Kaunas Fort IX

Passing Kaunas we stopped to see Fort IX. Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania between the two World Wars, when Vilnius was still under Polish rule.

The fort is one in a series of ten built for the defence of the town, but later used as a prison, both by inter-war Lithuania and Soviet occupants in 1940-41. Later during German occupation it was the site of large-scale executions of the Jewish population of Kaunas (read Virtual Jewish History on this dark piece of history).

The two top pictures are of the actual fort, the lower one of the museum- The site now houses museums with material and information mainly relating to Soviet and to some extent Nazi atrocities in Lithuania.