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When the
Gestapo official in charge of Jewish affairs in Kovno informed the
Aeltestenrat that all residents of the ghetto were to assemble in
Democrats Square in order to separate workers from non-workers, the
Jewish council members knew what the population would be facing. The
Judenrat consulted with the Chief Rabbi and decided to summon the
inhabitants anyway, in the hope thereby of saving a few. The
“great Aktion” at Kovno took place on October 28, with SS
Master Sergeant Helmut Raucke deciding who would live and who would
die. More than 9,000 Jews, about half of them children, were removed
from the main ghetto to the “small ghetto,” quarantined there
until the next day, and led in groups to the Ninth Fort. Germans
then ordered the Jewish police to cleanse the “small ghetto” of
persons in hiding; the Jewish police managed to save a few such
people by placing Jewish police emblems on their clothing. Six
kilometers from the center of Kovno, at the Ninth Fort—part of a
set of redoubts that encircled the town—9,000 Jews were shot to
death. |
