Crowds watching the corpses of Jews murdered by Lithuanian mobs shortly after the German occupation, Kovno, Lithuania

Between the two World Wars Kovno (Kaunas) was Lithuania's capital. The Jewish community of 35,000-40,000 about one-fourth of the city's total population, was a center of Jewish learning and culture with many political, cultural, religious and other organization, Yiddish and Hebrew schools, a famous yeshiva (center of Jewish learning) and a Jewish hospital. In June 1940 the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania and the Baltic countries came under Soviet rule. However this was short lived, since only a year later Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Following the German occupation in June 1941, pro-German Lithuanian mobs began to attack and murder Jews (whom they unfairly blamed for Soviet repression). In early July 1941, German Einsazgruppen (mobile killing unit) and their Lithuanian auxiliaries launched systematic massacres of Jews. The remaining Jews were incarcerated in a ghetto, but the killings continued.

In the autumn of 1943 the ghetto was converted into a concentration camp. In July 1944 the remaining Jews were deported mostly to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.