Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto

In Summer 1941, special killing squads accompanied the German army's sweep through the Baltic States, murdering tens of thousands of Jews. In Kovno, Lithuania, however, four fifths of the city's 37,000 Jews were spared this deadly assault and were herded into a ghetto in the poor suburb of Vilijampole. For three nightmarish years, the jews of Kovno faced mass murders and endured forced labour and deportations. Without question, the brutal Nazi regime planned to exterminate them - and all traces of their ordeal.But the Jews of Kovno refused to let their suffering be forgotten. With photographs, paintings, drawings, letters, diaries and reports, they meticulously recorded their plight - and hid these artifacts and documents from their Nazi oppressors. Now, more than fifty years later, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has gathered these extraordinary Kovno materials together for the first time. Drawn from individuals and archives in Lithuania, Israel and the United States, the documents and images collected in this moving book offer an unforgettable look at Jewish life and survival during the Holocaust.