Lietūkis Garage Massacre Memorial

Kaunas


This small memorial in the courtyard marks the spot where, on June 27, 1941, during the first days of the Nazi occupation of the city, Lithuanian 'patriots' wearing the white armbands of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) killed 70 or so Jewish passers-by, by beating them to death with crowbars and torturing them with the insertion of high pressure water hoses into various orifices until they burst. The spectacle was attended by a cheering crowd of onlookers.

In 2011, when Kaunas' small Jewish community marked the 70th anniversary of this massacre, the Lithuanian government chose to honour the memory of its perpetrators.