Lithuania

Vilijampole was the Jewish district in Kaunas long before it was turned into the ghetto under Nazi occupation. Traditional Jewish houses are characterised by a door immediately adjacent to the street enabling a business at the front of the building & living quarters to the rear. The district is immediately across the river from the main town & appears not to have changed in the last 100 years.

The mirrored building is the old police house, marking the entrance to the ghetto, where there would have been a gated checkpoint. There are differing interpretations of the meaning of the mirrored art installation; one interpretation is that it is an invitation to Lithuanians to look at themselves in the mirror, another is that it causes the building to sparkle in the light.

Our guide told us a story of when he brought a group here, among the group was a survivor from the Kovno ghetto who told him a story of being smuggled out of the ghetto in a potato sack thrown over the fence. It was common for parents to smuggle their children out of the ghetto in the hope that they would be adopted & protected by Lithuanians. Little girls sometimes had their hair dyed blonde so they did not look Jewish. Jonas told us that if a Nazi noticed one of these girls, their parents would standby hoping that they would not reply in Yiddish, thus betraying their Jewishness.Lue lisää