Kauen (, ) was a

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

located in the former

Kovno Ghetto The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas (Kovno) during the Holocaust. At its peak, the ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, o ...

, modern day

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. It operated from 15 September 1943 to 14 July 1944 and had seventeen satellite camps located around the city of

Kaunas Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...

, in modern-day Lithuania. Most prisoners were Jews who had survived the previous years of

the Holocaust in Lithuania The Holocaust resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian (Litvaks) and History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in ''Generalbezirk Litauen'' of the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' in the Occupation of Lithuania by Na ...

. In July 1944, eight of the subcamps were closed. The main camp was liberated by the Red Army on 1 August 1944.

References

Sources

*Evelyn Zegenhagen, Charles-Claude Biedermann: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) . Encyclopedia. In: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ed.):

Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945'' is a seven-part encyclopedia series that explores the history of the concentration camps, ghettos, forced-labor camps, and other sites of detention, persecution, or state-sponsored murder ru ...

. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, USA 2009, , "Kauen" pp. 848–852 *Riga-Kaiserwald, Warschau, Vaivara, Kauen (Kaunas), Płaszów, Kulmhof. (''tr. "Riga Imperial Forest, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas (Kaunas), Płaszów, Kulmhof"'') In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Hrsg.):

Der Ort des Terrors ''Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager'' ("The Place of Terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps") is a nine-volume German encyclopedia series of Nazi Germany's camp system, publis ...

. (''tr. "The place of terror"'') vol. 8, "Kaunas". C. H. Beck, Munich 2005, , p. 209–232 {{Authority control Nazi concentration camps in Lithuania