Ninth Fort

The Ninth Fort is a fortress in ilainiai elderate, Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a portion of the Kaunas Fortress, which was built in the late 1800s.

Kaunas was fortified in the end of the nineteenth century, and by 1890 it was surrounded by eight forts and nine gun batteries. The Ninth Fort (named for its numerical classification) began construction in 1902 and was finished on the eve of World War I. The Ninth Fort was utilized as the Kaunas City jail beginning in 1924.

During the Soviet occupation, 1940–1941, the NKVD utilized the Ninth Fort to detain political prisoners awaiting transit to Gulag forced labor camps. During the Nazi occupation, the Ninth Fort was used as a mass murder facility. In what became known as the Kaunas massacre, 45,000 to 50,000 Jews, mostly from Kaunas and mostly from the Kovno Ghetto, were hauled to the Ninth Fort and slaughtered by Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators.

Location: Kaunas