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.
