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The Kaunas massacre of October 29, 1941, also known as the Great Action, was the largest mass murder of Lithuanian Jews.[1]
By the order of SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger and SS-Rottenführer Helmut Rauca, the Sonderkommando under the leadership of SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann, and 8 to 10 men from Einsatzkommando 3, murdered 2,007 Jewish men, 2,920 women, and 4,273 children[2] in a single day at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, Generalbezirk Litauen, as German occupied Lithuania was then known.[3] Almost the entire 1st Police Battalion took part in the operation, with the actual killings carried out by the 3rd Company.[2]
The Nazis destroyed Kaunas Ghetto on October 4, 1941, and killed almost all of its inhabitants at the Ninth Fort. Later that month, on October 28, SS-Rottenführer Helmut Rauca of the Kaunas Gestapo conducted the selection in the Kaunas Ghetto.[4][unreliable source?] All inhabitants of the ghetto were forced to assemble in its central square. Rauca selected 9,200 Jewish men, women, and children, about one-third of the population.[1] The next day, October 29, all of these people were shot at the Ninth Fort in huge pits dug in advance.[3]
