News - Kauno IX forto muziejus

Free Admission to the Museum for Ukrainian Citizens

We invite Ukrainian citizens to visit the expositions of Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum and to participate in our guided tours free of charge. All you need to do is provide an identity document at the ticket office. Registration to the guided tours is available via phone +370 686 26243 or e-mail muziejus@9fortomuziejus.ltRelevant information: www.ltua.lt.Important contacts—Запрошуємо громадян України відвідати експозиції Каунаського музею IX форту та взяти участь в екскурсіях музеєм безкоштовно. Все, що потрібно для цього зробити – пред’явити своє посвідчення особи.Попередній запис на екскурсію проводиться за телефоном +370 686 26243 або ел. поштою muziejus@9fortomuziejus.ltІнформація для громадян України: www.ltua.lt.Важливі контакти—Приглашаем граждан Украины посетить экспозиции Каунасского музея IX форта и принять участие в экскурсиях по музею бесплатно. Всё, что необходимо для этого сделать, это в кассе предъявить свое удостоверение личности.Предварительная запись на экскурсии производится по телефону +370 686 26243 или по эл. почте muziejus@9fortomuziejus.ltАктуальная информация: www.ltua.lt.Важные контакты

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Events

2024-08-23

Opening of the Exhibition “Bakhmut. The Faces of Genocide 1942 | 2022”

This is not history any more. This is today’s reality.For the first time, the exhibition from Ukraine “Bakhmut. The Faces of Genocide 1942 | 2022” is brought to the European Union. The exhibition, organised by the National Historical Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar,” presents a retrospective of the tragedies of Bakhmut, past and present, and reveals the horrific picture of a genocide with the same face: a totalitarian regime with an ideology of hatred.The exhibition will be on display at Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum (Žemaičių pl. 73, Kaunas) from August 23 to October 29 this year.The exhibition will symbolically open on the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 23, 2024 (Friday) at 11:00 a.m., also commemorating the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism and the Baltic Way Day.PROGRAMME of the opening event11:00 am. Welcome speech11:20 am. Presentation of the exhibition (with the participation of the exhibition authors)11:40 am. Musical works performed by Viktor Rekalo, cellist of the State Vilnius Quartet (Lithuania) and Kseniia Kosarieva, first violin of the Prime Orchestra (Kharkiv, Ukraine)12:10 pm. Independent visit of the exhibitionThe opening event is free of charge; it will be held in Lithuanian and English.The event is open to the public and will be filmed and ...

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Transfer of the Museum’s Ticket Office

From August 20, 2024, the ticket office of Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum will be located not in the Ninth Fort, but in the nearby building of the memorial complex, the address of which is Žemaičių pl. 73.After the completion of the first stage of the renovation, a spacious information centre has been set up here, where you will be able to conveniently buy a visitor’s ticket, find out more about the services and choose a book or souvenir.When you arrive to the museum, please follow the information signs to the ticket office.

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Timetable of the Guided Tours at Weekends

Only general organised guided tours take place in Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum at weekends. Pre-booking is not possible: the person who purchased the ticket earlier acquires the priority to participate in the guided tour. The maximum number of participants in a tour is 25 people.A special ticket for a participant of an organised guided tour (11 Eur or with a discount – 6 Eur per person) will allow visitors to visit the museum expositions as well as join thematic or guided tours organized at certain times.TIMETABLE OF THE GUIDED TOURS*In English:12:00 Overview guided tour THE NINTH FORT: FROM FORTIFICATION TO THE MUSEUM (120 min.)In Lithuanian:11:00 Extended thematic guided tour THE DEFENSIVE WALL OF THE NINTH FORT: THE UNDERGROUND (70 min.)13:00 Overview guided tour THE NINTH FORT: FROM FORTIFICATION TO THE MUSEUM (120 min.)14:00 Extended thematic guided tour THE DEFENSIVE WALL OF THE NINTH FORT: THE UNDERGROUND (70 min.)15:00 Extended thematic guided tour THE DEFENSIVE WALL OF THE NINTH FORT: THE UNDERGROUND (70 min.)*Except for the last Sunday of every month

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International Scientific Conference

“80 Years after the Destruction of the Kaunas Ghetto – What Do We Remember, What Have We Learnt?”On 17-18 July 2024 the Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum invites you to the international scientific conference “80 Years After the Destruction of the Kaunas Ghetto – What Do We Remember, What Have We Learnt?”. What makes the Kaunas Ghetto unique in the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania? What lessons did we learn from the Holocaust in Lithuania and other Nazi-occupied countries? How can we ensure that historical memory is effectively integrated into public consciousness? Experts from Lithuania, Poland, Germany, the USA, Ukraine, and Israel will address these and other significant questions.The conference will be conducted in both Lithuanian and English. The detailed programme is available here.The Kaunas Ghetto was one of the three major ghettos in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. In the summer of 1941, it housed over 30,000 Jews. By the time the ghetto was liquidated in July 1944, only a few hundred Jews had survived. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Kaunas served as the provisional capital of Lithuania, a hub of intellectual and cultural nucleus of the young state, the people who, with their inner potential, had built Lithuania and rapidly integrated it into ...

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Exhibition “Icons on Ammo Boxes”

February 29 – September 15, 2024The exhibition “Icons on Ammo Boxes” by Ukrainian artists Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klimenko consists of 19 icons from the Pietitus series.In 2014, when Russia’s aggression against Ukraine started, two Ukrainian artists, Sofia Atlantova and Oleksandr Klimenko, conceived a highly original and eloquent artistic project: they started painting icons on ammunition boxes. The artists noticed that the lids and bottoms of the boxes were very similar to the boards on which the icons were painted. This strange coincidence inspired them to start the project. Speaking about the idea, Klimenko said: “The New Testament idea of ‘reforging weapons to ploughs’ was born from the Old Testament motif of getting out of hell (…). However, the exodus from hell could only take place as a victory over death, a victory through death.” The icons created on the parts of the ammunition boxes, like the cross, symbolise the transformation of death into life.The message conveyed by the icons in the exhibition is multi-layered. On the one hand, they are the work of talented Ukrainian artists. The icons combine modernity and tradition, focusing on the work of Byzantine-era icon masters. On the other hand, the story these icons tell ...

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Sensitive Art Exhibition “Escape from the Ninth Fort” Opened at Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum

On Saturday (December 8, 2023), the exhibition “Escape from the Ninth Fort,” created by artists Džiugas Karalius and Mindaugas Lukošaitis in collaboration with the museum staff, was opened to the public at Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum. The art installation and drawings present the memories of the surviving prisoners and invite visitors to personally experience an emotional journey through several knowledge layers of this historical event.“On the night of December 25, 1943, in the shadow of the crimes committed in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, sixty-four prisoners, who had been part of the operation of exhumation and cremation of the corpses, resisted and made a daring escape from Kaunas Ninth Fort. Reading the story of the escape, we could not believe it. It seemed, and still seems, to be a fictional story. That is why we decided to recreate the chronology of the events by artistic means and to convey the story of a cruel, yet very real story to the public,” tells D. Karalius, an artist and architect.Museum visitors are invited to experience the full escape sequence: Kaunas Ninth Fort, the site of the mass murder, arrival of the burners, instruction, selection, work in the murder site, planning the escape, the course of ...

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Memories Alive for 80 Years: the Escape From Kaunas Ninth Fort Through the Eyes of Relatives

“The experience of the Ninth Fort was reflected in the daily lives of the liberated prisoners throughout their lives. Despite my father’s positivity, the psychological impact of the escape was much stronger than one could imagine,” claimed Ya’arit Glezer, the daughter of Pinia Krakinovsky and the niece of Aba Diskant, as well as the relatives of other escapees, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the escape from Kaunas Ninth Fort.“It is hard for me to imagine what my father went through in the fortress in Lithuania, the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, which hid the Nazi crimes and mass killings, but I am glad that he and his comrades found the courage to break free. A group of 64 prisoners escaped from Kaunas Ninth Fort in the cover of darkness and snow on December 25, 1943. Unfortunately, only a few of them survived. Among the survivals was my father,” tells Glezer.She says that although her father managed to escape from the Ninth Fort physically, he could not escape the horrible memories he had experienced there: “I remember my father waking up screaming at night, and when my mum would ask him what happened, he would answer that he had ...

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Christian Boltanski “Animitas”

Commemorating the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews2023 June 22 d. 13:00On September 22, 2023, Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum will commemorate the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews, and the installation “Animitas” (Lithuanian: Souls) by the famous artist Christian Boltanski will be opened. Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum and “Kaunas 2022” are inviting you to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and to participate in the opening of a work of art that has never been exhibited in Lithuania before, which reminds us of those we have lost.PROGRAMME:13.00 Commemorative procession in the Museum territory13.10 Tribute to the victims of the Holocaust13.20 Opening of Christian Boltanski’s artistic installation “Animitas”13.35 Dance performance | Choreographer and performer Erika Vizbaraitė, music author and performer Domas Aleksa14.00 Presentation of the experiential installation “Hideout at the Ghetto”In order to remember and honour the victims of the Holocaust, the event will start with a commemorative procession from the Museum’s administration building (Žemaičių pl. 71) to the mass murder site. After the ceremony, Christian Boltanski’s artistic installation “Animitas” will be presented by curator Josée Drouin-Brisebois and Virginija Vitkienė, the director of Kaunas 2022. The presentation will be followed by a dance performance created ...

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International Holocaust Remembrance Day

For the commemoration of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we invite you to listen to the thoughts of the pastor, the initiator of the “March of Life”, the author of the book “Breaking the Veil of Silence”, Jobst Bittner, and the representatives of the younger generation, on why it is important to talk about what happened.

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Tebby Ramasike, Who Will Perform at the Ninth Fort: “In Ugliness There Is Beauty and in Darkness There Is Light”

South African-born dancer and choreographer Tebby W. T. Ramasike has three decades of experience working on a professional stage. Ramasike doesn’t avoid drawing resources from painful historical events, which he combines with his personal experience and expresses in body language. On 24th of September, 2022, he will perform the performance “The Wreckage Of My Flesh” at Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum. In order to learn more about the performance, the dance in the context of traumatic experience, and the importance of remembering historical events, we invite you to read the interview with Tebby Ramasike.The performance “The Wreckage Of My Flesh” is a part of the international project “ECCE HOMO: Those Who Stayed”, which is organised by Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum and Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022.On 24th of September, you will perform “The Wreckage Of My Flesh” at the Ninth Fort. First of all, I would like to ask you what impression and emotions did you have after visiting the Ninth Fort for the first time in 2021, during the preparation for the project?That was quite an overwhelming experience. I saw pictures before that Bruce [visual artist Bruce Clarke] had shared with me, so I expected a different place. But when we were there, I just felt – ...

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Bruce Clarke, the Author of the Art Installation at the Ninth Fort: Artist Has to Give Tools to Understand

“Knowing history helps us to better understand the present,” says Litvak origin artist Bruce Clarke. From 29th of June till July 20th, 2022, the famous artist is visiting Lithuania: he is beginning to create an artistic installation “ECCE HOMO: Those Who Stayed” at Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum. The presentation of the installation will take place in September, on the commemoration of the National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. In order to learn more about art, painful historical events and the project in Kaunas we invite you to read the interview with Bruce Clarke.“ECCE HOMO: Those Who Stayed” is a part of the international project, which is organised by Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum and Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022.*By using art, you are looking for ways of expressing really complex and painful topics such as the Holocaust. What made or inspired you to focus on them?Beyond this question is another: how I conceive the role of art. I conceive it as something, which plays an active role in society and which says something about the world in which we live or about its history. So, it’s both contemporary and past history. If you are an artist, you ...

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