The exhibition will be open from April 24, 2026,  to October 4, 2026.

RAISED FROM THE ASHES. KAUNAS 

The Holocaust in Kaunas: A Testimony to a Crime Against Humanity 

The exhibition presents a series of drawings by Mindaugas Lukošaitis, based on artistic research into the Holocaust in Kaunas. This story is a part of  the policy of exterminating Jews, carried out throughout Nazi-controlled Europe as a systematic and large-scale crime against humanity. In the context of Kaunas, this tragedy is revealed through brutal pogroms, ghetto isolation and mass murder, which became a tragic reflection of the genocide of Jews across all Europe. 

The artistic research is based on archival documents, historical texts and observations of specific Holocaust sites in Kaunas. In the exhibition, this  history is presented in a coherent visual sequence: 

Prelude to Violence – a premonition and the beginning of mass extermination; 

Rhythm of Death – the pulse of systematic extermination in Kaunas Fortress forts; 

Boundary – the living space of free townspeople is reduced to the brink of inevitable death; 

Censorship of Life – the Nazi regime’s ruthless sorting of the living and the dead; 

דְּמָמָה – profound silence of the end 

The drawings are executed in Japanese ink, which creates a restrained monochromatic visual language. The ink, made from soot, acquires a  conceptual meaning: a trace of burnt material that remains as a dark layer of history. 

The viewers are guided sequentially: by looking at the drawing, the place and the traces of history, they encounter the history of the Holocaust in  Kaunas and its imprint on the city’s memory. 

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Project team 

Mindaugas Lukošaitis, artist of the drawing cycle Raised from the Ashes. 

Eglė Pietarytė, exhibition curator 

Renata Vinckevičiūtė-Kazlauskienė, design and visual communication of the exhibition 

Henrika Kryževičienė, exhibition communication 

Aurimas Dudanavičius, Karolina Vilkelienė, video content creation  

Vytautas Petrikėnas, historical content consultant 

Marius Antanaitis, author of audio études  

Irmantas Kuskys, technical decisions  

Jolita Večkienė, Lithuanian language editor 

Materials used in the exhibition: 

Excerpts from the book Kaunas Ghetto: Day by Day by Avraham Tory (2000)  
Audio étude excerpts from the piece “Baym Geto Toyerl (At the Ghetto’s Gate)” (lyrics by Abraham Axelrod, melody by Mark Varshavski) from the  Yad Vashem collection Music of the Holocaust.