Pre-1940: Kaunas (Yiddish: Kovne), city, apskritis center and provisional capital, Lithuania; 1940–1941: uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kauen, city and Kreis center, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kaunas, rajonas and apskritis center, Republic of Lithuania Kaunas is located 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) west-northwest of Wilno. Prior to the war, roughly 40,000 Jews lived in Kaunas—about one quarter of the city’s population. The Soviet occupation of Lithuania in the summer of 1940 aggravated antisemitic sentiments in the country. Soviet repressive and economic measures affected the Jews just as much as, if not more than, non-Jewish Lithuanians. Two days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on the evening of June 24, 1941, the 2nd Corps, part of the 16th Army in Army Group North (General von Leeb) occupied Kaunas. Security Police and SD units charged with “special tasks” followed on the heels of the Wehrmacht; when the leader of Einsatzgrup...