page_title: Kaunas Fortress
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Kaunas Fortress / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: Exposition in Ninth Fort, part of the Kaunas Fortress. Lietuvių: Kauno tvirtovės IX forto ekspozicijos dalis.
context_page_description: Kaunas Fortress is the remains of a fortress complex in Kaunas, Lithuania. It was constructed and renovated between 1882 and 1915 to protect the Russian Empire's western borders, and was designated a "first-class" fortress in 1887. During World War I, the complex was the largest defensive structure in the entire state, occupying 65 km².
  The fortress was battle-tested in 1915 when Germany attacked the Russian Empire, and withstood eleven days of assault before capture. After World War I, the fortress' military importance declined as advances in weaponry rendered it increasingly obsolete. It was used by various civil institutions and as a garrison.
  During World War II, parts of the fortress complex were used by the Nazi Germany for detention, interrogation, and execution. About 50,000 people were executed there, including more than 30,000 victims of the Holocaust. Some sections have since been restored; the Ninth Fort houses a museum and memorial devoted to the victims of wartime mass executions. The complex is the most complete remaining example of a Russian Empire fortress.
context_section_description: Lithuania remained a Soviet Socialist Republic until 1990. In 1948, the headquarters of the 7th Guards Cherkassy Airborne Division was established in the fortress' commandant's headquarters. The barracks were used by the 108th paratroopers regiment and the Fifth Fort served the air defense regiment. Most of the forts, however, served as depots or housed farming organizations. During the postwar expansion and development of the city, parts of the fortress were dismantled; as part of the construction of Kaunas Polytechnic Institute the ground-level entrenchments of one defensive sector were destroyed.
  In 1958, the Ninth Fort was dedicated as a museum. During 1959, its first exhibition was opened, memorializing the crimes that had taken place there. The museum later expanded its scope to cover the fortress' entire history. A 32 m (105 ft)  tall memorial to the victims was constructed there in 1984. However, the Soviet military occupied most of the fortress until Lithuania re-established its independence. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces, completed in 1993, Lithuanian military bases were established at several forts.
    
  As of early 2007, only the Ninth Fort had been partly renovated. It is now devoted to the Holocaust and Lithuania's occupations by the Germans and the Soviets. The museum, which holds over 65,000 artefacts, is sponsored by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.  Since the early 2000s, it has received about 100,000 visitors per year and hosted Holocaust education seminars and workshops. In 2005, the international project "Baltic Culture and Tourism Route Fortresses" was launched, with support from the European Union. Its goal is the promotion of transnational scientific cooperation in monument protection, along with the creation of strategies to reconstruct and manage fortresses in the region. Kaunas Fortress is a part of this project. In 2007, Seventh fort was sold, new owners started the restoration process, since 2009 Seventh fort is open as a fortification and military museum and is the only brick fort in Kaunas suitable for safe visiting.  In the 2000s, a variety of entities owned parts of the complex: the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Defence, the State Property Fund, and the City of Kaunas. The site still contains unexploded ordnance, although a 1995 project removed about 1.9 tonnes of explosives. Other restoration issues include uncovered wells, poor drainage and ventilation, erosion, possible chemical contaminants, vegetative overgrowth, and the presence of a protected bat colony. Despite the damage that it has sustained, the Kaunas Fortress complex is the most complete of the surviving Russian Empire fortresses.
caption: Museum in the Ninth Fort
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