At the seminar “The Story of the Escape of 64 Prisoners in 1943: A Living Historical Narrative and the Use of the Museum’s Exhibition”, Ya’arit Glezer, an educator and guest from Israel, shared the story of the escape of her father, one of the prisoners of the Kaunas IXth Fort, Pinios Krakinovskij. Ya’arit Glezer told what she had heard of her father’s planned escape in 1943, at Christmas time.
An educator from Israel shared her thoughts on the second generation after the Second World War: that parents were reluctant to tell their children about traumatic experiences, that parents’ experiences during the Holocaust had to be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle to make a family and tribal history. Ya’arit Glezer showed only one photo of her mother’s family taken before the war, which went to relatives in the USA before the Second World War so that Ya’arit could know what her dead uncles and murdered grandparents looked like.
After a talk on the use of personal stories, the participants had the opportunity to see the new Escape History exhibition, which tells the story of the escape of the prisoner-body burners from Kaunas Fort IX on December 25, 1943, using a secret hole drilled in a metal door. Only 11 of the escapees survived the end of the Second World War. Every year after the war, they would come to Kaunas IX Fort on Christmas Day, saying that Christmas was their second birthday, their salvation from death.
The seminar was attended by 33 teachers and education staff from Alytus, Balbieriškis, Biržai, Jonava, Kaunas, Marijampolė, Kėdainiai, Panevėžys and Vilnius. The Secretariat of the International Commission organised the event in cooperation with the Kaunas IX Fort Museum and the Israeli Embassy in Lithuania.
