The last of 9 forts of Kaunas fortress was built in 1901-1913, but it functioned as an actual defensive fort only for a very short period. After Lithuania declared its independence in 1918, it was decided to reorganize the fort and its building was turned to Kaunas city prison. This prison operated in this fort from 1924 until the first Soviet occupation in 1940. Soviet authorities continued to use this fort as a prison, but of a very different kind – it was mainly used for political prisoners, who were later sent to gulags. In 1941 Nazis occupied Lithuania and used the fort as a prison as well – it was a prison for Communists and Jews. In October of 1941 Nazis ordered mass killings of these prisoners despite their sex or age. Recent studies show that during these mass murders approximately 50 thousand people were killed. As in many similar cases, the Nazis tried to hide everything, which incriminated them with mass murders, so in November of 1943, they formed a special prisoners` unit, which had to dig the bodies of the deceased and cremate them.  The prisoners of this macabre work unit organized an escape, which was partially successful – on the 25th of December in 1943 64 prisoners managed to escape the fort and 11 of them survived until the end of the war. They are the ones, who could have told this tragic history of the 9th fort, so-called “death fort”.  However, the story of mass murders did not end up with the escape of these prisoners – only in the summer of 1944, when Lithuania was reoccupied by the Soviet Union and the Germans withdraw, the mass murders of Jews in the 9th fort stopped.