Eighty Years of the Escape from the 9th Fort 2024 — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

About six months late (due to the October 7th war), we gathered in May 2024 at Beit Vilna to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the daring escape from the 9th Fort. Y'aarit Glazer, born in Kovna, a member of the Association management, organized the evening which was attended by the families of the escapees and a large crowd that filled the house. Yaarit's father, Pinchas Krakinovski, who was a prisoner in the group of 64 cremators, drilled 312 holes in one of the iron gates in the Ninth Fort, thus enabling the fulfillment of his and his friends' escape plan, outside the walls of the Death Citadel.

Professor Motti Zalkin, a historian of Eastern European Jewry, an expert in the communities of Vilna and Kovna, told about the daily life in the Kovna ghetto. Yaarit's granddaughter read Yaarit's mother's poetry, which was written in the ghetto. Testimonies of Yaarit's mother and escapees from the 9th Port were projected on the screen, which added many more details about this masterful operation, which were narrated, played and sung by Udi, Gali, Janna and Regina from the The Nechama Lifshitz Yiddish Song- Workshop