At Noon in Democrats’ Square. 2017
Paulina Pukytė
At Noon in Democrats’ Square. 2017
Performance. Duration 10 min. With the help of Bella Shirin. Singing: VMU Music Academy students Gabrielė Kuzmickaitė, Gabrielė Skromanaitė, Monika Pleškytė and Martynas Žukauskas under the direction of Professor Sabina Martinaitytė and Audronė Eitmanavičiūtė
Across from Demokratų g. 31, Vilijampolė, Kaunas
Daily at noon
The suburb of Vilijampolė (also known as Slobodka) was the location where all the Jews from Kaunas were forced to move to in July 1941, when the Kaunas Ghetto was established. In 1943 it was transformed into a concentration camp and liquidated in 1944. Here, in the square known during the ghetto period as Demokratų Square, on 28 October 1941, a mass selection of the Ghetto inhabitants, known as the Big Action, or the Great Action, took place. The selected 9,200 men, women and children were marched to Fort IX and shot. “Snow was falling, mixed with rain.”
Every day at noon a singer comes and sings two songs in Yiddish to the emptiness of Democrats’ Square.
Shlof zhe mir shoyn, Yankele, mayn sheyner,
Di eygelekh, di shvartsinke, makh tsu;
A yingele, vos hot shoyn ale tseyndelekh,
Muz nokh di mame zingen ay-lyu-lyu.
A yingele, vos hot shoyn ale tseyndelekh,
Un vet mit mazl bald in kheyder geyn,
Un lernen vet er khumesh un gemore,
Zol veynen ven di mame vigt im ayn?