Holocaust narrative(s) in Soviet Lithuania: the case of the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas

The aim of this paper is to trace the construction of memories of the Nazi occupation in Soviet Lithuania based on the case study of the Ninth Fort Museum focussing on two questions: (1) Who were the key actors who created the museum? (2) How was the memory of the war constructed, medialized, and gendered at the site of the museum? The paper reveals that the war memory in the Ninth Fort Museum was mostly a narrative of male martyrdom, despite Soviet ideology which presented itself as attempting to liberate women from their traditional roles. The memories of the female survivors from the Ninth Fort were neglected and they were excluded as active transmitters of memory during the public commemorative events at this site.