The Ninth Fort on the edge of Kaunas was built as part of the Tsarist fortress ring, used as a prison in the interwar republic, and then used by the Nazi occupation as a killing site. Tens of thousands of people were murdered here, most of them Jews, including many deported from other countries specifically to be killed at this place.
The memorial that now stands on the site was completed in 1984: three enormous concrete forms rising from open ground, jagged and vertical, visible from a long way off. It is Soviet monumental sculpture at full volume, and whatever one makes of the politics of its commissioning, the ground it stands on justifies the scale.