Jewish council building and ghetto inhabitants gathered outside the building.
Menu
Introduction
Invasion
Mass Murder
Ghettoization
Inside the Ghetto
Secret Archives
Final Days
Timeline
Menu

Menu
Avraham Tory, diary entry, June 5, 1943: The people come to the Council seeking a chance to lighten their difficult lives--maybe to change from a hard workplace to a better one, to receive a furlough due to illness, to request a pair of wooden shoes, a pair of trousers to avoid going naked, an additional ration...to request a chance for better housing....They also come to the Council to hear news, what the situation is. In this place the ghetto simmers.
Organizational chart of the Jewish council from a yearbook chronicling events of 1942. Offices abolished by the Germans were crossed out.Jewish ghetto police desk calendar, designed in the graphics office.

Armbands
The council mobilized artists and draftsmen to create maps, signs, passes, and identification and ration cards. Produced in a graphics workshop, these articles provided organization to the ghetto and a facade of order. Such graphics were the primary means of transmitting German decrees and important announcements. Samples of these documents were clandestinely collected in a special graphics archive.
Menu
Dr. Elkhanan Elkes was chairman of the Jewish council during the entire three years of the ghetto's life. Before the war, he was one of Kovno's leading doctors, serving as personal physician to the Lithuanian prime minister and the German ambassador. In the ghetto he provided moral leadership and negotiated with the Germans on behalf of Kovno's Jews. He helped the medical community, oversaw the police, supported the underground resistance, and encouraged writers, artists, and fellow council members to secretly document the ghetto's history.
The Jewish council. Chairman Elkes is seated third from left, and Vice-Chairman Leib Garfunkel is to his far right.
Logo of the Kovno ghetto education office.
Imprint bearing Elkhanan Elkes's name, from a stamp for official ghetto documents.
Elkhanan Elkes, leader of the Kovno ghetto Jewish council.