Antanas Sutkus. In Memoriam exhibition catalogue has been published which contains newly commissioned essays by Leonidas Donskis and Kamile Rupeikaite, and interviews with last living survivors of Kaunas Ghetto .

Published by White Space Gallery, London, 2016. First edition of 1600 copies. 112 pages, soft back

Antanas Sutkus, a master of art photography, born 1939, learned about the mass killing of Jews by Nazis during WWII from his grandparents. Being a Lithuanian himself, he intuitively felt bitterly opposed to the humiliation of man and the mass destruction of human life in his homeland. In 1988 he began to photograph the Kaunas Jews who had escaped death in concentration camps. Gradually personal relationships were formed. He had feelings of shame and guilt for what had been going on behind the Vilijampole ghetto gates and the 9th fort – then known as “Enterprise 1.005B” – between 1941 and 1944.

As far back as the time of Lithuania’s Grand Duke Gediminas (1275-1341), who invited traders and artisans to come to Lithuania from various European states, the Jews were promised protection and support. During the following six hundred years the Jews took root in Lithuanian soil through their works and prayers, printing shops and synagogues, libraries and gymnasiums, songs and legends, as well as by that special Lithuanian-Jewish atmosphere common to larger and smaller towns accompanied by the peculiar cacophony of the Orient. That vibrant branch of Lithuania’s history and culture was chopped off as 200,000 men, women, children and old people were shot dead and thrown into pits prepared for them at forest edges, quarries and death camps.

–Alfonsas Bukontas