When the Gestapo official in charge of Jewish affairs in Kovno informed the Aeltestenrat that all residents of the ghetto were to assemble in Democrats Square in order to separate workers from non-workers, the Jewish council members knew what the population would be facing. The Judenrat consulted with the Chief Rabbi and decided to summon the inhabitants anyway, in the hope thereby of saving a few. The "great Aktion " at Kovno took place on October 28, with SS Master Sergeant Helmut Raucke deciding who would live and who would die. More than 9,000 Jews, about half of them children, were removed from the main ghetto to the "small ghetto," quarantined there until the next day, and led in groups to the Ninth Fort. Germans then ordered the Jewish police to cleanse the "small ghetto" of persons in hiding; the Jewish police managed to save a few such people by placing Jewish police emblems on their clothing. Six kilometers from the center of Kovno, at the Ninth FortΓÇöpart of a set of redoubts that encircled the townΓÇö9,000 Jews were shot to death.
