Upon his return to New York, Rabbi Alperstein was delighted to learn that his colleagues Rabbis Moshe Matlin and Yehuda David Bernstein had opened a Lithuanian-style yeshiva named in honour of the distinguished Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno.
Following the death of Rabbi Spektor in 1896, his son, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Spektor, renamed the yeshiva that his father had founded in Kovno, Knesses Beis Yitzchok and chose Rabinowitz as the first rosh yeshiva.
Jews constituted a vast majority after large numbers of them forcibly relocated in August and September 1943 from the ghettos of Kovno and Vilna in Lithuania and Salaspils in Latvia; smaller numbers were from Estonia, Russia and Romania.
The Kovno Kollel was later transferred to Slabodka, a suburb of Kovno, where Rabbi Shimon Zvi Dubiansky was appointed rosh kollel and served there until the outbreak of World War II.
A. Rogovin (1838- February 27, 1923) was a Russian civil engineer responsible for construction of many fortresses in Russia: Libau, Brest Fortress, Kovno among others.
After Sipiagin's assassination (1902) Sviatopolk-Mirskii resigned as Assistant Minister but was persuaded to accept the position of Governor-General of the North-Western province that included gubernias of Vilna, Kovno and Grodno (that is modern-day Lithuania and most of the Belarus).