Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum

Rīgas geto un Latvijas Holokausta muzejs

In the Latvian capital of Riga about 30,000 Jews had to live in a fenced off ghetto from October 1941. Shortly afterwards the SS murdered the Jews of Riga and deported Jews from the German Reich to the Riga ghetto. Since 2010 the Ghetto Museum commemorates the ghetto and the fate of its inhabitants.

History

Prior to World War II about 40,000 Jews lived in the Latvian capital of Riga. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia. After the Red Army retreated from the approaching German Wehrmacht in July 1941, many Latvians greeted the Germans as liberators. Latvian nationalists inflamed violent pogroms against Jews, whom they regarded as Soviet collaborators, hundreds of Jews perished. Along with the Wehrmacht the SS Einsatzkommando 2 (mobile killing squad) had marched into Riga. Members of the SS continued the killings: They shot several thousand Jewish men from Riga and its surroundings in the Biķernieki forest outside the city. At the same time Wehrmacht and SS planned to concentrate the Jews of Riga in a large ghetto: At command of the occupying forces all Jews had to move to the ghetto by mid-April 1941. It was set up in the particularly derelict district of Maskavas Forštate (Moscow Forshtat), where many poor and Jews lived. This area consisted mainly of wooden houses with no sanitation or water supply. By the end of October about 30,000 people moved to the ghetto, which was then cordoned off by the Wehrmacht. The ghetto was guarded by Latvian auxiliary police. The Jews were only allowed to leave the ghetto to work, contact between Latvians and Jews was strictly forbidden. One month later the senior SS and police leader Friedrich Jeckeln ordered to clear the Maskavas Forštate by the end of November and to kill all its occupants. Members of the SS shot the Riga Jews in the forest of Rumbula during two big »Aktionen«.
From December 1941 the SS deported about 25,000 German, Austrian and Czech Jews to the cleared ghetto. Beginning of 1942 members of SS and Latvian accomplices murdered thousands of them in the Biķernieki forest. The surviving 12.000 Jews had to conduct forced labour until the dissolution of the ghetto.

Riga, 1942, The ghetto, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N1212-326, Herbert Donath

Riga, 2010, Open-air exhibition in the museum's courtyard, Rīgas geto un Latvijas Holokausta muzejs

Victims

After the pogroms and murder operations by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) committed against Jewish men it was mainly elderly, women and children who were moved to the Riga ghetto until October 1941. Of the approximately 30,000 occupants about 8,200 were men, 15,700 women and 5,600 children under the age of 14. Almost all the Jews of Riga were murdered later by the SS and their accomplices.
The 12,000 German Jews in the Riga ghetto who were still alive in 1942 were deported to the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga after the dissolution of the ghetto in 1943. Their further fate remains uncertain.
Almost all 70,000 Latvian Jews fell victim to the persecution by the National Socialists and their accomplices.

Latvia, an independent state since 1918, was occupied by the Red Army in 1940 as the result of a German-Soviet agreement – the so-called Hitler-Stalin (or Molotov-Ribbentrop) Pact. When German troops attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, there were still around 70,000 Jews in Latvia. Shortly before this, 23,000 Jews and hundreds and thousands of other Latvians had been deported to Siberia by the Soviet secret service NKWD or had managed to flee within the USSR. The Wehrmacht troops were followed by SS Einsatzgruppe A, which shot around 30,000 Jews between July and early December 1941 with the active participation of Latvian »self-defence« units. In the late summer of 1941, the headquarters of the Wehrmacht in Latvia established two ghettos: one in the capital Riga holding 30,000 Jewish prisoners and one in Daugavpils with 14,000 Jewish prisoners. Members of the German and Latvian special units carried out two mass shootings at the end of 1941 in the forest of Rumbula near Riga, killing 25,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto. From December 1941, the liquidated »Big Ghetto« in Riga became the destination for deportation trains carrying 25,000 German, Austrian and Czech Jews. In early 1942 more mass shootings took place in the forest of Bikernieki near Riga, claiming thousands of Jewish lives. By the end of the war, 95 percent of the pre-war Jewish population of Latvia and around 120,000 civilans had met a violent death. After the Red Army had regained Latvia in 1944, the country once again became a Soviet republic. A large number of monuments were built to commemorate the »victory« in the »Great Patriotic War«. Only in 1990-91 did Latvia reclaim its independence from Moscow, following a struggle also against Soviet troops. Many Soviet monuments were subsequently dismantled and the decades of occupation and resistance became the main feature of national memory. The Soviet annexation of Latvia in 1940-41 and from 1944 to 1990 was viewed on the same footing as the German occupation. As in Lithuania and Estonia, occupation museums were established in Latvia focusing on the years of Soviet terror. During the Second World War around 160,000 Latvians either volunteered or were forced to serve in the Latvian legion of the Waffen SS. They were deployed to take part in mass shootings, to ransack towns and villages and to guard camps, but also to fight in the war and against partisans. During the Soviet regime, they were marginalised and persecuted but after 1990-91 these former »legionaries« were respected and celebrated by many as freedom fighters who had opposed the communist enemy. This one-sided perspective attracted criticism from abroad. At the end of 1998, an international committee of historians was founded by the President of the Republic to examine »Crimes against Humanity during the Two Occupations, 1940–1956«. Holocaust memorial sites were established most notably at the former Salaspils concentration camp in 1967 and in Bikernieki in 2001. As early as 1962, Jewish dissidents put up a Jewish star in the forest of Rumbula to remember the Jewish victims. It was removed by the Soviet authorities and replaced by a monument honouring the »victims of fascism«. A new monument was inaugurated there in November 2002. Already in 1989, a Jewish Museum was funded in Riga by Holocaust survivors. In 2005-06 a memorial site was opened among the foundations of the former Choral Synagogue in Riga to remember all victims of the Holocaust and all Jews murdered on Latvian soil. Since 2010 there is also a Museum of the Riga Ghetto.

Remembrance

The Ghetto Museum is located in the district of Spīķeri near the border of the former Riga ghetto. The city of Riga handed the building as well as the surrounding grounds for free use to the Jewish organisation Shamir, who initiated the foundation of the museum. In September 2010 the museum was opened with an open-air exhibition. The proper exhibition building is currently being renovated and the reconstruction of an authentic ghetto building is in progress. Step by step more exhibition areas are to be added. Specific attention will be paid to the individual fates of Latvian Jews. In the museum's courtyard is a plaque with the names of more than 70,000 Latvian victims of the holocaust.

Riga, 2010, Memorial stone to the Jews of Riga, Rīgas geto un Latvijas Holokausta muzejs

Riga, 2010, Details of the exhibition, Rīgas geto un Latvijas Holokausta muzejs

Open

Daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact

http://www.rgm.lv

rgm@rgm.lv

+371 672 708 2

Maskavas iela 14a
LV-1050 Rīga

Riga, 2017, In the museum's courtyard, Christian Wendling

Riga, 2017, View of the exhibition, Christian Wendling

Riga, 2017, Open-air exhibition in the museum's courtyard, Christian Wendling

Riga, 2017, Detailed view of the exhibition, Christian Wendling

Riga, 2010, Plaque with the names of Latvian victims of the holocaust, Rīgas geto un Latvijas Holokausta muzejs

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