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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE

An Online Resource Centre

ESTONIA


Jews in Estonia
Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Estonia
Tallinn Kohtla-Jarve Narva Parnu
Tartu Valga Viljandi Voru
Holocaust memorials and sites
Contacts
Sources

Jews in Estonia
It was not until the late nineteenth century that Estonia developed a Jewish community of any size; indeed, before 1865, permanent settlement was banned by the Russian Tsars. Both the Nazi and Soviet eras saw the near-obliteration of this community. In spite of this, Jews played a crucial role in Estonia’s two periods of democratic independence, from 1919 until the 1930s, and since 1991.

For a detailed history, see:
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Estonia.html and
www.einst.ee/factsheets/jews/

Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Estonia
Tallinn
For the historical background, see:
www.ejc.ee/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/304672/jewish/History.htm

Synagogue, community centre and museum
The late 1980s saw a rebirth of Estonian national identity; with it went a Jewish revival. Indeed the country’s Jewish Cultural Society was, in 1988, the first autonomous Jewish organisation in the Soviet Union. During this period the publication of Jewish periodicals was restored and, following a half-century break, the Jewish school re-opened its doors. Great support for the restoration of Jewish life in Estonia has been provided by American charity organisations, as well as by the Jewish communities of Finland and Sweden.

In April 1992 Estonia’s Jewish religious community, together with the Jewish Cultural Society, founded the Jewish Community of Estonia. A plot of land on the corner of Karu and Aedvilja Streets, seized from the Jewish community by the Soviet state in 1940, was returned. It became the site of a new community centre and synagogue.

At present the community centre building houses a Jewish school, opened in 1990, and an Estonian Jewish museum opened in December 2008, which documents the life of Estonian Jews from the second half of the 19th century to the present. It includes a permanent exhibition, an archive, a library, and an events programme; temporary exhibitions will be mounted in the synagogue next door.

This, designed by local architects Kimmel and Stöör, was opened in June 2007. Its unusual design features an enormous semicircular roof, supported by thin concrete columns; the walls are almost entirely made of glass. The wave-like form of the eaves alludes to the dramatic swings of fortune that have characterized Jewish life in Estonia. The interior is enriched with wooden screens pierced with images of the Tree of Life. The building also houses a mikveh and the country’s only kosher restaurant. See photos.

Address
Telephone
Fax
Community website
Museum website
16 Karu Street
+372 662 3050
+372 662 3001
www.ejc.ee/
http://eja.pri.ee/

Former Cantonists' synagogue
The site of the former synagogue in Tallinn Old Town (1867-1870), converted to a warehouse and bombed in 1944. See photo.

Address
37 Uus Street

Soviet-era synagogue (1966-2000)
Estonia’s Jews maintained a small synagogue on the edge of Tallinn during much of the Soviet era. The simple, domestic-scale building survives, though abandoned, and is an historic witness to the tenacity of Tallinn’s Jews in the face of decades of discrimination and oppression. It was preceded by a well-appointed prayer room at 23 Kreutzwaldi St. (1946-1966), which was demolished during the construction of a hotel.
See photos.

Address
9 Magdalena Street

Former Great Synagogue
The large, brick Romanesque-style synagogue was erected in 1883 and destroyed in 1944. At present, its site is unmarked. The building was designed by Nikolai Tamm, one of Estonia’s first professional architects. See photos.

Address
5 Maakri Street

Memorial, site of former prison
A memorial plaque was installed in 2001 on the wall of the fortress/prison on Suur Patarei Street, now a cultural park. Here, 400 French Jews were murdered during the Second World War. A plaque has since been created in memory of 207 Estonian Jews who also died there. Both were funded by relatives of the deceased. See photos and the entry in www.memorial-museums.net/.

Location
2, Suur Patarei Street

Magasini cemetery
This was the primary Jewish burial ground in Tallinn from the 19th century until the Rahumae cemetery was opened in 1909. It was destroyed in the 1960s: losses include a large, freestanding domed Moorish-style building to Levinovitsch, 1910. A marble slab with an inscription in Estonian reads (in translation) ‘here was the Jewish cemetery from the eighteenth century until the end of the 1960s’. The city government is developing a project to reconstruct the cemetery. See photos.

Location
31, Magasini Street

Rahumae cemetery
Rahumäe cemetery
The Jewish section of this municipal cemetery was established in 1909. It is well-maintained and is still in use. There are many interesting gravestones and an attractive modest-sized Ohel on the site - see photo. This structure is built of wood on a stone foundation, and its large arched windows include in their tracery a Star-of-David motif. There are two memorials: one to Jews who perished in the Holocaust and another to Jews who were deported, killed or died in exile during the Stalin era. See photos.

Address

Telephone
Email
6 Rahumäe Road
Tallinn 11316
+372 6554 8966
rahumae@kalmistud.ee

Kohtla-Jarve
Kohtla-Järve
Community Office
This is the major Jewish community centre in north-east Estonia. It is run by the city’s Jews and supported by the US-based Joint Distribution Committee. About 75 people use the facilities, which are located in a former apartment.
Contact
Telephone
Aleksander Dusman, Jewish Community of North-Eastern Estonia
+372 337 8508

Narva
Former synagogue
Narva, on the Russian border in the far east of Estonia, now has a small and ageing Jewish community, most of whom are Russian-speakers. They have a community centre, the Narva Hebrealaste Selts, but their synagogue was destroyed in 1944 during fighting between the Soviet and German armies. The site remains empty and is unmarked.

Address
12 Helsinki Street, within a block between Ruutli (Rüütli) and Viru Streets

Jewish cemetery
The cemetery is located on the edge of the town and is entirely overgrown. Boundary walls have been robbed of their stones, and those gravestones that are still visible are in poor condition, broken by vandals or overturned by tree roots.

Location
Contact
In the southern part of the Vana-Siivertsi cemetery; reached by a dirt road through fields
Maria Tsikunova, Narva Jewish Community

Parnu
Pärnu
Former synagogues
After the Second World War, a large wooden house on Suur-Õie St was used as a synagogue. A smaller building, more domestic in scale, was used before the war and is now abandoned; part of it is burned-out. A plan to install a memorial to the former synagogue and to Jewish children murdered there is currently on hold. See photos.

Locations

Suur Õie St – synagogue after WWII
Laatsareti St (on the corner of Liilia St) – synagogue before WWII

Jewish cemetery
The cemetery is of modest size, but is well-maintained and surrounded by a wall and fence. The many graves appear to be in good condition, and the cemetery is noteworthy for its many horizontal sarcophagus-style tombs. In 2009 a monument to 32 Jewish children murdered in Parnu synagogue in 1941 will be installed here. See photos.

Location
Contact
Telephone
Riia Road
Mark Klompus, Parnu Jewish Society
+372 510 8049

Tartu
Dorpat
Former synagogue
Tartu synagogue was built in 1901 and destroyed by fire during the Second World War. The site is unmarked. See photos: 1 2 and 3

Address
4 Turu Street

Old Jewish Cemetery
The cemetery was founded in 1859 and closed in 1895. Nothing has been done to preserve the site. Only a few gravestones remain.

Roosi Street Cemetery
In 1895, the city government allocated a free plot for the Jewish cemetery on Roosi Street. The last burials took place after the Second World War. Many of the stones are of great artistic value, and there is a large arched brick structure on the site. The cemetery is maintained, but its fence and tombstones are in need of urgent repairs. See photos.

Location
46 Roosi Street

New Jewish Cemetery
Räpina tee cemetery
Tartu’s third Jewish cemetery was opened in 1935. Most of the burials took place after the Second World War. A white entrance building stands near the gate, marked by a Star of David, and with a caretaker’s apartment, a storeroom, and a space for ceremonies; this building was damaged by fire in 1998. The cemetery’s surrounding fence is in need of reconstruction. The local Jewish community takes care of the site, which includes a war memorial and a Holocaust memorial, the latter erected in 2001. See photos.

Location
Main road to Räpina, community Luunja

Tartu City Museum
The museum in Tartu is said to house some Judaica, including a Torah scroll. In 2003 an agreement was reached to share the scroll with the Jewish community of Tallinn.

Address

Telephone
Website

Contact
Telephone
Narva 23
Tartu 51009
+372 746 1911
http://linnamuuseum.tartu.ee/

Ilona Smushkina, Jewish Community of Tartu
+372 515 3387

Valga
Jewish Cemetery
The cemetery is relatively intact, and is noteworthy in part for its many horizontal sarcophagus-style tombs. See photos (2 pages).

Address
Miera Street, Valka

Viljandi
Jewish Cemetery
In addition to a number of surviving gravestones, there is a simple Holocaust monument to local Jews. Carved in white stone, the monument is inscribed with the names of 31 victims, nine of whom are from the Donde family. All died in 1941. See photos.

Address
c/o Viiratsi community, Vana-Võidu

Võru
Jewish Cemetery
Voru is located in southern Estonia. The well-maintained cemetery, located in a wooded area, includes several Christian graves. It is not clear if these are spouses of Jews or intrusions. As late as 1973 the cemetery was entered through a large gateway whose gates were adorned with Stars of David; there was a Hebrew inscription over the portal. Today the gateway survives but the gates and inscription have gone. See photos.

Location
Kubja Road

Holocaust memorials and sites
From Autumn 1942, tens of thousands of Jews were transported to Estonia from other areas under Nazi rule, including Theresienstadt, the Lithuanian ghettos of Vilna (now Vilnius) and Kovno (now Kaunas), Bistrita in Transylvania, and the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia. They were held at about twenty concentration, transit and labour camps, mostly in the county of Ida-Viru in north-east Estonia, and forced to mine oil shale for the production of fuel, as well as to perform heavy military work. The main camp was at Vaivara, through which some 20,000 Jews passed; a further 1300 people, mostly Jewish, were kept captive there; many died. As the Red Army advanced, on 18 and 19 September 1944 most of the Jews in the Lagedi and Klooga camps were taken to nearby woodland and shot; throughout that Autumn, the Germans hurriedly transported the remaining Jews across the Baltic Sea to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany. There were very few survivors.

Estonia has been slow to recognise its Holocaust history, and to identify and mark the many sites in the country. Six sites– Ereda, Kalevi-Liiva, Klooga, Kiviõli, Illuka and Sinimäe, were marked with Holocaust memorials during the Soviet era; however these were not very specific or even accurate in the information they gave.

Since 1994, when a group of private individuals erected a small monument at Vaivara –the first in Ida-Viru to mention that the Holocaust had had Jewish victims – there has been a gradual discovery of Estonia’s lost Holocaust history. That same year the Estonian government erected a monument at Klooga, where – as well as at Lagedi – atrocities on a particularly horrific scale were committed in the last days of the war. The Klooga monument is one of the most ambitious in the country: a large granite stele featuring a Menorah and a Star of David, with on the reverse a metal inscription in Estonian, Yiddish and Hebrew: ‘in commemoration of Jews murdered in Estonia 1941-1944’.

The memorial plaques at the former prison at Tallinn were installed from 2001 onwards. Then, in 2002, Estonia established an annual Holocaust memorial day on 27 January; that same year, the Jewish community erected a memorial stone and tablet at the execution site of Kalevi-Liiva.

Beginning in 2003, there has been an ongoing project to place new commemorative markers at concentration and labour camp sites. Some of these replace misleading Soviet-era monuments, others are new. This project, an initiative of the Jewish Community of Estonia, has been sponsored by the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, the Holocaust Education Trust, the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism and the Estonia Ministry of Culture. Five monuments, at Ereda, Kiviõli, Klooga, Illuka, Metsakmistu and Vaivara, were dedicated in 2005. Monuments at Asari, Kohtla-Nõmme and Soski are expected to be installed in 2009. Holocaust monuments can also be seen in some Jewish cemeteries, including Tartu, Viljandi and Rahumae.

For more on these, see Klooga (1), Klooga (2) and others.

Contacts
Jewish Community of Estonia

Address

Telephone/Fax
16 Karu St
Tallinn 10120
+372 662 3034

Sources

contact us: editor@jewish-heritage-europe.eu

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