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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE

An Online Resource Centre

LATVIA HOME PAGE



Jews in Latvia
Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Latvia
Riga Aizpute Bauska Daugavpils
Kuldiga Liepaja Rezekne Sabile
Other Jewish cemeteries in Latvia
Contacts
Sources

Jews in Latvia
Latvia, which, like the other Baltic States, has a complex territorial history, became part of Russia during the eighteenth century, when the first known synagogues were constructed in Riga and Courland.

Latvia in its modern form first claimed independence after the Russian Revolution/First World War. After the German occupation of 1941, ghettos were established in Riga, Dvinsk and Liepaja; the Nazi authorities were aided by local auxiliaries in the many atrocities that took place.

When Latvia became part of the Soviet Union, in 1944, only a few hundred Jews remained in the country; returnees were persecuted in turn by the Soviet regime. The modern Jewish community is mostly made up of Russian Jews who migrated to the territory in subsequent years. Riga was a major centre of Jewish dissident activity in the 1970s. After the collapse of communism and the resurrection of an independent Latvia in 1991, restrictions on Jewish life were removed.

Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Latvia

Riga
Jewish quarters and Holocaust-era ghetto
Maskavas street, the Moscow highway, has long been the focus of Jewish settlement in Riga. The main historic sites are at the city-centre end of this road; the Nazi-era ghetto was further out, beyond the railway station, around Lacplesis and Ludzas Streets. The Old Jewish Cemetery lay within this latter area; a plaque on a wall close to the cemetery commemorates the fact that Jews were interned in the ghetto from late 1941, prior to being executed in the Rumbula and Bikernieki killing fields around Riga.

Peitavas Street synagogue
Peitav shul
This, Riga’s only surviving synagogue, is located at the southern edge of the old city. During the Second World War it was used by the Germans as a warehouse; Torah scrolls and other treasures were hidden and thus survived. The target of two anti-Semitic bomb attacks in the 1990s, the building has now been restored.

The building was designed by H. Silverlich and Neuman and built in 1905; it was the first structure in Riga to display Perpendicular Art Nouveau, a style that was to have a major impact on the city’s architecture; in this case, the design is intermingled with Egyptian and Moorish motifs.

For more, see:
www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/14693/ and
www.bh.org.il/Communities/Synagogue/Riga.asp

Address

Telephone
Peitavas St 6-8
LV 1322
+371 721 45 07

Former Choral synagogue (Gogol shul) and memorials
The Choral synagogue was originally constructed in 1868-71. This large and elaborate building became famous for its cantors and choir. On 4 July 1941 it was burned to the ground, killing perhaps three hundred Jews inside (the precise number is contested). The ruins have since become a focus for memorialisation projects.

The first of these was developed by the Jewish community from 1988. The idea for this holocaust memorial was to excavate the ruins of the building and display them within a purpose-built museum. However, lack of funds led to a downscaling of the project. Substantial parts stand exposed, and a memorial boulder, inscribed with the date of the massacre, was placed on the site in 1989.

On 4 July 2007, a new memorial – the Saviours’ Monument – was added to the site. Designed by Latvian artist Elina Lazdina, it consists of a large white tilting wall which splits to form short lengths of irregular length. These are inscribed with the names of 269 non-Jewish Latvians who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The 60,000 Latvian Jews who died in the same years remain unmentioned at the site. There is also a small metal sculpture on one wall, with a menorah in the middle.

For photos, see:
www.rumbula.org/riga_choral_synagogue.shtml;
www.rumbula.org/righteous_gentiles_latvia.shtml; and
www.ou.org/index.php/photo_gallery/image_full/2100/

Address
Gogola St 25

Jewish community centre/former Jewish theatre
The centre, known as ‘Aleph’ within the Jewish community, occupies the city’s pre-war Jewish theatre. The first performance in the theatre, which retains its Baroque plasterwork, took place in 1913. The community centre was established in 2000 with the support of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

For a photo, see:
www.rumbula.org/VirtualTours/jewish_riga_photo5.htm
Address

Telephone
Skolas St 6
LV 1322
+371 728 96 02

Jews of Latvia museum and documentation centre
During the Soviet period, any study or publication on the subject of Latvia’s Holocaust history was forbidden. In the late 1980s a group of survivors of ghettos and concentration camps in the territory decided to create a Holocaust centre in Riga. The group was headed by historian Margers Vestermanis, a former prisoner in the Riga ghetto and Kaiserwald concentration camp. The result, opened in 1990, was initially an archive, but in 1996 a permanent exhibition was added; this was the first public source of information in the country on the fate of Latvian Jews. In 1998 the centre became an officially registered public institution, though it is still supported entirely by private donations, many from Germany. It is sited on the third floor of the community centre.

Many of the centre’s collections are unique; they include personal archives of outstanding Jewish personalities, extensive records of Jewish organisations of the 1920s and 1930s and documents on the Holocaust. Rare Jewish books and works by Jewish craftsmen are held here, as well as the personal belongings of ghetto and concentration camp prisoners and objects found in mass graves and ruined synagogues. There is a large photographic archive.

The Museum is also working on a catalogue of records and archives relating to Latvian Jews and has worked with the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad on a countrywide survey of Jewish cemeteries and mass grave sites. It engages in outreach, educational and community work.

Address

Telephone/Fax
Skolas St 6
LV 1322
+371 728 95 80

Bikur Holim Jewish hospital
Bikur Holim hospital was established in 1924. It was nationalised by the Soviets in 1940, and remained in state control thereafter. One of Riga city council’s first resolutions after independence was the return of the hospital to the Jewish community.

For a photo, see:
www.rumbula.org/VirtualTours/jewish_riga_photo12.htm

Address

Telephone
Fax
Email
Website
Maskavas St 122-128
LV 1003
+371 6714 45 29
+371 6714 45 64
bikur@latnet.lv
www.bh.lv/

Former Jewish school
Now Ohel Menachem Chabad
Riga’s first secular Jewish school was founded in 1840. It became a model of enlightened, German-influenced teaching throughout Russia, and in 1887 moved into this purpose-built home, an imposing structure in the idiom of a Renaissance palace. The building became the headquarters of the Judenrat during the Second World War, and was only returned to the Jewish community in 1992. It is now a Jewish school run by Chabad Lubavitch.

For more, see: www.chabad.lv/en/istorija.html

Address
Telephone
Fax
Email
Lachplesha St 141
+371 720 40 22
+371 783 04 44
rabbi@dza.lv

Albert Street: Art Nouveau buildings and memorial plaque
Albert Street is lined with Art Nouveau apartment buildings, one of the finest groups of such buildings in Europe. Numbers 2, 2a, 4, 6, 8, and 13 were designed by Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein (1867-1921) father of the great film director Sergei Eisenstein. A convert to Christianity, Mikhail Osipovich was born in St Petersburg to an Orthodox Jewish family of German origin. Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was born at number 2a, an event now commemorated by a plaque. For more, see:
www.latvians.com/en/Personal/Features-AlbertaIela/index.php

Old Jewish cemetery
This cemetery, founded in 1725, served the Jewish community until, in 1920, it was replaced by a new one in Shmerli. The Nazis ravaged the site, robbing it of many of its old gravestones. The mass graves of those who died in the Riga ghetto are believed to have been dug here. Destruction of the cemetery continued after the war. What remained of its enclosing wall was torn down, and it became the Park of the Communist Brigades. Only in recent years has its identity been restored, though little else has changed. It is still a municipal park, but the Jewish community has erected a large memorial stone in the shape of a Magen David. There is no explanation of the site’s history.

Location
Liksnas St

New Jewish cemetery
This large and well-maintained cemetery contains over 5,000 graves. Unlike the old cemetery, it is a lively place; scores of people can typically be found there, cleaning graves or strolling through the grounds.

The history of Riga’s Jews over the past eighty years can be deduced by studying the site’s gravestones and larger commemorative monuments. German, Russian, Hebrew and Latvian are the languages used to commemorate the dead. There is a substantial prayer hall at the cemetery entrance, which was been restored with financial help from the city council. A large memorial to Zanis/Janis Lipke, a Latvian who saved many Jews, stands to the right of the entrance. A new Holocaust memorial is planned for the area to the right of the prayer hall. The cemetery contains various monuments to those who died in the Holocaust and whose resting places are not known.

The cemetery – especially its outer wall – has occasionally suffered anti-Semitic graffiti attacks, but the damage is usually quickly repaired by the city authorities.

Museum of the Occupation of Latvia
The museum, which is dedicated to documenting the years of the Soviet and German Occupation of Latvia, is set in a starkly modern building on the old town square. The overwhelming emphasis of the museum is on Soviet oppression and atrocities both before and after the Nazi era. There is good material on the early phases of the Second World War, including the Soviet invasion of Finland and the diplomatic capitulation of the Baltic States. In documenting the Nazi period, the curators have accepted the illegitimacy of the regime, but the Latvian soldiers who fought for it are portrayed as fighting against the Soviets in the cause of Latvian nationalism. The Holocaust is dealt with in three relatively small panels. Two of these deal rather summarily with the deaths of over 80,000 people, while a third is dedicated to the Latvians who saved 300.

Address

Telephone
Email
Website
Strelnieku Laukums 1
LV 1050
+371 721 27 15
omf@latnet.lv
www.occupationmuseum.lv/

Rumbula Holocaust memorial site
The notorious Rumbula killing field lies in the south-east suburbs of Riga. Here, about 25,000 Jews were murdered on two days, 30 November and 8 December 1941. The site was maintained as a memorial during the Soviet period, and the large mass graves were kept visible, but it remained poorly marked and maintained. In 2002, thanks to an internationally-funded effort, the memorialisation of the site was entirely redesigned and refurbished.

Today, the entrance to the site is marked by a two-storey high, 10-metre wide iron sculpture that hangs over half of the six-lane Moscow highway. The main memorial consists of a large iron menorah surrounded by rough stones bearing the names of 1,300 of the victims. Various older, more modest memorials at the site were preserved during the renovation.

The project to create this memorial played a major role in a national reassessment of Holocaust history in Latvia. The monument is at once striking, subdued and tasteful. The refurbishment of the areas of the mass graves, and the new markers (large rough stones set on each mound) are simple and sobering. Devices such as the repeated use of cast concrete stele, each with a Magen David and the dates of the killings, help tie the site together visually.

For more, see: www.rumbula.org/remembering_rumbula.shtml

Location
Maskavas (Moscow) St, 10 kilometres from the city centre

Bikernieki forest Holocaust memorial site
Approximately 40,000 Jews were murdered at Bikernieki forest, on the outskirts of Riga. They came from across Europe, and are now buried at the site. In 2001, an impressive memorial was dedicated here. As many non-Jews were also killed here, the symbolism is not as overtly Jewish as at Rumbula, but the site is just as superbly executed, and comparable designs and devices are used at both locations. The central area consists of a great mass of stones, as at Rumbula, but in a more organised grid pattern, with labels indicating the cities from which people were deported. A large central stone beneath an open canopy has inscribed on it a passage from the Book of Job in four languages.

For more, see: www.rumbula.org/bikernieki_forest_latvia.shtml

Salaspils concentration camp memorial site
Salaspils, 20 kilometres from Riga, was a Nazi concentration camp where tens of thousands were murdered, including Jews brought from other Nazi-occupied territories. The Latvian inscription at the memorial entrance advises visitors that ‘behind this gate the earth groans’. Enormous stark statues stand throughout the site; the focus is on a long block of polished stone within which a metronome ticks endlessly.

Kaiserwald concentration camp site
The Kaiserwald concentration camp was established in the summer of 1943. Jewish survivors from the ghettos of Riga, Daugavpils, Liepaja, and Vilna were sent to Kaiserwald. The surviving inmates were deported to Stutthof concentration camp in the summer of 1944. The site is now a public park (Mezaparks).

Aizpute
Former synagogue
This building was erected in 1752 and reconstructed in 1935. Today it is an arts centre. In May 2007, a memorial plaque was placed here in memory of the more than 300 Aizpute Jews who were deported to concentration camps in 1941.

For photos, see: http://travel.webshots.com/album/560562483urdffJ

Address
Synagogas St 2

Cemetery
A Jewish cemetery was established in the seventeenth century.

Location
Kalvenes St

Bauska
Former synagogue
This building now houses an estate agency. A plaque confirms its original function.

Jewish cemeteries
Bausa’s old Jewish cemetery was established on the right bank of the Memele river in the early 18th century. In the mid-19th century, a new cemetery was created by a crossroads in the city.

Daugavpils
Dvinsk
Daugavpils lay within the Pale of Settlement and had a large Jewish community before the Holocaust. Today the community is small, but maintains one former synagogue, as well as a community centre.

Contact
Address
Jewish Community of Daugavpils
Seknu St 29

Daugavpils synagogue
Now Kadiša prayer house
This synagogue was built in 1850 and is today the only functioning prayer house in the city. The building has a handsome Classically-influenced design, with a prominent Star of David on one façade. It was re-consecrated in 2006 after a restoration project funded by the family of the world-famous artist Mark Rothko (1903-70), who was born in the city, and the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Another synagogue, built around 1900, was in the 1990s a sports club.

Address
Telephone

Cietokšņa St 28
+371 542 00 92

New Jewish cemetery
Among the noteworthy graves here are those of two famous rabbis, the Rogachover Gaon (Yosef Rozin [Rosen], 1858-1936) and Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen, moved here from the town’s old Jewish cemetery, founded in the eighteenth century and destroyed in the 1970s.

Address

Novembra St 18

Kuldiga
Former synagogue
This, characterful structure was constructed in 1875. It was used for storage during and after the war; in 1958 it became the Kurzeme cinema. Today, the building is unused, but there are plans to have it transformed into the town library.

For more, see:
www.buero-schwimmer.de/kuldiga/introduction.html;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuldiga;
www.panoramio.com/photo/5551298

Address
1905 St 6

Cemetery and school
Kuldiga’s Jewish cemetery was bounded by Edoles, Nomales and Liepajas Streets; little survives of it; the town also includes a former Jewish school building.

For more, see:
www.buero-schwimmer.de/kuldiga/introduction.html

Liepaja
Libau
Jewish Community
Kungu St 21

Skede mass grave
These dunes outside Liepaja were the site of several mass executions during the Second World War. On 15-17 December 1941 nearly 3,000 Jews were brought here and executed by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and their Latvian collaborators. Between October 1941 and the spring of 1945 another estimated 7,000 people were killed and buried here, 3,640 of whom were Jewish. The dunes were part of a closed military area during the subsequent Soviet occupation, and, although there was a Soviet-era monument here (which made no mention of Jews), the mass graves here were not located until the early 1990s, when the area finally became open to the public. A memorial stone commemorating the victims, with text in three languages, was placed near the graves by Edward Anders and Vladimirs Bān in 2006.

For more, see new Holocaust monument and
www.liepajajews.org/mass_grave.htm

Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust/Gulag memorial

The city’s first known Jewish cemetery, at 7-9 Kalpaka St, was founded in 1803. The current one was founded later in that century. In 2004 a Memorial Wall was erected there. It is a large, simple structure in a landscaped area of its own. It lists the names of 6,423 Jews, all victims either of the Holocaust or of the Gulag, as well as 46 Latvian and German rescuers of 33 Jews.

For more, see www.liepajajews.org/wall_web1/info.htm

Address
Cenkones St 18-20

Rezekne
Jewish Community
Valdemara St 14-54

‘Green’ synagogue
This is one of the very few East European pre-war wooden synagogues to have survived; it is a domestic-scaled building with arched windows on the lower floor and retains most if its interior fittings and furnishing. Inside, a glazed gallery rises above the main entrance. Built in 1845, it is also the last surviving synagogue in Rezekne, which in 1897 had ten synagogues, serving a Jewish population of nearly 6,500.

The building underwent major repairs in 1939. Its condition has deteriorated and the Jewish community has declined in numbers. An international effort to restore the building has been underway since 2003: a World Monuments Fund preservation plan triggered USD $40,000 from local government to repair the roof and some timbers and prevent further water damage. Full conservation will require a further USD $200,000 (2003 prices).

For more, see:
www.culturekitchen.com/mole333/blog/preserving_heritage_preserving_identity_why_i_c
and http://rezekne.latviasig.org/

Address
Krāslavas St 5

Cemetery
The cemetery at 91 Upīša St was founded in 1786. For photos, see:
http://rezekne.latviasig.org/photos_jewish_cemetery_rezekne.htm

Sabile
Former synagogue
This elaborate synagogue in northern Latvia was built in 1890. After years of neglect, the building was restored in 2002 and now serves as an exhibition hall, located in Sabile’s historic centre. The project was a joint effort of the Swedish National Heritage Board and the Latvian government’s State Inspection for Heritage Preservation.

For more, see:
www.buero-schwimmer.de/kuldiga/Feldbergs.html
Address
Sinagogas St

Jewish cemetery
The cemetery was founded in 1809.
Location
Meža St

Other Jewish cemeteries in Latvia
Balvi (Brivibas St)
Cesis (Rigas St)
Dagda (6 Plavas St, early 19th century)
Demene (Elasnishi farm, early 19th century)
Dobele
Embute
Gostini
Griva (late 18th century, now part of Daugavpils)
Grobina (two)
Ilukste
Jaunjelgava (12 Mezha St, founded in 1803)
Jekabpils (Two; the older, on Saules and Nameja St, is early 19th century)
Jelgava (1 Miera St; 1729)
Kandava
Kraslava (end of Spidolu and Liela Sts, eighteenth century)
Krustpils (along Rigas St, early 19th century)
Lejastsiems (end of Rozhu St)
Laidze
Limbazhi (Juras and Oshu Sts)
Livani (Meža St)
Ludza (J. Soikāna St, early 18th century)
Piltene (31-33 J. Matera St, early 18th century)
Plavinas
Preili (Cesu St, early 19th century)
Riebini (Dārzu St)
Rujiena (Ozolnieki farm)
Saldus (Meža St, 1809)
Skaistkalne
Sloka (Lielupes St, 18th century)
Smiltene (Raine St)
Subate (Jelgavas St, 1820s)
Talsi (Milenbaha St, 1799)
Tukums (Klusa St, 1799)
Valdemarpils (Ezera St, 18th century)
Valka (29 Varonu St)
Valmiera (Briezas St)
Varaklani (10a Kapsetas St; late 18th century)
Ventspils (Saules St)
Vilaka (16 Yaunatnes St, late 18th century)
Vilani (Rezeknes and Aleyas Sts)
Viski (Aglonas St, early 19th century)
Zilupe (Priezu St).

Contacts
Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia

Address


Email
6, Skolas St
Riga
LV 1050
rika@mbox.riga.lv

Sources
Acknowledgements
Note: This page relies heavily on information gathered by the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and the Jews of Latvia museum and documentation centre.

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

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