3 Sitio(s) de ejecución
Marģers V., born in 1925:
Witness: "My father decided to stay with the women in that Small Ghetto. He didn't return. My mother and sister were also there. My mother's sister was paralyzed, and she had two daughters. My father knew exactly where he was going, as if he could somehow help those women. He had great authority within the family—his name was Abraham, and he was an educated, wealthy man who directed a company.
Yahad: Did he think he could somehow help them? Witness: No. He stayed purely for moral reasons. They were deported on December 8th, to Rumbula. About ten days after the ghetto gates were sealed, my parents were in bed, but the rest of us were awake, sitting around on mattresses. Every room was crowded—the corridor, the small kitchen—everywhere. My parents usually spoke German, but when discussing serious matters, they spoke Yiddish. I heard my father whispering to my mother, "Rose, we have to go."
Yahad: Go where? Commit suicide? Witness: Yes, of course. My mother responded firmly, "No, absolutely not." Their whispers grew louder until my mother cried out, "To live at least one more day is still life!" My father had managed to obtain some poison—potassium cyanide or something similar. He understood we were trapped and doomed to die. He preferred not to wait for their fate.
Yahad: He had potassium cyanide? Witness: He didn't tell us children explicitly, but I assumed it was potassium cyanide. It was very expensive; people were exchanging gold and anything valuable for it. Later, it turned out to be just useless powder. There are always cynics who try to profit even from those facing death. "To live another day is still life," my mother said. Then they were taken away.
Yahad: Did you see them leaving for Rumbula? Witness: No. On December 8th, I was sent away early in the morning for forced labor. But I heard that day there were no shootings in the streets, no bodies on Ludzas Street—it was eerily quiet. However, the columns of people were forced to walk ten kilometers. Older people and women with small children who couldn't keep pace were shot along the way. It was winter, and behind the column was a large sledge drawn by a horse, previously used in Riga to clear snow. Bodies were thrown onto it as they fell." (Testimony N°YIU115LV, interviewed in Riga, September 16, 2021)
Irēna A., born in 1936:
"In the evening, we returned home by train. It was a steam train, and we could roll down the windows. When we passed through Rumbula, Janina, our neighbor who had gone to Riga for groceries, and I rolled down the window and leaned out to look. Suddenly, a huge cloud of smoke rose from near Rumbula, with a terrible smell like burning bones. I told my mother, 'There's a huge cloud of smoke rising!' My mother urgently replied, 'Close the windows immediately, or they'll start shooting at you too! Don't look!' We quickly closed the windows, but the horrible smell persisted—it reeked of burning bones and hair. My mother said grimly, 'They were shot, and now they're being burned.' It was a tragic, terrible time." (Testimony N°YIU81LV, interviewed in Talsi, September 6, 2021)
"On October 25, 1941, all 32,000 Jews of Riga were locked up in the ghetto located in the Maskavas forštate [a historic district of Riga].
On November 30, 1941, the first Aktion targeting the Jews of the ghetto took place. This first group to be shot comprised 18,000 people. On the same day, inside the ghetto, more than 1,000 Jews were also shot. This first group of 18,000 Jews was shot on November 30, 1941, in the Rumbula Forest.
The pits used for shooting Jews in the Rumbula forest were dug in advance by Soviet prisoners of war who had been forcibly brought there.
The second Aktion was carried out on December 7 and 8, 1941. This time, 10,000 Jews were shot: some in the Rumbula Forest and others in the Biķernieki Forest. After the shooting in the Rumbula forest, the 100 POWs who had dug the pits there were also shot by the Germans because they were afraid of leaving the POWs as living witnesses.
After these two Aktionen, by December 9-10, 1941, there were around 4,000 men, 150 women and children remaining in the ghetto. From December 17, 1941, groups of Jews brought from abroad began to arrive in our ghetto. […]" [Deposition of Noa Semenovitch Heimanson, a Jewish survivor, born in 1901, given to the State Extraordinary Soviet Commission (ChGK); GARF 7021-93-6/Copy USHMM RG.22-002M; p.350-351]
"[…] Jeckeln drew up the plan for the overall Aktion in Riga based on the model of the Aktion tested in southern Russia. During a car journey, he himself selected a suitable site near the Rumbula railway station. This site was a few kilometres from the ghetto and a few hundred metres to the left of the road from Riga to Dünaburg. It was somewhat hilly and had dry sandy soil. There was also a small forest on the site.
The head of the construction department on the Jeckeln staff, SS-Untersturmführer Ernst Hemicker, was instructed to plan and excavate shooting pits to accommodate 25,000 to 28,000 people to be shot. He designed 6, perhaps more, pits, which were about three metres deep and measured approximately 10 x 10 metres. The pits were equipped with sloping ramps on one side so that people aged 15 and over could enter." [Extract from the criminal judgment against Viktor Bernhard ARAJS, p.53; B162-2989, p. 3208]
Riga, the capital of Latvia, is located at the mouth of the Daugava River on the Baltic Sea. Jewish presence in Riga dates back to the 16th century, when Jewish merchants began arriving in the city to trade. However, only a few were permitted to settle permanently. In 1710, Riga was incorporated into the Russian Empire. The new Russian authorities allowed some Jewish merchants—particularly those serving imperial interests—to reside in the city. In 1725, the establishment of a Jewish cemetery marked the beginning of an organized Jewish community in Riga.
Between 1743 and 1766, Jews were expelled from Riga, until Empress Catherine the Great lifted the ban. Jewish communal life gradually resumed, and in 1840, the city’s first Jewish school was established. By 1857, Jews had gained the right to purchase property, settle freely in the city, and join professional guilds.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish life and culture in Riga flourished. The community was diverse: the majority were Yiddish-speaking Jews, while a minority spoke German and were culturally influenced by German traditions. Numerous synagogues were constructed during the second half of the 19th century, including the Great Choral Synagogue, completed in 1871 and the largest of its kind in Riga.
From 1880 to 1914, there was a notable increase in the number of Jewish schools. These institutions offered instruction in Russian and Hebrew and covered a wide range of subjects. In terms of political life, Zionist organizations began to emerge in the 1880s and expanded significantly after the First Zionist Congress in 1897.
By that same year, Riga’s Jewish population had reached 21,963—approximately 7.9% of the city's total population. Both the Jewish community and Riga itself experienced rapid growth in the latter half of the 19th century. By the end of the century, Jews controlled roughly one-third of the city’s trade. They were active in a wide array of industries and professions, including grain, flax, hides, and egg exports, the lumber trade, textile and clothing retail, banking, finance, and dentistry.
Following the end of the First World War, Latvia gained independence from Russia, becoming the Republic of Latvia in 1920. Although Jewish economic power diminished during the interwar years, Riga’s Jews retained a measure of influence. By 1935, the Jewish population had grown to 43,672—around 11% of the city’s total.
On June 17, 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Riga. Soviet authorities quickly dismantled all Jewish political and cultural organizations, deporting many of their leaders to Siberia. Jewish schools were absorbed into the Soviet education system, with Yiddish becoming the primary language of instruction during this period.
Just over a year later, on July 1, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Riga as part of Operation Barbarossa. At the time, approximately 37,000 Jews remained in the city, including 551 refugees from other countries.
Immediately after Nazi Germany occupied Riga on July 1, 1941, anti-Jewish measures were swiftly implemented, accompanied by widespread antisemitic propaganda. Beginning on July 2, Jews were banned from standing in line at shops, their homes were subjected to searches and looting, and a wave of violence began. On July 4, 1941, synagogues and Jewish homes were set ablaze, resulting in the horrific deaths of around 400 Jews who were burned alive.
From the earliest days of occupation, Jews were subjected to forced labor and an increasing number of restrictions. On July 28, 1941, all Jewish residents were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David for identification.
Several thousand prominent Jews were arrested and tortured by members of the Kommando Arājs and the local auxiliary police. A total of 6,378 Jewish men were subsequently executed at various sites in and around Riga. One of the main killing fields was the nearby Biķernieki Forest, where, between July and September 1941, approximately 4,000 Jews and 1,000 non-Jews suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies were murdered.
In early August 1941, Jews in Riga were ordered to move into a designated area in the Maskavas Forštate neighborhood, where a ghetto was being established. On October 25, 1941, the Riga Ghetto was sealed, imprisoning over 30,000 Jews (29,602 as of November 20). On November 26, 1941, the ghetto was divided into two sections: the “Small Ghetto” for Jews assigned to forced labor, and the “Big Ghetto” for the remaining population.
Between late November and early December 1941, the “Big Ghetto” was liquidated in two mass execution operations (Aktions), conducted by the German Order Police under the command of Friedrich Jeckeln, the Security Police (during the second Aktion), and the Latvian Arājs Kommando. On November 30, 1941, the western portion of the “Big Ghetto,” mainly housing women, children, the elderly, and the sick, was marched to the Rumbula Forest. There, victims were stripped, forced to lie in pre-dug pits (excavated by Soviet POWs), and shot. A second massacre followed on December 8, 1941, targeting the eastern section of the ghetto, including hospital patients. Over 1,000 Jews—many of them children—were killed in their homes or en route and later buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery by Jewish men from the “Small Ghetto.”
These two Aktions at Rumbula claimed the lives of over 25,000 Jews (some estimates put the number at 27,800), including 942 German Jews murdered during the morning of November 30, and up to 300 Soviet POWs who had dug the graves.
Approximately 4,000–5,000 Jewish men, and some women considered fit for work, were spared during the liquidation and remained in the “Small Ghetto.” Between December 1941 and mid-1942, over 22,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia were deported to Riga and housed in the emptied “Big Ghetto.” Up to 2,000 of those deported—primarily the elderly and infirm—were killed upon arrival at the Šķirotava railway station and buried in three mass graves.
Living and working conditions in the ghetto were harsh and deadly. Many Jews were forced to work in Riga and surrounding areas, including the Salaspils concentration camp and the Jumpravmuiza transit camp. Some Jews employed by the Wehrmacht managed to smuggle weapons into the Latvian sector of the ghetto and organized a resistance movement. A number of Jews succeeded in escaping to join partisan groups in the forests.
After the resistance was discovered in late October 1942, the German Security Police executed several hundred Jews, including nearly all members of the Jewish ghetto police. During 1942 alone, approximately 12,000 foreign Jews unable to work were murdered in the Biķernieki Forest during several Aktions.
In the summer and autumn of 1943, the remaining ghetto inhabitants were gradually transferred to the newly established Kaiserwald concentration camp in northern Riga and its 23 subcamps. Those deemed unfit to work were executed in the Biķernieki Forest. On November 2, 1943, the Riga Ghetto was officially liquidated. About 4,000 remaining Jews were moved to Kaiserwald, while 2,268 weaker inmates were deported to Auschwitz.
From the spring of 1944, as part of Operation 1005, the Nazis forced Jewish prisoners from Kaiserwald to exhume mass graves at Rumbula, Biķernieki, and other execution sites and burn the bodies in an effort to erase evidence of mass murder. These Jewish Sonderkommando units—around 300 individuals—were executed once the task was completed.
In autumn 1944, as the Soviets advanced, disabled laborers from Kaiserwald were taken to the Biķernieki Forest and killed, while the remaining Jews were deported to Stutthof concentration camp in Germany. In total, 35,000 people—including 20,000 Latvian and foreign Jews, Soviet POWs, activists, and others—were killed in the Biķernieki Forest between 1941 and 1944.
By the time the Red Army liberated Riga on October 13, 1944, only around 200 Jews remained in the city. Fewer than 1,000 Jews from Riga survived the war. Some owed their survival to the aid of Lithuanians, several of whom were later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.
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