Action Dünamünde

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The dünamünde action , partly as operation Dünamünde called, was a shooting operation of the Nazis in the spring of 1942, when the old and no longer fully able-bodied people from the "Reich Jewish ghetto Riga" and the camp Jungfernhof were murdered. Gerhard Maywald is considered to be the initiator of the Dünamünde campaign .

Reconstructable crime

From the deportees imprisoned in the Reichsjudenghetto Riga and the Jungfernhof concentration camp, the old and no longer fully capable of work were recorded on lists in the spring of 1942. Allegedly they were supposed to do light work in a canning factory in Dünamünde with good food. When they were being transported from Riga, some of them hid; Relatives of others asked to be taken to Dünamünde. According to this version, the Germans did not search apartments for those left behind who were on the list by name. In the course of this action, which - not without a doubt - is dated March 15, 1942, almost 1900 people were murdered. When the abductees' clothes came back, the news spread quickly.

Another version dates a forced transport to the 5th / 6th. February 1942. The ghetto was hermetically sealed off early in the morning. Individual groups would have had to go to roll call in their residential streets. The Jewish security service , headed by the German and Latvian ghetto guards, searched the apartments and drove all residents, including seriously ill people, onto the street. First of all, the Jews on a list were recorded, then other older people and women with small children. Those who resisted were brutally mistreated and sometimes thrown onto the loading area like cattle.

After comparing written sources and various memories of survivors, the historians mentioned come to the conclusion that it is not possible to determine whether two or three death transports left the ghetto.

The implementation of the Dünamünde campaign in Jungfernhof can be better reconstructed. Here on March 26, 1942, all but 450 strong prisoners were taken away by bus. They too were taken to the nearby Biķernieki forest , which had served as a shooting range since July 1941. Under the direction of officers of the security police, about ten men from the Arājs command led by Viktors Arājs carried out the shootings in mass graves prepared by other internees . Approximately 1,800 people from the Jungfernhof concentration camp and 3,000 from the Riga ghetto were probably murdered in several executions.

Sources

The historians Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein state that the numerous "post-war statements of the survivors" differ considerably from one another. The information on the number of transports and exact dates as well as on the creation of the transport lists and additional selections are contradictory . The claim made by contemporary witnesses that “Dünamünde” was a non-existent place and was merely a cover for the shootings in the high forest of Bikernieki is incorrect . Dünamünde is the German name of the Daugavgrīva district of Riga, which, however, is locally located in the opposite direction to the city center. The use of gas trucks is also not verifiable.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From Münsterland to Riga: Victims and perpetrators of the deportations Short lecture by Winfried Nachtwei (PDF file; 22 kB)
  2. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , p. 340.
  3. ↑ Neighbors next door - missing in Riga
  4. ↑ About the Dünamünde campaign (dated March 30th) ( Memento of the original from December 14th, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.erinnern-fuer-die-zukunft.de
  5. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , p. 342.
  6. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , p. 344.
  7. ↑ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The “Final Solution” in Riga, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , pp. 338–339 with note 3.