Massacre in Liepāja

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Massacre in Liepāja describes a series of mass killings by the German Wehrmacht , the Einsatzkommandos of the SS / police and the Latvian self-protection (auxiliary force of the occupying power) in and in the Latvian city ​​of Liepāja (German name: Libau) during World War II . Most of the approximately 7,000 local Latvian Jews were shot. Only about 800 surviving Jews were detained in a cordoned off area in 1942 and 1943 to do forced labor .

Shootings

Anti-Jewish orders issued on July 5, 1941.

Liepāja was considered a communist stronghold of Latvia. The Wehrmacht conquered this industrial port city on June 29, 1941 after comparatively protracted fighting. Since civilians had also participated in the defense, the arriving parts of Einsatzgruppe A, on the orders of the city commandant , proceeded particularly brutally against communists , dispersed Red Army soldiers and Jews. In the first week of the occupation, 1,430 people were shot in the city park ( Rainis Park ). The first written anti-Jewish provisions are recorded on July 5th as a notice posted by the Navy's military administration . In addition to the systematic disenfranchisement and harassment, targeted hostage killings soon began to decimate the city's Jewish population. Troops of the Arājs Command from Riga were present in late July and September and carried out executions of 1,100 and 600 Jewish men, respectively. The management of these "actions" was in the hands of the local officers of Einsatzgruppe A, in particular Wolfgang Kügler . In the late summer of 1941, SS leader Fritz Dietrich (later chief of police) arrived. The shooting measures in the city and its surroundings continued and also hit people persecuted as gypsies and inmates of psychiatric hospitals.

Šķēde massacre

Members of the Latvian auxiliary police guard Jewish women and children before their execution. Šķēde on December 15, 1941

From December 15 to 17, 1941, the mass murders reached their climax on Šķēde Beach , north of the city. A total of 2,749 Jewish men, women and children were detained in the women's prison by the Latvian auxiliary police and then driven in groups in trucks to a former training area of ​​the Latvian army. The victims had to undress, were brutally driven to prepared killing pits and shot there.

The SS police and location leader Dietrich used all available forces. In addition to his “Schutzpolizei-Dienstabteilung”, these were in particular the local Latvian auxiliary police of the SD and the Latvian Police Battalion 21. When the war situation changed, the National Socialists tried in 1943 to cover up their crimes. The mass graves were opened and the bodies were doused with chlorine .

Liepāja ghetto

Location of the ghetto

Perhaps because of the lack of a closed Jewish quarter, the occupying forces did not create a ghetto in 1941, as in Riga or Daugavpils . On July 1, 1942, around 800 Jews who were still able to work were assigned to a small area surrounded by four streets near the city center. The conditions there are said to have been a little more humane than in other ghettos. By March 1943, 160 Jews, mostly Western European prisoners, had been brought here from the Riga ghetto , where they had to work in the sugar factory. On October 7, 1943, all prisoners still alive were deported to the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp . According to a Soviet commission investigating Nazi crimes, 156 people are said to have perished in the ghetto.

Legal processing

A Soviet special commission investigated the crimes on site until 1946. Two Einsatzgruppe processes took place in West Germany . Many of the perpetrators, however, were able to live in freedom unmolested. In 1971, the Hanover Regional Court specifically negotiated the events in Liepāja and sentenced some former members of the SS Security Service (SD) and the regulatory police as participants in the massacres. The investigations of this court are the main source of what was going on in the city. In 1972 and 1973, a series of criminal trials against members of the Latvian Police Battalion 21 in connection with the massacre near Šķēde took place in the Latvian SSR .

On March 18, 1971, the Berlin City Court sentenced former Gestapo member Hans Baumgartner to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Libau, Azipute (Hasenpoth) and Schkede area following the fascist occupation of Latvia. Baumgartner was a member of one of the notorious task forces of the Security Police and the SD and the Gestapo office established in Libau, which worked closely with recruited Latvian collaborators.

Commemoration

A short film scene from here, which a soldier presumably recorded privately, is possibly the only film document with moving images directly from the extermination of the Jews (Shoah / Holocaust). Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), when asked about original images, points to a scene from Liepāja: Strictly speaking, there is nothing about annihilation. ... The only material I have found - and I have really seen everything - is a little one and a half minute film by a German soldier named Wiener (whom I tracked down and talked to) .

At the Jewish cemetery in Liepājas there is a memorial wall with the names of 6,428 victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag . In summer 2005 a memorial with the names of all known victims was inaugurated in Šķēde. Before that, an obelisk erected during the Soviet era had already stood there.

literature

  • Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian part in the Holocaust . Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 .
  • Andrew Ezergailis, Historical Institute of Latvia (ed.): The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944 . Riga 1996, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 .
  • Marģers Vestermanis : The National Socialist Prison and Death Camps in Occupied Latvia 1941–1945 . In: Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth , Christoph Dieckmann (eds.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps: Development and Structure . Volume 1, Göttingen 1998, pp. 472-492.
  • Margers Vestermanis: Ortskommandantur Libau , published in War of Extermination - Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944 , Two Thousand One , 1995, ISBN 3-86150-198-8 , pp. 241-256.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margers Vestermanis: Ortskommandantur Libau , appeared in a war of annihilation - crimes of the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1944 , Zweitausendeins, 1995, ISBN 3-86150-198-8 ff, S. 241st
  2. ↑ "Einsatzgruppe 1a" approx. 20 men under Reichert, as well as parts of "Einsatzgruppe 2" approx. 30 men under Erhard Grauel . Igors Vārpa: Latviešu Karavīrs zem Kāškrusta Karoga , ISBN 9984-751-41-4 . P. 39.
  3. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 . P. 190.
  4. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 . Pp. 190/191.
  5. ↑ Andrew Ezergailis: The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944 Riga 1996, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 . Pp. 286/287.
  6. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 . P. 191.
  7. ↑ The 21st Police Battalion was officially set up in February 1942. Igors Vārpa: Latviešu Karavīrs zem Kāškrusta Karoga ISBN 9984-751-41-4 . P. 116.
  8. ↑ Andrew Ezergailis: The Holocaust in Latvia from 1941 to 1944. Riga 1996, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 . P. 294.
  9. ^ Marģers Vestermanis: The National Socialist Prison and Death Camps in Occupied Latvia 1941-1945. P. 485.
  10. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 . P. 192.
  11. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 . P. 193.
  12. ↑ Andrew Ezergailis: The Holocaust in Latvia from 1941 to 1944. Riga 1996, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 . P. 305.
  13. ↑ Igors Vārpa: Latviešu Karavīrs zem Kāškrusta Karoga , ISBN 9984-751-41-4 . Pp. 115/116.
  14. ↑ Reiner Stenzel: To whom the federal government grants pensions
  15. ↑ The interview with Claude Lanzmann: “ The place and the word ” quotes Marc Chevrie and Hervé Le Roux, from: Cahiers du Cinéma No. 374, Paris, July / August 1985.
  16. ↑ Reinhard Wiener: Mass shootings in Liepaja (Part 1) Yad Vashem, German, at youtube.com Film info : 4:54 min, 3,593 views 6 years ago, excerpt from an interview with Reinhard Wiener , a German soldier who reported the mass shootings of the Jews in Liepaja, Latvia recorded with his 8mm camera and (part 2) 1:18 min, published on July 23, 2011, mass shootings in Liepaja, Latvia Yad Vashem German • 59,026 views 6 years ago Jews are executed in mass shooting pits on the coast of Latvia . The film was shot by Reinhard Wiener, a German soldier who was in the area.
  17. ^ Jews in Liepaja (Latvia), 1941–1945