Marģers Vestermanis

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Marģers Vestermanis in the Museum Jews in Latvia

Marģers Vestermanis (born September 18, 1925 in Riga , Latvia ) is a Latvian Holocaust survivor , historian, founder and former director of the Museum Jews in Latvia .

Life

Youth and World War II

Marģers Vestermanis was born as the youngest of three children of a merchant and factory owner into an upper-class Jewish, German-speaking family in Riga. He attended the German school in his hometown, then the private Jewish Esra school. In addition, a rabbi gave him Jewish religious instruction from the age of six to fifteen. When the Wehrmacht conquered Latvia in 1941, at the age of 16 he was deported to the Riga ghetto established by the Nazis . He worked there as a cabinet maker. He was then interned in the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp, after which he had to do forced labor at the SS military training area at Seelager and in the neighboring camps at Poper Wahlen and Dondangen. On a death march he managed to escape into the woods of Courland on the third attempt , where he joined the resistance. In 1944 he lived in hiding under an assumed name. He was the only one of his family to survive the German occupation.

The years under Soviet rule

After the war, Marģers Vestermanis studied history in Riga . After graduating, he worked at the Latvian State Archives (Latvijas PSR Centrālais Valsts Vēstures Arhīvs). He specialized in the history of the Latvian labor movement at the beginning of the 20th century and published studies a. a. to the story of May 1st . When he wrote a chapter on the Holocaust - carefully worded to be on the safe side - on the Holocaust for a commemorative publication of the Latvian State Archives for the victims of the Second World War , published in 1965 on the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, he was dismissed and his contribution was not printed. Because in it he had violated the then valid language regulation, according to which the Latvian Jews had been murdered as citizens of the Soviet Union (and not as part of the Jewish people). Nevertheless, in addition to his full-time activity as a teacher and part-time as a journalist, he continued to research - discreetly - the Jewish history in Latvia .

In independent Latvia

Since the regaining of independence in Latvia in 1990/91, he has been able to devote himself fully to this task. In 1990 Marģers Vestermanis opened the Museum Jews in Latvia in Riga .

He was a member of the Commission of Historians, convened in 1998, to research the history of Latvia under German and Soviet rule in the 20th century and the collaboration of Latvians with them. As a consultant he is involved in a documentary film about the mass murder of Jews in the Rumbula forest in 1941, which is due to be completed in 2018.

At the University of Latvia in Riga, Marģers Vestermanis is a lecturer on the Jewish history of Latvia and the Holocaust in Latvia. As a historian and contemporary witness at the same time, he gave numerous lectures in his home country and in Germany about the Holocaust in Latvia.

Awards

Fonts (in selection)

  • Pirmais maijs Latvijā, 1893-1919. Vēsturiska izzin̡a . Latvijas valsts izdevniecīva, Riga 1957 (Latvian; German translation of the title: The First May in Latvia, 1893-1919. A historical bloom ).
  • Ar Lībknehta Vāciju. Latvijas un Vācijas proletariāta kopīgās revolucionārās cīņas 1917–1919 . Latvijas Valsts Izdevniecība, Riga 1960 (Latvian; German translation of the title: With Liebknecht in Germany. The joint revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of Latvia and Germany 1917–1919 ).
  • Red October and the revolution of the 8th German Army in the Baltic States 1917–1918 . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement, vol. 11 (1969), pp. 87-101.
  • The SS lake camp Dondauga - a model for the planned National Socialist “reorganization of Europe” . In: Military History, ed. from the Military History Institute of the German Democratic Republic, vol. 25 (1986), issue 2, pp. 145f.
  • The Latvian part in the “Final Solution”. Attempt an answer . In: Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse, Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The shadows of the past. Impulses for the historicization of National Socialism . Propylaea, Berlin 1990. ISBN 3-549-07407-7 . Pp. 426-449.
  • Fragments of the Jewish history of Riga. A brief guide-book with a map for a walking tour . Museum and Documentation Center of the Latvian Society of Jewish Culture, Riga 1991.
  • The "Holocaust" in Latvia. For the "post-communist" processing of the topic in Eastern Europe . In: Arno Herzig, Ina Lorenz (ed.): Displacement and extermination of the Jews under National Socialism. Shlomo Na'aman for his 80th birthday on November 10, 1992 . Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1992. ISBN 3-7672-1173-4 . Pp. 101-130.
  • Jews in Riga. On the trail of the life and work of a murdered minority. A historical guide. 3rd edition, Edition Temmen, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-86108-263-2 .
  • The Holocaust in Latvia's Public Consciousness . In: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, Vol. 5 (1996), pp. 35–45.
  • Local authority Libau . Two months of German occupation in the summer of 1941 . In: Hannes Heer, Klaus Naumann (ed.): War of destruction. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941–1944 . Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1997. ISBN 3-86150-198-8 . Pp. 241-259.
  • The National Socialist detention centers and death camps in occupied Latvia (1941–1945) . In: Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, Christoph Dieckmann (eds.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps 1933–1945 . Vol. 1. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1998. ISBN 3-89244-289-4 . Pp. 472-491.
  • Savior in the land of henchmen. On the history of helping Jews in Latvia during the “Final Solution” . In: Wolfgang Benz, Juliane Wetzel (ed.): Solidarity and help for Jews during the Nazi era. Regional studies. Vol. 2: Ukraine, France, Bohemia and Moravia, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia . Metropol, Berlin 1998. ISBN 3-926893-48-6 . Pp. 231-272.
  • Holocaust in Latvia. Contributions to the history of Jewish tragedy . Muzejs un dokumentācijas centrs Ebreji Latvijā, Riga 1999.
  • (with Leo Dribins and Armands Gūtmanis): Latvijas ebreju kopiena. Vēsture, traģēdija, atdzimšana . Latvijas Vēstures Institūta Apgāds, Riga 2001. ISBN 9984-601-64-1 (Latvian; German translation of the title: Latvia's Jewish Community. History, Tragedy, Rebirth ). (NB: The book is the result of the work of the aforementioned Commission of Historians.)
  • The concentration camps for Jews during the National Socialist occupation in Latvia from 1943 to 1944 . In: Stefan Karner, Philipp Lesiak, Heinrihs Strods (eds.): Austrian Jews in Latvia. Escape - asylum - internment . Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck 2010. ISBN 978-3-7065-4871-7 . Pp. 149-162.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Marģers Vestermanis: Attempt at a self-biography . In: Shalom. The European Jewish magazine , issue autumn 2000, accessed on May 1, 2014.
  2. ↑ Data sheet with the metadata for the recording of an interview with Marģers Vestermanis in 1998 .
  3. ↑ Latvijas PSR Ministru Padomes Arhīvu Pārvalde (ed.): Mēs apsūdzam . Liesma, Riga 1965 (Latvian; German translation of the title: We indict ).
  4. ↑ Lucas Melle Bruyn: Interview with Marģers Vestermanis , February 20, 1996, accessed May 1, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b c Nadja Cornelius: "A rare person". Latvia: The Jewish historian Margers Vestermanis received the Herbert Samuel Prize in Riga. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , March 1, 2007.
  6. ↑ http://www.rumbulasecho.org/filmmakers.shtml
  7. ↑ "We survived our deaths by more than 50 years" - The Holocaust in Latvia , accessed on May 1, 2014.
  8. ↑ Latvian Academy of Sciences: Yearbook 2010–2011 . Latvijas Zinātņu akadēmija, Riga 2011, p. 98.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Vestermanis, Marģers
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vestermanis, Margers; Vestermanis, Margers Abramovich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latvian Holocaust survivor and historian
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga , Latvia