Forest of Rumbula

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In the forest of Rumbula (also Rumbuli ), a pine forest in the district of the same name in Riga , members of the SS murdered over 26,000 Latvian and 1,053 Berlin Jews in just two days at the end of 1941 .

Historical framework

On September 17, 1941, Adolf Hitler decided to deport the German Jews to the East. The Minsk ghetto, initially intended as a destination , was soon unable to accept any more displaced persons. Therefore more trains were diverted to Riga.

But the Riga ghetto, which had recently been set up, was also overcrowded and could not take in the deportees from Germany. Heinrich Himmler therefore commissioned the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) and Leader of the SS Upper Section Ostland, Friedrich Jeckeln , to “make room” in the Riga ghetto and to kill the Jewish inmates there.

Mass shooting

Memorial dedicated to the victims of fascism , erected in 1964 in the Soviet Union by members of the Riga Jewish Community. Inscriptions in Latvian, Russian and Yiddish.

On November 30, 1941, around 15,000 local Jews from the ghetto were shot in dug pits in the nearby forests of Rumbula with the help of 500 Latvian auxiliary police officers and 300 German police officers and SS men. On the same day a transport train from Germany with 1,053 Berlin Jews reached the Šķirotava train station near Riga in the morning . These people were the first victims to be murdered in the Rumbula forest ; Jeckeln was reprimanded by Himmler for his unauthorized action in this case. On 8./9. December 12,500 people from the ghetto were shot dead at pits dug in the nearby forests of Rumbula. Among the victims of the November and December mass murders were 15,650 Jews who were classified as fit for work.

The Reich Commissioner for the East , Hinrich Lohse , was present at this event ; he had been invited by Jeckeln.

Act descriptions

Only a few survivors of the massacre are known ; one of them, Frida Michelson, fell to the ground at a moment when the security guards were inattentive and pretended to be dead. In addition, Ella Madalje, the Lutrins and the then almost twenty-two-year-old Beila Hamburg survived. Two further reports - one from a perpetrator - can be found in the source edition The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 .

Russian prisoners of war were forced to dig several 3 to 4 meter deep pits. Men and women were placed in separate columns. They had to undress in the freezing temperatures; Women were allowed to keep their underwear on. Valuables should be thrown in a suitcase. Then the order was given that the victims had to lie down in the pits. Five or six riflemen, who were regularly relieved after an hour and a half, shot them in the neck with submachine guns. The next group had to lie down on the still warm corpses and were murdered in the same way.

Earthworks

90 percent of Latvian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. When the course of the war turned against the Germans, the traces of the mass crimes were to be removed by the " Sonderkommando 1005 ". Two and a half years after the mass murders, a special detachment under SS-Hauptsturmführer Walter Helfsgott started work at this crime scene, which is now overgrown with plants. From the end of April to the beginning of June 1944, around 30 Jewish prisoners had to open the mass graves; sometimes a grab excavator was also used. The dead were pulled out of the pits with metal hooks and piled on piles with layers of firewood, which were doused with diesel oil or petrol before igniting. Later, the forced laborers had to sift out valuables from the ashes, crush unburned bones with a bone grinder and scatter the ashes. The workers were shackled with shackles both day and night. Usually these forced laborers were killed afterwards.

Commemoration

First efforts at a memorial go back to the 1960s. Despite some resistance from the Soviet authorities, Jews put a plaque with a Yiddish inscription on a tree in the forest of Rumbula in 1963 . In addition, a large-format poster by the artist Joseph Kuzkovsky was installed near the Moscow-Riga railway line; it showed a man preparing to climb out of a grave. The two panels disappeared after a short time. Soon afterwards, in 1964, Jewish initiators were given permission to place a memorial stone with the inscription “For the Victims of Fascism”. This inscription was written in three languages ​​- Russian, Latvian, Yiddish - but did not mention that the victims were racially persecuted Jews.

In November 2002, a Holocaust memorial was completed with financial support from the USA, Israel, Latvia and Germany . At the entrance there is a metal construction that symbolizes the tyranny of the National Socialists, and there are multilingual explanations of the events. In the central square, which is shaped after a Star of David , a menorah rises above a large collection of stones, some of which bear the names of victims and some of the street names of the ghetto. In addition, many of the well-known mass graves are framed with concrete blocks and thus identified in the forest.

Rumbula Holocaust Memorial

See also

literature

documentary

Web links

Commons : Rumbula  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Document VEJ 3/223 in: (. Edit) Andrea Löw: The persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 (source book), Volume 3: Empire and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939-September 1941 , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58524-7 , p. 542: Himmler informed on September 18, 1941 that the Führer wanted the Jews to be deported from the “ Old Reich ” and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .
  2. ↑ Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 57.
  3. ↑ Alfred Gottwald, Diana Schulle: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich 1941–1945 . Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , p. 111 / For more detailed information, see Christoph Dieckmann: Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Lithuania 1941–1944. Göttingen 2011, Vol. 2, pp. 960-967.
  4. ↑ Angrick, Klein: "Endlösung", pp. 142–159 / Wolfgang Curilla: Schutzpolizei und Judenmord ... in: Alfred Gottwaldt et al. (Ed.): Nazi tyranny. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , pp. 253-259.
  5. ↑ Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 56 and Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews. Seen through. Special edition in one volume, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , p. 643.
  6. ↑ Frida Michelson: Ich überlebte Rumbula (translation of the Latvian translation by Ilze Eris of the second, expanded version of the Russian translation and literary adaptation of the lost Yiddish original records by David Silberman, taking into account the English adaptation by Wolf Goodman by Matthias Knoll , unpublished typescript)
  7. ^ Jens Hoffmann: The 1005 campaign in Riga
  8. ↑ Documents VEJ 7/256 and VEJ 7/283 In: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (collection of sources), Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet territories under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5
  9. ↑ Description follows document VEJ 7/256, here p. 671.
  10. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Vol. 2, pp. 719f.
  11. ^ Jens Hoffmann: The 1005 campaign in Riga
  12. ↑ Holocaust Memorial Places in Lativia

Coordinates: 56 ° 53 ′ 4 "  N , 24 ° 14 ′ 39"  E