Biķernieki Forest

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Location of the forest in the urban area of ​​Riga

The Biķernieki Forest (also called Riga High Forest , in Latvian Biķernieku mežs ) was a forest east of Riga until the years after the Second World War . During the Latvian War of Independence , the forest was used by the Bolsheviks as a shooting range. During the National Socialist period , mass shootings took place in the Biernieki forest . A memorial was opened in 2001. In the meantime, the hilly sandy inland dune area, which is predominantly forested with Scots pine, is located within the growing Baltic metropolis and, like Lake Linezers in the forest, serves as a local recreation area . The Biķernieki forest is also known for its motorsport circuit : it was laid out in the Soviet era and is the largest racetrack in Latvia .

Executions in the Latvian War of Independence

During the Latvian War of Independence in 1919 the Bolsheviks took control of Riga and large parts of Latvia for 4 ½ months. There were numerous death sentences against so-called counter-revolutionaries. In Riga alone 3,654 death sentences were carried out. One of the places of execution was the Biķernieki forest. A prominent victim was the Protestant pastor Heinrich Bosse . In the early morning of March 14, 1919 alone, 63 people from many different population groups, including the Protestant pastors Eugen Berg and Theodor Scheinpflug , were shot here. Germans, Latvians, Jews and Russians were among those killed, and many different professions and ages were represented. At 63, Berg was the oldest victim, the 18-year-old shop boy Morduch Girsfeld the youngest; close relatives died together. The death sentences were published in the Riga Red Flag , among other things . This magazine emphasized the alleged necessity of these measures in the class struggle and complained that "the revolutionary people are always too lenient, too generous and only too easily forgive centuries of bondage and slavery".

Mass graves from World War II

Executions

The largest mass graves in Latvia are located in the Biķernieki forest : 55 larger and smaller graves with a total area of ​​2885 m². It was the first systematic murder of Jews by mass shooting during the Nazi regime. From the summer of 1941 to the autumn of 1944, according to various sources, 35,000 to 46,500 people were killed here by the security police and Latvian aid workers. Determining the exact number of victims is made more difficult by the fact that the retreating German troops burned the buried bodies towards the end of the war. The following numbers of victims are verifiable: approx. 20,000 Jews from Latvia, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, approx. 10,000 prisoners of war and approx. 5000 resistance fighters.

In March 1942, around 1,900 disabled Jews from the Riga ghetto were taken to the forest of Biķernieki, where they were shot and buried, on the pretext of doing light work in fish processing in Dünamünde . On March 26, 1942, between 1600 and 1700 inmates of the disbanded Jungfernhof camp were brought here by truck, shot and buried in mass graves; They too were deceived with the same fictional camp in Dünamünde, where there would be better accommodation options. Rabbi Joseph Carlebach was one of those shot dead . Viktor Marx from Württemberg, who was imprisoned there and whose wife Marga and daughter Ruth were shot, reports: “In the camp we were told that all women and children would be leaving the Jungfernhof, namely to Dünamünde. There are hospitals, schools and solid stone houses where they can live. I asked the commandant to send me to Dünamünde as well, but he refused because I was too good a worker. ”The essayist, writer and Dadaist Walter Serner and his wife Dorotea were also murdered in the forest of Biķernieki . August 1942.

Direction and execution of the shootings

As with those in the forest of Rumbula, the direction of the shootings lay with the SD chief in Latvia, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln . During the first executions in 1941 the German SS leaders - the ghetto commander SS-Sturmführer Kurt Krause , the commandant of the Jungfernhof camp, Unterscharführer Rudolf Seck and the SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Lange - were present. The shootings were carried out by the Arājs commando, which at the time consisted of 50 to 100 people . With regard to the so-called “ Operation Dünamünde ”, in which around two thousand people were murdered on March 26, 1942, the then auxiliary security police officer Pēteris Iklavs testified: “[…] Arajskommando police officers shot them with machine guns. […] The head of the Security Police and the SD of Latvia, Lange, as well as some German officers of the SD […] were also at the pit. Arajs and some officers from his command were there with them [...]. "

Trace destruction

After the mass graves in the forest of Rumbula were cleared in 1944, Sonderkommando 1005b tried to open the pits in the forest of Bikernieki. They extended over two separate areas. The first consisted of about seven mass graves with 10,000 to 12,000 bodies that were excavated and burned at stake by the end of July 1944. SS-Hauptsturmführer Walter Helfsgott then had 60 exhausted work prisoners shot who had been forced to do this work. Then the second cemetery was opened, which contained at least 10,000 or even 20,000 bodies. After the corpses were cremated, bones crushed and the ashes scattered, these inmates were shot and burned as well.

memorial

In the Soviet era, these graves were hardly cared for; however, there were occasional commemorative events. With the support of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge , a Holocaust memorial was opened on November 30, 2001 in the forest of Biķernieki . The cantor of the Jewish community in Riga, Vlad Shulman, spoke the kaddish . On the sides of the memorial stone is written in Hebrew, Russian, Latvian and German:

"OH EARTH, DO NOT COVER MY BLOOD AND MY SCREAMING WILL NOT REST!"

- ( Job 16:18  LUT )

About 5000 steles made of Ukrainian granite in a coarse structure and in different sizes and colors remind of what happened.

  • Entrance to the memorial

  • Steles and center of the memorial

  • Vienna

  • Prague

  • Herford

  • Bible quote

literature

  • Book of memory. The German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews deported to the Baltic States. Published by the "Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V." et al. 2 vols. Munich: KG Saur 2003.

Web links

Commons : Forest of Biķernieki  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , Volume I (1990) columns 712-713 ( Memento from June 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Alexander Burchard: "... all your miracles": The last German provost in Riga remembers , Volume 10 of the publication series of the Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft , Schriftenvertrieb Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft e. V., Lüneburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-923149-59-9 , p. 126.
  3. ↑ Twenty years ago , article in the Rigaschen Rundschau No. 61 of March 15, 1939, p. 7 (online at periodika.lv ).
  4. ↑ W. Zelm: Twenty years ago , article in Evangelium und Osten No. 5 from May 1, 1939, p. 165 fr. (online at periodika.lv ).
  5. ^ Publication of the death sentences from the Rote Fahne in the Libauschen Zeitung , No. 69, March 24, 1919, online at Berg | issueType: P
  6. ↑ Five years ago in the Rigaschen Rundschau , No. 62, March 15, 1924, online at Berg | issueType: P
  7. ↑ Axel Vogel: Humanity was lost. Memory of the Jews murdered in Riga. In: Voice & Way 4/2010, p. 15.
  8. ↑ Axel Vogel: Humanity was lost. Memory of the Jews murdered in Riga. In: Voice & Way 4/2010, p. 14.
  9. ↑ Marģers Vestermanis : Par memoriālu nacisma terora upuriem Biķernieku mežā Rīgā (About the memorial to the victims of the National Socialist terror in the Biķernieki forest in Riga).
  10. ↑ Andrej Angrick , Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga. Exploitation and Destruction 1941-1944 , ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , pp. 338-345.
  11. ↑ Report by survivor Viktor Marx  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.geschichtswerkstatt-tuebingen.de  
  12. ↑ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV et al. (Ed.): Book of Memory. The German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews Deported to the Baltic States , pp. 20–36 ( Google Books ).
  13. ↑ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga. Exploitation and Destruction 1941–1944 , p. 344.
  14. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Vol. 2, pp. 759–764 (with photos).
  15. ↑ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV et al. (Ed.): Book of Memory. The German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews Deported to the Baltic States , S. XV ( Google Books ).
  16. ↑ Axel Vogel: Humanity was lost. Memory of the Jews murdered in Riga. In: Voice & Way 4/2010, pp. 14–15.

Coordinates: 56 ° 57 ′ 46.6 ″  N , 24 ° 12 ′ 37.4 ″  E