Jelgava massacres
Encyclopedia
The Jelgava massacres were the killing of the Jewish population of the Jews of the city of Jelgava
, Latvia
that occurred in the second half of July or in early August 1941. The murders were carried out by German police units under the command of Alfred Becu, with a significant contribution by Latvian auxiliary police organized by Mārtiņš Vagulāns.
. Jelgava was once the capital of the Duchy of Kurland
until that semi-independent state was taken over by the Russian empire in 1795. It is the principal city in the Latvian region of Zemgale, one of the four major regions of the country. The German name for Jelgava is Mitau. Jews began settling in Jelgava in the early 16th century, which was the start of the Jewish presence in Latvia. Many leaders of the Zionist movement came from Jelgava.
, entered Latvia, and captured Jelgava on June 29, 1941.
. For the Baltic States the responsible unit was Einsatzgruppe A, initially under the command of Franz Walter Stahlecker
. The Nazi organization which furnished most of the personnel for the Einsatzgruppen was the Security Service, (German
: Sicherheitsdienst
), generally referred to by its initials SD.
Jelgava is located on the road between Šiauliai
, Lithuania and the major city and capital of Latvia, Riga
. When Einsatzgruppe A entered Latvia, its commander, Stahlecker, stopped at Jelgava shortly after its capture to organize a unit of Latvians to carry out the functions of the German SD and the Einsatzgruppen.
Part of the Nazi plan for the Jews in Latvia was to use propaganda, including the newspapers, to associate the Jews with the Communists and the NKVD
, who had become hated in Latvia because of the Soviet occupation. In Jelgava on June 30, 1941, Nacionālā Zamgale (National Zemgale) became the first newspaper issued in Latvia under Nazi control on June 30, 1941. Stahlecker, possibly by pre-arrangement, selected the Latvian agronomist and journalist Vagulāns to be both the editor of Nacionālā Zamgale and also the commander of the Latvian SD unit in Jelgava, which later became known as the Vagulāns commando.
Carrying out the German wishes, the lead article in the first issue Nacionālā Zamgale praised Adolf Hitler and the German armed forces, and blamed the crimes during the Soviet occupation of Latvia on Jewish collaboration with the Communists. Similar anti-Semitic articles appeared in every issue of Nacionālā Zamgale. For example the headline in the July 3, 1941 issue was "Free of Jewish Bolshevik Looters and Murderers." The manner and style of the condemnations were different from prewar Latvian anticommunism, and indicated the direct control of the Germans over the editorial process.
, Liepāja
, and Valmiera
, with the main office in Riga. Under the Jelgava office, suboffices were set up in smaller towns in the vicinity, including Ilūkste
, Jēkabpils
, Bauska
, and Tukums
. A Nazi official named Egon Haensell was in charge of the Jelgava SD office.
("swastika"), a Latvian fascist organization in the 1930s. He claimed he had simply met Stahlecker on the highway to Riga, but Professor Ezergailis, questioned this, and stated that the possibility could not be ruled out that Vagulāns had been a pre-war SD agent in Latvia. The Germans remained in the background in Jelgava, and it was Vagulāns who organized the killings.
states that there were a number of individual murders in Jelgava. According to Kaufmann, these included Dr. Lewitas, who was shot dead in the cemetery, the educator Bowshower who with his child was executed in the marketplace, and the Disencik and Hirschmann families who were forced to dig their own graves. Kaufmann states that according to his sources, participants in these murders, as well as the burning of the synagogue, included Hollstein and Colonel Schulz, both Baltic Germans who had returned to Latvia from Germany. Local Latvian perpetrators, also according to Kaufmann, included Weiland (Veilands), Petersilins (Pētersiliņš), Kaulins (Kauliņš), Leimand (Leimanis), and Dr. Sprogis (Sproģis).
(Home Guard) up to the time of the Soviet occupation to report to the Security Police office. He also forbade Jews to own, manage, or work in any food store. On July 1, 1941, he ordered all building managers to register the building occupants with the security police. This was the beginning of the identification of the Jews for murder, although it is unlikely that this was realized at the time by the managers. Older Jews at that time in Jelgava could be readily identified by their conservative dress, but the younger Jews were indistinguishable from the Latvians and they spoke the Latvian language without an accent.
Vagulāns decreed that it as of July 3, 1941, it would be illegal to sell anything to Jews, that the employment of all Jews was terminated, and those who lived in designated areas of the city were to vacate their residences by 18:00 hours on July 5, 1941. Where they went is not clear, some sources say they were housed in warehouses and old factories near to the fish market, and others say they were housed near the railroad station. It appears that based by the small sized of the authorized guard by July 14 the Jews were housed in a single large building.
Their homes were looted by auxiliary police, or at least by people wearing armbands in the Latvia colors (red-white-red) who were pretending to be part of the auxiliary police. Jews were not to enter theaters, cinemas, parks, museums and all other establishments or events. They were not to listen to the radio and all radios were to be surrendered to SD headquarters. At the same time these decrees were being published, the same newspaper, Nationālā Zamgale, was used by Vagulāns to publish anti-Semitic material which, in the opinion of Professor Ezergailis, was as bad or worse than the notorious German hate newspaper Der Stürmer
.
Aspects of the Jelgava massacre remain obscure. Whether there was one continuous shooting over the course of a weekend, or several smaller shootings remains unknown. The precise number of victims is not known; estimates of 1,500, 1550, and 2,000 have been proposed. The German SD man who conducted the shootings was Alfred Becu, who at his trial in 1968 in West Germany, said he was following the orders of the Latvian SD man Vagulāns. Becu also acknowledged that he'd been ordered by Rudolf Batz
to take an Einsatzkommando detachment into Jelgava to kill the Jews. Becu testified that he was only in Jelgava a few days, left and had been in a state of shock ever since. The killing site seems to have been at a former shooting range of the Latvian army located about 2 kilometers south of Jelgava, near the highway that ran to Šiauliai in Lithuania.
According to a witness, Wilhelm Adelt, who commanded the perimeter guard at a three-day shooting, men, women and children, with the men predominating, were brought out to the shooting range, where on each day they were forced to dig a pit about 20 to 50 meters long and 2 meters deep. They were compelled to remove their outer clothing and surrender any valuables they were carrying. The victims were led to the pits by Latvian auxiliary policemen carrying rifles and wearing armbands. 8 to 10 Jews were killed at a time. The shooters were SD men, who used bolt-action rifles. Some shooters stood, and others knelt. The precise number of killers is not known. After being shot, some victims fell in the pit, others collapsed along the edge. Becu, who also gave the command to shoot, walked among the victims and shot again the still-living ones with his pistol. More victims were then brought up, shot, and pushed into the grave. When the pit was full, Latvians covered it up with sand. On each day of the killing, the victims would first be forced to dig a new pit and the process would continue. According to Adelt, Becu said "'the Jews had to be killed because they did not fit into the Nazi regime, and that Jews in general would be rooted out.'" The method described by Adelt was similar to the many killings committed by Einsatzkommando 2 in the Biķernieki forest. Adelt testified that about 500 to 600 people were killed in the three day massacre. Professor Ezergailis states that if this was the single major massacre, the total must have been three times as high.
In the fall of 1941 Latvia and the other Baltic States were incorporated with Belarus
(then known as White Russia or White Ruthenia) within a German occupation province called Ostland. Over Ostland the Nazis installed Hinrich Lohse
with the title of National (or Reich) Commissioner (Reichskommissar). Under Lohse, Latvia itself was governed by Otto-Heinrich Drechsler
with the title of Commissioner General (Generalkommissar). Latvia was broken up into six areas, of which Jelgava was one, with each area under the control of a Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar). For the Jelgava territory, Freiherr
Walter von Medem was appointed Gebietskommissar. Browning and Matthaüs report in their book that
In 1942, the Nazis removed and sold all the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery and leveled the site. Jelgava itself was mostly destroyed in later fighting in World War II
.
Jelgava
-Sports:The city's main football team, FK Jelgava, plays in the Latvian Higher League and won the 2009/2010 Latvian Football Cup.- Notable people :*August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein - linguist, folklorist, ethnographer...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
that occurred in the second half of July or in early August 1941. The murders were carried out by German police units under the command of Alfred Becu, with a significant contribution by Latvian auxiliary police organized by Mārtiņš Vagulāns.
Background
Jelgava is a town in Latvia, about 50 kilometers south of RigaRiga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
. Jelgava was once the capital of the Duchy of Kurland
Duchy of Courland and Semigallia
The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia is the name of a duchy in the Baltic region that existed from 1562 to 1569 as a vassal state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and from 1569...
until that semi-independent state was taken over by the Russian empire in 1795. It is the principal city in the Latvian region of Zemgale, one of the four major regions of the country. The German name for Jelgava is Mitau. Jews began settling in Jelgava in the early 16th century, which was the start of the Jewish presence in Latvia. Many leaders of the Zionist movement came from Jelgava.
German occupation
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the German armed forces attacked the USSR, including the Baltic states, which had recently been forcibly incorporated in the Soviet Union. The Germans advanced quickly through LithuaniaLithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, entered Latvia, and captured Jelgava on June 29, 1941.
The Holocaust begins in Jelgava
The Nazi occupation regime planned to kill as many "undesirable" people as possible in the immediate wake of the invasion. "Undesirables" in the Baltic States included Communists, Gypsies, the mentally ill, and especially Jews. The murders were to be carried out by four units called "special assignment groups" which have become known by their German name as EinsatzgruppenEinsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
. For the Baltic States the responsible unit was Einsatzgruppe A, initially under the command of Franz Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
. The Nazi organization which furnished most of the personnel for the Einsatzgruppen was the Security Service, (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
), generally referred to by its initials SD.
Jelgava is located on the road between Šiauliai
Šiauliai
Šiauliai , is the fourth largest city in Lithuania, with a population of 133,900. It is the capital of Šiauliai County. Unofficially, the city is the capital of Northern Lithuania.-Names:...
, Lithuania and the major city and capital of Latvia, Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
. When Einsatzgruppe A entered Latvia, its commander, Stahlecker, stopped at Jelgava shortly after its capture to organize a unit of Latvians to carry out the functions of the German SD and the Einsatzgruppen.
Part of the Nazi plan for the Jews in Latvia was to use propaganda, including the newspapers, to associate the Jews with the Communists and the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, who had become hated in Latvia because of the Soviet occupation. In Jelgava on June 30, 1941, Nacionālā Zamgale (National Zemgale) became the first newspaper issued in Latvia under Nazi control on June 30, 1941. Stahlecker, possibly by pre-arrangement, selected the Latvian agronomist and journalist Vagulāns to be both the editor of Nacionālā Zamgale and also the commander of the Latvian SD unit in Jelgava, which later became known as the Vagulāns commando.
Carrying out the German wishes, the lead article in the first issue Nacionālā Zamgale praised Adolf Hitler and the German armed forces, and blamed the crimes during the Soviet occupation of Latvia on Jewish collaboration with the Communists. Similar anti-Semitic articles appeared in every issue of Nacionālā Zamgale. For example the headline in the July 3, 1941 issue was "Free of Jewish Bolshevik Looters and Murderers." The manner and style of the condemnations were different from prewar Latvian anticommunism, and indicated the direct control of the Germans over the editorial process.
Establishment of the German SD
As the front lines moved eastward, the Einsatzgruppen, who followed close behind the fighting, moved through Latvia in a few weeks. The German authorities then established "resident" SD offices in the major cities of Latvia, including Jelgava. The other offices were in DaugavpilsDaugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, Liepāja
Liepaja
Liepāja ; ), is a republican city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea directly at 21°E. It is the largest city in the Kurzeme Region of Latvia, the third largest city in Latvia after Riga and Daugavpils and an important ice-free port...
, and Valmiera
Valmiera
Valmiera is the largest city of the historical Vidzeme region, Latvia, with a total area of 18.1 km². It is the center of the Valmiera District. As of 2002, Valmiera had a population of 27,323, and in 2008 – 27,569....
, with the main office in Riga. Under the Jelgava office, suboffices were set up in smaller towns in the vicinity, including Ilūkste
Ilukste
- History :Ilūkste was first mentioned in 1559, part of the estate lands of Count Kasper Zibergs.By 1795, thanks to its strategic location at the crossroads of Lithuania, Belarus and Daugavpils, Ilūkste became an important trade city and regional center, with 50 churches, 15 schools, and 150 taverns...
, Jēkabpils
Jekabpils
Jēkabpils is a city in Selonia, Latvia roughly halfway between Riga and Daugavpils. The Daugava River runs through the town, and the ancient valley, branches, and islands of the river are considered picturesque...
, Bauska
Bauska
Bauska is a town in Bauska municipality, in the Zemgale region of southern Latvia. The town is situated at the confluence of the rivers Mūsa and Mēmele where they form the Lielupe River...
, and Tukums
Tukums
Tukums is a town in Latvia. Three regions of Latvia meet in the vicinity of Tukums – Vidzeme, Zemgale and Courland. The city was host to the Cold War facility Tukums air base.- History :...
. A Nazi official named Egon Haensell was in charge of the Jelgava SD office.
The Vagulāns Kommando
Vagulāns hed been a member of PērkonkrustsPerkonkrusts
Pērkonkrusts , was a Latvian political party founded in the 1930s. This group adapted fascist ideology to the situation in independent Latvia after 1918. It was the largest and longest-lived organisation of its kind in Latvia...
("swastika"), a Latvian fascist organization in the 1930s. He claimed he had simply met Stahlecker on the highway to Riga, but Professor Ezergailis, questioned this, and stated that the possibility could not be ruled out that Vagulāns had been a pre-war SD agent in Latvia. The Germans remained in the background in Jelgava, and it was Vagulāns who organized the killings.
Burning of the synagogue
Two or three days after the Germans captured the city the synagogue was burned, apparently by the Germans using hand grenades and gasoline. As the fire burned, the building was ringed by guards wearing German helmets. It was said in the city the next day that the rabbi refused to leave the synagogue, and perhaps other Jews were burned in the synagogue, or brutalized outside. Some Latvian onlookers of the burning expressed sympathy for the Jews, whom were forced to march by and witness the burning prayer house.Individual murders and perpetrators
Max Kaufmann, a survivor of the Riga ghettoRiga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
states that there were a number of individual murders in Jelgava. According to Kaufmann, these included Dr. Lewitas, who was shot dead in the cemetery, the educator Bowshower who with his child was executed in the marketplace, and the Disencik and Hirschmann families who were forced to dig their own graves. Kaufmann states that according to his sources, participants in these murders, as well as the burning of the synagogue, included Hollstein and Colonel Schulz, both Baltic Germans who had returned to Latvia from Germany. Local Latvian perpetrators, also according to Kaufmann, included Weiland (Veilands), Petersilins (Pētersiliņš), Kaulins (Kauliņš), Leimand (Leimanis), and Dr. Sprogis (Sproģis).
Identification and isolation of the Jews
From his office at 42 Lielā street (Lielā iela) in Jelgava, Vagulāns used his new newspaper, Nationālā Zamgale, to promulgate his decrees. On June 30, among other things, he ordered all veterans of the police and the AizsargiAizsargi
Aizsargi Aizsargi Aizsargi (literally: "Defenders", "Guards" was a paramilitary organization, or a militia, in Latvia during the interbellum period (1918–1939). The Aizsargi was created on March 30, 1919 by the Latvian provisional government as a self-defense force, a kind of national guard,...
(Home Guard) up to the time of the Soviet occupation to report to the Security Police office. He also forbade Jews to own, manage, or work in any food store. On July 1, 1941, he ordered all building managers to register the building occupants with the security police. This was the beginning of the identification of the Jews for murder, although it is unlikely that this was realized at the time by the managers. Older Jews at that time in Jelgava could be readily identified by their conservative dress, but the younger Jews were indistinguishable from the Latvians and they spoke the Latvian language without an accent.
Vagulāns decreed that it as of July 3, 1941, it would be illegal to sell anything to Jews, that the employment of all Jews was terminated, and those who lived in designated areas of the city were to vacate their residences by 18:00 hours on July 5, 1941. Where they went is not clear, some sources say they were housed in warehouses and old factories near to the fish market, and others say they were housed near the railroad station. It appears that based by the small sized of the authorized guard by July 14 the Jews were housed in a single large building.
Their homes were looted by auxiliary police, or at least by people wearing armbands in the Latvia colors (red-white-red) who were pretending to be part of the auxiliary police. Jews were not to enter theaters, cinemas, parks, museums and all other establishments or events. They were not to listen to the radio and all radios were to be surrendered to SD headquarters. At the same time these decrees were being published, the same newspaper, Nationālā Zamgale, was used by Vagulāns to publish anti-Semitic material which, in the opinion of Professor Ezergailis, was as bad or worse than the notorious German hate newspaper Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
.
Massacre
The exact date of the murder of the Jelgava Jews cannot be precisely determined. It occurred either on the weekend of July 25–26 or August 2–3, with evidence supporting both dates. Supporting an August 2–3 date for the murders is a directive by Vagulāns published on August 1, 1941:Aspects of the Jelgava massacre remain obscure. Whether there was one continuous shooting over the course of a weekend, or several smaller shootings remains unknown. The precise number of victims is not known; estimates of 1,500, 1550, and 2,000 have been proposed. The German SD man who conducted the shootings was Alfred Becu, who at his trial in 1968 in West Germany, said he was following the orders of the Latvian SD man Vagulāns. Becu also acknowledged that he'd been ordered by Rudolf Batz
Rudolf Batz
Rudolf Batz was an SS Sturmbannführer. From 1 July to 4 November, 1941 he was the leader of Einsatzkommando 2 and as such was responsible, along with others, for the mass murder of Jews in the Baltic states.- Life :...
to take an Einsatzkommando detachment into Jelgava to kill the Jews. Becu testified that he was only in Jelgava a few days, left and had been in a state of shock ever since. The killing site seems to have been at a former shooting range of the Latvian army located about 2 kilometers south of Jelgava, near the highway that ran to Šiauliai in Lithuania.
According to a witness, Wilhelm Adelt, who commanded the perimeter guard at a three-day shooting, men, women and children, with the men predominating, were brought out to the shooting range, where on each day they were forced to dig a pit about 20 to 50 meters long and 2 meters deep. They were compelled to remove their outer clothing and surrender any valuables they were carrying. The victims were led to the pits by Latvian auxiliary policemen carrying rifles and wearing armbands. 8 to 10 Jews were killed at a time. The shooters were SD men, who used bolt-action rifles. Some shooters stood, and others knelt. The precise number of killers is not known. After being shot, some victims fell in the pit, others collapsed along the edge. Becu, who also gave the command to shoot, walked among the victims and shot again the still-living ones with his pistol. More victims were then brought up, shot, and pushed into the grave. When the pit was full, Latvians covered it up with sand. On each day of the killing, the victims would first be forced to dig a new pit and the process would continue. According to Adelt, Becu said "'the Jews had to be killed because they did not fit into the Nazi regime, and that Jews in general would be rooted out.'" The method described by Adelt was similar to the many killings committed by Einsatzkommando 2 in the Biķernieki forest. Adelt testified that about 500 to 600 people were killed in the three day massacre. Professor Ezergailis states that if this was the single major massacre, the total must have been three times as high.
Survivor accounts
There appear to be no survivor accounts of the Jelgava mass shootings. One incident that might be described as a survivor account is provided by Frida Michelson, a women's clothing designer from Riga who was working in a forced labor detail in the field near Jelgava:Results and aftermath
Virtually the entire Jewish community of Jelgava was killed during the course of the massacres and the other persecutions. Afterwards, the Nazis posted signs at the entrance to the town which said "Jelgava is cleansed of Jews" (judenrein). Police Battalion 105 was a Nazi organization assigned to the Baltic states with the task of killing Jews, Gypsies, and others. On July 20, 1941, a salesman from Bremen, who had enlisted in Police Battalion 105, wrote to his wife from Jelgava, complaining that there were no more Jews left in the city to act as domestic servants, and added, possibly sarcastically, "They must be working, I suppose, in the countryside."In the fall of 1941 Latvia and the other Baltic States were incorporated with Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
(then known as White Russia or White Ruthenia) within a German occupation province called Ostland. Over Ostland the Nazis installed Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
with the title of National (or Reich) Commissioner (Reichskommissar). Under Lohse, Latvia itself was governed by Otto-Heinrich Drechsler
Otto-Heinrich Drechsler
Otto-Heinrich Drechsler was a prominent German dentist, mayor of Lübeck, and during the Second World War from 1941 through 1944 he resided in Riga as the General Commissioner of Latvia for the Nazi occupation regime .- Early life :Drechsler originally intended a career as professional military...
with the title of Commissioner General (Generalkommissar). Latvia was broken up into six areas, of which Jelgava was one, with each area under the control of a Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar). For the Jelgava territory, Freiherr
Freiherr
The German titles Freiherr and Freifrau and Freiin are titles of nobility, used preceding a person's given name or, after 1919, before the surname...
Walter von Medem was appointed Gebietskommissar. Browning and Matthaüs report in their book that
In 1942, the Nazis removed and sold all the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery and leveled the site. Jelgava itself was mostly destroyed in later fighting in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Memorials
Memorials have been constructed in the Jewish cemetery and in the forest near the city where the Jews were killed.Historiographical
- Browning, ChristopherChristopher BrowningChristopher Robert Browning is an American historian of the Holocaust.-Education:Browning received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming...
, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, Cambridge University Press 1999 ISBN 052177490X - Dribins, Leo, Gūtmanis, Armands, and Vestermanis, Marģers, Latvia's Jewish Community: History, Tragedy, Revival (2001), available at the website of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Dribins, Leo, "Kurzeme's and Zemgale's Jews", University of Latvia website
- Ezergailis, AndrewAndrew EzergailisAndrew Ezergailis is a retired Professor of History, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA, known for his research into the 20th-century history of Latvia, particularly of the 1917 Revolution and the Holocaust in Latvia....
, The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944—The Missing Center, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996 ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 - Hilberg, RaulRaul HilbergRaul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, The Destruction of the European Jews (3d Ed.) Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 2003. ISBN 0300095570 - Kaufmann, Max, Die Vernichtung des Judens Lettlands (The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia), self-published, Munich, 1947, English translation by Laimdota Mazzarins available on-line as Churbn Lettland -- The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia (all references in this article are to page numbers in the on-line edition)
- Lewy, GuenterGuenter LewyGuenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford University Press 2000 ISBN 0-19-512556-8 - Lumans, Valdis O., Latvia in World War II, Fordham University Press, New York, NY, 2006 ISBN 0823226271
- Roseman, Mark, The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution—A Reconsideration, Holt, New York, 2002 ISBN 0-8050-6810-4
Personal accounts
- Michelson, Frida, I Survived Rumbuli, (translated from Russian and edited by Wolf Goodman), The Holocaust Library, New York 1979 ISBN 0-89604-030-5
War crime trials and evidence
- Jaeger Report, "Complete tabulation of executions carried out in the Einsatzkommando 3 zone up to December 1, 1941" reproduced at Holocaust History.org
- Stahlecker, Franz W.Franz Walter StahleckerFranz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
, "Comprehensive Report of Einsatzgruppe A Operations up to 15 October 1941", Exhibit L-180 (excerpts of extensive report), translated and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume VII, pages 978-995, USGPO, Washington DC 1946 ("Red Series") - Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946 - April 1949, Volume IV, ("Green Series) (the "Einsatzgruppen case") also available at Mazel library (well indexed HTML version)
External links
- Jewish community of Jelgava website
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, Holocaust Education, Research and Remembrance in Latvia, 16 Sept 2003
- Model of Jelgava synagogue, at Shamir Latvia website Команда Мартиньша Вагуланса. Из истории Холокоста в Елгаве // Доклад на международной конференции «Вторая мировая война и страны Балтии. 1939—1945 г.». Опубликовано на Dialogi.lv 18 декабря 2006 Романовский Д. Коллаборанты и их роль в Холокосте в Латвии и Литве // Лехаим, октябрь 2007