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Rumbula massacre
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The Rumbula massacre was the two-day (November 30, 1941 and December 8, 1941) killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Other than the infamous Babi Yar massacre in the Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day atrocity during the Holocaust. About 24,000 of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and approximately 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by freight train.
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The Rumbula massacre was the two-day (November 30, 1941 and December 8, 1941) killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Other than the infamous Babi Yar massacre in the Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day atrocity during the Holocaust. About 24,000 of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and approximately 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by freight train. The systematic mass murder was carried out by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe A with the help of local collaborators of the Arajs Kommando, with support from other such Latvian auxiliaries. In charge of the operation was Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln, who had previously overseen similar massacres in the Ukraine. Rudolf Lange, who later participated in the Wannsee Conference, also took part in organising the massacre. Some of the accusations against Latvian Herberts Cukurs regarding crimes perpetrated against Jews are related to the clearing of the Riga Ghetto by the Arajs Kommando. The Rumbula murders, together with many others, formed the basis of the post-World War II Einsatzgruppen trial where a number of Nazis were found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Nomenclature
This crime is known by different names, including "The Big Action", and the "Rumbula Action", but in Latvia it is just called "Rumbula" or "Rumbuli". It is sometimes called the Jeckeln Action after its commander Friedrich Jeckeln. The word "aktion", which translates literally to action or operation in English was used by the Nazis as a euphemism for killings. For Rumbula, the official euphemism was "shooting action" (Erschiessungsaktion). In the Einsatzgruppen trial before the Nuremburg Military Tribunal, the event was not given a name but simply described as "the murder of 10,600 Jews" on 30 November 1941.
Location
Rumbula was a small railroad station 12 kilometers south of Riga, the capital and major city of Latvia It was connected with Daugavpils, the second largest city in Latvia by the rail line which ran along the north side of the Daugava river. The crime scene was on a hill about 250 meters from the station. The view blocked by vegetation, but the sound of gun fire would have been audible from the station grounds. The area lay between the rail line and the Riga-Daugavpils highway, with the rail line to the north of the highway. Rumbula was part of a forest and swamp area known as Varnu mežs (Crow Forest). As with the rail station, the sound of gun fire could be heard from the highway, and in fact it was heard by one of the few nonperpetrator witnesses. The Nazi occupation authorities carried out a number of other massacres on the north bank of the Daugava in the Rumbula vicinity. The soil was sandy and it was easy to dig graves. The rail line and highway made it easy to move the victims in from Riga to be murdered (it had to be within walking distance of the Riga Ghetto on the southeast side of the city), as well as transport the killers and their arms.
The Holocaust in Latvia
The Holocaust in Latvia began on June 22, 1941, when the German army invaded the Soviet Union, including the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which had been recently occupied by Soviet forces following a period of independence after World War I. Murders of Jews, Communists, and others began almost immediately. These killings were perpetrated by German murder squads known as the Einsatzgruppen, and also other organizations, including the German Security Police, known as the SD (Sichersheitsdient, literally "Security Service"). The Nazi occupiers were also aided by a unit of native thugs known as the Arajs Commando, and at least to some extent by Latvian police.
Involvement of local population
The Nazis wished to make it appear as if the local populations of Latvians were responsible for the murders of the Jews. They attempted without much success, to stir up local deadly riots, known as "pograms" against the Jews. They spread rumors that Jews were responsible for widespread arson and other crimes, and even reported the same to their superiors. This policy of incitement to what the Nazis called " self-cleansing actions" was acknowledged to be a failure by Fritz Stahlecker, who, as chief of Einsatzgruppe A, was the Nazi's main killing expert in the Baltic states. Latvian police and auxiliaries assisted in the systematic murder of the Latvian Jews.
Creation of the Riga Ghetto
The SD's goal was to make Latvia judenrein, a Nazi neologism which can be translated as "Jew purified." By October 15, 1941, the Nazis had killed up to 30,000 of Latvia's approximately 66,000 Jews. Hinrich Lohse, who reported to Alfred Rosenberg rather than the SD's boss, Heinrich Himmler, wanted not so much to murder the Jews but rather to steal all their property, confine them to ghettos, and work them as slave laborers for Germany's war effort. This bureaucratic conflict slowed down the pace of Nazi murder in September and October 1941. Lohse, as part of the "civil administration" was perceived by the SD as resisting their murder plans. On November 15, 1941, Lohse asked for directions from Rosenberg as to whether all Jews were to be killed "regardless of economic considerations."By the end of October, Lohse had confined all the Jews of Riga, as well some of the surrounding area, into a ghetto within the city, the gates of which were about 10 kilometers from Rumbula. The Riga Ghetto was a creation of the Nazis themselves, and had not existed before the war.
Entry of Friedrich Jeckeln
Motive
Himmler's motive was to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga so that Jews from Germany and Austria could be deported to the Riga ghetto and housed in their place. Similarly-motivated mass killings of eastern Jews confined to ghettos were carried out at Kovno on October 28, 1941 (10,000 dead), and at Minsk, where 13,000 were shot on November 7 and an additional 7000 on November 20. Historian Friedländer states "the mass slaughters of October and November 1941 were intended to make space for the new arrivals from the Reich.. To carry out this plan, Himmler brought Friedrich Jeckeln into Latvia from the Ukraine. Jeckeln had organized a number of mass killings in the Ukraine, including Babi Yar, where over 30,000 Jews were murdered in a few days. Jeckeln's gang of about 50 killers and supporting personnel arrived in Riga on November 5, 1941. Jeckeln did not arrive with them. Instead, Jeckeln went to Berlin where on November 12, 1941, he met with Himmler personally. Himmler told him to kill the entire Riga ghetto, and to instruct Lohse, should he object that this was an order of Himmler's and also of Adolf Hitler's.[ Jeckeln then went to Riga, explained to situation to Lohse, who raised no further objection. By mid-November 1941 he had set himself up in a building in the old section of Riga known as the Ritterhaus. Back in Berlin, Rosenberg, Lohse's caporegime, was able to get one concession out of Himmler, that the slave labor extracted from male Jews aged 16-60 would be considered too important to Germany's war effort to allow their immediate killing. Consequently, these people would be spared, while women, children, old and disabled people would be shot. Jeckeln's plan for carrying out this segregation of the victims came to be known as the "Little Ghetto".]
Planning the crime
To fulfill Himmler's order to clear out the Ghetto, Jeckeln would need to kill 12,000 people per day. Because the victims walk to the killing site, rather than transported by rail or truck, it would take about three hours to march them from the ghetto to the pits. At that time of year, there were only about eight hours of day and twilight in which the killing could be done. The last column of victims would have to leave the Riga ghetto no later than 12:00 noon. Guards would be posted on both sides along the entire 10 kilometer column route. Although the actual killings took only a few men, the whole process required about 1,700 personnel to carry it out.
Jeckeln's aide Paul Degenhart helped him scout out the killing site. Jeckeln's construction specialist, Ernst Hennicker, who later claimed he was shocked when he learned in advance of the number of people to be killed, nevertheless made no objection at the time and proceeded to supervise the digging of six murder pits, sufficient to bury 25,000 people. The actual evacuation was done by 200 or 300 Russian prisoners of war. The pits themselves were purpose-designed for their role in the murder. They were excavated in levels, with the broader levels towards the top, and a ramp down to the different levels to allow the victims to be literally marched into their own graves. It took about three days to finish the pits which were complete by November 23, 1941.
The actual shooting would be done by only 10 or 12 men of Jeckeln's bodyguard, including Endl, Lueschen, and Wedekind, all experienced murderers. Much later, Jeckeln's driver, one Zingler, claimed in testimony that Jeckeln had forced him to join in as a killer by making threats to harm Zingler's family. Jeckeln had no Latvians carrying out shootings. Jeckeln considered the shooting of the victims lying down in the pits to be a deed of marksmanship, and he wanted to prove that Germans were inherently more accurate shooters than Latvians. Jeckeln also didn't trust other agencies, even Nazi ones, to carry out the murders in the manner he wanted. Although the SD and the Order Police were involved, Jeckeln assigned his own squad of killers to supervise every aspect of the operation.
Deciding on the killing site
Jeckelen searched the Riga vicinity to find a good place to kill all the people. Riga was located in a swampy area where the water table was close to ground level. This would interfer with the proper disposal of thousands of corpses. He had to find some elevated ground. The site also had to be on the north side of the Daugava River, because the ghetto was on the north side. It also had to be within walking distance of the ghetto. On or about November 18 or 19 Jeckeln came upon Rumbula as he was driving south to the Salaspils concentration camp (then under construction), and it fit what he was looking for. The site was close to Riga, elevated ground, and sandy soil, with the only drawback being the proximity to the highway (about 100 meters).
The Jeckeln system
Jeckeln developed his "Jeckeln system" during the many killings he had organized in the Ukraine. He called it "sardine packing" (Sardinenpackung). It was reported that even some of the experienced Einsatzgruppen killers claimed to have been horrified by its cruelty. Extermination by shooting ran into a problem when it came to women and children. Otto Ohlendorf, himself a prolific killer, objected to Jeckeln's techniques according to his testimony at his post-war trial for crimes against humanity.The Jeckeln method was noted, although not by name, in the judgment of the Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg Military Tribunal, as a means of avoid the extra work associated with having to push the bodies into the grave. There were nine components to the method, which handled murder like an assembly line. Jeckeln had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process. Jeckeln system shooters were known as Genickschussspezialisten -- "neck shot specialists". Jeckeln's system, as applied to the Riga Ghetto, worked as follows:
- The Security Police rousted the people out of their houses in the ghetto;
- The Jews were organized into columns of 1000 people and driven to the killing grounds;
- The Order Police (another branch of the Nazi police bureaucracy) led the columns to Rumbula;
- Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously;
- The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables;
- The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits;
- To save the trouble of tossing dead bodies into the pits, the killers forced the living victims into the trench on top of other people who had already been shot;
- Russian submachine guns (another source says semi-automatic pistols were employed at Rumbula)were used rather than German arms, because the magazine held 50 rounds, but the weapon could be set to fire one round at a time.
- The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people had just been shot. The people were not sprayed with bullets. Rather, to save ammunition, each person was shot Just once, in the back of the head. Anyone not killed outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up.
Arranging transport for infirm victims
Jeckeln had at his direct disposal only 10 to 12 automobiles and 6 to 8 motorcycles. This was enough to transport the killers themselves and certain official witnesses to the murder site. However Jeckeln needed more and heavier transport for the sick, disabled or other of his intended victims who could not make the 10 kilometer march. Jeckeln also anticipated there would be a significant number of people murdered along the march route, and he would need about 25 trucks to pick up the bodies. Consequently he ordered his men to scrounge through Riga to locate suitable vehicles.
Final planning and instructions
On or about Thursay, November 27, 1941, Jeckeln held a meeting of the leaders of the participating units at the Riga office of another German police force, the Protective Police (Schutzpolizei) to coordinate the actions in the forthcoming massacre. On the afternoon of Saturday, November 29, 1941, Jeckeln held meeting of the more senior commanders, this time at the Ritterhaus. According to later versions given by those in attendance, Jeckeln gave a speech to these officers to the effect that it was their patriotic duty to exterminate the Jews of the Riga ghetto, just as much as if they were on the front lines of the battles then currently raging far to the east. Officers also later claimed that Jeckeln told them that failure to participate in the murders would be considered the equivalent of desertion, and that all HSSPF personnel who would not be participating in the action were required to attend the extermination site as official witnesses. No Latvian officials were present at the Ritterhaus meeting.
At about 7:00 p.m. on November 29, a brief (about 15 minutes) third meeting was held, this time at the Protective Police headquarters. This was presided over by Karl Heise, the head of the protective police. He told his men they would have to report the next morning at 4:00 a.m. to carry out a "resettlement" of the people in the Riga ghetto. "Resettlement" was a Nazi euphemism for mass murder. Despite the euphemism, Heisse and a majority men of the Protective Police still knew the true nature of what they would be participating in. Final instructions were also passed to the Latvian militia and police who would be rounding up people in the ghetto and acting as guards along the way. The Latvian police were told they would be moving the Jews to the Rumbula station for transport to a resettlement camp.
Carrying out the killings
Able-bodied men separated from the others
As mentioned, the segregation of the men aged 16-60 from the rest of the population and their preservation (at least for the time being) for slave labor, was part of the compromise plan that Rosenberg and Himmler had agreed upon to effect the destruction of the balance of the Jewish ghetto population. On about November 27, 1941 a four-block area of the Riga ghetto was cordoned off with barbed wire, and this area became known as the "small ghetto". On November 28, the Nazis issued an order requiring the able-bodied men to move to the small ghetto and the rest of the population was to report at 6:00 a.m. on November 30 to a different area for "light work" with no more than a 20 kilogram bag. The reaction among the Jews was one of horror. In July and August, it was the men of Latvia who had been shot first, while the women and children had been allowed to live, at least for a time. The order for the men to separate themselves from their families was thus perceived as a predicate for the murder of the men, the arrangements between Rosenberg and Himmler having been made without their knowledge. By the morning of Saturday, November 29, the Nazis had finished segregating the able-bodied men into the small ghetto.
First transport of German Jews arrives in Riga
The first transport of German Jews to Riga departed Berlin on Thursday, November 27, 1941 and arrived in Riga on Saturday, November 29, 1941. Whether the Jews were to be worked and starved to death over time, or simply murdered outright had not yet been decided upon. Apparently at the last minute, Himmler decided had not wanted these German Jews killed immediately; his plan instead was to house them in the Riga Ghetto in the dwellings to be made available from the murder of the Latvian Jews. For this reason, on Sunday, November 30, 1941, Himmler placed a telephone call to Reinhard Heydrich, who, as head of the SD was also Jeckeln's boss. According to Himmler's telephone log, his order to Heydrich was that the Jews on the transport from Berlin were not to be murdered, or in the Nazi terminology, "liquidated". (Judentransport aus Berlin. Keine Liquidierung). Himmler however only made this call at 1:30 in the afternoon that Sunday, and by that time, the people ont the train were dead. What had happened was that there was no housing for the deported German Jews when they arrived in Riga, so the Nazis left them on the train. The next morning, the Nazis ran the trainload of people down to the Rumbula station. They took the people off the train, marched them the short distance to the crime scene and shot them all between 8:15 and 9:00 a.m. They were the first group to die that day.. The Nazi euphemism for this crime was that the 1,000 Berlin Jews had been "disposed of." Thereafter, on December 1, and, in a personal conference on December 4, 1941, Himmler issued strict instructions to Jeckeln that no mass killings of deported German Jews were to occur without his express orders. Jeckeln claimed at his post-war trial that he'd received orders from Himmler on November 10 or 11, that "all the Jews in the Ostland down to the last man must be exterminated." Jeckeln might well have believed that killing the German Jews on the Riga transport was what Himmler wished, for Just before the Rumbula massacre, mass killings of German Jews upon or shortly after arrival in the East had been carried out in Kaunas, Lithuania, on November 25 and 29, 1941, when the Sipo killed 5,000 German and Austrian Jews who had arrived on transports on November 11, including some 1,000 Jews from Berlin.
Women, children and elderly forced out of ghetto
The first action in the ghetto began at 4:00 a.m., well before dawn, on Sunday, November 30, 1941. Working from west to east (that is, towards Rumbula), squads of the SD, the Protective Police, the Araji commando, and about 80 Jewish ghetto police rousted people from their sleep and told them report for assembly in half an hour. Detachments cut special openings in the fence to allow more rapid access to the highway south to the killing site. Things did not go as smoothly as Jeckeln had planned. Even though the able-bodied men were gone, people still resisted being forced out of their dwellings and tried to desert from the columns as they moved through the eastern part of the ghetto. The Nazis killed 600 to 1000 people in process of forcing out the people. Eventually columns of about 1,000 people were formed and marched out of the ghetto. The Jews were allowed to carry some luggage as a sham to create the impression among the victims that they were simply being resettled. Jeckeln intended to shoot even the old and sick who could not walk, so he had arranged to have them transported to Rumbula by bus. Frida Michelson, one of the few survivors of the massacre, later described what she saw that day:
Ten kilometer march to the killing pits
The first column of people, accompanied by about 50 guards, left the ghetto at 6:00 a.m. The people could not keep up the pace demanded by the guards, and the column kept stretching out. The guards murdered anyone who fell out of the column or stopped to rest. German guards, when later tried for war crimes, claimed it was the Latvians who did most of the killing. In Latvia however there were stories about Latvia policemen refusing orders to shoot people.
Arrival at Rumbula and murder
The first column of people arrived at Rumbula at about 9:00 am on November 30. By then the Nazis had already murdered the German Jewish people they had brought in by rail. A path veered off from the highway at towards the pits. The people were ordered to disrobe and deposit their clothing and valuables in designated locations and collection boxes. They were then marched towards the murder pits. If there were too many people arriving to be readily killed immediately, they were held in the nearby forest until their turn came. As the piles of clothing became huge, members of the Arajs Commando loaded the articles on trucks to be transported back to Riga. The disrobing point was watched carefully by the killers, because it was here that there was a pause in the conveyor-like system, where resistance or rebellion might arise.
The people were then marched down the ramps into the pits, in single file ten at at time, on top of previously shot victims, many of whom were still alive. Some people wept, others prayed and recited the Torah. Handicapped and elderly people were helped into the pit by other victims. Mothers hung tight to their children:
The shooting continued past sundown into to the twilight, and probably ended at about 5:00 p.m., when darkness finally ended the ability of the killers to carry out their deeds. (Another source says the shooting went on well into the evening.) Their aim may have been worsened by the twilight, as Nazi police Major Karl Heise, who had gone back and forth between Riga and the killing site that day, suffered the misfortune of having been hit in the eye by a ricochet bullet.
Jeckeln himself described the murders at Rumbula at his own trial for crimes against humanity in early 1946.
Captain Otto Schulz-Du Bois, of the Engineer Reserves of the German Army, was in the area on bridge and road inspection duties, when he heard "intermittent but persistent reports of gunfire". (It will be recalled that the murder scene was within earshot of the main highway.) Schulz-Du Bois stopped to investigate, and because security was weak, was able to observe the murders. A few months later he described what he saw to friends in Germany, who in 1980 reported what Schulz-Du Bois had told them:
Official witnesses
Jeckeln required high-ranking Nazis to witness the Rumbula murders. Jeckeln himself stood at the top of the pits personally directing the shooters. National Commissioner (Reichskommissar) for the Ostland Hinrich Lohse was there, at least for a while. Dr. Otto Heinrich Drechsler, the Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar) of Latvia may have been present. Roberts Osis, the chief of the Latvian collaborationist militia (Schutzmannshaft) was present for much of the time. Viktors Arajs, who was drunk, worked very close the pits supervising the Latvian men of his commando, who were guarding and funnelling the victims into the pits, but not actually shooting them. That was done by 10 or 12 Germans.
Later murders and body disposal in the ghetto
Karl Heise returned from Rumbula to the Riga ghetto by about 1:00 p.m. There he discovered that about 20 Jews too sick to be moved had been taken not to the murder site but rather to the hospital. Heise ordered they be taken out of the hospital, and shot on the street. This was done. There were still the hundreds of bodies left from the morning's forced evacuation. A squad of able-bodied Jews was delegated to pick them up and take them to the Jewish cemetery using sleds, wheelbarrows and horse carts. Not every one who had been shot down in the streets was dead; those still alive were finished off by the Arajs commando. Individual graves were not dug at the cemetery. Instead. using dynamite, the Nazi blew out a large crater in the ground, into which the dead were dumped without ceremony.
Aftermath at the pits on the first day
By the end of the first day the Nazis had forced approximately 13,000 people into the pits and shot them, but not everyone was dead. Wounded naked people were wandering about as late as 11:00 am the next day, seeking help but getting none. In the words of Professor Ezergailis:
According to historian Bernard Press, himself a survivor of the Holocaust in Latvia:
The December 8 killings
Jeckeln seems to have wanted to continue the murders on December 1, but did not. Professor Ezergailis proposed that Jeckeln may have been bothered by problems such the resistance of the Jews in Riga. In any case, the murders did not resume until Monday, December 8, 1941. According to Professor Ezergailis, this time 300 Jews were killed in forcing people out of the ghetto. (Another source reports that the brutality in the Ghetto was worse on December 8 than on November 30.). It was snowing that Monday, and the people may have believed that the worst had past. Even so, the columns were formed up and marched out of the city just as on Sunday, November 30. Of the 12,000 people forced out of the ghetto to Rumbula that day, three known survivors later gave accounts: Frida Michelson, Elle Madale, and Matiss Lutrins. Michelson survived by pretending to be dead as victims discarded heaps of shoes on her. Elle Madale claimed to be a Latvian. Matiss Lutrins, a mechanic, persuaded some Latvian truck drivers to allow him and his wife (whom the Nazis later found and killed) under a truckload of clothing from the victims that was being hauled back into Riga.
Among the murdered on December 8 was Simon Dubnow, a well known Jewish writer, historian and activist. Dubnow had fled Berlin in 1933 when the Nazis took power, seeking safety in Riga. On December 8, 1941, too ill to be marched to the forest, he was executed in the ghetto. and buried in a mass grave. He was murdered on the second day. According to one account, the person who murdered him was a German who had been a former student. A rumor started, which later grew into a legend, that Dubnow said to the Jews present at the last moments of his life: "If you survive, never forget what is happening here, give evidence, write and rewrite, keep alive each word and each gesture, each cry and each tear! In addition to killing Dubnow, the Nazis stole all the historian's papers and transported them back to the Reich.
Effect of Rumbula on plans for the Holocaust
German Jews replace Latvians in Riga ghetto
In December, 1941, the Nazis continued issuing directions to Jews in Germany that they were to report to be deported to the East. For most of these people, because of Himmler's change of plan (as shown in his "keine Liquiderung" telephone call) they would get a year or two of life in a ghetto before their turn came to be killed. One of the first trains to arrive in Riga was called the "Bielefeld Transport." Once the German Jews arrived on the Riga transports in December, 1941, they were sent to the ghetto, where they found that the houses had obviously been left in a hurry. The furnishings in the residences were in great disarray and some were stained with blood. Frozen but cooked food was on the tables, and baby carriages with bottles of frozen mike were outside in the snow. On one wall a German family found the words written "Mama, farewell." Years later, a Ghetto survivor, then a child, remembers being told "Latvians lived here", with no mention they were Jews. Another survivor, Ruth Foster, recounted what she had heard about the massacre:
Effect on the Wannsee Conference
Rudolf Lange, commander of Einsatzkommando 2 in Latvia, was invited to the infamous Wannsee Conference to give his perspective on the proposed Final Solution to the so-called Jewish question. When trainloads of German Jews arrived at Riga in Latvia, Lange simply had them shot, as he and Jeckeln had done at Rumbula. The Nazis did not find this to be a feasible method of murdering millions of people: the cost of ammunition alone was unacceptable, and it was observed that even SS troops were uncomfortable about shooting assimilated German Jews as opposed to Ostjuden ("Eastern Jews"). The head of the German civil administration in the Baltic area, Wilhelm Kube, who had no objection to killing Jews in general objected to German Jews, "who come from our own cultural circle", being casually killed by German soldiers.
An example of the difficulties that some Germans had in executing fellow Germans of the Jewish faith was described by survivor Ruth Foster. Her father was working outside the Riga Ghetto sawing wood for the SS. A German solder from their home town passed him, and said "Wilhelm, what are you doing here?" The father only answered "Bring me some bread." The soldier did so, but it did not help the father. As the Jews were marched back into the ghetto that evening from their work assignments, they were search, and those that were found with food, even potato peelings, were arrested. Later, the Nazis forced all the Jews of the Ghetto to assemble, and he shot the father and two others in the back of the head with his pistol, as the family watched along with the other Jews of the ghetto.
Later actions at the site
In 1943, apparently concerned about leaving evidence behind, Himmler ordered that the bodies at Rumbula be dug up and burned. (Similar actions were taken at Belzec extermination camp in Poland.) This work was done by a detachment of Jewish slave laborers. Persons travelling on the railway could readily smell the burning corpses. In 2001, the President of the Republic of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who had been a child during World War II, spoke at a 60 year anniversary memorial service about the destruction of the bodies: "We could smell the smoke coming from Rumbula, where corpses were being dug up and burnt to erase the evidence."}}
Justice
Some of the Rumbula murderers were brought to justice.
- Hinrich Lohse was a member of a Nazi class that "was to receive surprisingly light treatment" at the Nuremburg. In Lohse's case, apparently because the British authorities believed him to have been innocent of the Nazi crimes in the Baltic states, he was not even indicted by the Allied powers, and was handed over to a West German "denazification" court. Sentenced to the maximum of 10 years, Lohse was released early in 1951 "on the familiar grounds of ill health."
- Victors Arajs was charged in a British court with war crimes, but was released in 1948, and afterwards hid out in West Germany for many years; although he was still a wanted war criminal, he found work as a driver for a British military unit in the western occupation zone.. Eventually Arajs was caught, and, in 1979, tried and convicted of murder in a West German court.
- Friedrich Jahnke, a Nazi policeman who had been instrumental in setting up the Riga Ghetto and organizing the march out to the pits, was likewise apprehended and tried in West Germany in the 1970s.
- Herberts Cukurs escaped to South America, where he was later murdered. It is said that he was assassinated by Mossad agents, who attracted him from Brazil to Uruguay under a fake intention of starting an aviation business,after it was found out that he would not stand trial for his alleged participation in the Holocaust.
- Eduard Strauch, SS Lieutenant Colonel, commanded a subunit of the Rumbula killers called "Einsatzkommando 2.". Despite an effort to sham mental illness, he was convicted by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen trial for having a key role in the Rumbula and a number of other mass murders in Eastern Europe. On April 9, 1948, Presiding judge Michael Musmanno pronounced the tribunal's sentence on Strauch: "Defendant EDUARD STRAUCH, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted, the Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging." Unlike his co-defendants Ohlendorf and Blobel, Strauch did not hang. Instead, he was handed over to authorities in Belgium, where he had committed other crimes, for trial He died in Belgian custody on September 11, 1955.
- Jeckeln came into Soviet custody after the war. He was, interrogated, tried, convicted and hanged in the former Riga ghetto on February 3, 1946
Historiography and memorials
Soviet period
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union again occupied Latvia, this time from 1944 to 1990. It did not suit Soviet purposes to memorialize the Rumbula site or to acknowledge that the victims were Jewish. Until 1960 nothing was done to preserve or memorialize the killing grounds. In 1961 young Jews from Riga searched for the site and found charred bones and other evidence of the murders. In 1962 the Soviets staged an officially-sanctioned memorial service at Bikernecki (another murder site) which made no mention of the Jews but spoke only of "Nazi victims". In 1963 groups of young Jews from Riga came out to Rumbula weekly and cleaned up and restored the site using shovels, wheelbarrows and other hand tools. The site has been marked by a series of makeshift memorials over the years. Throughout the Soviet domination of Latvia the Soviets refused to allow any memorial which would specifically identify the victims as Jews.
The Soviet Union suppressed research into and memorials of the Holocaust in Latvia until 1991, when Soviet rule over Latvia ended. In one case a memorial at Rumbula of which the authorities did not approve was simply hauled away in the middle of the night, with no explanation given. Occasional references were made to the Holocaust in literature during the Soviet era. A folkloric figure called Židu šavejs (Jew shooter) turned up in stories on occasion. The poet Ojars Vacietis often referred to the Holocaust in his work, including in particular his well-regarded poem "Rumbula", written in the early 1960s.
One notable survivor of the Latvian Holocaust was Michael Genchik, who escaped from Latvia and joined the Red Army, where he served for 30 years. His family was killed at Rumbula. Many years later he recalled:
Independent Latvia
In Latvia, Holocaust scholarship could only be resumed once Soviet rule had ended. Much of the post-1991 work was devoted to identification of those who had been murdered. This was complicated by the passage of time and the loss of some records and the concealment of others by the NKVD and its successor agencies of the Soviet secret police.
On November 29, 2002, sixty-one years after the murders, the highest officials of the Republic of Latvia, together with representatives of the Latvian Jewish community, foreign ambassdors, and others attended a memorial dedication at the Rumbula site. The president and the prime minister of the Republic walked the to the killing ground from where the Riga ghetto had been. Once they arrived, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga addressed the gathering:
Historiographical
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- Bloxham, Donald, Genocide on Trial; war crimes trials and the formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, New York NY 2001 ISBN 0198208723
- Browning, Christopher, and Matthäus, Jürgen, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2004 ISBN 9780803259799
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- Edelheit, Abraham J. and Edelheit, Hershel, History of the Holocaust : A Handbook and Dictionary, Westview Press, Boulder, CO 1994 ISBN 0813314119
- Eksteins, Modris, Walking Since Daybreak: A story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of our Century, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1999 ISBN 0395937477
- Ezergailis, Andrew, 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
- Ezergailis, Andrew, "Latvia", in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, Wyman, David S., and Rosenzveig, Charles H., Eds., at pages 354-388, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1996 ISBN 0801849691
- Fleming, Gerald, Hitler and the Final Solution, Berkeley : University of California Press, Berkeley,1994 ISBN 0520060229
- Friedländer, Saul, The years of extermination : Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, New York, NY 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-0190439
- Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (3d Ed.) Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 2003. ISBN 0300095570
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- Michelson, Frida, I Survived Rumbuli, Holocaust Library, New York, NY 1979 ISBN 0896040291
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- Press, Bernard, The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, Northwestern University Press, 2000 ISBN 0810117290
- Reitlinger, Gerald, The SS -- Alibi of a Nation, at 186, 282, Viking Press, New York, 1957 (Da Capo reprint 1989) ISBN 0-306-80351
- Rubenstein, Richard L., and Roth, John K., Approaches to Auschwitz, page 179, Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. ISBN 0664223532
- Schneider, Gertrude, ed., The Unfinished Road: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Look Back, Praeger Publishers (1991) ISBN 978-0275940935
- Smith, Lyn, Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust, Carroll & Graf, New York 2005 ISBN 0-7867-1640-1
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War crimes trials and evidence
- Brätigam, Otto, Memorandum dated 18 Dec. 1941, "Jewish Question re correspondence of 15 Nov. 1941" translated and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Exhibit 3666-PS, Volume VII, pages 978-995, USGPO, Washington DC 1946 ("Red Series")
- Stahlecker, Franz W., "Comprehensive Report of Einsatzgruppe A Operations up to 15 October 1941", Exhibit L-180, translated in part 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")
- also available at (well indexed HTML version)
Further reading
- Katz, Josef, One Who Came Back, University of Wisconsin Press, (2nd Ed. 2006) ISBN 978-1928755074
- Iwens, Sidney, How Dark the Heavens -- 1400 Days in the Grip of Nazi Terror, Shengold Publishing (2d ed. 1990) ISBN 978-0884001478
- Michelson, Max, City of Life, City of Death: Memories of Riga, University Press of Colorado (2001) ISBN 978-0870816420
- Schneider, Gertrude, Journey into Terror, Praeger Publishers (2nd ed. 2001) ISBN 978-0275970505
See also
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
External links
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- (interviews with Rumbula survivors)
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