Obj. ID: 51665
Memorials Holocaust Memorial at the Cirma Lake near Ludza, Latvia, 1968
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
About 600 inmates of the Ludza Ghetto murdered on this site.
Description:
The monument is situated on a mound, to which leads a pathway.
A horizontally aligned low stele of gray granite is placed on a concrete pedestal. It bears a Star of David and inscriptions in Yiddish, Latvian, and Russian. Under the inscriptions, the date August 1941 is inscribed and a line is drawn.
Inscription
Yiddish
אייביקער אנדיינקונג די יידישע קרבנס
Translation: Eternal memory to Jewish victims
Latvian
Mūžiga piemiņa fašisma upuriem
Translation: Eternal memory to the victims of fascism
Russian
Вечная память жертвам фашизма
Translation: Eternal memory to the victims of fascism
1941 VIII
Commissioned by
To be determined
sub-set tree:
The Nazi German troops entered Ludza on 3 July 1941. On the following day, arrests of Jewish refugees and “Soviet activists” began. 25 people from among the arrestees were shot on the outskirts of the town, in the vicinity of a brick factory, on July 15, 1941. A ghetto was established in Ludza in mid-July 1941. 35 old Jews, including rabbi Benzion Don Ihie, were shot at the end of July 1941 at the intersection of Rēzekne St. with Parka St, Liepājas St. and Rupniecibas St. After the war, they were reinterred in the Jewish cemetery. 10 more Jews were shot at “Lauderi” farm at the end of July 1941. They were also reinterred in the Jewish cemetery.
A mass murder of Jews from the Ludza ghetto took place in mid–August 1941, when about 600 people were taken to the Cirma Lake (about 7 km from Ludza) and shot. 40 more Jews were shot there on August 27, 1941. In October 1941 part of the remaining ghetto inmates were sent to Daugavpils, some were shot near Dzerkaļi village, and others were shot near Kotāni village on November 13, 1941. The last inmates of the ghetto were murdered in Garbari Forest on April 3, 1942.
The monument was probably erected in the 1990s.
In the 1970s, commemorative events in Ludza were reported in the Soviet Latvian press (Zeltser, 199).
"Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia," a website by the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia, http://memorialplaces.lu.lv/memorial-places/latgale/cibla-municipality-the-cirma-lake/.
Lenskis, Ilja, Holokausta piemina Latvijā laika gaitā 1945–2015 = Holocaust Commemoration in Latvia in the Course of Time, 1945–2015 (Riga: Muzejs “Ebreju Latvija,” 2017), p. 59.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), p. 271.
Rochko, Josif, Jewish Latgale: Guidebook (Daugavpils, by the author, 2018), p. 39.
Zeltser, Arkadi, Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union, trans. A.S. Brown (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2018), p. 199.