Obj. ID: 44115
Jewish Funerary Art Holocaust Monument in the Jewish Sector near the chapel in the Communal Cemetery in Daugavpils, Latvia, 1950s(?)
To the main object: Jewish Sector near the chapel in the Communal Cemetery in Daugavpils, Latvia
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
5 or 15 Jewish families, the victims of the Holocaust.
Description:
The monument is situated in the Communal Cemetery, in the Jewish Sector not far from the cemetery chapel, between other Jewish graves.
It consists of a horizontal black marble lying stele without any inscription and a low black marble “bench” inscribed in Yiddish and Russian. The Yiddish inscription gives the number of victims as "5 families," while the Russian one states "15 families"; Digit 1 was added to digit 5 in a later stage.
Inscription
Russian
Здесь покоятся 15 еврейских семейств
растреленые [расстрелянные] гитлеровскими
разбойниками в 1941–45 г.
Translation: Here are resting 15 Jewish families shot down by Hitlerite bandits in 1941–45.
Yiddish:
דא רוען 5 אידישע געזינטן וואס זיינען
דערהארגעט גיווארן דורך די היטלערישע מערדער
אין די וארן [יארן] 1945 – 1941
Translation: Here are resting 5 Jewish families that were killed by the Hitlerite murderers in 1941–1945.
Commissioned by
PRobably, the Jewish Community of Daugavpils
4 image(s)
sub-set tree:
According to Meyer Meler, the remains and ashes of 2,000 children found in the killing site in Mežciems in the 1950s were reinterred in the Old Jewish Cemetery and after its demolishing were transferred to the Communal Cemetery (Meler 2010, p. 145-146; Meler 2013, pp. 86, 88). However, the text of the epitaph does not support this version.
The site "Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia" states more accurately: "A part of Daugavpils ghetto prisoners, who were shot in the Mežciems Forest, have been reinterred in the Daugavpils Communal Cemetery, their remains were found in the 1950s. During the first post–war years the reinterment site was in the Old Jewish Cemetery, but in the 1970s, when the Cemetery was liquidated, the monument was moved to the Communal Cemetery."
Josif Rachko does not explain who is buried in this grave and only states that the monument was originally installed in the Old Jewish Cemetery and moved here after that cemetery was demolished in the 1970s (Rochko, p. 27). He, however, mentions that in the Old Cemetery, there were "black marble slabs... which were inscribed in Hebrew and in Russian: 'Here lie the remains and ashes of 2000 Jewish children, killed and burned by Hitler's murderers'" (Rochko, p. 19).
"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/daugavpils-the-communal-cemetery/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 86, 88.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 145-146.
Rochko, Josif, Jewish Latgale: Guidebook (Daugavpils, by the author, 2018), p. 27, 19.
Rochko, Josif, Khronologiia Daugavpilsskoi evreiskoi obshchiny, 1940–2020 (Daugavpils: By the author, 2021), p. 31.