Obj. ID: 51809
  Memorials  Holocaust memorial in Rumbula near Riga, Latvia, 1964

Rumbula is one of the largest sites of mass murders of Jews in Europe. During two actions – on 30 November and 8 December of 1941 more than 25,000 thousand Jews from the Riga Ghetto were shot in the Rumbula Forest, among them approximately 1,000 Jews deported from Germany. In 1944, several hundred men from the Kaiserwald concentration camp were murdered in Rumbula.

In the spring of 1962, an initiative group of Jews identified the mass graves in the Rumbula forest. In October 1962,  a wooden plaque was affixed to a pine tree with the inscription in Yiddish. On November 9, 1962, the activists held the first memorial ceremony at the site. The Star of David made of wooden sticks was placed on one of the graves. Simultaneously, in November 1962, they made an attempt to receive official permission from the municipal executive committee to commemorate the memory of the murdered in Rumbula. The authorities rejected the application. Activists were well aware that to get a favorable decision they had to have a Jewish ambassador close to party officials. Therefore Riga activists involved retired Colonel Boris Slutsky to promote their case and indeed received permission to put the site in order on their own. After the legal approval was received many Jews who were afraid to participate in the grass-roots initiative, joined the commemoration project. [Tseitlin, pp. 335-337; Zeltser, pp. 160-161]

The site became a place of Holocaust commemoration not always specifically connected to the events that took place in Rumbula itself. On April 2, 1963, the ceremony was held in Rumbula in memory of the 20th anniversary of the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The artist Zalman Baron made a black wooden stele that was installed at the killing site. The back side of the stele had a depiction of red drops of blood in its upper part. In its central part of the stele, a photo showing a central fragment from the drawing "Last Way" was pinned. "Last Way" depicted Jews walking to Babii Yar and was painted by Riga-based Jewish painter Joseph Kuzkovsky in the late 1940s. Currently, the original of "Last Way" is on the permanent display in Knesset. The photograph of the painting that was pinned to the stele was made by Josef Schneider. The ceremony gathered around dozens of people, among them, Frida Mikhelson, a survivor of Rumbula, who publicly told her story. 

Architects Nehemia Paul and Isaak Rakhlin compiled a draft of the memorial site. In May 1963, the Latvian Ministry of Culture approved the project of the memorial cemetery in Rumbula. After that dozens of Riga Jews came every Sunday to put a site in order. 

The killing site was close to the railroad tracks. The activists marked one of the graves near the railroad with a large Magen David made of barbed wire. It was multiple times dismantled by the authorities. In 1964, on the same spot, a large plywood board with a depiction of a Jew rising from the grave with a fist clenched was installed. The figure was close to the tracks so that train passengers could see it. According to most sources, the Jew with the fist was painted by Joseph Kuzkovsky, according to another source the Jew was painted by the Riga Jewish activist Mark Blum (Mordechai Lapid). [Tseitlin, pp. 349-350, ills; Alon] This board disturbed the authorities. To pacify them and explain who the Jew with the fist was threatening, the activists added the inscription "Сurse upon Fascism," but the authorities broke the board multiple times. 

The memorial was unveiled on October 25, 1964. The unveiling ceremony included an official part approved by the authorities and an inofficial Jewish part that included a recital of Kaddish, the memorial prayer El Male Rachamim, Jewish songs and lyrics. [Tseitlin, pp. 355-359].

On 29 November 2002, a memorial complex, designed by architect Sergey Rizh, was unveiled in Rumbula. The construction was financed by the Latvian, Israeli, USA, and German institutions as well as by private persons.