Obj. ID: 44096
Jewish Funerary Art Old Monument at the Murder Place near Zilupe, Latvia, 1961
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jews of Zilupe murdered on this site.
Description:
The monument stands in a forest, about 100 meters from the road, on the mass grave of Zilupe Jews, which is marked by a concrete frame. A wooden staircase leads from the road to the mass grave. The stele of red granite bears a five-pointed star and Latvian and Russian inscriptions mentioning “peaceful inhabitants.” It is identical to the memorial stele in the Jewish cemetery in Ludza (see here). The back side of the stele is painted white.
In 2009, an additional monument was erected on this site, see:
Inscription
Latvian:
Šeit 1941 g.
vacu fašisti masveidīgi
iznīcināja Zilupes
mierīgos iedzīvotājus
Translation: Here, in 1941, German Fascists massively destroyed the peaceful inhabitants of Zilupe
Russian:
Здесь в 1941 г.
происходило массовое
уничтожение мирных жителей
гор. Зилупе
немецкими фашистами
Translation: Here, in 1941, took place the mass destruction of the peaceful inhabitants of the city of Ludza by the German Fascists.
Commissioned by
The authorities of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (to be confirmed)
sub-set tree:
The German troops arrived in Zilupe on July 5, 1941. The first murder of Jewish men took place at the end of July 1941, near the village of Rakšina. In late August or early September 1941, all remaining Jews of Zilupe were collected in the market square, on the pretext of their transfer to Ludza. Groups of 10-15 people were taken to the road leading to Ludza and shot dead near the village of Zabolocki. Later, the Jews murdered near Rakšina were also reinterred here.
A monument on the killing site was erected in 1961 (Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia).
In 2009, an additional monument was built by Ilya Aron, a former resident of Zilupe, in memory of his sister Etel (see here).
"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/zilupe-municipality-zilupe-zabolocki/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 442-444.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 179-180.