Obj. ID: 44126
Modern Jewish Art Memorial near Mežciems train station in Daugavpils, Latvia, 1974
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
2,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Daugavpils murdered at this site.
Description:
The monument is situated on a hill in the middle of a forest.
It is a large granite rock on a low base with a cut front side. A mother with a daughter is depicted on its left side, while on the right side, there is a Russian inscription.
At the road, there is a concrete signpost, probably from the 1960s, directing to the site.
Inscription
Russian
На этом месте
8.XI – 9.XI 1941 года
немецкие фашисты
расстреляли 2000
мирных жителей
Даугавпилса –
детей и взрослых
Translation: On this site, on November 8 and 9, 1914, German fascists shot down 2,000 peaceful inhabitants of Daugavpils – children and adults.
On the signpost directing to the memorial:
Latvian:
Vieta. kur 1941. gada novembrī
vācu fašistiskie iebrucēji nogalināja
2000 sievietes un bērnus
Translation: Place where in November 1941, German fascist invaders killed 2000 women and children.
Russian:
Место расстрела немецко-фашистскими
захватчиками 2000 женщин и детей
ноябрь 1941 года
Translation: Site of the shooting by German fascist occupiers of 2,000 women and children, November 1941.
Commissioned by
Probably, hAuthorities of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic
9 image(s)
sub-set tree:
The German troops entered Daugavpils on June 26, 1941. On July 15, 1941, a ghetto was established in the bridge fortification on the left bank of the Daugava River. In total, approximately 15,000 to 20,000 Jews were placed in the ghetto, of which less than 100 persons survived.
On November 8–9, 1941, as the result of a selection in the ghetto, 1,134 Jews, children among them, were sent to Mežciems and shot.
An obelisk was set up on this site in 1967. In 1974, it was replaced by a commemorative stone.
"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-mezciems-monument-to-the-victims-of-action-of-8-9-november-1941/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), p. 90.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), p. 148.
Rochko, Josif, Jewish Latgale: Guidebook (Daugavpils, by the author, 2018), p. 26.
Rochko, Josif, Khronologiia Daugavpilsskoi evreiskoi obshchiny, 1940–2020 (Daugavpils: By the author, 2021), pp. 28, 32.