Obj. ID: 44143
Jewish Funerary Art Monument at the Mass Grave in the Jewish Cemetery in Varakļāni, Latvia, 1990s(?)
To the main object: Jewish cemetery in Varakļāni, Latvia
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jews of Varakļāni murdered by the Nazis.
Description:
The monument is a gray granite stele on a concrete base. The stele bears a Star of David and Hebrew and Russian inscriptions. A metal fence with six-pointed stars and the Stars of David surrounds the stele.
Inscription
Hebrew
פ"נ
לזכרון עולם
הקדושים מווארקלאן
שנהרגו מידי הרוצחים הפשיסטים
ביום י"א מנחם אב שנת תש"א 4.8.1941
ת'נ'צ'ב'ה'
Translation: Here are buried. For eternal memory of / the martyrs from Vorklan / who were killed by fascist murderers on 11 of Manhem Av [5]701, August 4, 1941. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life.
Russian
Вечная память
жертвам немецко-фашистского
террора
ворклянским евреям зверски
убитым 4.VIII.1941
Translation: Eternal memory to the victims of German fascist terror, the Jews of Vorklian, brutally killed on August 4, 1941.
Commissioned by
Jews originating in Varakļāni
sub-set tree:
The troops of Nazi Germany entered Varakļāni at the beginning of July 1941. A provisional ghetto was set up next to the Jewish cemetery, and all Jews had to move to it. On August 4, 1941, a German SD unit (“Arājs Commando”), with the assistance of local self–defenders, shot practically all Jews of Varakļāni, approximately 540 persons, in the territory of the Jewish cemetery near its fence.
After WWII, the victims were reinterred in a mass grave in the middle of the cemetery. A monument at the killing site was probably erected in the 1950s (see here). The monument at the mass grave, judging from its style, was probably built in the 1990s.
Commemoration in the cemetery is held on the first Sunday of August (Rochko, p. 57).
"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/varaklani-municipality-varaklani-the-jewish-cemetery/.
Meler, Meyer, Ebreju Kapsētas Latvijā - Jewish Cemeteries in Latvia - Evreiskie kladbishcha v Latvii (Riga: Shamir, 2006)., p. 117.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 412-414.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 85-87.
Rochko, Josif, Jewish Latgale: Guidebook (Daugavpils, by the author, 2018), pp. 56-57.