Obj. ID: 44144
Jewish Funerary Art Monument at the Killing Site in the Jewish Cemetery in Varakļāni, Latvia, 1950s(?)
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 memorial is a black concrete stele with a white marble plaque. The plaque bears a Star of David with the abbreviation פ"נ, as it is common in Jewish tombstones and similar (but not identical) inscriptions in Yiddish and Russian. These inscriptions are completely identical to the inscriptions on the monument in Preiļi (see here).
Inscriptions
Yiddish
פ"נ
מיר וועלן אייביק געדיינקן
אונזערע עלטערן, ברידער, שוועסטער
און קינדער, וועלכע זיינען אומגעקומען
פון די מערדערישע פאשיסטישע
הענד י"א מנחם-אב שנת ה'ת'ש'א'
ת'נ'צ'ב'ה'
Translation: Here are buried. We will remember forever / our parents, brothers, sisters / and kinder, who perished at the hands of fascist murderers on 11 of Maneham-Av 5701. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life.
Russian
Мы вечно будем скорбить
о наших родителях,
братьях и сестрах,
погибших от рук фашистов в 1941 г.
Translation: We will grieve forever / about our parents, / brothers and sisters / who perished at the hands of fascists in 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. The monument at the mass grave, judging from its style, was probably built in the 1990s (see here).
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.