Obj. ID: 44159
Jewish Funerary Art Monument at the Grave of the Holocaust Victims in the Jewish cemetery in Jēkabpils, Latvia, 1959
To the main object: Jewish cemetery in Jēkabpils, Latvia
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
418 Jēkabpils Jews and the Jews from Viesīte, and Nereta murdered in Kūkas
Description:
The mass grave where Jews murdered in Kūkas Swamp were reburied in 1958 is marked by a low kerb. A high granite stele with a triangular top is situated in the center of the grave. It bears inscriptions in Yiddish and Russian and a depiction of a Star of David, which - as it seems - was removed at some stage between 1959 and 1990.
Inscriptions:
Yiddish:
צום אייביקען אנדענק
דיא 3 אידישע קהלות
יעקאבפילס: וויעסיטע
נערעטע וואס זיינען
אומגעקומען אויף
קידוש השם קרבנות
פון דיא פאסישטישע
מערדער ימח שמם
אין יאר 1941 ת'נ'צ'ב'ה'
Translation: For eternal memory of three Jewish communities of Jēkabpils, Viesīte, and Nereta, that were annihilated for the sanctification of the name, victims of fascist murderers, may their names be obliterated, in 1941. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life.
Russian:
Вечная память
погибшему еврейскому
населению гор. Екабпилс
Виесиете и Нерета,
расстрелянному
немецкими оккупантами
в 1941 году.
Translation: Eternal memory of the perished Jewish population of cities Jēkabpils, Viesīte, and Nereta, shot by the German occupiers in 1941.
Commissioned by
Surviving Jews of Jēkabpils, Viesīte, and Nereta
5 image(s)
sub-set tree:
At the beginning of July 1941, the Jews of Jēkabpils were arrested and confined in two synagogues. At the end of July, “self–defenders” of Jēkabpils and Krustpils transferred the Jews to Kūkas (approximately 15 km from Jēkabpils), where they spent approximately a fortnight in the barracks of the peat factory’s workers. On August 10, 1941, the Latvian SD unit (“Arājs’ Commando”), which had arrived from Rīga, shot 418 Jews in the Kūkas Swamp.
In 1958 the remains of people murdered in the Kūkas Swamp, together with the remains of Jews shot in Viesīte and Nereta, were reinterred in the Jēkabpils Jewish Cemetery, where a monument was erected in 1959 (Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia; Lenskis, p. 45).
"Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia," a website by the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia, http://memorialplaces.lu.lv/memorial-places/zemgale/jekabpils-the-old-jewish-cemetery/.
Lenskis, Ilja, Holokausta piemina Latvijā laika gaitā 1945–2015 = Holocaust Commemoration in Latvia in the Course of Time, 1945–2015 (Riga: Muzejs “Ebreju Latvija,” 2017), p. 45.
Meler, Meyer, Ebreju Kapsētas Latvijā - Jewish Cemeteries in Latvia - Evreiskie kladbishcha v Latvii (Riga: Shamir, 2006)., p. 44.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 135-137.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 167-168.