Obj. ID: 54040
Memorials Holocaust Monument at Augustovka in Krāslava, Latvia, 1950s(?)
Memorial Name
No official name
Who/What is Commemorated?
Krāslava Jews
Description:
The monument stands on the site of a mass grave in the Augustovka ravine, in the middle of a forest. A paved path leads to the site, where there are two additional paved paths with low stone walls of different heights.
The monument is a concrete stele of triangular footprint standing on a concrete triangular base. Its widest facet features the Star of David, a Yiddish inscription that mentions Jews, and Latvian and Russian inscriptions that do not mention Jews.
Inscription:
Yiddish:
אייביקער אנדיינקונג
די געשאסענע יידן
Translation: Eternal memory to shot Jews.
Latvian:
Mūžīga piemiņa
fašisma upuriem
Russian:
Вечная память
жертвам фашизма
Translation: Eternal memory to victims of fascism.
1941
Commissioned by
Jewish survivors from Krāslava.
sub-set tree: 
The killing of Krāslava Jews began on June 29, 1941, and continued until September 19, 1941. Several hundred Jews were killed in different sites in the city, and the majority of Jews were transferred to the ghetto in Daugavpils on July 26, 1941. The remaining Jews, 144 people or 70 families, were shot dead by local "self-defenders" in Augustovka on August 3, 1941.
In 1944, German Nazis opened the mass grave and burnt the corpses.
A monument was apparently erected in the 1950s. Its Yiddish inscription explicitly mentions the executed Jews, while the Latvian and Russian ones speak of "victims of fascism."
"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/kraslava-municipality-kraslava-augustovka/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013)
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 210-211, 213.
Rochko, Josif, Jewish Latgale: Guidebook (Daugavpils, by the author, 2018), p. 45.