Obj. ID: 54045
Memorials Monument at the Killing Site at Smilšukalns near Rugāji, Latvia, 1960s (?)
Memorial Name
No official name
Who/What is Commemorated?
About 250 Jews of Rugāji, its area, and other villages murdered on this site.
Description:
The monument stands on a mass grave, situated in the middle of a forest. The grave is marked by a low wooden fence with concrete posts and a stone curb.
A reddish granite stele is placed on a stone base, which stands on a high concrete (or brick) pedestal with one preceding it. The stele bears identical inscriptions in Russian and Latvian which do not mention that the victims were Jews.
Inscription:
Russian:
Вечная память
жертвам фашистского террора
1941–1945
Latvian:
Mūžīga piemiņa
fašisma terora upuriem
1941–1945
Translation: Eternal memory to victims of fascist terror, 1941–1945.
Commissioned by
The authorities of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.
sub-set tree: 
Jewish men of Rugāji and the area were taken away to Gulbene on August 8, 1941. On the same day, Jewish women and children were arrested. Jews from Bērzpils. They were murdered by the Latvian Arajs Kommando on August 9, 1941.
The Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders opened the grave and found there about 250 bodies.
The monument was built in the Soviet period.
"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/rugaji-municipality-smilsukalns/.
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. 365-366.