Obj. ID: 50276 New Holocaust Memorial at the Fish Processing Plant in Liepāja, Latvia, 1990s
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Liepāja Jews murdered near the Fishing Harbor and lighthouse.
Description:
The memorial marks the area where about 1,200 Liepāja Jews were murdered in July 1941. According to the book of Meyer Meler, the killing took place “in the area of the Fishermen Harbor, to the south of the lighthouse, on the beach” (Meler 2010, 246).
The memorial, placed on the right-hand side of the old memorial plaque (see here), consists of a red brick wall of the Fish Processing Plant, a black marble plaque with identical Latvian and Russian inscriptions and the Star of David, and a kind of metal bas-relief in a sunken panel. The bas-relief consists of a five-pointed star, a vase with flame and the dates 1941 and 1945.
Inscription
Latvian:
Cilvēki,
apstājieties, nolieciet galvu!
Šajā vietā 1941. gada 27. jūlijā
notika pirmā liepājas ebreju
masveida iznīcināšana.
Lāsts fašistiskajiem slepkavām!
Translation: People, stop, put your head down! In this place, on July 27, 1941, the first mass annihilation of the Jews of Liepāja took place. Curse the fascist killers!
Russian:
Люди,
остановитесь, склоните головы!
На этом месте 27 июля 1941 года
состоялось первое массовое
уничтожение евреев Лиепаи.
Проклятие фашистским убийцам!
Translation: People, stop, put your head down! In this place, on July 27, 1941, the first mass annihilation of the Jews of Liepāja took place. Curse the fascist killers!
Commissioned by
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Liepāja fell to the Nazi German hands on June 29, 1941. The first mass-scale killings of Jews took place in July 1941 in the vicinity of the fishing port – at the lighthouse and at the fish cannery. About 1,200 Jews were shot there.
According to the Liepaja Jewish Heritage Foundation, “Researchers of the exact place of execution of the Jews of Liepāja in the lighthouse area, consider that the trench, which may still contain human remains, ran parallel to the seashore along the fortresses that are now located on both sides of Roņu Street. The assumption is based on the fact that during the war there was no Roņu street and the fortifications located on both sides of the street were connected.”
The first memorial plaque at the killing site was probably installed in the 1960s (see here). In the 1990s, it was supplemented by a new memorial.
"Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia," a website by the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia
Liepaja Jewish Heritage Foundation, http://liepajajewishheritage.lv/en/the-lighthouse-2/., http://liepajajewishheritage.lv/en/ (accessed October 28, 2023)
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 206-208, 212, 214.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 246, 252, 254.