Obj. ID: 50702 First Holocaust memorial in the former firing range in Jelgava, Latvia, 1992
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish Holocaust victims from Jelgava
Description:
The monument is a granite rock on a concrete base. On its front side, there are engraved a Star of David, a long inscription in Hebrew and a short dedication in Latvian.
Inscription
Hebrew:
הכאב עד העולם!
קרבנות מהרוצחים הנציים
בשנת 1941-1944
Translation: Eternal pain! Victims of the Nazi murdered in the year (sic!) 1941–1944.
Latvian:
Ebrejiem genocida upuriem
Translation: To Jews, victims of the genocide.
Commissioned by
[to be determined]
5 image(s)
Stone: height 125 cm, width 180 cm, thickness 36 cm
The German army entered Jelgava on 29 June 1941. On the evening of July 3, 1941, the Great Synagogue of Jelgava was put on fire with several Jews inside. On July 5, the Jews were expelled from their houses and resettled in the suburbs.
The annihilation of the Jews took place in the second half of July 1941, on the ground of the former firing range of the 3rd Jelgava Infantry Regiment of the former Latvian army. The killing was led by Sturmführer A. Beck of the German commando 2, sent from Riga, together with the Latvian auxiliary police. After the war, four mass graves were discovered in the firing range: four of them 60 x 3 m and the fifth 85 x 4 m.
The memorial was erected in 1992 (Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia).
"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/jelgava-the-jelgava-forest/.
Meler, Meyer, Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember (Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013), pp. 143-145.
Meler, Meyer, Mesta nashei pamiati: Evreiskie obshchiny Latvii, unichtozhennye v Kholokoste (Riga: by the author, 2010), pp. 174-176.