The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates
The surrender takes effect on May 8 at 11:01 PM Central European time (CET). May 8, 1945. Germany signs a second, very similar, document of surrender in Berlin.
Riga
Einsatzgruppen shoot at least 11,000 Jews from the <anchor>Riga</anchor> ghetto in the Rumbula Forest. The massacre continues on December 8-9. In total, at least 25,000 Jews are killed.
Riga | Holocaust Encyclopedia
Menu



Must Reads▾

Language
English
▾

## Featured Content

## Must Reads

Close menu

## Search the Holocaust Encyclopedia

Enter your search term here

Content typesAll categories▾

- Animated Map

- Article

- Artifact

- Audio

- Discussion Question

- Document

- Film

- ID Card

- Map

- Media Essay

- Oral History

- Photo

- Series

- Song

- Timeline

- Timeline Event

- Clear Selections

Language

English عربي (Arabic)汉语 (Chinese)فارسی (Farsi)français (French)Deutsch (German)Ελληνικά (Greek)हिंदी (Hindi)Magyar (Hungarian)Indonesia (Indonesian)Italiano (Italian)日本語 (Japanese)한국어 (Korean)polski (Polish)Português - Brasil (Portuguese-Brazil)русский (Russian)Español (Spanish)Türkçe (Turkish)Українська (Ukrainian)اُردو (Urdu)▾

Search

Trending keywords:

Close search menu

Your browser is out of date and may not support some of the features of this webpage. Please consider updating your browser or using another.

Entrance gate to the Riga ghetto. This photograph was taken from outside the ghetto fence.

More information about this image

# Riga

Close Image Lightbox

Tags

This content is available in the following languages

Close language menu

View this term in the glossary

From 1918 to 1940, Riga was the capital of independent Latvia. Before World War II, about 40,000 Jews lived in Riga, representing slightly more than 10 percent of the city's population. The community had a well-developed network of Hebrew and Yiddish schools, as well as a lively Jewish cultural life. Jews were integrated into most aspects of life in Riga and even sat on the city council.

In August 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Latvia, and Riga became the capital of the Latvian SSR. German forces occupied Riga in early July 1941 after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Thereafter, Riga became the capital of the Reich Commissariat Ostland, a German civilian administration.

Media Essay

German forces occupied Riga, Latvia in July 1941. Soon after, they established a ghetto in the city. German SS and police units and Latvian auxiliaries murdered thousands of Riga's Jews in shootings. Over three days in November and December 1941 alone, at least 25,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were shot in the Rumbula Forest. By the city's liberation in 1944, almost all of the Jews in Riga had been killed.

Item 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

During World War II, the Germans established ghettos mainly in eastern Europe (between 1939 and 1942) and also in Hungary (in 1944). These ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions. The Germans regarded the establishment of Jewish ghettos as a provisional measure to control, isolate, and segregate Jews. Beginning in 1942, after the decision had been made to kill the Jews, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos, deporting the Jews to extermination camps where they were killed.

German Einsatzgruppen together with Latvian auxiliaries, shot several thousand Jews shortly after German forces entered the city. In mid-August, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in the southeastern area of the city; this ghetto was sealed in October 1941, imprisoning some 30,000 Jews. In late November and early December of 1941, the Germans announced that they intended to settle the majority of ghetto inhabitants "further east." On November 30 and December 8-9, at least 25,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were shot by German SS and police units and their Latvian auxiliaries in the nearby Rumbula Forest.

Oral History

The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.

Credits:

The surviving 4,000-5,000 Jews were incarcerated in an area of the ghetto known as the "small" or "Latvian" ghetto. The Germans also deported some 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Riga. The section of the ghetto where these foreign Jews were imprisoned was called the "big" or "German" ghetto, established as a separate entity from the "Latvian" ghetto. A transport of 1,000 Jews from the German Reich shared the fate of the murdered Riga Jews. Most of the remaining German Jews deported to Riga were also later killed in the Rumbula Forest.

Several hundred Jews in the Riga ghetto organized resistance activities against the Germans. Small groups sought to escape from the ghetto and join partisans in the surrounding forests. In October 1942, German police discovered a small band of members of the Jewish underground outside the ghetto. In reprisal for partisan activities, the Germans seized and killed more than 100 people from the ghetto, and executed almost all Jewish policemen on suspicion of participating in resistance activities.

In the summer of 1943, the Germans deported some ghetto inhabitants to the Kaiserwald concentration camp, which had been established in March in the north of the city. Others were deported to Kaiserwald subcamps nearby. The Germans destroyed the ghetto in December 1943, and deported the last Jews to Kaiserwald. The surviving Jews in Latvia, from the destroyed ghettos of Riga, Liepaja, and Dvinsk, were concentrated in Kaiserwald and its subcamps.

A 14-year-old inmate of the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga.

Photo

14-year-old Sara Bialovadska, imprisoned in the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga. Latvia, 1943.

Credits:

- YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York

In 1944, in an attempt to destroy evidence of mass murder, the Germans forced prisoners to reopen mass graves in Rumbula and burn the bodies. Once the work was completed, the Germans then killed these prisoners. In the summer of 1944, the Germans murdered thousands of Jews then held in Kaiserwald and its subcamps. Those remaining alive were later deported to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany.

On October 13, 1944, the Soviet army liberated Riga. Almost all of Riga's Jews had been murdered by the Nazis.

Author(s):

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

## Glossary Terms

## Critical Thinking Questions

- Learn about the lives of the Jews in the community of Riga between the two world wars.
- What pressures and motivations may have influenced partisans’ decisions and actions? Are these factors unique to this history or universal?
- How can societies, communities, and individuals reinforce and strengthen the willingness to stand up for others?

## Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies, Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, the Claims Conference, EVZ, and BMF for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
View the list of all donors.

## Glossary

Close glossary



100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW

Washington, DC 20024-2126

Main telephone: 202.488.0400

TTY: 202.488.0406

## Get the Latest News

E-mail Address

Postal Code