The Former Jewish Ghetto in Riga

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I write this post with a heavy heart. While visiting Riga, the capital of Latvia, we wanted to trace both good and bad historical events. The former Jewish Ghetto, created by the Nazis shortly after the occupation of Latvia in the summer of 1941, is now houses and streets for Riga citizens. We took three trips to the area to figure out where it used to be. Why couldn’t there be markings on the pavements or a single memorial for the thousands of harassed and murdered Jews? An inscription for a few righteous people who helped the Jews is on a house wall.

  • The Riga Ghetto was here
  • The Riga Ghetto was here
  • Situated at the former Jewish Ghetto, a memorial for those few who helped Jews escape the Nazis

However, there is a Ghetto Museum situated very close to the burnt Great Choral Synagogue and the Jewish Ghetto.

From the homepage of the Ghetto Museum:

The Riga Ghetto Museum opened its doors in 2010. It is located close to the border of the former Jewish Ghetto, in Maskavas Forštate (Moscow suburb), a historical city quarter. Once inhabited by Russian merchants and Jews, the quarter has small wooden houses with aged but still elegant wooden carvings, paved winding streets and a unique aura. Many people come here nowadays to look for the places where their ancestors had once lived. The territory of the Riga Ghetto is unique, having barely changed in the last sixty years.

A replica of a train that transported the Jews to their death in the woods
The Ghetto Museum in Riga
The Ghetto Museum near the former Ghetto. The stones are taken from the Ghetto.
A memorial at the Ghetto Museum for the crimes against the Jewish population. Donated by the citizens of Bremen

In Latvia, the Fourth of July is a sad memorial day, as it was on that day in 1941 that the new Nazi occupiers burned the Great Synagogue and other Riga synagogues. The Synagogue was famous for the cantors and choirs.

From Baltic News: July 4, 2023

Today, Latvia celebrates the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Jewish People. The date was chosen to commemorate the burning of the Great Choral Synagogue and four other synagogues in Riga on July 4, 1941, which became a symbolic beginning of the holocaust carried out by the Nazi occupation authorities.




Two months after the start of the German occupation, all 30.000 of Riga’s Jewish population were required to move into the newly established Ghetto. Not long after that, 25.000 of them were forced to be “relocated”. That meant being executed in the Rumbula forest near the Riga Ghetto. The link is about the atrocities. Sovjet war prisoners had dug the pits, and the Jews had to wait naked in line after having placed their shoes and clothes in neat heaps. The Nazis got help from willing local people in the mass killings, which is the reason why this dark chapter of history is challenging to find in Latvian memory. Now, the Riga Ghetto was empty. 3000 European Jews from Theresienstadt swiftly filled up the space until they met the same fate in the ravines of the Rumbula Forest. The link is about the memorial site.

One of the notorious local killers was Viktors Arjas. He was supposed to make the burning of the Choral Synagogue a spontaneous thing. An unknown number of Jews were burnt alive because of him. His unit murdered about 26.000 people in Latvia and Belarus. Only late in his life, he was arrested and died in solitary confinement in 1988 in Kassel, Germany.

Categories: History, The Great Choral Synagogue in Riga, The Riga Ghetto, WWII

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    • I feel like I want to read the books of the few survivors of that horrible execution scene in the woods, and yes, I hardly dare to mention what happens now as all groups of people are put up against each other. It’s like “Never again is now”, and Jews have to hide their identity all over the place.

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  2. I was unaware of these terrible crimes and atrocities that occurred in the last world war in Latvia.

    It is beyond belief today that globalist-funded mainstream media is helping to fan the flames of a raging insane hatred against Jews, as witnessed in the recent wave of pro-terrorist protests (likely well funded by globalist interests). By denying and covering up history and twisting the truth, it seems the goal of today’s media and their puppet masters is to try to convince the world that terrorists are “good” and that Jews are subhuman and have no right to exist. Together, media and countless corrupt political leaders (including at the unelected UN) are today’s worst possible partners in crime as they promote evil lies and propaganda that is stirring up exactly the same evil anti Semitic murderous madness that occurred in Nazi Germany.

    🙏 Prayers for “never again” and for truth and a just peace in our time, for God’s protection of the Jewish people, and for God’s help for all who are victims of terrorist operations and oppression.

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  3. Oh Maria, When I was in the Australian Army as a teacher there was a young Latvian fellow on the same induction course. One night when he had drunk too many glasses of beer he said how proud he was at the way ‘we Latvians dealt with those Jews’. I have never forgotten that.

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  4. I have come back to have another look – I know that many people are terribly upset that so many residents of Gaza have died and I sympathise with them. But the fact that people in universities around the world and in the streets of cities like Melbourne are protesting against anything Jewish in their own town or city. Few people, except Jews, are protesting against the attack of October 7th. It is not a protest against war – it is anti-semitism. “Never again is now.” This sums it all up.

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