Sima Schlossberg and her family in Jelgava

I just found another resource to research the Jews of Latvia - the Latvian Names Project. It is an attempt to do for all of the Jews of Latvia what Edward Anders and his co-workers were able to do for Liepaja - identify the fates of Jews who lived in Latvia before the Second World War. In 1935 the Latvian census recorded 93,479 Jews living in Latvia.

I looked up the name of my relative from Jelgava, Latvia - Sima Schlossberg. She came up on the list, and so did the names of her family - names that she doesn't refer to in her letters to my grandfather. Her sister's name was Miriam, and she was born on August 5, 1909. Sima herself was born on November 27, 1911. Their parents' names were Itzik Ruben and Esther Raschel. Only the possible fate of Miriam Schlossberg is mentioned - in the Riga Ghetto.

Looking back in correspondence from March and April of 2004 (with Miriam's daughter and with a cousin of Sima's), I discover, however, that I do know the fates of the people in the family. Sima escaped from Riga in 1941 with her parents first to Russia and then to Uzbekistan. Her sister Miriam was already living there because she had fled earlier. Sima's father Itzik died in 1942 from hunger. The two sisters and their mother survived the war. In 1942, Miriam married a man named Mikhail Golod, and her daughter was born in 1943 in Bukhara. They returned to Riga in 1945. Sima worked as a bookkeeper, and in 1955 was married to a man named Nohum Bruk and moved with him to St. Petersburg. She died there in 1988, leaving no children behind. Miriam died in 1980 and her mother Esther Raschel died in 1984 at the age of 100.

I'm going to have to write to the Latvian Names Project and give them information on all of these people.

Secret Justice Department report on U.S. help to former Nazis

The New York Times has just posted to its website a secret, 617-page report prepared by the Justice Department on how the U.S. government helped former Nazis, and then prosecuted many who had come to the U.S. under false pretenses. The Justice Department ordered that the report be made, but then suppressed it for four years. Someone just gave the Times the full report, which is available at: Secret Justice Department Report Details How the U.S. Helped Former Nazis.

There is an appendix to the report that gives information about 143 Nazi persecutors whom the Office of Special Investigations, formed in 1979 to investigate and deport Nazi war criminals, prosecuted and attempted to deport (in many cases succeeding).

I have extracted the reports on those accused of committing atrocities in Latvia and Estonia, and they are copied here.

Bogdanovs, Boleslavs
Born: 1917, Russia
Died: 1984, US

Alleged Persecutory Activity: Member of the "Arajs Kommando," a Latvian death squad responsible for mass execution of thousands of civilians in Nazi-occupied Latvia. The victims of the mass shootings were mostly Jewish, but also included political enemies (those believed to be Communists), gypsies and the mentally ill. The leader of the organization, Viktor Arajs, was convicted in West Germany for leading the unit in murdering more than 13,000 people.

Legal history: Denaturalization proceedings commenced in Nov. 1983. Bogdanovs died before the case was resolved.

Detlavs, Karlis
Born: 1911, Latvia
Died: 1983, US

Alleged Persecutory Activity: As a member of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police, he executed Jews in the Riga ghetto and chose Jews for execution in the Dwinsk ghetto.

Legal History: Detlavs never became a U.S. citizen. INS filed a deportation action in 1976. An immigration judge rejected the government’s case in 1980 and that decision was affirmed on appeal the following year.

Didrichsons, Valdis
Born: 1913, Latvia
Died: 1995, U.S. A
lleged Persecutory Activity: Member of the Arajs Kommando (see Bogdanovs).
Legal History: The government filed a denaturalization suit in May 1988. The case settled in Feb. 1990 with Didrichsons agreeing to relinquish his citizenship. Because he was ill, the U.S. agreed not to institute deportation proceedings.

Hazners, Vilis
Born: 1905, Latvia
Died: 1989, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Selected Latvian Jews in the Dwinsk ghetto for execution.
Legal History: Hazners never became a U.S. citizen. A denaturalization action was filed by INS in Jan. 1977. The government’s claims were rejected in 1980 and OSI handled the appeal. The immigration judge’s decision was affirmed in 1981.

Inde, Edgars
Born: 1909, Latvia
Died: 1980, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Member of the Arajs Kommando (see Bogdanovs)
Legal History: The government filed a denaturalization suit in Aug. 1988. Inde died before the court issued a ruling. [RL: There’s obviously an error in dates here].

Kalejs, Konrads.
Born: 1913, Latvia
Died: 2001, Australia
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Officer in the Arajs Kommando (see Bogdanovs) and a guard supervisor at the Salaspils concentration camp near Riga, Latvia.
Legal History: Kalejs never became a U.S. citizen. A deportation action was filed in Nov. 1984 and he was ordered deported to Australia in Nov. 1988. His appeals were exhausted in Mar. 1994 and he was deported the following month. See pp. 469-478,493.

Kaklins, Talivaldis
Born: 1914, Latvia
Died: 1983, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Member of Latvian District Police and director of the Madona concentration camp in Latvia. As a member of the District Police, he participated in two mass executions of hundreds of Jews and Soviet activists.
Legal History: A denaturalization case was filed in 1981. It was pending when he died.

Kauls, Juris
Born: 1912, Latvia
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Deputy chief and COn1I11anJer of the guards at a Nazi concentration camp near Riga, Latvia
Legal History: A denaturalization case was filed in 1984. Kauls left for Germany in 1988 while the case was still pending. The court entered a default judgment of denaturalization.

Kirsteins,Mikelis
Born: 1916, Russia
Died: 1994, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Member of the Arajs Kommando (see Bogdanovs)
Legal History: A denaturalization case was filed in July 1987. The case settled in Dec. 1991, with Kirsteins relinquishing his citizenship and the U.S. agreeing not to file a deportation action unless the defendant's medical condition improved.

Laipenieks, Edgars
Born: 1913, Latvia
Died: 1998, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Member of the Latvian Political Police which pursued Jews and Communists.
Legal History: Laipenieks never became a U.S. citizen. A deportation case was filed in June 1981. The government lost; the decision was reversed on appeal, and then reversed again. See pp. 117-126.

Linnas, Karl
Born: 1919, Estonia
Died: 1987, U.S.S.R.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Chief of concentration camp in Tartu, Estonia
Legal History: Denaturalization proceedings commenced in Nov. 1979. Linnas' citizenship was revoked in June 1981 and his appeals were exhausted in Oct. 1982. A deportation action was filed in June 1982 and Linnas was ordered deported in May 1983. Appeals were exhausted in Apr. 1987 at which time he was deported to the U.S.S.R. See pp. 273-297.

Maikovskis, Boleslavs*
Born: 1904, Latvia
Died: 1996, Germany
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Latvian chief of police who participated in the arrest of civilians and the burning of their dwellings.
Legal History: Maikovskis never became a U.S. citizen. INS filed a deportation case in Oct. 1976. Maikovskis was ordered deported to Switzerland in Aug. 1984. Switzerland would not allow him entry and OSI asked the court to modify its order to designate the U.S.S.R. In Oct. 1987, while that request was pending, Maikovskis left for West Germany. In 1988, Germany charged him with war crimes. His trial was suspended due to the defendant's ill health. See pp. 430, 433-434.

Sprogis, Elmars
Born: 1914, Latvia
Died: 1991, U.S.
Alleged Persecutory Activity: Assistant Chief of Police in Gulbene, Latvia. He was involved in the arrest, transportation, and confiscation of property from nine Jews, the transportation of 100 to 150 Jews to the site of their execution, and the appropriation of furniture from the houses of arested Jews. Legal History: A denaturalization complaint was filed in June 1982. The government lost the case both in the district court and on appeal. See pp. 101-105.

Trucis, Arnolds
Born: 1909, Latvia
Died: 1981, U.S.
Alleged persecutory activity: Member of the Latvian Auxiliary Police and the Security Service of the SS which guarded and beat Jewish civilians.
Legal History: A denaturalization action was filed in June 1980. Trucis died before the matter was resolved.

Yad Vashem - Untold Stories of the Murder Sites in the Occupied USSR

I just came across a New York Times article published last year about new research being done at Yad Vashem on lesser-known killing fields in the Holocaust: "New Looks at the Fields of Death for Jews" (April 19, 2009). One report about Liepaja is from a German sailor who filmed the killings at Skede.

One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who said he had been a bystander with a movie camera.

According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.

“At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.

Yad Vashem has created a website devoted to this topic - the Untold Stories. There are several pages devoted to what happened in Liepaja.

Websites on journeys to Liepaja

A number of other people have made a similar journey to Liepaja to see where their ancestors lived. I just found a website created by Arturo and Marc Porzecanski about their visit to Liepaja (among other places in eastern Europe) in 2002: Our trip. The direct link to the page on Liepaja is: Our Trip to Liepaja.

Brian Friedman created the Welcome to Avaslan website about his family in eastern Europe, including Liepaja. Like me and the Porzecanskis, he found the house where his relatives in Liepaja had lived. He also has a page on the Killing Fields of Skede and photographs of the memorials there.

A Day in Riga - the Jews of Riga in the Holocaust

I have just arrived (yesterday) in Tartu, Estonia, for a conference that begins on Sunday. I was in Israel from June 15 to July 21, and then on the morning of the 21st flew to Riga, Latvia, for what an Israeli friend called a מסע לשרשים – a “roots trip.” Some of my family ended up in Latvia – my grandfather’s uncle, Mordechai Falkon, and his wife and family lived in Liepaja (the German name for the city is Libau), a city on the Baltic Sea about a two hour drive from Riga. I don’t know when he moved there or got married – his father was named Bentsel Falkon, from Ukmerge, Lithuania. Mordechai had a brother and sister. His brother, Jacob Morris Falkon, moved to the United States in the 1890s, married, and was the father of my grandfather, Mark Falcon (Lesses). His sister, Gittel, ended up in the Soviet Union, first in Baku, then in Moscow.

I hired a guide to take me around Riga (on Wednesday) and to Liepaja (on Thursday), and also a car with driver and then a second guide in Liepaja (who did not speak English, so the first guide translated what she said). I found the guide through a man named Dr. Edward Anders, who grew up in Liepaja and was saved because he posed as a half-Jew. He has been instrumental in gathering records of what happened to the Jews of Liepaja during the Holocaust. (See here for his site on the Jews of Liepaja). Dr. Anders recommended a guide named Ieva Gundare, who is a historian who works for the Occupation Museum in Riga (it documents both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Latvia).

I got into Riga with enough time to check in to the hotel and take a shower before Ieva arrived with the car and driver and we started our tour around Riga.

We first went to the Jewish Museum, which traces Jewish history in Latvia since about the 16th century, when Jews first settled in Latvia, up until the Nazi period, when most of the Jews of Latvia were murdered. There was some information about Liepaja, including about Jewish schools, sports groups, and the like. There was a Jewish community in Liepaja of between 6,000 and 7,000 before the war, and a much bigger one in Riga, the capital of Latvia. I met the director of the museum, Margers Vestermanis, whom my guide knew.

After going quickly through the museum, Ieva brought me to several more Jewish sites in Riga. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) were among the first places they conquered. When they entered Riga, they destroyed all but one of the synagogues. We went to the ruins of the Choral synagogue, which has never been rebuilt. It was destroyed by the Nazis on July 4, 1941, very shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941). The site has been turned into a memorial.

Ruins of Choral Synagogue in Riga.

Our next stop was the memorial for the Jews who were killed at the Rumbula Forest, which in 1941 was outside Riga but is now inside the city. The Jews in the Riga Ghetto were forced to walk about 10 kilometers along the railroad lines until they reached the spot. About 25,000 were killed at the end of November/beginning of December 1941. A memorial has been built in the last few years.

One thing that I noticed and that the guide talked about was that during the years of Soviet occupation, when Latvia was part of the Soviet Union (1944-1991) the Soviets built monuments at various places where there had been Nazi massacres, but never specified that Jews were the victims (or were among the victims). The plaques simply talked about "victims of fascism," without being any more specific. The memorials that have been built since 1991 specifically discuss the Jewish victims.

In Latvian and English the plaque says:

Here in the forest of Rumbula, on November 30 and December 8 of 1941 the Nazis and their local collaborators shot dead more than 25,000 Jews, the prisoners of the Riga Ghetto, children, women, old people, as well as around 1,000 Jews deported from Germany. In the summer of 1944 hundreds of Jewish men from the concentration camp Riga-Kaiserwald were killed here.

This plaque and the rest of the memorial were put into place in 2002.

What follows is the original plaque, set up during the Soviet era. It says “to the victims of fascism,” in Russian, Latvian, and Yiddish. Notice the hammer and sickle symbol. The inset plaque was inserted later, and reads, in Latvian and English: “This monument was erected in 1964 under the Soviet totalitarian regime by activists of the Riga’s Jewish community. It was the only Jewish memorial to victims of Nazi terror in the territory of the USSR.” Edward Anders refers to this as “Soviet Holocaust Denial.” Ieva told me that when she was growing up in Sovietized Latvia, she did not learn about the Holocaust in school – only in 1988 did she first learn about it (this was during the era of Glasnost in the Soviet Union when Gorbachev was the Soviet leader).

Andrew Ezergailis, a retired Ithaca College professor of history, who is from Latvia, wrote a history of the Holocaust in Latvia. In his chapter on Rumbula he writes:

Under the second Soviet domination of Latvia, Jewish culture was suppressed. Rumbula was not an event that the Soviets wanted to commemorate. Up to 1960, the Rumbula grounds were completely neglected and overgrown. Only in 1961 did young Jews of Rîga begin a search for the location of Rumbula. They found burned bones and other remains from the massacre. The grounds were in an especially disorderly shape because in 1944 the Nazis had partly disinterred the victims to burn them.

Rumbula galvanized the young Jews of Rîga, and in spite of official warnings it became their weekly gathering place. To divert attention from Rumbula, communist officials in 1962 organized a memorial meeting of Nazi victims at Bi˚ernieki. At the official meeting, the speeches were only about “Nazi victims;” Jews were not mentioned. Instead of quieting the movement, this slap at the memory of Jewish victims spurred the activities at Rumbula. In 1963 as many as 500 young Jews worked with shovels, pails, and wheelbarrows weekly to cleaned up Rumbula grounds. Today the burial grounds have the look of a small shady park within a forest of gnarly pine trees, with neat paths and raised mounds indicating the original pits. At the entrance to the grounds stands a modest slab with a hammer and sickle in the upper right-hand corner, inscribed in Latvian, Russian, and Yiddish: “To the Victims of Fascism, 1941-1944.” Among Rîga Jews, this monument is known as the “Aryan compromise.”

The Rumbula memorial consists of a small field of stones set up as a symbolic Jewish cemetery – some of the stones have the names of people and families known to have been killed at Rumbula, while others are blank. Around this memorial are areas of the mass graves, each with a big stone set up on it. The Nazis originally buried the bodies in several big mass graves, but in 1943 they had Jewish men dig up the bodies, burn them, and then bury the bones and ashes.

Menorah in Rumbula memorial, surrounded by stones.

Names of those known to be killed at Rumbula, engraved on one of the stones.

More names.

One of the mass graves at Rumbula, surmounted by a stone.

After we visited the memorial at Rumbula, Ieva took me to a small memorial statue set up at the site of the Riga Ghetto, and then to the one surviving synagogue, in the Riga Old Town. It survived because it was built too close to other buildings that would also have burned.

The next day, we drove out to Liepaja and saw several sites there, including the memorial at the Skede dunes, another site in the city where Jews were killed (there is a Soviet-era memorial there), a memorial set up at the Jewish cemetery to the approximately 6,400 Liepaja Jews who were killed, and the likely site of the house on Barinu iela that Mordechai Falkon and his wife lived in before the Nazi invasion.

My next post will be about the day in Liepaja.

Arrival in Riga

I just arrived in Riga, Latvia, for the second part of my summer activities. I haven't been blogging very faithfully about being in Israel - I intend to write up my impressions and post them here (and to Facebook and other friends), so you'll find out more pretty soon.