Riga Ghetto

Riga Ghetto
Riga ghetto
Also known asGhetto Riga, Maskavas Forštate, Moscow Forshtat
LocationRiga, Latvia and vicinity, including Rumbula and Biķernieki forests
DateJuly 1941 to October 1943
Incident typeImprisonment, mass shootings, forced labour, starvation, exile, mass death from epidemics of neglected infectious diseases, forced abortions and sterilization
PerpetratorsHans-Adolf Prützmann, Franz Walter Stahlecker, Hinrich Lohse, Friedrich Jeckeln, Kurt Krause, Eduard Roschmann, Viktors Arājs, Herberts Cukurs
OrganizationsNazi SS, Arajs Kommando, Latvian Auxiliary Police
CampKaiserwald
VictimsAbout 30,000 Latvian Jews and 20,000 German, Czech, and Austrian Jews
SurvivorsAbout 1,000 people
MemorialsAt ruins of Great Choral Synagogue in Riga and in Rumbula and Biķernieki forests

Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, a neighbourhood of Riga, Latvia, where Nazis forced Jews from Latvia, and later from the German "Reich" (Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia), to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis evicted the ghetto's non-Jewish inhabitants and relocated all Jews from Riga and its vicinity there. Most Latvian Jews (about 35,000) were killed on November 30 or December 8, 1941, in the Rumbula massacre. The Nazis transported a large number of German Jews to the ghetto; most of them were later killed in massacres.

While Riga Ghetto is commonly referred to as a single entity, in fact there were several "ghettos". The first was the large Latvian ghetto. After the Rumbula massacre, the surviving Latvian Jews were concentrated in a smaller area within the original ghetto, which became known as the "small ghetto". The small ghetto was divided into men's and women's sections. The area of the ghetto not allocated to the small ghetto was then reallocated to the Jews being deported from Germany, and became known as the German ghetto.[1]

  1. ^ Schneider, Journey into Terror, p. 162, n.23