Following the liquidation of the Riga, Liepāja and Daugavpils (Dvinsk) ghettos in June 1943, the remainder of the Jews of Latvia, along with most of the survivors of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, were deported to Kaiserwald.
In early 1944, a number of smaller camps around Riga were brought under the jurisdiction of the Kaiserwald camp.
Following the occupation of Hungary by the Germans, Hungarian Jews were sent to Kaiserwald, as were a number of Jews from Łódź, in Poland. By March 1944, there were 11,878 inmates in the camp and its subsidiaries, 6,182 males and 5,696 females, of whom only 95 were gentiles.
Concentration camps in Reichskommissariat Ostland. The concentration camps are marked with a black square.
|Operated by||Nazi Germany|
|Operational||March 1943-15 October 1944|
|Number of inmates||11,878, almost all Jews|
|Liberated by||Red Army|
Unlike Auschwitz or Treblinka, Kaiserwald was not an extermination camp, and the inmates were put to work by large German companies, notably Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, which used a large number of female slaves from Kaiserwald in the production of electrical goods, such as batteries.
On August 5, 1944, as the Red Army advanced westwards and entered Latvia, the Germans began to evacuate the inmates of Kaiserwald to Stutthof, in Poland. All Jews under 18 or over 30 were murdered along with anyone who had ever been convicted of any offense, no matter how minor or anyone who it was thought would be unable to survive the trip from Latvia to Poland. The remaining inmates who did not die during the journey arrived at Stutthof in September 1944.
The Red Army took over the camp on October 15, 1944 and later used the camp to house Axis prisoners of war.
Albert Sauer (17 August 1898, Misdroy – 3 May 1945, Falkensee) was a German commandant of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.Arajs Kommando
The Arajs Kommando (also: Sonderkommando Arajs), led by SS commander and Nazi collaborator Viktors Arājs, was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police (German: Lettische Hilfspolizei) subordinated to the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). It was a notorious killing unit during the Holocaust.Bikernieki Memorial
Bikernieki Memorial (Latvian: Biķernieku memoriāls) is a war memorial to The Holocaust victims of World War II in Bikernieki forest (Latvian: Biķernieku mežs), near Riga, Latvia. Bikernieki forest is the biggest mass murder site during The Holocaust in Latvia with two memorial territories spanning over 80,000 square metres (860,000 sq ft) with 55 marked burial sites with around 20,000 victims still buried in total.
The memorial was initially planned and construction started in 1986, but was delayed after Latvia declared independence in 1991. The construction was revived in 2000 by German War Graves Commission with the help of local Latvian organisations and several German cities. It was financed mostly by German government and organisations, Austrian State Fund, and involved city donations. It was designed by Sergey Rizh and opened on November 30, 2001.Bruno Kittel
Bruno Kittel (born 1922 in Austria) was a Nazi official who oversaw the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943 and became known for his cynical cruelty. He disappeared after the war.Eduard Krebsbach
Eduard Krebsbach (8 August 1894 – 28 May 1947) was a former German physician and SS doctor in the Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen from July 1941 to August 1943. He was executed for crimes against humanity committed at the Mauthausen camp.Eduard Roschmann
Eduard Roschmann (25 November 1908 – 8 August 1977) was an Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmführer and commandant of the Riga ghetto during 1943. He was responsible for numerous murders and other atrocities. As a result of a fictionalised portrayal in the novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth and its subsequent film adaptation, Roschmann came to be known as the "Butcher of Riga".Else Hirsch
Else Hirsch (29 July 1889 – 1942 or 1943) was a Jewish teacher in Bochum, Germany, and a member of the German Resistance against the Third Reich. She organized transports of Jewish children to the Netherlands and England, saving them from Nazi deportation to concentration camps and death. Hirsch perished in the Riga Ghetto, at the age of 53 or 54.Fritz Dietrich (Nazi)
Fritz Dietrich (August 6, 1898 – October 22, 1948) was a German SS officer and member of the Nazi Party. He held a doctoral degree in chemistry and physics. His name is also seen as Emil Diedrich. He was hanged for war crimes.German occupation of Latvia during World War II
The occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany was completed on July 10, 1941 by Germany's armed forces. Latvia became a part of Nazi Germany's Reichskommissariat Ostland—the Province General of Latvia (German: Generalbezirk Lettland). Anyone not racially acceptable or who opposed the German occupation, as well as those who had cooperated with the Soviet Union, were killed or sent to concentration camps in accordance with the Nazi Generalplan Ost.Gustav Sorge
Gustav Hermann Sorge (April 24, 1911, Reisen, Province of Posen – 1978, Rheinbach prison, North Rhine-Westphalia), nicknamed "Der eiserne Gustav" (Iron Gustav) for his brutality, was an SS senior NCO (Hauptscharführer). He was initially a guard at Esterwegen concentration camp in the Emsland region of Germany. Later on, he was assigned to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.History of the Jews in Latvia
The History of the Jews in Latvia dates back to the first Jewish colony established in Piltene in 1571. Jews contributed to Latvia's development until the Northern War (1700–1721), which decimated Latvia's population. The Jewish community reestablished itself in the 18th century, mainly through an influx from Prussia, and came to play a principal role in the economic life of Latvia.Under an independent Latvia, Jews formed political parties and participated as members of parliament. The Jewish community flourished. Jewish parents had the right to send their children to schools using Hebrew as the language of instruction, as part of a significant network of minority schools.World War II ended the prominence of the Jewish Community. Under Stalin, Jews, who formed only 5% of the population, constituted 12% of the deportees. This paled in comparison to the Holocaust, which killed 90% of Latvia's Jewish population.Today's Jewish community traces its roots to survivors of the Holocaust, Jews who fled to the USSR to escape the Nazi invasion and later returned, and mostly to Jews newly immigrated to Latvia from the Soviet Union. The Latvian Jewish community today is small but active.Jānis Lipke
Jānis (Žanis) Lipke (1 February 1900, in Jelgava – 14 May 1987, in Riga) was a Latvian rescuer of Jews in Riga during World War II.
Lipke, a dock worker in the port of Riga, was determined to help save Latvian Jews from capture by the Nazis after witnessing actions against them in the streets. He retrained in order to become a contractor for the Luftwaffe, and then used his position to smuggle Jewish workers out of the Riga ghetto and camps in and around Riga, whom he concealed with the aid of his wife until the arrival of the Red Army in October 1944. The Lipkes and their various helpers saved forty people in this way, one fifth of the approximately 200 Jews who survived the war in Latvia.
When he died in 1987, the Jews of Riga arranged his funeral, and he is honoured as one of the Righteous among the Nations.Kaiserwald
Kaiserwald may refer to:
Kaiserwald concentration camp, a WWII German concentration camp near Mežaparks, Latvia
Kaiserwald Riga, a Baltic German football club
The German name for Mežaparks, a neighbourhood in Riga, Latvia
The German name for Slavkovský les, a mountain range in the Czech RepublicMežaparks
Mežaparks (German: Kaiserwald) is a neighbourhood of Northern District in Riga, the capital of Latvia. It's located on the western shore of Lake Ķīšezers. The name is literally translated as "forest park". The park was built in the early 20th century and was originally called Kaiserwald. It was one of the world's first garden cities. It had large number of Art Nouveau and Eclectic villas for upper class inhabitants of Riga. During the Second World War, the Kaiserwald concentration camp was located in this park, and many Jews, Gypsies, communists, and other opponents of Nazi rule were murdered in these woods.
Today it is still one of the wealthier areas of Riga, the Mežaparks Great Bandstand hosts the Latvian Song and Dance Festival in early July every five years.
Mežaparks is also host to the Riga Zoo and its lakeside locale allows for various water sporting activities. There is also an amusement park in Mežaparks, which makes the neighborhood a popular summer destination for Riga residents.Rollkommando Hamann
Rollkommando Hamann (Lithuanian: skrajojantis būrys) was a small mobile unit that committed mass murders of Lithuanian Jews in the countryside in July–October 1941, with a death toll of at least 60,000 Jews. The unit was also responsible for a large number of murders in Latvia from July through August, 1941. At the end of 1941 the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry was effectively accomplished by the Rollkommando in the countryside, by the Ypatingasis būrys in the Ponary massacre, and by the Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas in the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. In about six months an estimated 80% of all Lithuanian Jews were killed. The remaining few were spared for use as a labor force and concentrated in urban ghettos, mainly the Vilna and Kaunas Ghettos.Rudolf Batz
Rudolf Batz (10 November 1903 – 8 February 1961) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. From 1 July to 4 November 1941 he was the leader of Einsatzkommando 2 and as such was responsible for the mass murder of Jews and others in the Baltic states.Rudolf Joachim Seck
Rudolf Joachim Seck (15 July 1908 – 1974) was an SS-Oberscharführer (staff sergeant) during World War II during the course of which he committed a large numbers of crimes against humanity, for which he was later sentenced to serve life in prison by a West German court.Salaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km (11 mi) southeast of Riga (Latvia). The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp (Polizeigefängnis und Arbeitserziehungslager). It was also known as camp Kurtenhof after the German name for the city of Salaspils. Planning for the development of the camp and its prisoner structure changed several times. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler briefly considered converting the camp into an official concentration camp (Konzentrationslager), which would have formally subordinated the camp to the National Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA), but nothing came of this. The camp has had a lasting legacy in Latvian and Russian culture due to the severity of the treatment at the camp, especially with regards to children.Šķēde
Šķēde is a suburban settlement near Liepāja, Latvia, in Medze parish. It is located on the north border of the city. Šķēde was the biggest dacha cooperative in Latvia in the time of the Latvian SSR. One of Šķēde's notable features is its street names, which are known as "lines" and numbered from 1 to 18. Typical Šķēde addresses may thus appear as: Šķēde 1-15-2. Until 2005, the main Liepāja landfill was located near Šķēde.
|Nazi occupation and organizations|
|Ghettos and camps|
|War crimes investigations and trials|
|Righteous Among the Nations|