List of massacres in Latvia
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The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in Latvia (numbers may be approximate):
| Name | Date | Location | Deaths | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liepāja massacres | 1941 | Liepāja and vicinity, including Priekule, Aizpute, and Grobiņa | 5000+ | 5,000+ Jews. as well as gypsies, communists and the mentally ill were killed in a series of mass executions, many public or semi-public, in the city of Liepāja |
| Burning of the Riga synagogues | July 4, 1941 | Riga | 400 | All synagogues were destroyed and 400 Jews were killed[1][2] |
| Rēzekne massacre | July 1941 | Rēzekne | 2,500 | Killings were carried out by a German SD group, which was helped by Selbstschutz men and Arajs Kommando. Beginning in July 1941 and into the fall, about 2,500 Jewish men, women and children were murdered.[3][4] |
| Jelgava massacres | Second part of July or early August, 1941 | Jelgava and vicinity | Separate estimates of 1,500, 1,550, and 2,000 victims have been made. | German police along with Latvian auxiliary police murdered the Jewish inhabitants of the city during a series of mass shootings |
| Varakļāni massacre | August 4, 1941 | Varakļāni | 540 | The Nazis forced 540 remaining Jews to dig their own graves, and then shot them to death |
| Rumbula massacre | November 30 and December 8, 1941 | Rumbula forest (near Riga) | 25,000 | About 24,000 Latvian Jews and 1,000 German Jews were murdered in or on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga.[5] |
| Dunamunde massacre | March 15-26, 1942 | Daugavgrīva, Latvia | 3,740 | About 3,740 German, Czech, and Austrian Jews were killed by the Nazi German occupying force and local collaborationists in Biķernieki forest. |
| Gulbene kindergarten massacre | February 22, 1999 | Gulbene | 4 | 19-year-old Alexander Koryakov entered a Gulbene kindergarten and hacked three girls to death with a meat cleaver. He also killed a teacher and wounded a nurse before trying to escape. After his arrest, he told police that he wanted to become famous. Koryakov was sentenced to life imprisonment on December 7, 1999.[6][7][8] |
References
[edit]- ^ Liniņš, Eduards (4 July 2014). "Šī diena vēsturē. Sinagogu nodedzināšana Rīgā 1941. gada 4. jūlijā - Raksts". Public Broadcasting of Latvia (in Latvian). Retrieved 1 November 2024.
- ^ Demidovs, Viktors; Kinca, Aija (4 July 2021). "Ebreju tautas genocīda upuru piemiņai – 80. gadadiena / Raksts". Public Broadcasting of Latvia (in Latvian). Retrieved 1 November 2024.
- ^ "Rezekne". Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Retrieved 3 October 2023., quoting Encyclopaedia Judaica (2008)
- ^ "Rezekne and the Holocaust". kehilalinks. JewishGen.org. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
- ^ Liniņš, Eduards (30 November 2021). "30. novembris. Ebreju masu slepkavošanas akcija Rumbulas mežā 1941. gada / LR1 - Latvijas Radio". Latvijas Radio (in Latvian). Retrieved 1 November 2024.
- ^ Town in shock after slaying of kindergartners and teacher Archived June 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Associated Press (February 23, 1999)
- ^ "Once they were children" Archived 2011-06-29 at the Wayback Machine, The Baltic Times (March 25, 1999)
- ^ Killer sentenced in Gulbene deaths Archived 2011-06-29 at the Wayback Machine, The Baltic Times (December 9, 1999)
