Following the occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, the Daugavpils Ghetto () was established in an old fortress near Daugavpils. Daugavpils is the second largest city in Latvia, located on the Daugava River in the southeastern, Latgale, region of Latvia. The city was militarily important as a major road and railway junction. Before World War II, Daugavpils was the center of a thriving Jewish community in the Latgale region and one of the most important centers of Jewish culture in eastern Europe.Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, pages 90 to 91. Over the course of the German occupation of Latvia, the vast majority of the Jews of Latgale were killed as a result of the Nazi extermination policy.
Nomenclature The city of Daugavpils is also known by the Russian name of DvinskIwens, How Dark the Heavens, page 19 and the German name of Dünaburg. Many of the killings associated with the ghetto occurred in the nearby Pagulanka forest, which is also seen spelled as Polulanka and Pogulianski. Although known as a "ghetto", this old fortress was converted into a prison to hold Jews on a temporary basis before they were killed in the Pagulanka forest.Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, page 278. Similar places in Latvia were called "concentration camps".
The Holocaust begins in Daugavpils At that time, about 12,000 Jews lived in Daugavpils.Lumans, Latvia in World War II, page 243. In front of the German army, a huge column of refugees, including not only Jews from Lithuania, but Red Army soldiers separated from their units, began to move northeast on the highway from Kaunas (also known as Kovno) to Daugavpils, where the refugees expected to find safety or perhaps board a train for the east.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, page 14. Some Jewish refugees managed to reach the Soviet border, but they were prevented from crossing by NKVD guards. Eventually some were allowed to cross, but it was too late for most.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, pages 40 and 41Lumans, Latvia in World War II, at 156 and 227–228.
Following several days of aerial bombardment, the German army captured Daugavpils on June 26, 1941, but there was still fighting in the near vicinity for several days. A fire burned in the city, which the Nazis later chose to blame on the Jews.Frankel-Zaltzman, Haftling No. 94771, Part 1, "The Tragedy Begins" and "It's burning, brothers, it's burning ..."Einsatzgruppe A Situation Report ("Ereignismeldung") No. 24, July 16, 1941, as reprinted in Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, at pages 272–273Lumans, Latvia in World War II, at 140, 153, and 154. According to EK 1b's official report:
On June 29, 1941, at the order of Robert Blūzmanis, who had been appointed by the Germans as the police chief of the Latvian police in Daugavpils, large signs were posted around the city announcing in German, Russian and Latvian that all Jewish males below the age of 60 were to report that morning to the main marketplace, failure to do so would be met with "the maximum penalty."Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at 24–31.Gilbert, The Holocaust, at pages 153–159Frankel-Zaltzman, Haftling No. 94,771, Part I, "Black Sunday – June 29, 1941 – The Men are Taken Away": "On Sunday, the 29th, early in the morning, the guard woman came in and told us that there is an order that all Jews up to the age of 60 must gather in the marketplace. Those who disobey the order will be shot." Some of them were put to work burying the bodies of civilians and Red Army soldiers killed in the fighting, and later, dead horses. Many others were forced to dig their own graves and simply murdered outright.
Early killings Mass killings of Jews in Latvia were part of an overall plan developed at the highest level of the German government. Aspects of the plan as it was applied to Latvia had been applied in other countries, such as burning of synagogues (Germany) and ghettoization (Poland). Latvia presented a new development in the Holocaust, which was the implementation of mass killings immediately upon the occupation of a country.Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, at page 203
The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) attempted to stir up local anti-Jewish feeling by forcing Jews to dig up mass graves of Latvians who had been murdered by the NKVD in the Soviet occupation that had begun in June 1940. This was part of an overall SD plan to associate the Jews with Communism and Russians, both unpopular in Latvia. Latvian guards at early executions would ask the Jews waiting to be executed if they felt like singing "Katyusha".Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, at page 36 (Katyusha was a popular Russian patriotic song of World War II.)
On June 28, 1941, two days after the fall of Daugavpils, the Nazis rounded up Jews in a synagogue, and then took them out and shot them. Other Jews were randomly murdered simply walking down the street.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at 54–55 On Sunday June 29, 1941, the German army began rounding up Jewish men in Daugavpils to subject them to terror, humiliation and imprisonment under brutal and overcrowded conditions. At gun point the Germans made them shout "Heil Hitler", and sing Deutschland über alles. Survivors reported:
The Germans accused them of setting fire to Daugavpils. According to Stahlecker's official report:
Jews in general and Lithuanian refugees in particular were accused of being communists. On July 8, 1941, a newspaper in Daugavpils (Daugavpils Latviešu Avīze), published an editorial consistent with the German efforts to blame the Jews for communist atrocities:
As time went on, increased numbers of Latvian auxiliary police guarded the prison where the Jewish men were held. By July 8, the work had become so hard that the Jews were literally being worked to death. One assignment included rolling huge blocks of stone to the top of a hill, another including carrying heavy timbers several kilometers. German guards struck prisoners with whips at will. Later, the expression arose among the widows of the men who were rounded up and killed on June 29 about their husbands that, "'he was taken way to prison that First Sunday.'"Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at page 103
Railroad Park massacre By July 7, 1941, the Latvia police had arrested about 1,250 people, including 1,125 Jews, and were holding them in the main prison in Daugavpils. Erich Ehrlinger, the commander of Einsatzkommando Ib, was tried in a West German court in the 1960s. The court found that four early massacres had occurred in Daugavpils, including two in a place matching the description of 'Railroad Park', also called the Railwayman's Garden (Latvian: Dzelzceļniecki dārzs), one at the army training grounds near Mežciems, and another near a cemetery about a half hour's walking distance to the north of the city.Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, at pages 274 to 275 Professor Ezergailis believed these may not have been properly described to the court.
Iwens, a survivor of the Railroad Park massacre, gives one of the few descriptions of it. On July 8, 1941, the Germans forced a detail of Jews to dig ditches in the Railroad Park,Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at page 31. The next day, July 9, the Germans began shooting Jews and pushing the bodies into the ditches. The sound of gunshots, occurring at regular intervals, could be heard in the city. Among the murdered was one man who tried to explain to a guard that he was a decorated veteran of the German army from the First World War. While the guards in this operation were Latvian, the supervisors were entirely German. One German officer hummed the Beer Barrel Polka in between shooting people in the back of the head.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at 30–39 The Germans filled-in all the trenches dug on July 8 with the bodies of the persons murdered on July 9, but there were still a lot of people left alive whom they had intended to kill. At the end of the killings on July 8, the survivors were put to work digging new graves and tamping down the earth over the bodies in the previous trenches. The next day, July 10, the killings resumed.Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, at pages 32–39 The survivor Iwens reported after the war what he had learned from another survivor, Haim Kuritzky, about what occurred at the pits:
Kuritsky was saved when the Germans turned out to have miscalculated the number of bodies they could place in the pits:
Anyone not working fast enough to cover the bodies was ordered to lie down on them and was shot by the German officer, who screamed at them "faster, faster", and raved hysterically against the Jews. The number killed is unclear. Iwens, who while present, was trying to survive, said "thousands" were killed. The Germans reported killing 1,150 Jews by July 11. The Germans later separated from those who identified themselves as craftsmen, such as carpenters, from the professionals. Some of the craftsmen were kept alive for a while, but the professionals were killed immediately. After the Railroad Park massacre, few Germans were seen in the area of the prison, which was run for the most part by the Latvian auxiliary police.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at 41–50
Measures against Jews Roberts Blūzmanis, the Latvian police chief in Daugavpils, carried out the SD's wishes for certain Jewish restrictions. It was Blūzmanis, acting for the SD, who ordered that all Jews in Daugavpils over four years of age wear six-pointed yellow stars on the front and back of their clothing. According to Stahlecker, chief of Einsatzgruppe A: Later, the Nazis forbade Jews to use the sidewalks, to speak to non-Jews and to read newspapers.Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, at ____ Frankel-Zaltzman reported being shouted at as she and her parents were driven out of their home: "Nobody dare step on the sidewalk! Yudn [Jews] must run in the middle of the road like dogs!"Frankel-Zaltzman, Haftling No. 94771, Part 1, "We are aligned in rows"
Construction of the ghetto Construction of the ghetto began on July 18, 1941, as confirmed by Stahlecker himself: "Apart from organizing and carrying out measures of execution, the creation of Ghettos was begun in the larger towns at once during the first days of operations.". Jewish forced labor was used to build the ghetto, which was not an actual housing district, but rather a decrepit fortress on the west side of the Daugava river, a short distance just to the northwest of the suburb of Griva, across from the main city of Daugavpils.:Gilbert, The Holocaust, page 179 "In July, as the initial wave of shootings subsided, the local Germans and their Latvian counterparts rounded up some 14,000 Jews from Daugavpils and the outlying areas of Latgale and crammed them into the old Daugavpils fort, 'the Citadel'."Loman, Latvia in World War II, page 247.
Forced relocation to the ghetto On July 25, 1941, the Germans issued an order that all Jews were to relocate to the ghetto by the next day. In addition to all the Jews of Daugavpils, those assembled on July 26, were to be marched into the fortress, including Jews from Lithuania and from the area surrounding Daugavpils. Frankel-Zaltzman described the scene:
Some had been forced to walk up to 50 kilometers. The Latvian guards enforced their commands by beating the workers with clubs that were four or five feet long. Among other things, Jews were beaten if they smiled upon recognizing another Jewish prisoner. Iwens, an eyewitness, reported that "many women had to cope with their children and aged parents all by themselves, for their men had been killed in the prison massacre."Iwens, How Dark the Heavens, page 47.
Perpetrators