Location of the monument:
Latitude: 56.999956
Longitude: 22.006301
The Nazi troops entered Kuldīga on 1 July 1941. Already on the following day a number of orders were issued that restricted the life of Jews in the town, and a couple of hundred Jews were arrested. Mass murdering of Jews was started in mid–July by a SD unit, with the assistance of the local self–defenders, and continued until the beginning of August in various locations. Four sites, where Jews were shot, are known in Rumba parish; however, the exact number of victims and circumstances of murdering are unknown
During the Soviet period in one of the murder sites in Rumba parish, in a forest not far from Mežvalde (approximately 6 km from Kuldīga) a memorial sign of light bricks was placed, the plaque on it bears an inscription in Latvian and Russian “Here from 1941 to 1945 fascists murdered 600 persons.”
Further reading:
- Meler M. Jewish Latvia: Sites to Remember. Tel-Aviv: Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in Israel, 2013.
- Ezergailis A. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944: The Missing Center. Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia; Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996.
Search for the related names of Jews at http://names.lu.lv.