Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.520597
Longitude: 21.020347

The Nazi troops occupied Liepāja on 29 June 1941. Already on the following days many Jews were arrested, of whom 300 were shot together with “Soviet activists” in the Rainis Park. A number of orders were issued that imposed restrictions upon Jews: wearing the yellow sign, prohibition to visit public institutions, etc. The first mass–scale killings of Jews took place in July in the vicinity of fishing port – at the lighthouse and at the fish cannery (1200 Jews were shot during it), but the largest action of shooting Liepāja Jews took place later – in December in the Šķēde Dunes (approximately 15 km from Liepāja). On 1 July 1942 a ghetto was established in Liepāja, the surviving Jews had to move to it. It was closed in October 1943, when all the surviving Jews were taken to the concentration camp “Kaiserwald” in Rīga.

During the Soviet period on the site of murder in the Rainis Park a monument was erected, bearing an inscription in Latvian and Russian: “Here in 1941 German occupants murdered numerous Soviet patriots”. The remains of the shot Jews were reinterred in the Liepāja Jewish Cemetery soon after the murder, still during the period of Nazi occupation.

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.
• Anders E., Dubrovskis J. Jews in Liepāja, 1941—1945: A Memorial Book. Burlingame, 2001.
• Linkimer K. 19 Months in a Cellar: How 11 Jews Eluded Hitler’s Henchmen. Riga:Museum “Jews in Latvia, 2008.

Search for the related names of Jews at http://names.lu.lv.