Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.145024

Longitude: 26.989754

At the beginning of the Nazi occupation in July 1941, the Jews of Aglona (at the time – village Somerseta) and of its vicinity were arrested and soon afterwards were shot on the shore of the Cirīši Lake. The total number of Jews murdered on this site in July and August 1941 is approximately 96.

In 1964 a monument to soldiers of the Red Army and Soviet activists was erected on the site of murder. One of the memorial plaques refers to “Victims of German–Fascistic Terror”, however, no Jews are found among the surnames of victims engraved on it; Jews are designated by the phrase “and other 80 persons”. In 2007 the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia, with the financial support of the EU, erected next to the memorial plaque of the Soviet period, a memorial stone with the inscription: “In this forest in July and August 1941 96 Jews of Somerseta and its vicinity were murdered: the Trukšāns, the Lurjes, the Kagans, the Ovsejkins, the Dimansteins, theSilberbrants and others”.

 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.