Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.567081
Longitude: 27.646707

The Nazi troops entered Ludza on 3 July 1941, and already on the following days arrests of Lithuanian and Latvian Jewish refugees and “Soviet activists” began. On 15 July 25 persons among them were shot on the outskirts of the town, in the vicinity of a brick factory. In mid–July all Jews of Ludza had to move to a ghetto that was set up in the town; in total 800–900 persons were placed there, but at the end of July 35 of them were recognised as being incapable for work and were shot at the end of Rēzekne Street, and 10 more Jews were shot at “Lauderi” farm. A mass murder of Jews took place in mid–August, when approximately 800 Jews of Ludza were taken to the Cirma Lake (approximately 7 km from Ludza) and shot. Some of the workers, who had remained in the ghetto (doctors, cobblers and other specialists), were shot on 2 April 1942 in the Garbari Forest.

During the Soviet period on the site of massacre at the Cirma Lake a granite stone monument with the Star of David and an inscription in Yiddish, Latvian and Russian: “Eternal Remembrance to the Victims of Fascism, 1941” was erected. The inscription in Yiddish mentions Jews mentioned instead of victims of fascism.

 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.