Location of the monument:

Latitude: 55.887024
Longitude: 27.167600

With the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Krāslava, already on 29 June 1941 the local self–defenders began arresting and shooting some Jews. At the end of July mass–scale arrests began, as the result of which the Jews of Krāslava (approximately 1000 people) were placed in two synagogues and adjacent buildings. On 26 July 1941 the arrested Jews were convoyed to Daugavpils ghetto; the feeblest were shot on the way (approximately 40 persons). In August local self–defenders and policemen arrested a couple of hundred Jews from Krāslava more. Part of them was taken to the Augustovka Ravine (approximately 1 km from Krāslava) and a part of them – to the bank of the Daugava River near turpentine factory and were shot there.

After the war, possibly, the Jews of Krāslava from various sites of massacres were reinterred in the Jewish Cemetery, and a monument was erected, with an inscription in Russian “Eternal Remembrance to the Victims of Fascism” and in Hebrew “To the inhabitants of Krāslava, who perished during the war, 1941”, the Star of David and abbreviations in Hebrew, typical of Jewish tombstones, are also engraved on it.

• 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.