Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.520399
Longitude: 26.197080

At the beginning of July 1941, mass–scale arrests of Jews started in Krustpils. Initially Jews were driven into the slaughterhouse, but in a couple of days’ time part of the Jews were taken to the Krustpils Sugar Factory on the outskirts of the town and to Jaunā muiža (approximately 4 km from Krustpils), but the remaining – to the premises of the former Jewish School of Krustpils (182 Rīgas Street), which became a provisional ghetto. On 1 August 1941 all imprisoned Jews were shot by a SD unit (“Arājs Commando”), which had arrived from Rīga, together with local self–defenders and policemen in the former shooting–range of the Latgale Artillery Regiment of the Latvian Army in Kaķīši peat swamp (5–6 km from Krustpils). Some Jews of Krustpils were shot on the highway of Jēkabpils–Rēzekne in the part of the road– turning to Ļamāni, where a gravel pit had been located before the war.

On 5 July 2002 the Jewish community of Jēkabpils erected a monument on the site of murder at the turning to Ļamāni, the inscription in Russian states: “This forest is a witness of horrible genocide. In 1941 the Jews of Krustpils, the Gotthelfs among them, were shot here, the rest remain unknown. Such losses can be revived in neither marble, nor bronze, nor in any other material.”

• 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.