Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.548821
Longitude: 27.725695

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.

In 1991 in the former territory of Ludza ghetto a monument was erected, it bears inscription in Hebrew, Latvian and Russian: “Here the Earth moans above the Jewish ghetto”.

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.