Location of the monument:
Latitude: 56.286
Longitude: 27.214
The Nazi troops entered Malta on 4 July 1941 and immediately started extermination of Jews. Part of Malta Jews were shot together with the Jews from the vicinity – Silene and Pīgožņi – in the Baldene (Balda) Forest at the end of July, but mass–scale massacres of Malta Jews took place at the end of September, in a basement close to the House of Culture (No. 76 1st of May Street), when approximately 200 Jews were shot.
In 2004 the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia unveiled at the site of massacre in the Baldene Forest a monument in black granite with the Star of David and an inscription in Latvian and English “In memory of Jews of Malta, Silene and Pigoshni who had been murdered by the Nazi occupants and their local collaborators in July to August 1941”.
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.