Location of the monument:

Latitude: 56.334847

Longitude: 25.562635

In July 1941, after the Nazi Germany troops had entered Viesīte, approximately 150 Jews who lived in Viesīte were driven out of their homes and placed in a shed at “Ļudāni” farm (4 km from Viesīte). On 19 July, the local self–defence unit murdered the arrested Jews in a forest behind a swamp, in a distance of approximately 1 km from “Ļudāni” farm.

In 1958 the remains of murdered Viesīte’s Jews were reinterred in the Jēkabpils Old Jewish Cemetery, where a monument was erected in 1988. A memorial stone to Jews in Viesīte was unveiled on 5 September 1998, at the Jaunie Cemetery, with the words by poet Knuts Skujenieks carved into it: “Commemorate us with a moment of silence not because of us, but because of you.”

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.