About 93,000 Jews lived in Latvia just before the outbreak of World War II. Most of them lived in the large cities of Riga, Daugavpils, Ventspils, Jelgava, Liepaja, Ludza, Jekabpils and Rezekne, as well as in the many cities and towns throughout Latvia. The Nazis occupied Latvia between July 1 and July 8, 1941, and immediately began the murder of the Jews. Already on July 4, Jews were burned alive in the synagogue in Riga. During the months between July and September, 1941, many Jews were murdered in the Bikernieki Forest near Riga. The Jews of the Riga Ghetto were murdered in the two large "Aktions" held on 30 November and 08 December, 1941, in the Rumbula Forest.
In 1942, approximately 12,000 foreign Jews who had been brought from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria were murdered in the Bikernieki Forest.
The Riga Ghetto was liquidated in September 1943; the surviving Jews were deported to the Kaiserwald concentration camp.
Just before the liberation of Latvia, when the Red Army was approaching, the Nazis deported the surviving inmates to the Stutthof camp.
Approximately 70,000 of the Latvian Jews were murdered.
Yad Vashem has made great efforts to locate the names of the Holocaust victims and reconstruct their experiences. As part of this effort, we have mounted a unique project intended to determine the fate of the Latvian Jews, based on testimonies and methodical and extensive archival documentation. The documentation was found over the past few years in the Latvian State Historical Archives, and copied by the Yad Vashem Archive. Among other items, we located and copied the Population Census of 1935, containing much personal information about the 93,000 Jews living in Latvia just before the war. A group of local researchers is assisting us in piecing together the details of this puzzle, and accumulating documentation from various sources that attest, as much as possible, to the fate of each one of the Latvian Jews.
On completion of the project, all the documents were scanned, the data was analyzed, and the information was uploaded to the Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names on the Internet. The data is presented in the form of a personal "file" in which the information and the documentation currently known to us about a specific person is accessible.
