Juris Vater's sister Eva was born in Riga in 1922. In June 1941 she was evacuated with a special transport of young Communists, one of the last evacuation transports from Riga. The parents of Eva and Juris remained in the capital of Latvia and were killed by the Nazis. Since in the first half of 1941 Eva had served as a nurse at a Red Army training camp, during the Soviet German war she served in the same capacity with the Red Army's 201st Latvian Infantry Division and, starting in October 1942, with the 43rd Latvian Infantry Division.
After the war, Vatere graduated from medical school, and for the next forty years she worked as a physician. At the same time and, especially after her retirement in 1992, she was an amateur historian writing about the history of Latvian Jews; publishing several books on the topic.
Vatere called her son, who was born in 1955, Iurii, in memory of her fallen brother. She lived in Israel since 1997. Eva Vatere died in 2018.
