Jewish Life and Death in Daugavpils, Latvia

Samantha G.

Gary R. Gerson Undergraduate Scholar, Spring 2022.

Receiving the Scholarship

Receiving the Gerson Scholarship through UF Jewish Studies was a privilege and an honor. It enabled me to spend a semester in Daugavpils, a city in Latvia close to Lithuania and Belarus that one had a large Jewish population. Latvia’s Jewish history is complex; besides information on the Holocaust, there is little online information on modern Jewish life and culture there. With my scholarship, I first endeavored to gather a clear understanding of the Holocaust in Daugavpils. Then, I sought to understand what music and culture looked like during and after Jews were forced into the Daugavpils Ghetto and killed by the thousands.

My work began with visiting historical sites, museums, and memorials to gather background information. I then started to network, hoping to find Jews and Jewish allies in the city who would be willing to speak to me about their experience. Finally, after building trust and reputation in January of 2022, I completed a series of seven 20–30-minute recorded interviews with people ranging from about 25 to 85 years old. These interviews were conducted in Russian at various sites such as the local university, a synagogue, the Daugavpils and Riga Ghettos, and Jewish-owned business places.

Background on the Holocaust

The brief Nazi terror in Daugavpils led to the extermination of centuries of Jewish life and culture in the region. Before the Holocaust, Daugavpils was the busy Jewish epicenter of Latvia and one of Europe’s most flourishing Jewish cities. Its Jewish population was 56,000 by 1914, just over 50% of Daugavpils’ total population. It then rested at around 28,000 people after World War I.

The Soviet Union annexed Latvia in June 1940. Communism meant complete overhaul of politics and culture, including the rejection of religion. In the Daugavpils region, located in the southeastern corner of the nation, anti-Soviet activity was often spearheaded by Jews and Zionist youth, leading to several young Jews being exiled to Siberia in 1940 and 1941. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, German troops marched into Daugavpils, capturing its Dinaburg fortress, killing civilians, and blocking the bridge out of the city. Some Jews opened their homes and synagogues to civilians seeking shelter, while around 200 others attempted to flee into Russia. By July, the Germans established a Latvian Auxiliary Police force, Schutzmannschaften, which promptly began humiliating, beating, arresting, and murdering Jews, even taking fifteen Jews off the street and killing them in a Jewish cemetery. Nazi police tied Jews to communism to help build Latvian resentment towards Jews. The main Daugavpils newspaper wrote in July 1941 that “it was the Jews who greeted the Red Army in July 1940 and enslaved, tortured and killed Latvians during communist rule.” The Nazis also set fire to the city and blamed the Jews.

In Daugavpils, the German occupiers did not introduce anti-Semitic laws or require Jews to wear yellow stars as they did in Riga and elsewhere. Instead, Jews were almost immediately moved into the Daugavpils Ghetto, a part of the Dinaburg fortress, along with Jews from cities and shtetls in the wider region. The ghetto was created on July 15, 1941, and by the end of the month it held up to 16,000 Jews. Living conditions were tragic; the space was rotted, filled with animal waste, and far too small to house many people. There were not enough beds or toilets, and privacy was impossible. The ghetto was overseen by Latvian auxiliary policeman Eduards Zaube, remembered for his relentless cruelty; he terrorized and executed Jews for various infractions. Notice in this photograph how the bark has been stripped from the ghetto’s largest tree. Jews were so hungry and malnourished that they chewed on its bark.

Einsatzgruppen, special Nazi killing squads, were created for the the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies and Soviet political commissars. Einsatzgruppe A covered the Baltic states. It was divided into smaller detachments. Einsatzkommando 3, commanded by SS – Standartenfuhrer Karl Jäger, oversaw Daugavpils. From July 4 to November 25, 1941, Jäger oversaw the killing of 137,346 Jews (Zalkin, 2010). He depended on the Latvian Auxiliary Police to prepare mass graves and aid in roundups. The Latvian police force was eager. At one particular massacre, Railroad Park, the Latvian auxiliary police arrested over a thousand Jews one week and then murdered them the following week. They were essential to German aims.

As the ghetto began overcrowding, the Nazis and Latvian Auxiliary Police offered 2,000 Jews the opportunity to move to a new Ghetto. Instead, on August 2 or 6, 1941, these Jews were led 8 km away into the Poguļanka forest, forcibly stripped, and shot in the back of the neck into one of fifteen shallow pits.

The memorial standing today is pictured to the right. Mass murders continued through August. They included 400 orphaned children, and infants, who were buried alive. The Einsatzkommando leaders reported killing between 9,000 and 9,300 Jews between mid-July to mid-August of 1941. Six thousand more were killed over the next few months. And while they left labor-capable Jews in the ghetto for some time, the Nazis completed their extermination of all remaining Jews in the ghetto, including one thousand children, between November 7-9, 1941. By May of 1942, Daugavpils’ Jewish population was around 500. When Nazi occupation ended, 100 Jews remained.

Pictured to the left, in October of 1944, the Yiddish Forverts wrote: “10 Jews remain in [Daugavpils], 31,000 are dead.”

The Red Army liberated Kraslava and Daugavpils on July 23rd of 1944. About forty Jewish families who had fled to Russia returned, and the Jewish population was about 2,000. However, by the 1950s, almost all moved to Riga or Israel. At the turn of the 21st century, only around 400 Jews and one synagogue remained (Zalkin, 2010). Today, the Jewish population is just under 100. The remaining synagogue (there were once forty-five) mainly serves as a museum. The photo on the left, below, was taken before World War II and shows a large white synagogue. On the right is my own photo from February 2022. The space is now a parking lot.

Modern Jewish Daugavpils

Through the spring semester of 2022, I conducted interviews to assess what modern Jewish culture now looks like in Daugavpils. The Holocaust meant not only death, but the destruction of Jewish culture, arts, customs, and norms. I spoke with Jews and Jewish scholars in the city, attended Jewish cultural events, and entered Jewish spaces. Specifically, I sought to understand if and how Jewish music and artistic culture existed in and after the Daugavpils ghetto.

Two key facts were immediately evident. First, Jews were prosperous and influential as leaders, doctors, musicians, and artists in Daugavpils before the Holocaust. In turn, their legacy of business and cultural excellence remains today, seen through the inventions, products, and technologies that continue to be used by Latvians. Along the same vein, the Jewish legacy of arts in the city is marked by the many compositions, dances, and foods known today. Second, Nazi propaganda was successful and remains influential. As an opening discussion prompt on my first day of class, my teacher asked me in Russian if I thought the Holocaust was a good or a bad thing. He did not know of my project nor that I am Jewish. Instead of answering, I pushed him on why he thought that question was acceptable to ask. He responded that some people, including several of his students, argue that while the Holocaust was tragic, it was a natural response to overt Jewish involvement with Communism. In other words, the Jews brought the Holocaust onto themselves through their involvement with the USSR. These two background facts framed the way I approached my interviews.

The first person I interviewed, Joseifs Ročko, is arguably the most influential Jewish historian in Daugavpils and perhaps even Latvia. Born and raised in Daugavpils, he lost his family in the Holocaust. He underscored that while Jewish culture flowered in Latvia before the Nazi invasion, it was annihilated in 1941. To Mr. Ročko, one of the saddest losses was the death of Yiddish. Once spoken across Daugavpils, there are only four remaining native Yiddish speakers in the whole city. He described how Nazi efficiency also exterminated knowledge. There was no time for, or interest in, Jewish cultural or intellectual preservation. Jews were simply gathered, brutalized, and killed. When I specifically asked about music, he noted that the only time Jews had to sing was when they were being transferred as prisoners around Daugavpils and between Riga and Lithuania. Mr. Ročko explained that at first, the songs were a bitter and tragic reflection of oncoming death, but that closer to the end of the war, they began to express hope for survival. Mr. Ročko noted that the survivors formed a community in 1989, but people left so quickly afterwards that it was unsustainable.

Mr. Ročko’s interview left me curious about how Jewish culture somehow survives in Daugavpils without the presence of an intentionally formed Jewish community or a regularly open synagogue. I scheduled an interview with the local Israeli dance troupe, a Jewish restaurant owner, and a Jewish elementary school teacher from a Jewish school. These interviews revealed the ways Jews in Daugavpils have reclaimed their Jewishness. The Israeli dance instructor, for example, explained in Russian that Israeli dancing is his means of communication with G-d through music and words. On the left is a picture of me between one of the students and the dance teacher. In a city with no synagogue, dance is his way of connecting his soul and spirit to G-d. The restaurant owner discussed how her space and food represent Israel and Eastern European Jewish culture, in a sense educating the Daugavpils population through the experience of food. Additionally, the Jews who live in Daugavpils all know each other, and are highly regarded by the wider community.

In total, my interviews revealed that while so much of Jewish culture and arts were stolen from the present by Nazi Germany and the vile actions of the Latvian Auxiliary Police, Jews in Daugavpils have retained their innovative and creative spirit. They have found ways, through creative avenues, to not only revive Judaic experiences in Latvia but also to retain their Jewish connection to G-d if they so desire. In the face of historic and enduring antisemitism, these Jews continue to tell the story of those who came before them and their Jewishness through culture and arts when the religious community became harder to access. Thanks to my Gerson Scholarship, I have the privilege of turning this footage into a short film that will, I hope, reveal the enduring spirit, resilience, and creativity of the Jews of Daugavpils.

Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies