History of the Jews in Latvia

During the World War I in 1914, there were about 190,000 Jews in the territories of Latvia (7.4% of the total population).[10] During the war years, many of them were expelled to the interior of Russia, while others escaped from the war zone.^{[citation needed]} In 1920 the Jews of Latvia numbered 79,644 (5% of the population). After the signing of the peace treaty between the Latvian Republic and the Soviet Union on August 11, 1920, repatriates began to return from Russia; these included a considerable number of Jewish refugees. In this time, there were 40,000 Jews in Riga alone.^[11] By 1925 the Jewish population had increased to 95,675, the largest number of Jews during the period of Latvia’s existence as an independent state.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1925 and 1935 over 6,000 Jews left Latvia (the overwhelming majority of them for the

After the Ulmanis coup d’état of May 15, 1934, restrictions were placed on the autonomy of minorities' "cultures and minorities" education as well as education in native language. This was part of a wider move to standardize Latvian usage in schooling and professional and governmental sectors. As a result, Jewish schools continue to operate while secular Yiddish schools were closed.^[2] This resulted in the works of eminent Jewish authors such as the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik (Latvian: Haims Nahmans Bjaliks) and historian Simon Dubnow (Latvian: Šimons Dubnovs) being removed from the Jewish curriculum. Notably, Dubnow was among the Jews who fled from Germany to Latvia for safety in 1938. (Latvia continued to take in refugees until the fall of 1938.)

All political parties and organizations were also abolished. Of Jewish groups, only Agudat Israel continued to operate. Jewish social life did, however, retain its vitality. Owing in part to the restrictions imposed on minorities including Jews, the influence of religion and Zionism increased, motivating some to immigrate to Palestine. This also increased the influence of the banned Social Democrats, while the Jewish intelligentsia gravitated toward Zionism.^[2]

World War II

Soviet occupation, 1940–1941

After first extracting Latvian agreement under duress—Stalin personally threatened the Latvian foreign minister, in Moscow, during negotiations—to the stationing of Soviet troops on Latvian soil, the Soviet Union invaded Latvia on June 16, 1940. Jewish civic and political leaders began to be arrested in August 1940.^[13] The first to be arrested were the Zionist leaders Favid Varhaftig and Mahanud Alperin.^[13] The leadership of Betar were deported.^[13] In 1941, the Soviets arrested Nuroks, Dubins and other Jewish civic leaders, Zionists, conservatives, and right wing socialists.^[13] Their arrest orders were approved by S. Shustin.^[13] When the Soviets executed the first round of mass Baltic deportations, on the night of June 13–14, 1941, thousands of Latvian Jews were deported along with Latvians. Of all the ethnic groups so deported, Jews suffered proportionately more than any other, and were deported to especially harsh conditions.^[14] Records have been preserved of the deportations of 1,212 Jewish Latvian citizens (12.5% of those deported to the far reaches of the USSR) but the actual number of Jews deported was certainly larger, on the order of 5,000 to 6,000 during the first Soviet occupation.^[13][15][16]

The deportations of Jewish civic leaders and rabbis, members of parliament, and the professional and merchant class only a week before Nazi Germany invaded the Baltics left the Jewish community ill-prepared to organize in the face of the invasion and immediately ensuing Holocaust. Those deported included Constitutional Convention members

It is estimated that of the 2,100,000 Jews who came under Soviet control as a result of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact dividing Eastern Europe, about 1,900,000 were deported to Siberia and central Asia.^[18]

German occupation of Latvia, 1941–1944

Latvia was occupied by the Germans during the first weeks of the German-Soviet war in July 1941. It became part of the new

Nevertheless, the Latvian Arajs Kommando played a leading role in the atrocities committed in the Riga Ghetto in conjunction with the Rumbula massacre on November 30, 1941. One of the most notorious members of the group was Herberts Cukurs. After the war, surviving witnesses reported that Cukurs had been present during the ghetto clearance and fired into the mass of Jewish civilians. According to another account Cukurs also participated in the burning of the Riga synagogues. According to Bernard Press in his book The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, Cukurs burned the synagogue on Stabu Street.

At the instigation of the Einsatzgruppe, the

The German occupying power in Latvia also kept Jews in "barracks camps", i.e., near their places of forced labor. A considerable number of such camps were located in the Riga area and other localities. Larger concentrations camps included those at Salaspils and Kaiserwald (Mežaparks). The Salaspils concentration camp, set up at the end of 1941, contained thousands of people, including many Latvian and foreign Jews.

Conditions in this camp, one of the worst in Latvia, led to heavy loss of life among the inmates. The Kaiserwald concentration camp, established in the summer of 1943, contained the Jewish survivors from the ghettos of Riga, Daugavpils, Liepāja, and other places, as well as non-Jews. At the end of September 1943 Jews from the liquidated

German retreat and Soviet re-occupation, 1944

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About 1,000 Latvian Jews survived their internment in concentration camps; most of them refused repatriation and remained in the

According to the population census taken in the Soviet Union in 1959, there were 36,592 Jews (17,096 men and 19,496 women; 1.75% of the total population) in the

]

War crimes trials

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On April 7, 1945, the Soviet press published the "Declaration of the Special Government Commission charged with the inquiry into the crimes committed by the German-Fascist aggressors during their occupation of the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic". This document devotes a chapter to the persecution and murder of Jews. The declaration lists Nazis held responsible for the crimes committed in Latvia under German occupation. They include Lohse, the

Latvian SSR

, but altogether only a small number of Germans and Latvians who had taken part in the murder of Latvian Jewry were brought to justice.

Latvians of varying backgrounds also took part in the persecution and murder of the Jews in the country outside Latvia. At the time of the German retreat in the summer of 1944, many of these collaborators fled to Germany. After the war, as assumed

The Jewish population of Latvia declined from 28,300 in 1979 to 22,900 in 1989, when 18,800 of its Jews lived in the capital Riga. Part of this was due to a high rate of emigration to Israel; the Soviet Union allowed limited numbers of Jewish citizens to leave the country for Israel every year. Between 1968 and 1980, 13,153 Jews, or 35.8% of the Jewish population of Latvia, emigrated to Israel or other Western countries.[20] Another major factor was a high rate of assimilation and intermarriage, and a death rate higher than the birth rate. In 1988–89 the Jewish birth rate was 7.0 per 1,000 and the Jewish mortality rate – 18.3 per 1,000. In 1987, 39.7% of children born of Jewish mothers had non-Jewish fathers.

In 1989, there were 22,900 Jews in Latvia, who comprised some 0.9% of the population. That same year Soviet Union allowed unrestricted Jewish immigration, and 1,588 Jews emigrated from Latvia (1,536 of them from Riga). In 1990, 3,388 Latvian Jews immigrated to Israel (2,837 of them from Riga). In 1991, the number of immigrants to Israel from Riga was 1,087. That same year, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Latvia regained its independence. Immigration continued throughout the 1990s, causing a decline in the Jewish population. According to the Jewish Agency, 12,624 Jews and non-Jewish family members of Jews immigrated from Latvia to Israel between 1989 and 2000. Some Latvian Jews also emigrated to other Western countries. Many of these emigrants kept their Latvian citizenship.^[20]

After the fall of the Soviet Union and Latvian independence in 1991, many Jews who arrived from the Soviet Union were denied automatic Latvian citizenship, as with anyone of any nationality who was not a Latvian citizen, or descendant of one, until the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940. This included children and grandchildren who were born in Latvia, as per Latvian law citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but by having an ancestor who is a national or citizen of the state. In public school, the compulsory use of Latvian affected many Jewish students, who spoke Russian as their primary language. As Latvia sought to become a member of the European Union, its citizenship requirements were gradually relaxed in the 1990s, allowing for its postwar residents to apply for Latvian citizenship.

While striving toward independence the Latvian national movement sought to make common cause with the Jews in the republic. July 4 was established in Latvia as a memorial day for the victims of the

Many Jewish organizations operate in the country.

In independent Latvia

On June 11–17, 1993, the First

Two desecrations of Holocaust memorials, in Jelgava and in the Biķernieki Forest, took place in 1993. The delegates of the World Congress of Latvian Jews who came to Biķernieki to commemorate the 46,500 Latvian Jews shot there, were shocked by the sight of swastikas and the word Judenfrei daubed on the memorial. Articles of antisemitic content appeared in the Latvian fringe nationalist press. The main topics of these articles were the collaboration of Jews with the Communists in the Soviet period, Jews tarnishing Latvia's good name in the West, and Jewish businessmen striving to control the Latvian economy.

In the early 2000s, after a decade of mass emigration, around 9,000 Jews remained in Latvia, mostly in Riga, where an Ohr Avner Chabad school was in operation. Ohel Menachem also operated a day school, as well as a kindergarten. An active synagogue, the Peitav Synagogue, operates in the Old City of Riga. The main Holocaust memorial in Riga was built in 1993 on the site of the destroyed Grand Choral Synagogue, with another one commemorating the events in Biķernieki (built 2001), the Rumbula massacre (built 2002) and the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Sarkandaugava (built 2005). The main Jewish cemetery, the New (Šmerlis) Cemetery, is located on the city's eastern side in Lizuma Street in Jugla. Elsewhere in Latvia, the Daugavpils Synagogue is still in operation, with a new synagogue opened in Jūrmala and the ones in Rēzekne and Ludza restored as museums.^[21][22] One of the largest memorials outside Riga is located at the Šķēde Dunes in Liepāja.^[23]

The old synagogue (Peitav Shul) in the Old Town of Riga is active regularly, and today, the rabbi of the synagogue is Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer. This synagogue belongs to the Litvak stream.

The Chabad Rabbi is the emissary of Chabad in Latvia since 1992, Rabbi Mordechai Glazman. He is joined by other rabbis: Rabbi Shneur Kot since 1998 and Rabbi Akiva Kramer since 2016. In September 2021, a Chabad House was inaugurated in the center of Riga on Dzirnavu Street 29, which includes a synagogue, a community center, and a kosher store.

In late August 2018, the "Beit Yisrael" synagogue was inaugurated in the residential area of Jūrmala at the home of businessman Emanuel Grinshpun. The synagogue is located in the Bolderāja neighborhood and is the only active synagogue in the city, the first since the end of World War II. The city's rabbi is Rabbi Shimon Kotnovsky-Liak, whose family originally came from Rēzekne, Latvia. He himself is a native of the country. After his studies and military service in the IDF in 2006, he was sent on missions to Jewish communities in the United States and Russia and has been primarily active in Latvia and Europe since 2018. Rabbi Kotnovsky-Liak is a member of the Conference of European Rabbis and the Eastern European representative in Latvia. His mentors are Rabbi Uri Amos Cherki and Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt. He holds a dual degree in political science and Judaism.

The population in the 2021 census rose from 6,454 to 8,094. This included 4 Karaim and 3 Krymchaks. Around three-quarters of the Jews are Latvian citizens, which is a high percentage for an ethnic minority in Latvia.

In 2023, a mass grave of dozens of Jews slain by Nazis in 1941 was detected in