1 Killing site(s)
Zigrīda K., born in 1933: "During the German occupation, my uncle was arrested and imprisoned in a facility where Jews were also being held. Later, all the prisoners were taken to the Klavana Forest, about 3 km from Jēkabpils, and executed by Latvian Schutzmänner. In the 1950s, I went with my family to the site of the killings in the forest to help identify the bodies. There were several mass graves. In the first pit that was opened, we found the bodies of Jewish women. They were barefoot and dressed only in light nightgowns. My uncle was not among them. He was found later, not far from the Jewish graves, and was reburied in a cemetery." (Testimony N°YIU161LV, interviewed in Jēkabpils, on September 30, 2022)
"[…] In July, August, and September 1941, German fascists and their accomplices […] arrested and shot over 500 Soviet citizens – residents of Jēkabpils – who were buried in the woods of ‘Klavanu sils,’ ‘Grants Bedres’, ‘the Pelites River,’ and other locations. […] It has been established that during the occupation, the fascist scoundrels exterminated 559 people in the above-mentioned places, including entire families with women and children, inhabitants of Jēkabpils. [Among the victims] were the Shershnev, Lietskamnine, Rotbart, Glyks families and hundreds of other families […] of Latvian, Russian, and Jewish nationality. […]." [Act drawn by State Extraordinary Soviet Commission (ChGK), on November 30, 1944, p. 17; GARF 7021-93-2400/Copy USHMM RG.22-002M]
Jēkabpils is the main town of Jēkabpils Municipality, located roughly halfway between Latvia’s two largest cities, Riga and Daugavpils. Since 1962, the town has encompassed both banks of the Daugava River, including the right-bank area of Krustpils.
The first Jews began settling in Jēkabpils around 1810, during the period when the town was part of the Russian Empire (incorporated in 1775). That same year, a Jewish community register was established, and a Jewish cemetery was founded. In the decades that followed, Jēkabpils became home to a yeshiva, an elementary school for boys, a library, and a reading room.
By 1935, the Jewish population had grown to 793, comprising 14% of the town’s total population. At that time, the community maintained one Jewish public bathhouse and five synagogues and prayer houses. Leib Shevel Ginsburg served as the town’s rabbi.
Jews in Jēkabpils were primarily engaged in commerce, handicrafts, and the service sector. They operated a diverse range of businesses, including bookstores, grocery stores, bread shops, butcher shops, a wine and vodka store, clock and watch shops, hardware stores, textile shops, and ready-made clothing stores.
In addition to its economic vitality, the community supported a number of Jewish organizations and institutions, such as the Mortgage and Savings Society of Jewish Merchants, the Bikur Cholim healthcare aid society, the Chevra Kadisha burial society, the Trumpeldor sports society, and the Bemilas Chesed charity association. There were also Jewish healthcare professionals in the town, including a doctor, three dentists, and a pharmacist.
In 1940, following Latvia’s annexation by the Soviet Union, all Jewish community institutions were dissolved, and private businesses were nationalized. A number of residents, including Jews, were deported to Siberia. Only a few Jewish families managed to evacuate before the German invasion of Jēkabpils in 1941.
Jēkabpils was occupied by German troops on June 29, 1941. Immediatly afterwards, a Self-Defense squad made up of former Latvian policemen and Aizsargi members was established in Jēkabpils and nearby Krustpils.
At the beginning of July 1941, most of the Jēkabpils Jews were confined in two synagogues where they stayed under guard till the end of the month. At the end of July 1941, they were transferred to the barracks of the Kūkas peat factory, some 15 km away, by Self-Defense squads from Jēkabpils and Krustpils.
Two weeks later, on August 10, 1941, Jewish men, women and children, 418 people in all, were shot in the pit at the Kūkas peat bog (Kūkas swamp) by the members of the Latvian SD unit, Arājs Kommando, assisted by the Latvian Self-Defense squad.
13 members of the Jewish Binder family, whose head, Yoka Binder, had joined the Aizsargi Organisation before the war, managed to avoid the arrest and transfer to the Kūkas peat factory alongside other Jews of Jēkabpils. However, they were murdered at the Ķeikāni gravel pit a month after.
According to the local witness interviewed by Yahad, a number of Jews and Latvians were arrested and held in the prison of Jēkabpils during the Germand occupation. The detainees were taken to the Klavana forest, 3 km away, where they were shot and buried in several pits, including a separate pit where were buried several Jewish women.
In 1958, the remains of Jews murdered in the Kūkas peat bog, Ķeikāni gravel pit, Klavana forest as well as those killed in Viesīte and Nereta were reinterred in the Jēkabpils Old Jewish Cemetery. The monument was erected there a year later, in 1959. It is dedicated to the Jews of Jēkabpils, Viesīte and Nereta shot by German occupants in 1941. In 1988, a memorial stone was also placed at the killing site in Kūkas peat bog. The other killing sites from which the victims’ remains were exhumed are not commemorated.
According to the Yad Vashem Institute, the number of Jews of Jēkabpils murdered during the German occupation is as high as 720 people.
For more information about the killing of Jews from Jēkabpils in Kūkas peat bog please follow the corresponding profile.
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