Tallinn | Harju

In Estonia, the first traces of an organized Jewish community date back to 1830 in the city of Tallinn. Later, in 1865, Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, officially authorized Jews to settle anywhere in the region. They thus began emigrating from different parts of the empire. In 1883, a large synagogue was built in downtown Tallinn. At the same time, the creation of elementary schools teaching the Talmud made the city an attractive location, leading to the arrival of more Jews. It became a real cultural center, with ritual baths and Jewish butcher shops. By 1897, the Jewish population numbered close to 1200 individuals. In 1919, a new Jewish elementary school was founded. In 1924, a Jewish secondary school was established. At this time, there were nearly 2,000 Jewish individuals and a very active local cultural life, particularly in the schools. In 1940, Estonia was invaded by the USSR. During this occupation, Jewish cultural autonomy and the activities of Jewish associations were suppressed. In addition, the teaching of Hebrew and lectures on Judaism and Yiddish culture were prohibited.

On June 22, 1941, the Third Reich and its allies began the invasion of the USSR, marking the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Before the arrival of the Germans, many of the local Jews had fled east to into the Soviet Union. At the end of August, Tallinn was occupied and the synagogue was destroyed during the bombing. From the very first days of the occupation, the population of the city was subjected to arrests, violence and torture. In September, the authorities declared that Jews had to wear a yellow star, that they were forbidden to change their place of residence, to walk along the sidewalk, to use any means of transportation, to go to the theater, to the museum, to the cinema or to school. They were forbidden to work as lawyers, doctors, notaries, bankers or real estate agents. Their property and homes were to be confiscated. At the same time, the local police were ordered to draw up lists of the number of Jews, their addresses and their property as quickly as possible. In September 1941, the Jews of Tallinn were separated by sex, with the women sent to the Harku camp west of Tallinn and the men sent to the Patarei prison, in the city center. By October 6, 1941, 207 Jewish men had already been executed in the prison. Until 1944, the prison became a place of transit for many Jews coming from different areas of Europe occupied by the Reich. Among them, there were also Estonian civilians, communist suspects, and Soviet POWs. Inside, overcrowding caused real hygiene problems and the inmates were regularly mistreated by the guards. Torture and mass executions of prisoners were carried out on a regular basis. In 1942, while the deportations of European Jews to Estonia continued, the authorities of the Reichskommissariat Ostland set up a network of about twenty concentration and labor camps on the Estonian territory. Among them was the Lagedi camp, located 12 km southeast of Tallinn. In the summer of 1944, as the Soviet armies closed in on Tallinn, the German authorities organized mass shootings of Jewish prisoners in the region. On the outskirts of the city, at the Viljandi cemetery, they executed 203 Jewish men from the Patarei prison in an anti-tank ditch. Nearby, in the forest of the Mäniku cemetery, 300 Jewish women and children were shot. At the beginning of August 1944, the Germans set up a place of execution near the Tallin Cemetery, in the Metsakalmistu forest. There they executed Jews from the Patarei prison, 520 Jews from the Lagedi camp, as well as 300 from Convoy 73, a deportation convoy of Jews from France that had left the Drancy camp. They were brought there in trucks, in groups of about 30 people, shot, then burned on pyres in order to erase the traces of these mass crimes. Under the pretext of "military exercises", the local population was not allowed to approach the site. Between August 8 and September 18, 1944, more than 1000 people were executed in the Metsakalmistu forest.