Historiography of the history of the Jews of Latgale

Most historians and area scholars who have studied the history of the Jewish population of Latgale have focused primarily on Daugavpils, as this city was home to the majority of Latgale's Jews before World War I – almost half of its 100,000 inhabitants. According to the 1897 All-Russian Population Census, there were 64,239 Jews living in Latgale, 32,400 of whom were residents of Daugavpils (Bobe M. Ebreji Latvijā. Rīga, 2006. 92 lpp.). At that time, 6,478 Jews lived in Rezekne, and 6,255 in Luda and its surroundings. After World War I, the number of Jews in Latgale decreased sharply, as some of the refugees did not return from Russia, many emigrated to the United States for fear of pogroms, or moved to Riga in search of work. In 1935, there were 28,000 Jews living in Latgale, including 11,106 in Daugavpils (25% of the city's population).

The situation of the Jews of Daugavpils in the 19th century was studied by historian Z. Yakub, who devoted more than 50 years to local history. In his essay ‘Jews in Dinaburg – Dvinsk – Daugavpils,’ he cites data showing that in 1913, 55,686 Jews lived in Daugavpils, accounting for 49.3% of the city's population; in 1935, they accounted for 24.53%; and 1.1% in 1991. Latvian historian E. Dunsdorf noted that by 1897, 61,335 Jews in Latgale were townspeople, only 1,865 were merchants, and 424 were peasants.

Among the Jews of Latgale, there were 12 personal nobles and officials and 123 honorary citizens (Dunsdorfs E. Skaistā Latgale. Latgales vēsturiskās kartes. Melbourne, 1991. p. 39). Z. Jakub's 80-page essay highlights the situation of Jews in Daugavpils in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Jews in Daugavpils. Daugavpils, 1993. pp. 10–89). It notes the participation of Jews in the city's administration in the early 19th century, when Jewish councillors and a mayor were elected, and shows their role in the city's industry. The list of Jewish entrepreneurs from 1835 to 1931 includes the names of factories and plants, the names of their owners, the nature of their production and the number of employees. Considering the role of artisans, the author states that they constituted the majority of the city's working-age Jewish population. The labour movement in Daugavpils, the role of the Bund, and the activities of watchmaker Sh. Kats, who was the only worker among the delegates to the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Minsk, are described in detail. The author managed to find out about the further fate of Sh. Katz thanks to correspondence with his sister. Z. Jakub's essay concludes with an extensive list of sources and literature, including a statistical compendium from 1866, archival documents from 1869, and publications from 1882 and 1886. Z. Jakub is also the author of essays on Jewish schools and the Jewish theatre in Daugavpils. The essay ‘The Education of the Jews of Daugavpils’ highlights the activities of Jewish educational institutions in Daugavpils from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. (Jews in Daugavpils. Book 2. Daugavpils, 1999. pp. 116–140). The author notes that until the mid-19th century, the heder was the only school for the Jewish population. Education in the heders was often limited to rote learning of religious texts that were incomprehensible to children. In the mid-19th century, they began to teach Russian and other secular subjects. In 1897, the literacy rate in Dvinsk was 48.5% of the urban population (among Jewish men, the literacy rate was over 75%, among women – about 50%). More advanced educational institutions compared to the cheders were the Talmud Torahs (‘Torah Teaching’) for boys from poor families, who were being prepared for admission to yeshivas, where future rabbis and other ministers of the Jewish faith were trained. After World War I, a yeshiva also operated in Daugavpils. At the beginning of the 20th century, a secular school (progymnasium) was also established, which had 235 students and 20 teachers in 1913. Many Jews also attended a real school, where children of different nationalities studied. After the establishment of the independent Latvian state in 1920, a Jewish primary school was opened, where the language of instruction was Hebrew. By 1927, there were already five Jewish schools in the city, with more than 1,500 students. The school headed by S. Dobrin taught in Russian, while the school headed by S. Levenberg taught in Yiddish. The author also examines the activities of Jewish schools with a religious orientation. At the Jewish gymnasium in Daugavpils, the language of instruction was Hebrew until 1940, and after the establishment of Soviet power in Latvia - yiddish.

Z. Yakub’s essay on the amateur Jewish theatre of Daugavpils is unique: it describes the activities of one of the few Jewish dramatic ensembles in the USSR, which continued to operate until 1967 (Yakub Z. The Jewish Theatre in Daugavpils Jews in Daugavpils. Book 2. Daugavpils, 1999. pp. 240–291). Although only 1,000 Jews lived in Daugavpils in 1946, their interest in Jewish culture led to the creation of an amateur theatre, in which leading roles were played by tailor I. Bergerman, tailor M. Rukasin, electrician A. Zilber, and others. When state antisemitism intensified at the turn of the 1940s–50s, the theatre continued to perform on the stage of the Russian Drama Theatre, whose actors became directors of Jewish plays based on the works of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Asch and others. These Yiddish-language performances attracted Jews from various parts of Latgale, who travelled to attend the productions and enjoy masterpieces of Jewish literature and music, accompanied by the orchestra conducted by J. Shur. The theatre’s activity inevitably caused concern among the local authorities, who sought to adhere to an unspoken anti-Jewish policy. The newspaper Latgalian Pravda wrote about the performance of Sholem Aleichem’s play 200,000 in May 1947. The director of the House of Culture, which sponsored the Jewish troupe, was summoned by state security officers and asked to provide explanations. Tours of the Daugavpils Jewish actors in Riga were banned. The Daugavpils amateur Jewish theatre continued to function for two decades thanks to the goodwill of the heads of the city’s cultural institutions, but in 1967 the troupe was forced to disband. That year, following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, the USSR severed diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, and any activity by Jewish cultural figures was regarded as anti-state activity. Access to Jewish culture became possible only in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was then that the periodical publication of collections of historical essays, Jews in Daugavpils, began. The first book in the series (297 pages) was published in 1993 under the editorship of Dr.L. Cilevics, Professor at Daugavpils University. Later, the editorial work for this series of essays was led by Daugavpils University lecturer B. Volkovich, who was also the author of the main contributions. The second volume of the collection Jews in Daugavpils, comprising 316 pages (including 22 pages of photographs), was published in 1999. The third book in the series appeared in two volumes (266 pages), while the fourth, issued in 2005, contained 379 pages of text and 9 pages of photographs. The first book (1993) included B. Volkovich’s essay Zionism and Zionists in Daugavpils (1900–1940). With this essay the author began his research on the subject, which has continued for more than twenty years. In the second book (1999), three essays by B. Volkovich were published – on the Daugavpils branch of the Bund, on the Jewish religious party Agudat Yisrael, and on Jewish teachers’, parents’ and students’ organisations in the city in the 1920s and 1930s (pp. 34–113). The author analyses the content of the Social-Democratic newspaper Latgalian Thought, highlights the work of the Bundist cultural organisation Peretz Club, and discusses the political activity of N. Maisel (the Bund’s only deputy in the Latvian Saeima). He examines the confrontation between the Bund and the Zionists: the latter believed that the future of the Jewish masses lay in Palestine, whereas the Bundists maintained that only a united struggle of Jewish workers together with workers of other nationalities could bring success. The essay concludes with comparative data on Jewish voters’ support for different Jewish parties in the years 1925–31, the results of elections to the Daugavpils City Council, and its Jewish representatives. The seventh appendix includes the topics of lectures given at the Peretz Club, while the eleventh lists the 29 professional sections of the Union of Craftsmen. The author constantly refers to numerous sources, including seven periodicals, documents from Collection 240 of the Latvian State Archives, and books by Israeli and Latvian authors. In the essay on the Agudat Yisrael party, the author notes that according to its statute it sought to unite all Jews of Latvia with the aim of promoting Judaism and improving the material conditions of Jews. He stresses that by the colonisation of Palestine the party primarily meant concern for the religious upbringing of Palestinian Jews. When discussing Jewish teachers’ organisations, the focus is usually placed on the activity of left-wing teachers’ unions, but B. Volkovich also draws attention to the activities of the associations of Jewish teachers of religious schools Moriah (“Teaching”) and Hebrew schools Hamoré (“Teacher”). In the fourth book Jews in Daugavpils, the first six essays were written by B. Volkovich (pp. 6–110), including those on the Society for Handicraft Work among Jews (ORT) and the Jewish Health Society (OZE). Of particular interest are the essays on the Jewish community of Daugavpils, as well as on Judaism and the city’s rabbis. B. Volkovich also wrote about the Jewish community in his book Jewish Organisations in Daugavpils (1920–1940), published in 1998. That work examines Jewish societies and organisations, issues of education, charity and more. The book contains an index of the city’s streets and notable individuals. In the 2005 collection of essays, B. Volkovich notes that between 1925 and 1934 the city’s synagogues received around 20,000 lats from the state, that a choir sang in the Great Choral Synagogue, and that in 1939–40, according to documents from the Latvian State Historical Archive, there were about 40 synagogues operating in Daugavpils. In discussing the city’s rabbis, B. Volkovich highlights the chief rabbi of the Mitnagdim, M. S. Katz-Kagan (1843–1926), and the chief rabbi of the Hasidim, Ch. I. Rozin (1859–1936). These world-renowned rabbis remained faithful to their Daugavpils congregations until the end of their lives. One of the contributors to all four volumes of Jews in Daugavpils was the historian I. Shteiman. In 1993 he published the essay The Jewish Public of Daugavpils (1920s–30s) (40 pp.), which describes the various social groups within the city’s Jewish population – entrepreneurs, craftsmen, teachers, doctors and others. The main sources for this work were the recollections of long-time Daugavpils residents who knew well the people described in the essay. The author writes, for example, about how the advice of M. S. Katz-Kagan helped to prove the innocence of a Jewish youth named Zundel, who had been accused of raping a Polish girl. The memories of contemporaries also became the basis of I. Shteiman’s book on the local Lozdan family, some members of which were forced to leave their native city and live in Lithuania and Russia (Shteiman I. The Way of Life and Way of Thought of the Jews of Latvia and Lithuania. Daugavpils, 1999. 232 pp.). In the second volume of Jews in Daugavpils, I. Shteiman writes about natives of the city who went on to become well-known scholars, politicians and cultural figures (pp. 206–239). Among them were the lawyer P. Mintz, who served as a member of the Latvian government headed by K. Ulmanis; the renowned surgeon V. Mintz; the prominent Bund and Socialist Revolutionary Party activists R. Abramovich-Rein and I. Shteinberg, who in late 1917 was People’s Commissar of Justice in Lenin’s government; as well as the painter M. Rothko, the actor and director S. Mikhoels, the composer O. Stroks, and others. In the third book of Jews in Daugavpils (part 2), particular attention is given to I. Shteiman’s essay The Jews of Daugavpils Repressed on 14 June 1941 (pp. 21–30). On that day, 1,771 Jews were deported (12.4% of all Latvian citizens deported). In Daugavpils, 181 people were deported, primarily entrepreneurs and their families. The essay describes the fate of the victims of Stalinist terror – how camp inmates perished from hunger, disease and back-breaking labour. In the fourth book of Jews in Daugavpils, I. Shteiman addresses relations between Jews and non-Jews (pp. 111–126). The contributions of engineer I. Gut to the second through fourth volumes of Jews in Daugavpils are also of considerable value. In 1999, he described the work of Jewish doctors in Daugavpils (pp. 176–205), outlining their specialisations before the Second World War, their individual traits, and later destinies. The final section of the essay covers post-war doctors, with particular attention given to the distinguished physician of Latvia, A. Shapiro – one of the best therapists in the republic. In 2001, I. Gut wrote about employees of the Daugavpils Chemical Fibre Production Association Himvolokno (pp. 83–112). Having himself been an engineer at the plant, Gut characterises the professional and personal qualities of Jewish staff, especially managers of departments and workshops. In 2005, he wrote about Jewish actors and directors of the Daugavpils Russian Drama Theatre during 1944–63 (pp. 275–308). He highlights the achievements of the Merited Artist of the Latvian SSR, B. Roshchin, who directed productions such as Lyubov Yarovaya, The Storm, and other plays that drew strong audience interest. Gut also recalls N. Altshuler and other popular Jewish actors, and notes the significance of Altshuler’s poetry. He further describes the role of the theatre’s musical directors, M. Bash and M. Preizner. The second volume of Jews in Daugavpils also includes a highly informative and stylistically original essay, Five Portraits Against a Common Background (Lecturers of DPI), by teacher G. Goldin (pp. 141–176). Drawing on materials from the archives of the Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute and interviews with lecturers, the author discusses the role of five academics in training teachers, emphasising the distinctive qualities of each. The essay begins with a characterisation of the institution itself – At the Origins of Alma Mater. It stresses the high scholarly standards of Professor I. Weinberg, who became one of the leading modern historians. It describes the warm and easy relations between Professor L. Tsilevich and his students; the thoroughness and unique spiritual qualities of L. Levitan; the mathematician Sh. Mikhelovich, who fostered not only mathematical thinking but also a distinctive worldview in his students; and the philologist B. Veksler, whose professionalism was matched by remarkable humanity. The history teacher I. Rochko became a co-author of the third and fourth volumes of Jews in Daugavpils. In an essay published in 2001, he recounted Ilya Ehrenburg’s visit to Daugavpils in 1957. As a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR representing Latgale, Ehrenburg met his constituents, who complained of an acute housing shortage. Speaking to lecturers and students of the Pedagogical Institute, the writer emphasised the need for the harmonious development of the individual and for cultivating emotional culture. Later, having attended rehearsals at the city theatre, Ehrenburg wrote that Daugavpils had a splendid theatre with an outstanding director, S. Radlov. In 2005, I. Rochko published two essays – one on Jewish musicians and another on Jews who taught at the Daugavpils Military College (Jews in Daugavpils, Book 4, pp. 309–361). The first essay shows how many distinguished musicians left this provincial town. The son of a local photographer, A. Zimmerman, became a professor of music at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. The son of a local craftsman, V. Okun, graduated from the Latvian Conservatoire and became a soloist at the Riga Opera and Ballet Theatre. The Daugavpils-born G. Tsveigoren became a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Somewhat unexpected for readers was the other essay – about Jewish officers who, at the Aviation Technical College, taught not only radio engineering but also social sciences. Colonel-Engineer S. Akselrod arrived in Daugavpils in the late 1940s, at a time when state antisemitism was intensifying in the Soviet Union. It is quite possible that the shortage of qualified specialists compelled the college authorities to refrain from dismissing Jewish officers, including I. Shlifer (whose father’s brother was the Chief Rabbi of Moscow). Rochko did not limit himself to clarifying the official posts of officers stationed at the Daugavpils Fortress: through conversations with them, he uncovered much of interest about their personalities. The highly skilled S. Akselrod was known for his modesty and kindness towards subordinates. The head of the radio engineering section, I. Shlifer, was an avid tennis player and supervised the construction of the first tennis court in Daugavpils. A. Nudel graduated from the Kharkov Military Aviation School and had seen active service at the front. N. Mirsky was the author of a methodological manual on “Electronic Digital Machines.” The authors of the four volumes of Jews in Daugavpils came from very different backgrounds. Before the war, S. Glezerov was a member of the “Trumpeldor” organisation and an athletics enthusiast. L. Cilevics, now living in Israel, wrote about how Molodezhnaya Street in Daugavpils was renamed after Solomon Mikhoels, despite resistance from Judeophobes (the house where this outstanding theatrical figure was born still stands on that street), as well as about his former colleagues from the Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute. Other contributors included A. Fishil and S. Meerova. This publication was in some sense unusual. The Jewish population of Riga was twenty times larger than that of post-war Daugavpils, yet no similar periodical had ever been published in the Latvian capital. It turned out that it was precisely in Daugavpils that a group of enthusiasts came together, determined to study the history of the city’s Jews. Later, I. Rochko focused his main attention on researching the Holocaust in Latgale. To this end, he travelled through all the towns and many parishes of the region, collecting testimonies from witnesses who had hidden and saved Jews, recording the memories of those whose parents had told them what had happened between 1941 and 1945. Rochko established close ties with the staff of the Jews in Latvia Museum, consulted with its director, M. Vesterman (Vestermanis), compared the accounts of the older generation with archival documents, and sought to understand the motives both of those who took part in the shootings of Latgale’s Jews and of those who risked their lives to hide and save them. The first researcher of the Holocaust in Daugavpils was Z. Yakub. His essay on the Holocaust in Daugavpils, published in Israel, Moscow and Daugavpils in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian, stood out because it was based on eyewitness testimonies: in the first post-war years several former inmates of the Daugavpils ghetto were still alive and shared their experiences with the local historian. However, not all of them agreed to tell their stories, fearing persecution by the state security services, which suspected surviving Jews of having collaborated with the Nazis. Yakub’s published essay In Those Days (Jews in Daugavpils. Daugavpils, 1993, pp. 287–396) describes the situation in the city in the first days of the war. The author seeks to understand why most Jews were unable to leave the city. He provides a detailed account of the fate of Jews imprisoned in the city jail, and of life in the ghetto, which before the war had served as barracks for Latvian army artillerymen and their horses, and could not accommodate the approximately 15,000 Jewish prisoners, among them refugees from Lithuania who had failed to reach the Russian border. The essay recounts the shootings of Jews in the Mežciems forest, after which only a few hundred Jews remained alive – kept by the Nazis for forced labour. Yakub analyses the composition of the local Judenrat and the activities of various institutions in the ghetto. He also describes the role played by Obersturmführer H. Tabbert in the extermination of Daugavpils’ Jewish population. Acts of rescuers are also depicted – in particular, that of People’s Conservatoire teacher P. Krumiņš, who saved his pupil and her sister, for which he was imprisoned on suspicion of opposing the Holocaust. The local historian identified the role of Russian gardener P. Afanasyev, the Polish family of the Shcherbinskis, and other Christians in saving Jews. He tells of the fate of Grīva resident Zaitsev, sentenced to death for attempting to rescue two Jewish women, and of M. Yunel, the nanny of the Jewish boy S. Perelman, who passed him off as her own son and thus saved his life. The study of the tragedy of Daugavpils’ Jews was continued by I. Rochko, who published several articles in various journals, including in the fourth volume of Jews in Daugavpils (pp. 197–214). This same volume also included an essay by Yad Vashem researcher A. Shneer (a graduate of Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute), The Gravediggers, or How It Was (pp. 215–258), which describes events in Daugavpils and publishes Yad Vashem documents – interrogation protocols of participants in the shootings of Jews, eyewitness testimonies of rescued Jews, and more. The results of many years of research are comprehensively reflected in the book The Holocaust in Latgale, published in Daugavpils in 2003. The most significant essay in the collection, Victims, the Saved and the Rescuers (pp. 81–146) by I. Rochko, analyses the works of L. Koval, as well as the memoirs of rescued Jews published in Tel Aviv and New York. Yet the principal source of this essay is eyewitness testimony. Working with the head of the Oral History Centre at Daugavpils University, Professor I. Saleniece, Rochko mastered the methodology of interviewing participants and made extensive use of their recollections in his 2003 and 2007 books (The Extermination of the Jews of Latvia, 1941–1945, Riga, pp. 150–289). The author gives a detailed account of events in Rēzekne, where the family of blacksmith J. Matusevich saved the Jewish family of H. Israelit. He discusses the situationin Krāslava, where Catholic priests – chaplain J. Ancan and dean P. Rudzitis – took part in rescuing Jews; in Līvāni, dean S. Vaikulis, who was imprisoned by both the German and Soviet occupiers; and in the town of Preiļi, where V. Vushkans, an accountant at the local distillery, saved the family of local Jew S. Hagi. In Kārsava, a local German, A. Bankovich, hid his Jewish wife in the countryside with the family of A. Barkan. Rochko also provides a detailed description of the situation of Jews in different parts of Latgale before the war. He notes, for example, that the number of Jews in Višķi fell from 668 in 1897 to 423 in 1936, but still constituted more than half the settlement’s population. He describes the activities of the Bund in various Latgalian towns, the predominance of Zionist influence, the attachment of most Jews to religion, and the occupations of different Jewish groups, pointing out that merchants and artisans were also engaged in gardening and animal husbandry. The book recounts the pre-war life of Jews in Malta and other Latgalian towns, includes the recollections of V. Gudlevska, a teacher from Aglona, and publishes unique photographs of Daugavpils ghetto inmates on the banks of the Daugava. The authors of the book The Holocaust in Latgale also include D. Olehnovich, a lecturer at Daugavpils University, who writes about antisemitic propaganda in German-occupied Latgale and analyses the content of the local press, and A. Shneer, who published a study on the destruction of the Jews of his native town, Ludza, drawing on documentary evidence. The book also features three essays by B. Volkovich – on the diary of a Jewish schoolgirl from Preiļi, who was shot in the summer of 1941; on the memoirs of former Daugavpils ghetto prisoner S. Aivens, published in the United States in English; and on the autobiographical novel of Latvian writer A. Janovskis, which describes the annihilation of the Jews of Jēkabpils–Krustpils. Teacher M. Stashevsky (grandson of Righteous Among the Nations I. Matulis) tells the story of his grandfather, who saved the family of pharmacist E. Lyak. Historian I. Shteiman discusses certain aspects of the historiography of the Holocaust in Latgale, analysing the works of Latvian scholars A. Ezergailis, I. Ronis, and H. Strods, as well as Jewish authors L. Koval, M. Zvonov, and others. The entire print run of The Holocaust in Latgale sold out immediately after publication, and today the book has become a bibliographical rarity. Equally rare is the book by B. Volkovich, H. Ferdman and I. Shteiman, The Jews of Daugavpils on the Fronts of the Second World War, published in Daugavpils in 2000. Across 99 pages, it describes Jewish military traditions, the service of Jews in the national army of Latvia as well as in the armies of the USA, Germany, Russia and other countries, the situation of Jews on the eve of the Second World War, the goals of the anti-Hitler coalition, the participation of Jews from various countries in the war, and the role of Jewish generals and admirals in the armed forces of the USSR. The greater part of the book is devoted to the participation of Jews in Latvian military units of the Soviet Army in 1941–45, as well as in the partisan movement in Latvia and in other Soviet armed forces. Most Latvian Jews fought between 1941 and 1945 on the Western and North-Western Fronts as part of the 201st Latvian Rifle Division, renamed the 43rd Guards Rifle Division in October 1942. Of the 10,000 soldiers in this division, 70% were volunteers. The book contains the memoirs of many combatants, which reflect the heroism and resilience of Jewish soldiers and list the names of those who fell in battle. Twenty-year-old G. Ioffe was killed in January 1944 near the city of Velikiye Luki. The brothers Z. and I. Trok (born in 1926 and 1923) also died at that time. Among the fighters were the tailor Sh. Toker and I. Snipelishek, a veteran of both world wars. In Krāslava a monument was erected to 52 Jews of the town who were killed fighting against the German forces. The political commissar of P. Ratinsh’s Latvian partisan brigade in early 1944 was R. Blum, the son of the headmaster of the Daugavpils Jewish Vocational School, who had graduated from the Latvian Gymnasium in Daugavpils. Among the soldiers of the Latvian Division were former pupils of the Daugavpils Jewish Gymnasium, L. Reizin and I. Novokovsky. A graduate of the Daugavpils Jewish Vocational School, N. Kleinman, served in the Soviet Army and later became a member of the Writers’ Union of Israel. Many graduates of the Daugavpils Latvian Gymnasium also fought at the front – M. Afremovich, who after the war became a well-known journalist in Riga; I. Baron, who went on to work as a doctor at Riga’s First Hospital; and others. Among the fighters were Zionists and Communists, Bundists and observant Jews – A. Plotkin, H. Trok, V. Pliner, and others. Photographs of many of them, including Jewish soldiers who settled in Daugavpils only after the war, are reproduced across eight pages of the book. The volume also contains maps of military operations involving Jewish soldiers, a name index, and the results of a survey of war veterans. It notes that 24% of veterans had higher education and another 24% secondary education, while 28% of Daugavpils Jews did not return from the war – they fell near Moscow, Staraya Russa, and other sectors of the front. Among the Daugavpils Jews who fought against the German forces were locksmith S. Fish, tailor Sh. Smushkovich, doctors A. Shapiro and B. Shafir, shoemakers K. Grubin and M. Kostylevsky, and representatives of other professions. Many Jews of Daugavpils began the war as rank-and-file soldiers and later became officers. Three of them are the subject of a short study by teacher R. Ustinskova, We Shall Remember (The Jews in Daugavpils, Book 4, pp. 259–274). It describes the fates of three Jews of Daugavpils before, during and after the Second World War. One of them was Sh. Kagan, a graduate of the metalwork department of the Daugavpils Jewish Vocational School. Three of his brothers were killed at the front, while he completed training at a tank school and went on to serve as an officer in the Soviet Army. After the war, Sh. Kagan married S. Ioffe, a former prisoner of the Daugavpils ghetto, who, at the end of the war, had served as a medic in a Soviet military unit stationed in Poland. Their daughters graduated from the University of Latvia, while Sh. and S. Kagan worked in Riga’s municipal services and other institutions, later emigrating to Israel – as did N. Khain, the son of a Daugavpils shoemaker. After completing his studies at the Riga Military School, which had been evacuated to Bashkiria, he became an officer in the 201st Latvian Rifle Division, serving as a battalion commander and attaining the rank of major. After the war, he headed the Department of Physical Education and Sport at the University of Latvia, graduated from the Faculty of Law, and earned the degree of Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences. In Israel, he continued his teaching career at a military academy. The Daugavpils worker M. Deich began the war as a private, completed officer training, and became a company commander in the 201st Latvian Rifle Division, finishing the war with the rank of captain. He was wounded several times, but after each period of treatment in hospital, he always returned to the front. After the war, he worked at a shoe factory, later becoming an engineer and then director of the “Rīgas Apavi” footwear combine, which employed more than 1,000 workers and staff. M. Deich graduated from the correspondence course of the Moscow Institute of Light Industry. His two sons and daughter graduated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute. Following the restoration of Latvia’s independence, M. Deich and his younger son established and headed a company in Riga, while his elder son and daughter pursued their professional careers in the United States. A comprehensive review of literature on the Jews is provided in I. Shteiman’s book Historiography of the Jews of Latgale (Steiman I. Latgales ebreju historiogrāfija. Rēzekne, 2000. 148 pp.). The first chapter discusses works by Israeli authors; the second focuses on studies by Latvian historians in the United States and other foreign countries. The third chapter surveys the work of scholars and publicists from Riga, while the fourth examines the research of historians and local historians from Daugavpils. The book also analyses the works of many authors who studied Latvian history as a whole without specifically focusing on Jewish life in the country. Nevertheless, in cases where they did address this subject, their observations are of considerable value. In the writings of both Latvian and Jewish historians, one encounters noteworthy facts about Jewish life in Rēzekne, Ludza, Krāslava and other localities, as well as general conclusions concerning Latvian–Jewish relations, Jewish religious traditions, their spheres of activity, and more. Familiarity with the works of Latvian historians provides grounds to assert that there were no Jews in Latgale before the 12th century. After their arrival, the Jesuits, who held considerable influence in Latgale, maintained a benevolent attitude towards them. A. Švābe, in his monograph on the history of Latvia (1800–1914), writes that in Rēzekne at the beginning of the 19th century there were 754 inhabitants, 70% of whom were Jews (Švabe A. Latvijas Vēsture 1800–1914. I. Rīga, 1991. 260 pp.). He also notes that Latvians treated Jews kindly, since both ethnic groups were subject to inequality under Tsarist rule. The Latvian writer A. Balodis remarked that Jews were a very active and well-educated national minority, with whom Latvians and the Latvian state had no major difficulties in coexisting (Balodis A. Latvijas un latviešu tautas vēsture. Rīga, 1991. 242 pp.). He also pointed out that, unlike Russians, Jews lived mainly in towns, with 46.7% of Latvia’s Jews residing in Riga. The leader of the Latvian Social Democrats, B. Kalniņš, in his book marking the 50th anniversary of the Latvian Social Democratic Party, spoke favourably of the Bund, which functioned as an autonomous organisation within the party. Among Israeli researchers, M. Bobe has written the most substantially about the Jews of Latgale. In particular, he discussed N. Aronson, a native of Krāslava, who became a renowned sculptor in Paris, where he created statues of Franklin, Roosevelt, Beethoven, Turgenev and other prominent figures. Jerusalem professor D. Levin writes that during the First World War, Tsarist generals suspected Jews of collaborating with the German occupiers. It is noted that in 1918 German soldiers and officers treated Jews better than Russian commanders did. When German troops occupied Daugavpils, they appointed the Jewish entrepreneur Ya. Movshenzon as head of the city. When the Red Army later seized the city, he was sentenced to death. D. Levin gives a positive assessment of the activities of the organisation Trumpledor, praising its role in the struggle for the revival of the Jewish state in Palestine. The Latgalian priest and historian S. Shkutans, who wrote a book about Latgale while in the United States, noted that the situation of Jews in Russia—of which Latgale had been a part since 1772—was far worse than in Poland. The Latgalian philologist and historian M. Bukšs writes that when, between 1865 and 1904, publications in the Latgalian language (using the Latin script) were banned, a Jew named Zelik from Dagda illegally published Catholic religious books, and the Latgalian peasants affectionately referred to him as the “Dean of Latgale” (Bukšs M. Latgaļu atmūda, idejas un ceiņas. Latgale izdevneiciba. 148 pp.). The Riga historian A. Straume writes that those in power in Latvia could not ignore public opinion in the West, where Germans, Poles and Jews had influential defenders (Straume A. Starpnacionālās attiecības Latvijā Pretstatu cīņa. Rīga, 1990. pp. 159–175). The Daugavpils teacher A. Petaško recounts the experience of Jews who studied at the Daugavpils Latvian Gymnasium (Vakardiena uzrunā šodien. B/v, 1996. pp. 271–272). The journalist M. Afremovich, himself a pupil of this gymnasium, offered an objective and vivid characterisation of relations between Latvian and Jewish students (Afremovich M. Bolʹshaya molekula Daugava. 1998. No. 1. pp. 45–106). The involvement of Jewish youth in the revolutionary movement is described by the authors of two books: the Daugavpils residents G. and F. Fridman and the Krāslava native V. Nevler. The former write about V. Kur, who fought in the International Brigade in Spain against Franco’s forces, as well as about I. Tsale (Lensky) and other leading members of the Communist underground (G. and F. Fridman. Revolutionary Youth of Latgale. Riga, 1959. 291 pp.). The second book describes the so-called “Krāslava Case” – the crackdown by the political police on members of the revolutionary underground in Krāslava (Nevler V. Days and Years in the Revolutionary Underground. Riga, 1962). In the final chapter of I. Shteiman’s Historiography of the Jews of Latgale, the research of Daugavpils historians and local scholars such as B. Volkovich, Z. Yakub and others is considered. To a certain extent, the book on the historiography of the history of the Jews of Latgale serves as a guide, giving the interested reader an overview of the content of different researchers’ works. At the same time, however, I. Shteiman also critically analyses a number of publications and evaluates the positions taken by various authors.