LATVIA, a Baltic state, comprises the territories of three historical regions — Courland (including Kurzeme and Zemgale), part of Livonia (the other part belonging to Estonia; see also Riga), and Latgale.
German knightly orders — in particular, the Order of the Sword Brethren — conquered Latvia in the 12th–13th centuries. They, along with the subsequent Livonian Order, sought to implant German civilisation across the Baltic. Like the Teutonic Order and visiting Hanseatic merchants, they forbade Jews to settle in the Livonian state they had established in Latvian territory.
Nevertheless, evidence such as 14th-century tombstones found near Jelgava (Mitau) and a 1536 accounting record of a Riga merchant referring to the purchase and sale of cloth and clothing to “the Jew Jacob” show that the ban issued in 1306 was not always strictly enforced.
Until Latvia’s incorporation into Russia (see below), this prohibition and the measures arising from it were often the subject of contention between central authorities and the nobility on one side, and the Church and townspeople on the other — both in the Duchy of Courland, which emerged after the dissolution of the Livonian Order (1561), and in the Piltene District (part of the independent Bishopric of Courland), as well as in Livonia and its main city, Riga.
In the Duchy of Courland, which became a vassal of the Polish Crown in 1561, German merchant guilds and craft guilds, fearing competition from an expected influx of Jews from Poland and Lithuania, succeeded in including in the Treaty of Submission (signed by the head of the Livonian Order and King Sigismund II Augustus on 28 November 1561) a clause prohibiting Jews from “engaging in trade or tax and duty farming in Livonia.”
Such obligations, which the dukes of Courland were compelled to assume repeatedly, ran counter to their own interests and to those of the nobility. Seeking to increase both private and state revenues, dukes and feudal lords, on the contrary, tried to attract Jews to the duchy, facilitate their economic activity, and exploit their commercial experience and connections to market agricultural produce from their estates, to import foreign goods, and to levy taxes and rents for residential and business privileges, such as leases on inns and taverns.
Despite resistance from the Church, the merchants, and the artisans, the dukes long circumvented both the 1306 decree and the 1561 undertaking, permitting Jews to live in the country as “foreigners.” The extravagance of Duke Friedrich Casimir, who had become heavily indebted, forced him to lease tax revenues to Jews, contrary to the protests of townspeople and the resolutions of the Landtag (assembly of nobles) in 1692, 1698, and 1699.
An edict issued in 1713 by Duke Ferdinand, at the insistence of urban residents, decreed the expulsion of all Jews from the duchy. Yet, owing to the nobility’s refusal to drive them out of their estates and villages, it was enforced only in Mitau (Jelgava). The supplementary decrees of December 1713 and March 1714, which ordered Jews under penalty of arrest and a daily fine of one thaler to leave the duchy within six weeks, were likewise only partially carried out.
In 1719, the Landtag effectively sanctioned the illegal residence of Jews in Courland, provided the nobility paid the treasury an annual tax of 400 thalers (this arrangement was revoked in 1739).
However, in December 1727, the Landtag resolved to expel Jews for accumulated tax arrears amounting to 2,000 thalers, forcing part of the Jewish population to leave Courland. A measure allowing temporary (but not permanent) residence was introduced by a 1730 Landtag resolution, exempting “craftsmen who do not harm native inhabitants, and those engaged in distilling spirits on the estates of nobles and in the homes of burghers” from expulsion.
Subsequent Landtag resolutions (1733, 1739, 1747, and 1754) revoked this privilege.
In 1710, for the first time in Courland’s history, permission was granted to establish a Jewish cemetery in Mitau. Before then, Jews — being prohibited from burying their dead within the duchy — had to transport bodies to Poland for burial.
In 1730, the first Jewish burial society (Chevra Kadisha) was formed in Mitau, and in that same year, the Jews began to keep a communal chronicle (pinkas).
In 1737, Ernst Johann von Biron became the Duke of Courland. In his absence (as he resided permanently in St Petersburg), the finances of the duchy were managed independently by the court Jew, L. Lipman (Isaac Liebmann; see also St Petersburg). After Biron’s exile to Siberia in 1741, when the duchy came under the administration of senior councillors appointed with the permission of the Polish King Augustus III, the attitude towards the Jews deteriorated, although decrees ordering their expulsion, as before, were not enforced.
The Jews’ economic situation suffered greatly due to the prohibition on permanent residence in one place and the constant threat of expulsion. Although many of the expulsion decrees were never carried out, or only partially enforced, most Jews were forced to wander throughout the country in search of a livelihood. In 1760, Duke Charles (the son of the Polish King Augustus III) enforced with great cruelty an order for the expulsion of the Jews from the duchy. All Jews were obliged to leave Courland within six weeks, and even short visits for trade purposes required special permission from the authorities.
The return of Courland to Biron’s rule in 1762 led to an improvement in the Jews’ situation, as they were permitted to return to the duchy. In 1782, the Land Diet granted Jews the right to reside in the country. As Jews from Poland arrived in Courland, the Jewish population increased, which in turn provoked renewed attacks from townspeople.
Fear of another expulsion prompted some Jews of Mitau to draft a petition on behalf of sixty Jewish families “whose ancestors had lived in Mitau.” They requested permission for their families to reside permanently in the town (at the time, two hundred Jewish families lived there). The petition was submitted in 1794 by the city commission to the Landtag for consideration. However, the Landtag did not have time to discuss the proposal, for on 16 March 1795 the duchy was annexed by Russia and became the Courland Governorate.
The situation of the Jews in the Piltene District differed. This district was one of three enclaves belonging to the independent Bishopric of Courland located within the Duchy of Courland. Seeking to derive as much profit as possible from his possessions before their sale to the Danish king in 1559, the Bishop of Courland permitted wealthy Jews to settle there. Residence in the Bishopric of Courland — a personal possession of the Danish monarch, and from 1585, of the Polish king — exempted the Jews of Piltene District from the restrictions stipulated in the 1561 treaty by which Livonia was placed under Polish rule.
The Jews were granted the right to reside permanently within the district, to form communities (the first in Courland), and to engage in trade and crafts; according to some historians, from 1570 they also enjoyed the rights of citizenship. However, after the district entered into a personal union with the Duchy of Courland in 1685, the Jews’ position began to deteriorate. In 1717 they were subjected to an annual poll tax of two thalers (doubled in 1719). Although expulsion decrees issued in subsequent years (1727, 1730, 1731, and 1738) were not enforced, some of the Piltene Jews were nevertheless compelled to leave the district.
Translate GPT said:
In 1750, the Polish Sejm permitted Jews to reside in the district in exchange for an annual tax of one thousand thalers, the collection of which was entrusted to Jewish tax farmers. Due to a decline in the Jewish population — caused by the waning commercial significance of Piltene — the tax was reduced in 1783 to 400 thalers per year, paid to the noble treasury, with an additional 40 thalers to be paid quarterly to the municipalities.
A special decree of the Sejm stated that burghers engaged in dealings with Jewish merchants were not to hinder them in paying their taxes to the nobility, and, since the taxes were being paid regularly, ordered that the Jews’ “civil and commercial rights” be protected. A synagogue had existed in the town of Piltene since 1708, and in 1751 the Sejm granted the Jews of Hasenpoth (now Aizpute) permission to build a synagogue and to establish a community “as is customary in Poland and Lithuania.”
For more on the position of the Jews in Livonia before it came under Russian rule (1721), see Estonia and Riga.
In Latgale — which was under Polish rule from 1561 until the First Partition of Poland in 1772 — Jews began to arrive later than in other parts of Latvia. The region’s remoteness from major Polish and Lithuanian centres, its proximity to Russia, Courland, and Livonia (all hostile to Jewish immigration into the Baltic), and its general economic backwardness, made it unattractive to Jewish settlers. It was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that some Polish–Lithuanian Jews, survivors of the pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the atrocities of the invading Russo-Cossack army, settled in Latgale.
There, Jews were mainly engaged in tax farming on customs duties, leasing taverns, acting as intermediaries, and in petty trade and peddling. Later, they also leased estates and traded in grain and timber. In the eighteenth century, the number of craftsmen increased.
According to the law of 1799 — enacted through the influence of Baron K. G. Heyking on Emperor Paul I — the Jews of the Courland Governorate were granted certain civil rights, including: the right of residence (subject to annual passport renewal); the right to engage in trade and crafts (on condition of paying taxes twice as high as those paid by Christians); the right to join merchant guilds; the right to establish communities (limited to religious affairs); the right to build synagogues and to acquire land for them and for Jewish cemeteries; the right to establish slaughterhouses (see Ritual Slaughter); and equal rights with other townsmen to participate in municipal elections.
According to the Statute on the Jews of 1804, the decree of Catherine II of 1791, which restricted Jewish residence (and effectively marked the beginning of the legislation creating the Pale of Settlement), did not extend to the Livonian and Courland Governorates. However, at the insistence of the burghers, the Senate ruled that the 1799 law applied only to Jews who had been living in Courland before its enactment. Consequently, the Livonian and Courland Governorates were not included within the Pale of Settlement.
Throughout the 19th century, the Jewish population of Latvia steadily increased, primarily due to the influx of Jews from the Pale. The 1835 statute permitted Jews of the Courland and Livonian Governorates who had been registered in the most recent census to reside there permanently and, like other inhabitants, to engage in trade, crafts, and the liberal professions. At the same time, it prohibited Jewish craftsmen from training anyone other than their own sons (a clause repealed in 1850) and forbade those who had left the region from ever returning. The statute also ordered the removal to the Pale of Settlement of any Jews who had not been registered in the most recent census, and it prohibited the migration of Jews from other regions into the governorate.
These regulations became the fundamental law defining the rights of the Jewish populations of the Courland and Livonian Governorates and remained in force throughout the entire period of Russian rule in Latvia. Owing to adverse economic conditions, more than 2,500 Jews from Courland resettled in agricultural colonies in southern Russia in 1840. During the mass resettlement of Jews across Russia in 1893 — aimed at returning those who had illegally left the Pale of Settlement — Jews who had settled without authorisation in the Livonian and Courland Governorates were granted permission to remain.
Between 1850 and 1897, the number of Jews in the Livonian Governorate rose from 9,000 to 26,900 (3.5% of the total population), including the Yuryev, Pernov, and Fellin districts (which became part of Estonia in 1918) with a Jewish population of 2,345. In the Courland Governorate, the number increased from 22,700 to 51,000 (7.6% of the total population). Altogether, by 1897, there were 139,700 Jews living in the territory of present-day Latvia (including Latgale, which formed part of the Vitebsk Governorate); by 1914, the number had risen to around 190,000.
In the second half of the 19th century, with Russia’s economic progress, the material conditions of the Jews of Livonia and Courland improved. Their participation in both foreign (export–import) and domestic trade and industry increased. At the beginning of the 20th century, Jews developed the export of timber to England, which became one of Latvia’s leading foreign trade industries. The most prosperous Jewish communities were in Riga, Libau (now Liepāja), Mitau, and Windau (now Ventspils).
Although the ideas of the Haskalah reached Latvia early, assimilation played little role in local Jewish life, and cases of conversion were rare (among the few exceptions was the Herschelmann family, whose members were ennobled by the Russian Emperor and who, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, attained high positions in the Russian army and government service).
The long isolation of Courland’s Jews from major Jewish cultural and religious centres, their steadfast observance of traditions often without deep understanding, and the influence of German culture, produced a distinctive type of Courland Jew — one whose native language was German, yet who also spoke “Courlandic Yiddish,” heavily mixed with German words. The Jews of Latgale, meanwhile, belonged to the Lithuanian–Belarusian branch of Jewry and were deeply influenced by the Chabad movement.
In Latgale — which, after its annexation to Russia, first formed part of the Pskov Governorate, then from 1777 the Polotsk Governorate, and from 1802 the Vitebsk Governorate — the status of the Jews until 1778 was determined by Catherine II’s decree issued following the annexation of Polish territories in 1772. The decree stipulated that “Jewish communities shall enjoy the religious and property rights they have hitherto possessed.”
When, in 1778, the law dividing urban inhabitants into the estates of merchants and townsmen came into force in Belarus (requiring the latter to live in towns), most Jews — though residing in villages — registered as townsmen. Consequently, the authorities deprived them of the right to remain in rural areas, thus stripping them of their means of livelihood. Complaints from both sides — from Jews, about the harshness with which the law was enforced, and from landowners, about the damage it caused them — led to a temporary repeal of the law in 1786. Jews were allowed to return to their former homes and occupations. However, the reprieve ended in 1808, and, under the 1804 Statute on the Jews, they were expelled from the villages and settlements of the Vitebsk Governorate and concentrated in the towns of the Pale of Settlement, which drove many into poverty.
According to the 1847 census, Latgale had about 11,000 Jews; in 1897 — 64,200; and on the eve of the First World War — about 80,000. By the time the independent Latvian state was founded (1920), the Jewish population of Latgale numbered over 30,000, and by 1925 about 32,000, after which it steadily declined. Many moved to the larger cities, while a significant number settled in Russia, where they had been deported during the war. Most were artisans or engaged in manual labour; a smaller proportion worked in the liberal professions.
In the former Vitebsk Governorate, Jews made up 71% of all craftsmen. The principal trades were tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry, and metalwork. Most workshops were small, employing two or three workers, while several larger factories operated in Dvinsk. Only 3.3% of Jews were engaged in agriculture, though many were employed in the processing of agricultural produce. According to the Jewish Colonisation Society (JCA), in 1898 about 18.5% of Jewish families required material assistance, and this percentage grew steadily thereafter.
In Dvinsk, there were two vocational schools partially subsidised by ORT and the JCA. Every town and shtetl had cheders and Talmud Torah schools. Unlike the Jews of Courland and Livonia — who were largely cut off from the main body of Russian Jewry — the Jews of Latgale were an integral part of it. They were subject to the same restrictions of the Pale of Settlement and shared its strong ties to Jewish tradition and culture. They responded enthusiastically to the idea of national revival and took active part in the political and social movements spreading through Jewish society. The Jews of Latgale were active in the Po‘alei Zion and Bund movements, in the revolutionary uprisings of 1905, in Jewish self-defence, in Zionist initiatives, and later in the halutz (pioneering) aliyah.
Among the many prominent Latvian rabbis of Courland and Livonia were M. Eliasberg and A. I. Kook. Notable figures in Jewish cultural life who lived in Latvia included M. Lilienthal; historians of Latvian Jewry R. I. Wunderbar (1812–1868), I. Ioffe (1871–?), and L. Ovchinsky (killed in 1941); composer and musicologist Sh. Rozovsky; I. L. Kantor; and Ba‘al-Machashavot. From the late 19th century onwards, various Jewish political parties and cultural organisations were active in Latvia, including the Bund and the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia.
Each of the four Imperial Dumas included one Jewish deputy from Courland. Latvian Jewry also played a prominent role in the Zionist movement. Hovevei Zion groups were active in Riga, Libau (Liepāja), Dvinsk, Kreutzburg (now Krustpils), and other towns. Members of this movement — and later pioneers (halutzim) from Latvia — were among the founders of Hadera at the end of the 19th century and of many kibbutzim in the 20th (see Riga for more details).
Many rabbis of Latgale gained fame far beyond the region. Especially renowned were the rabbis of Dvinsk: Meir Simcha ha-Kohen (1843–1926) and I. Rozin, the spiritual leader of the town’s Hasidic community (see Hasidism). Prominent in the religious–Zionist movement were Latgale-born rabbis of the Don-Yahia family — Yehuda Leib (1869–1941) and Shabtai (born 1909).
During the First World War, as Russian troops retreated from Courland, which had been occupied by Germany, they expelled about 75% of Latvia’s Jewish population into Russia’s interior provinces. After the short-lived Soviet government of Latvia was established in 1919, many of the exiled Jews returned, while others immigrated from various parts of Russia. The Jewish population thus rose to about 80,000 in 1920 and to around 95,000 by the early 1930s, before declining to 93,500 in 1935 (4.8% of the total population).
Between 1925 and 1935, around 6,200 Jews emigrated from Latvia, of whom more than 4,500 repatriated to Mandatory Palestine. Local authorities and Zionist representatives assisted halutzim (pioneers) leaving the Soviet Union through Latvian ports. At that time, the largest Jewish communities in Latvia were those of Riga (around 44,000 people — 11.3% of the total population), Daugavpils (over 11,000 — 25%), and Liepāja (7,300 — 13%).
Jews made a significant contribution to the post–First World War reconstruction of Latvia’s devastated economy. They played a major role in reviving the timber export trade (which accounted for more than three-quarters of the country’s total export value and was almost entirely controlled by Jews) and in the export of flax, as well as in the development of the woodworking, food, tobacco, textile, leather, and footwear industries. They also organised the import of petroleum products and coal into Latvia. Jews owned the largest Latvian banks — in 1924, six Jewish-founded banks held 60% of the country’s total banking capital. Using their international economic connections, Jewish bankers attracted investment (mainly Jewish) from the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, and other countries into the Latvian economy.
According to the 1930 census, 48.6% of Latvia’s Jews were engaged in trade (mostly small- and medium-scale), 28.7% in industry, 7.3% in the liberal professions (lawyers, doctors, journalists, etc.), 2.2% in transport, and 1.1% in agriculture; employment in state institutions was closed to Jews. Jewish cooperation saw substantial development, including credit societies for artisans, small traders, and others, united under the Union of Jewish Cooperative Societies (which had over 15,800 members in 1931). With the support of the Jewish Colonisation Association (JCA) and the Joint Distribution Committee (Joint), an extensive network of Jewish credit banks and loan offices was established.
However, from the early 1930s, the Latvian government began to squeeze Jews out of key economic positions, a policy that intensified during the rule of Kārlis Ulmanis (May 1934 – July 1940). Although Jews were not officially discriminated against by law, the government implemented an anti-Jewish economic policy in practice. This included the introduction of a state monopoly on the grain trade, the withdrawal of state support for Jewish cooperatives, restrictions on Jewish access to state bank loans, and heavier taxation compared to non-Jews. Some Jewish banks, industrial enterprises, and trading firms were nationalised.
The principal Jewish political parties in Latvia during this period were the General Zionists, the Revisionist Zionists (Latvia was the first country where, in December 1923, following V. Jabotinsky’s visit, a Revisionist Zionist Party was established, as well as Betar), Mizrachi, Tze’irei Zion, the National Democrats, the Bund, and Aguddat Israel. Since Latvia’s independence, these parties had held representation in the Saeima: M. Nurok (Mizrachi), M. Dubin (Aguddat Israel), N. Maizel (1891–1956; Bund), M. Lazerson (1887–1951; Tze’irei Zion), and P. Mintz (b. 1870 – d. after 1940; National Democrats; State Controller/Minister, 1919–21).
Jewish parties were also represented in the National Council (1918–20, seven deputies) and the Constituent Assembly (1920–22, eight deputies). Across the four democratic Latvian parliaments (1922–33), the number of Jewish deputies gradually declined — six in the first, five in the second and third, and three in the fourth — though they continued to play an influential role in forming coalition governments.
In 1919, Jews, like other national minorities, were granted cultural autonomy. The Jewish Department within the Ministry of Education, which oversaw a wide network of Hebrew- and Yiddish-language schools, was headed by engineer J. Landau. Most Yiddish schools were administered by the Central Jewish School Organisation, uniting Yiddish teachers, while Hebrew schools were under the Ha-Moreh organisation, composed of Zionist teachers. In the 1928–29 academic year, 85 Jewish primary schools taught more than 10,300 children and employed 599 teachers.
There were also four vocational schools (300 pupils, 37 teachers). Jewish teacher training was provided in state institutions, and there were courses for nursery educators, people’s universities, evening schools for working youth, a Yiddish theatre (founded in 1927), and educational clubs. A diverse Jewish press reflected a wide range of political views and was published mainly in Riga, but also in the provinces. Popular Yiddish newspapers included Dos Folk, Frimorgn, Ovnt Post (and in the provinces Morgn Post), the weekly Nayer Fraytik, and many others.
Jews were also active contributors to Russian-language newspapers such as Segodnya (“Today”) and Segodnya Vecherom (“This Evening”). Prominent Jewish journalists included J. Z. W. Latsky-Bertoldi, editor of Dos Folk and Frimorgn; J. Gelman (1880–1950), editor of Dos Folk and Der Veg (renamed Unzer Veg in 1923); and I. Vinnik (1895–1942), a leading Zionist and public figure who perished in a Siberian concentration camp, founder and editor of Yidishe Folksshtime, later editing Dos Folk, Unzer Veg, Der Ruf, and Frimorgn.
Various Zionist, youth, and sports organisations of different political affiliations were active — including Betar, Gordonia (which split from the Russian branch of Ha-Shomer ha-Tza’ir in 1930), the Netzah (an acronym for No’ar Tsofi Halutzi), He-Halutz, Hashmonai, Galilea, He-Haver, Ha-Shachar, Vetulia, Herzlia, Tzofim, Maccabi, Ha-Koach, and others. The Netzah organisation (which had 1,800 members in 29 Latvian towns and shtetls in 1932) and Betar maintained agricultural training farms to prepare young people for agricultural work in Eretz Israel. Betar also owned a vessel on which young Jews trained for maritime professions before their repatriation to Eretz Israel (some later studied at a maritime school in Civitavecchia, Italy). Jewish health work, particularly for children, was carried out by OSE (banned in the Soviet Union since 1919) and Jewish-run health funds. Financial assistance was provided through Jewish credit unions.
Latvian-born Jews played an important role in the development of the State of Israel, its economy, political life, and culture. Among them were prominent Zionist and public figures such as I. (J.) Tron (1864–1930), M. Nurok (mentioned above), the historian of Jewish law A. Gulak, the jurist M. M. Lazerson (1887–1951), leading Revisionist leader J. Hoffman (1891–1943), and the international law scholar B. Akzin (1904–1985). Many Jewish students from Latvia who repatriated to Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later joined the teaching staff there or at the Weizmann Institute of Science and other academic institutions.
From the 1930s onwards, fascist organisations in Latvia (Pērkonkrusts and others) engaged in anti-Semitic propaganda and organised anti-Jewish demonstrations. After the May 1934 coup, which abolished Latvia’s democracy, Jewish cultural autonomy was curtailed. All Jewish political organisations were banned, except for Betar and Aguddat Israel, which the government entrusted with the management of the entire Jewish school system. As a result, all secular Yiddish-language schools (which had been centres of Bundist and Yiddishist activity) were closed, and the curricula of secular Hebrew schools were revised to reflect an orthodox spirit.
By the beginning of the Second World War (1939), around 95,000 Jews were living in Latvia. After the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet army and its incorporation into the USSR in July 1940, the remaining elements of Jewish autonomy were abolished. Hebrew and Hebrew-language literature were banned, and books in Hebrew were removed from libraries. In Jewish schools, Yiddish replaced Hebrew as the language of instruction; a government newspaper, Kamf (“Struggle”), and the biweekly Oyfboy (“Reconstruction”) were published in Yiddish, and a Yiddish theatre operated.
On 14 June 1941, the Soviet security organs carried out a mass deportation of part of Latvia’s population to remote regions of the USSR. Historians differ in their estimates of how many Jews were among the deported. The figure most often cited is around 5,000, though there is no direct documentary evidence. Archival records indicate that 1,771 Latvian Jews (12.4% of all deportees) were deported — a proportion significantly higher than that of Jews in Latvia’s overall population (5%).
The rapid advance of German forces, the absence of organised evacuation, and Soviet blocking detachments that prevented civilians from leaving the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939–40, meant that only about 15,000 Latvian Jews managed to reach the country’s interior. Around 5,000 Latvian Jews were killed during the fighting and bombardments accompanying the German invasion.
Latvia was occupied by the German army between 25 June and 7 July 1941. Following the troops came Einsatzgruppe A units, which began mass shootings of Jews in the areas around Jelgava and Liepāja. Latvian nationalists took an active part in these massacres. On 4 July, members of the Pērkonkrusts organisation burned down the Gogoļa Street Synagogue (“Gogol Shul”) in Riga, where around 500 Jews — refugees from Šiauliai — had sought refuge. On the same day, Latvian nationalists in Riga burned down about 20 synagogues, some with people inside, killing anyone who tried to escape the flames.
In the first days of the occupation, a Latvian auxiliary unit of the German Security Police and SD was formed under the command of former Latvian army officer Viktors Arājs. During the summer and autumn of 1941, members of the “Arājs Kommando,” travelling in distinctive blue-painted buses, carried out massacres of Jews across the Latvian provinces. Without direct German involvement, they exterminated Jewish communities in Abrene, Kuldīga, Krustpils, Valka, Jelgava, Balvi, Bauska, Tukums, Talsi, Jēkabpils, Viļāni, and Rēzekne. In Viļāni, on 4 August, they murdered about 400 Jews; on 1 August, in Gostini (now part of Jēkabpils), they killed around 1,700 Jews from Gostini, Krustpils, and neighbouring towns — assisted by local police.
In other areas, Jews were shot by local residents, members of the Aizsargi organisation (a pre-war paramilitary guard), and spontaneous “self-defence” groups. For example, in Silene, on 28 July 1941, 186 Jews were killed; in Ventspils and Malte (near Rēzekne) at the end of September 1941, around 200 Jews; and in Riebiņi, 181 Jews.
Immediately after the occupation, ghettos were established in Latvian towns and small settlements. The vast majority — in Bauska, Balvi, Varakļāni, Viļāni, Jelgava, Zilupe, Kārsava, Krāslava, Ludza, Preiļi, and Jaunjelgava — existed only for a few days or weeks. In Riga, Jews were confined to a ghetto by order of the German General Commissioner for Latvia on 21 October 1941. On 26 November 1941, within the “Large Ghetto,” a “Small Ghetto” was created for so-called “specialists,” but without their families.
During the nights of 29–30 November and 8 December 1941, the prisoners of the Riga Large Ghetto were taken to the Rumbula Forest near Riga and shot. According to German records, 27,000 people were murdered there.
In Liepāja, several thousand Jewish men were executed between June and September 1941. From 14 to 17 December 1941, Einsatzgruppe A units shot 2,749 women and children. On 9 November, in Daugavpils, SS units executed 1,134 Jews. By 1942, ghettos remained only in Riga and Liepāja (the latter established on 1 July 1942 with 862 inmates, including 65 women and children), and in Daugavpils (whose ghetto was liquidated on 1 May 1942; the Jews were shot).
On 23 October and 21 November 1941, in Riga, several hundred Jews who were nationals of neutral countries (including Iran and the countries of the Americas, among them the USA) were shot. From December 1941 onward, Jews from various European countries — chiefly Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia — were deported to the Riga Ghetto. In total, 25,000 European Jews were sent to Riga, 19,000 of them in December 1941. Many were immediately murdered in the Bikernieki Forest; others were sent to the Salaspils concentration camp, while the remainder were placed in the Riga Large Ghetto.
In August 1943, the surviving inhabitants of the Riga Small Ghetto were transferred to the Kaiserwald (Salaspils) concentration camp near Riga. The last 800 surviving Jews from the Liepāja Ghetto were also brought there. Most of them were executed shortly before the Red Army’s arrival in 1944, while the others were deported — some to Auschwitz, others to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany.
In early May 1945, 300 Jews were shot in Liepāja; they had been sent there from Riga in the spring of 1945 to build defensive fortifications. During the Holocaust, about 70,000 Latvian Jews were murdered.
At the end of December, following the mass execution of Riga’s Jews, an underground resistance organisation was formed in the Riga Ghetto under the leadership of O. Okun, M. Vulfovich, and M. Liberman. The organisation was divided into groups of 5–12 members. It acquired weapons and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets in Latvian. On 26 October 1942, ten members of the organisation, together with several captured Soviet officers, attempted to escape the ghetto in a lorry carrying a large supply of weapons. Near Riga, the vehicle was stopped by SS troops. In the ensuing gunfight, eight Jews and several SS men were killed. As punishment for the escape attempt, 200 ghetto inmates, including 40 members of the Jewish ghetto police, were executed.
Jews who escaped from the ghettos took part in the Latvian partisan movement; others were specifically sent by Soviet military command. A large number of Jews fought in the 2nd Latvian Partisan Brigade, whose commissar was R. Blum, and whose 3rd detachment’s chief of staff was L. Kassel, a native of Riga. Many Latvian Jews also served in the Red Army, particularly in the 43rd Latvian Division.
Around 100 Latvian citizens were later recognised as Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jews, among them Žanis Lipke and others.
Of roughly one thousand Latvian Jews who survived the liquidation of the German concentration camps, most refused to return to Soviet Latvia. The majority emigrated from displaced persons’ camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy to Israel. After the war, only about 150 Jews remained in Latvia. In the following years, the Jewish population increased rapidly as evacuees and survivors resettled there. Between 1945 and 1946, the Bricha organisation operated in Latvia, but it was dissolved by the NKVD in mid-1946.
According to the official 1959 census, there were 36,600 Jews living in Latvia (1.75% of the total population). Of these, about ten thousand were Latvian-born; the rest had come from other parts of the Soviet Union. Around 48% listed Yiddish as their mother tongue, about 50% Russian, and only a few hundred declared Latvian. By the 1979 census, the Jewish population had fallen to around 28,000.
Latvian Jewry, which had uniquely absorbed elements of both German and Russian culture alongside the traditions of Lithuanian–Belarusian Jewry, did not play a major role in the broader history of the Jewish people or Russian Jewry. However, from the early 1970s onwards, Latvia became one of the centres of Jewish national awakening within the Soviet Union. In 1970, two issues of Iton (from the Hebrew iton, “newspaper”), the first Jewish samizdat journal, were published in Riga. From 1979 to 1985, around ten issues of the samizdat journal Chaim (“Life”) and four issues of the legal review Din u-Metsiut (“Law and Reality”) appeared.
Since 1975, the “Riga Judaica Readings” have been held, discussing Jewish history, religion, and culture. Several Jews from Latvia were involved in the so-called “aeroplane affair” (1970) and were tried in the first Leningrad trial. During the 1970s–80s and in later years, thousands of Jews from Latvia emigrated to Israel.
In the second half of the 1980s, with the advent of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, Jewish communal and cultural life began to revive. In the Baltic republics, where democratisation advanced more rapidly than elsewhere, this process was particularly dynamic. In Riga, the Latvian Jewish Cultural Society was officially registered in 1988. From March 1989, it published the Bulletin of Jewish Culture, a literary, artistic, and socio-political journal (edited by A. Dozortsev).
On 21–22 May 1989, Riga hosted a meeting of 120 delegates from 50 independent Jewish organisations representing 34 Soviet cities. The Bulletin of Jewish Culture was declared the organ of the Jewish independent movement.
In 1989, the first Jewish secondary school in the Soviet Union opened in Riga. Since 1993, it has published the Hebrew-language monthly Tchiya (“Revival”) as the organ of the Sh. Dubnov Riga Jewish Secondary School. From 1989, several Jewish organisations were re-established: the Society of Ghetto Survivors, the Kinor Jewish folklore ensemble, and local branches of Betar and Maccabi. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, formal Jewish community structures were restored — in Riga and Liepāja in 1989, and in Daugavpils in 1992.
Some Latvian Jews played an active role in the movement for the restoration of Latvian independence at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, including Mavriks Vulfsons (1918–2005) and Ruth Marjaš (born 1927), daughter of U. Shatz-Anin.
As in other Soviet republics and later in independent states, the revival of Jewish life in Latvia was accompanied by a sharp decline in the size of the Jewish population, due to mass emigration to Israel, the United States, Germany, Canada, and elsewhere, as well as growing assimilation.
By 1989, Latvia’s Jewish population stood at 22,900, of whom 18,800 lived in Riga. The numbers of Jews emigrating from Latvia to Israel were as follows: 294 in 1989; 4,393 in 1990; 1,852 in 1991; 866 in 1992; 1,399 in 1993; 845 in 1994; 541 in 1995; 709 in 1996; 599 in 1997; 447 in 1998; 326 in 1999; 390 in 2000; 300 in 2001; 166 in 2002; 78 in 2003; 69 in 2004; and 64 between January and December 2005.
According to Latvia’s 2000 census, about 10,000 Jews were living in the country.
窗体顶端
窗体底端
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several Jewish educational institutions were active in Latvia. Alongside the Shimon Dubnov Secondary School in Riga, a religious girls’ school, Ohel Menachem – Or Avner, was opened, as well as kindergartens in Riga and Daugavpils. The local branches of the Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and the Jewish Agency for Israel played a significant role in supporting the needy and developing Jewish education.
Since 1995, Riga has hosted the biennial international academic conference Jews in a Changing World, dedicated to issues of Jewish history, philosophy, and culture — particularly in the Baltic states. Since 1998, the University of Latvia has operated a Centre for Judaic Studies, founded and chaired by Ruvin Ferber (b. 1946), who had also chaired since 1993 the M. Dubin “Shamir” Club of Jewish Scholars. Between 1990 and 2003, the Chief Rabbi of Latvia and Riga was Rabbi N. Barkan (1923–2003), a representative of the Chabad movement. In 2003, the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia was established, chaired by Arkady Suharenko. Books on Judaism and the Holocaust — including proceedings from the Jews in a Changing World conferences — have been published, and the Riga Jewish community issues a monthly newspaper, Gesherim. A Jewish hospital also operates in the city.
There is no state-sponsored antisemitism in Latvia. President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga repeatedly emphasised that the Jewish community “actively participates in addressing the most pressing national issues and is loyal to the Latvian state.” However, antisemitic incidents do occur. On 2 April 1998, a bomb exploded at the entrance to the Riga synagogue. Jewish monuments and communal buildings have been desecrated, and antisemitic literature — mostly in Russian — continues to circulate, along with certain antisemitic periodicals. In June 2000, the memorial at Rumbula was vandalised; in July the same year, a swastika was painted on the Jewish memorial in Riga; in September 2003, a Jewish cemetery was desecrated — over 20 gravestones were toppled and defaced with swastikas and Nazi slogans. In December 2005, a large Hanukkah menorah placed in one of Riga’s central squares was knocked down. Members of the Russian National Unity movement were particularly active in such antisemitic actions.
There have been repeated attempts in Latvia — including by high-ranking state authorities — to rehabilitate Latvians who served in the Wehrmacht and SS units during the Second World War. In 1999, the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) declared 16 March as “Soldiers’ Day,” dedicated to the memory of all Latvian soldiers who fell during the war, regardless of the side on which they fought. In September 2003, many members of the Saeima and the Minister of Culture attended the opening of a memorial honouring Latvians who fought in the SS.
Diplomatic relations between Latvia and Israel were established on 6 January 1992. The Israeli Embassy opened in Riga in October 1992, and the Latvian Embassy in Tel Aviv in February 1995. Since 2004, the Latvian ambassador to Israel has been Karlis Eihenbaums, and since 2003, Israel’s ambassador to Latvia has been Gary Koren. The two countries cooperate in science, culture, education, and economics. In 2005, 168 Latvian–Israeli joint ventures were registered. Between January and March 2005, Israeli exports to Latvia amounted to US$3,606,993 million, while imports from Latvia totalled US$1,689,368 million.
High-level state visits have taken place between the two countries. In February 1998, Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis made an official visit to Israel; in September 2003, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin paid an official visit to Latvia; and in February 2006, Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga visited Israel on an official state visit.
窗体顶端
窗体底端