This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the IAJGS Conference in Chicago, August 2008—Ed.

The purpose of the Latvian Holocaust Jewish Names Project is to recover the names and the identities of Latvian Jews who perished during World War II and to ensure that their memory is preserved. The first stage of the project has been completed, and the list of all Jews who lived in Latvia on the eve of World War II is now available on the Internet, free of charge at <http://names.lu.lv/>. This article discusses that project, the methodology employed and its current status.

Latvian Jewry and the Holocaust

The 1935 Latvian census¹ identified 93,479 Jews living in Latvia, 4.8 percent of the total population, most of whom were of Latvian nationality. The Jews lived in 200 communities and worshiped in more than 140 synagogues and prayer houses; 71 Jewish schools taught more than 80 percent of the Jewish children, and Jews accounted for 13 percent of the students at the University of Latvia. Most Jews spoke three or four languages fluently, including Latvian.²

In June 1940, Soviet troops entered and occupied Latvia, ending national independence by incorporating Latvia into the Soviet Union, dismantling organized Jewish communities, and arresting and deporting their leaders. On June 14, 1941, about 15,000 from Latvia were deported to Siberia. Among them were 1,771 Jews.

Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The first Jewish victims fell on June 23, the next day. At the beginning of July, the first mass killings of Jews took place. The Nazis torched the famous Gogol Synagogue in Riga on July 4, and by July 8, German troops occupied the entire country. In August 1941, the Nazis murdered Jews in small towns and established ghettos in Riga, Daugavpils, Liepaja and Riga. The mass killings of Riga ghetto inmates took place on November 30 and December 8, 1941, when the Nazis massacred more than 27,800 Jews in the Rumbula Forest only 12 kilometers from the center of the city.

In November 1943, the Riga ghetto was closed and the remaining inmates were transferred to the Kaiserwald concentration camp where they stayed until August 1944, when the first transport to Stutthof concentration camp was organized. The last war residence for many of them became concentration camps such as Buchenwald, Dachau and Stutthof. The Soviet army freed Latvia of all German troops in May 1945, and Latvia once more was annexed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

An estimated 70,000 Latvian Jews perished in the Holocaust. The magnitude and speed of this mass murder meant that many families disappeared completely, leaving no one to inquire about the dead. As a result, the names of only about 25 percent of the victims appear on Yad Vashem’s Pages of Testimony or in its database of victims’ names.

About the Project

    The names project was described and presented to Latvia’s then-president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and several international organizations in 2001. It was launched in 2002 as an independent research project of the Centre for Judaic Studies of the University of Latvia under the leadership of Professor Ruvin Ferber, chairman of the board of the Centre.

Called “Jews of Latvia: Names and Fates, 1941–1945,” the project aims to investigate, identify and record the fate of Latvian Jewry in the Holocaust and in Holocaust-related events. The main stages of the project are as follows:

• Create as completely and accurately as possible the memorial list of the Jews of Latvia on the eve of World War II using archival sources.
• Determine the fate of each member of the Jewish community during that time period by checking data with the materials of the Extraordinary Commission; Yad Vashem Database; documents of the Buchenwald, Kaiserwald and other concentration camps; materials of the Museum of Jews in Latvia; and a variety of other available sources, including personal testimonies, memoirs and similar materials.

1935 Census

The 1935 Latvian census, created on individual cards that indicate each respondent’s religion, still exists. It was the basic source of data. During the 15 years from 1920 to 1935, the number of Jews living in cities increased from 24,000 to 44,000, but by 1935, the total had begun to decline, probably as a result of emigration. Less complete, but still important, census records exist for 1941, but only some—primarily from the Liepaja region—include information about the Jewish population. The 1935 enumeration was the national census closest to World War II, but because the war did not begin until five years later, other additional sources were needed for data about that interim period. Supplementing the census information is a variety of additional pre-war material, such as:

• House register books
• Birth, marriage and death records for the period 1935 to 1941. This source permitted adding babies born after the census was taken and excluding those who died during this period.
• Telephone, address and business directories
• Various other sources such as police lists, ghetto and execution lists available at Latvian State Historical Archives

Sample 1935 Census Card, Census information collected included address, family name and given name, gender, nationality, status (married, unmarried, etc.), religion, ethnicity, ability to read and write, school attendance (those younger than 20), knowledge of the state language, other languages, language spoken at home and occupation.

House Registers. House registers were the most important sources of detailed data after the census. They provide additional data and may allow the database to be more detailed. House registers provided information on maiden name; complete birth date and place; occupation; relationship (young children are recorded with their mothers); dates of death for those who died naturally; former addresses—and most important, a note about being sent to a ghetto. The ghetto information (and sometimes other information from which inferences may be drawn) may provide direct evidence about the fate of individuals.

In time, a search of all house registers—a time-consuming endeavor—may provide the most complete and detailed picture of the pre-war Jewish population. For example, the registers reveal that 46 percent of the houses in central Riga with more than 20 tenants belonged to Jews; Germans and Latvians accounted for 24 and 20 percent, respectively. A house register shows year and place of birth, previous address, passport data, when reported to the police, when and to which place left (in this case to the ghetto), and when signed out by the police.

Vital Records. Sometimes more than one individual had the same surname and given name. In such a case, the vital records were used to check the place and date of birth and, in rare cases, the names of parents. In addition, birth rec-ords from the Record Office archives were accessed to ensure that children born between 1935 and 1941 are entered into the database. By the same token, Jews whose deaths were recorded in the typical way were removed from the database.

Passports. A large internal passport collection is available for individuals who lived in Riga before 1940. In the few cases where other documents provided contradictory information about nationality or date and place of birth, passports resolved discrepancies. The first Latvian Republic passports, issued in the 1920s, are the most complete. They also include father’s name, occupation and addresses. Approximately 700,000 such passports exist for Riga residents, but fewer than 100,000 exist for the rest of Latvia. Books of passport records also have survived, but only through 1927. Approximately 500,000 foreign passports were issued during the period 1939–40. The foreign passports were issued to persons who traveled abroad and were valid for one year.

Search “Fate” in the Database <http//names.lu.lv/>

The database <http//names.lu/lv> includes data on the fate of about 43,000 Latvian Jews in the years 1941 to 1945. The following indicators and criteria were used:

• Deported: On June 14, 1941
• Killed: If the confirming documentary source is available
• Committed suicide: Recorded, although the method is not disclosed
• Fled: To the USSR after the start of the war
• Ghetto: Interned in a ghetto
• Hidden: Went into hiding or was hidden by someone
• Soviet Army: Fought in the Soviet Army
• Concentration camp (Buchenwald, Kaiserwald, Stutthof or other): Was interned in one or more of these camps
• Survived: If documentary or personal evidence is available
• Torfwerk (peat bog): Worked at peat factory and was alive in 1942–43
• (……)? Evidence is not strong. The fate of individuals was determined from the following sources:
• The Soviet Extraordinary Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes committed by the German-Fascist invaders and their accomplices. Original records are kept in the Moscow State Archives; microfilm copies are held by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and by Yad Vashem.
• Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
• Documents from Buchenwald, Kaiserwald and other concentration camps
• Materials in the Museum of Jews in Latvia
• Lists of June 14, 1941, deportees issued by the Latvian State Archives
• Lists of families evacuated to the USSR. A portion of these lists is accessible at USHMM (www.USHMM.org).
• Holocaust history research data in Latvia (volumes issued 2003–08 by the Commission of Historians, local researchers); lists of Jews who perished in the Holocaust in some small villages
• Memoirs of Shoah survivors published during the past several years

In addition, Edward Anders created a list of Liepaja Jewish victims by subtracting the survivors from a prewar list of the Jews of that city. This list is found on a separate site maintained by Anders at <www.liepajajews.org/db.htm>.

Extraordinary Commission Reports. Documents on the Riga ghetto and those from the Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of Fascist Crimes for the years 1945–46 help us trace the fate of many Latvian Jews, although this information is not complete. It must be supplemented with data available in the archives of Germany, Israel, Russia and the United States. Typically, the Extraordinary Commission lists are not complete for most places. More or less complete lists of names exist for Aizpute, Daga and Viesite, but only 2,000 names are given for Riga. No names at all are given for most locations, only the total number of individuals killed.

Testimonies are the basis of most Extraordinary Commission documents and, thus, often are inaccurate. Many errors occur in names, dates of birth, ages and more. Some lists give 1944 as the year of death, but this likely is wrong, because the mass murders of Latvian Jews occurred in 1941; by 1944 only a few Jews still lived in Kaiserwald and in the Central Prison of Riga. In addition, some individuals found in the Extraordinary Commission lists also appear on lists of deportees. These discrepancies remain to be clarified.

Fate: Fled to the USSR. In this category, the primary source is the house registers that show individuals being struck off in June 1941. The registers are not 100 percent accurate, however, since sometimes the same people appear later in lists of residents of the Riga ghetto. Another main source of information is the USHMM’s searchable database of individuals who fled to Uzbekistan. The notation “fled” followed by a question mark means that the individual probably fled to the USSR.

Fate: Ghetto. If an individual’s residence during the war was Riga and the word “ghetto” appears in the column headed “fate,” the person in question was in the Riga ghetto. If the war residence was Daugavpils and “ghetto” appears in the fate column, it means that the individual was in the Daugavpils ghetto. If the war residence did not coincide with the place of the ghetto, the ghetto in which the individual was interrned is given. For example, the person’s prewar and war residence was Kraslava, but the person was in the Daugavpils ghetto.

House registers which indicate that a person was taken off the register, because he or she had moved to a ghetto is a primary source of this information. Less informative is the Extraordinary Commission data, since it lists only about 190 individuals as inmates of ghettos. In unclear cases, the list must be double-checked with other sources.

    Fate: “Hidden.” Information that someone went into hiding or was hidden is based upon testimonies of survivors, memoirs and published books.  

    Fate: “KZ” (from German Konzentrazionslager [Concentration Camps]). The notation “KZ” indicates that the person was interned in one or more of the camps: Buchenwald, Kaiserwald or Stutthof. One list records prisoners sent from Stutthof to Buchenwald.

Fate: “Tortwerk.” The notation Tortwerk is based upon lists of peat factory workers for the year 1942–43. It signified persons imprisoned in the Riga ghetto and still alive at that time.

    Fate: “Survived.” Individuals are listed as having survived if documentary or personal evidence is available. Most often the information comes from testimonies of survivors and their relatives. A question mark following the word “survived” indicates that the individual in question probably survived, but the information is contradictory and not proven with documents.

Additional Contributions

Since the project appeared online and was announced in Israel during a meeting of the Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews in November/December 2007, the project has received approximately 400 letters with information about the fate of relatives. About 140 letters came after the presentation of the project at the Latvian University on June 2, 2008.

Appeal from the Project Team

The project is not yet finished. Many columns of the personal cards still remain empty, and the fate of many Latvian Jews remains to be established. Project leaders welcome anyone who can help with the work by sharing information about the fate of their relatives and friends. Contact them by e-mail at <names@latnet.lv>.

Notes

1. See Latvian State Historical Archives <www.arhivi.lv/ index.php?&110>.
2. See History of Latvia. The 20th Century, by Bleiere Daina a. o., Edit.. Jumava, Rīga, 2006.

Ruvin Ferber is a professor of physics at the University of Latvia as well as head of the board of the Center for Judaic Studies that he founded there in 1998. Ferber is head of the project “Jews in Latvia: Names and Fate, 1941–1945.” Rita Bogdanova is an archivist at the Latvian State Historical Archives.