Monument to Zanis Lipke and All the Saviours of Latvian Jews

Within four months of the Nazis occupying Riga on 1 July 1941, a Jewish ghetto had been set up in the Moscow District of the city. 30,000 Jews where forcibly moved into the ghetto. Within weeks, 24,000 of its occupants were forced marched to Rumbula forest on the outskirts of the city and shot. Thousands more were shot or otherwise eliminated within the city. Throughout Latvia, between 1941 and 1945 70,000 Jews were killed by or under Nazi direction.

Many Latvians voluntarily, or otherwise, sided with the Nazis and assisted them in their nefarious deeds.

The majority, understandably, turned a blind eye to what was going on. A small number risked everything to save the lives of a small number of Jews.

This monument, designed by Elina Lagzdina, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts and dedicated on 4 July 2007, records the names of, and celebrates, 270 Latvians who sheltered and thus saved the lives of over 400 Jews between 1941 and 1945 and risked their own, and their families lives in so doing.

Zanis Lipke is singled out for particular mention, and is pictured on the monument, as he is credited with saving the lives of 50 Jews by hiding them in a bunker specially designed under a shed at his residence at Ķīpsala. This monument is not to be confused with the separate Zanis Lipke Memorial at Ķīpsala, on the other side of the Daugarva River from the Old City, which I did not visit.

This monument, on Gogolo iela, is cast in the shape of a falling wall which symbolises the threat of extermination of the Jewish people. The wall is supported, and stopped from toppling over, by seven columns bearing the names of the 270 rescuers.

It is no accident that this monument is erected next to the ruins of the Great Choral Synagogue into which hundreds of Jews were herded before the building was set alight and burned to the ground by Nazis, causing all therein to perish on 4 July 1941, only three days after they took Riga from the Red Army. The ruins of the synagogue are now a memorial to those who died on that day and to all Jews who lost their lives on Latvian soil, at the hands of the Nazis during WWII.

Address: Gogola iela, 25
Directions: Between Dzimavu Iela and Jezusbaznicas Iela

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This is one in a group (loop) of reviews exploring beyond the Old City area of Riga. Continue to my next entry. Alternatively to start at the beginning of the loop click here.

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