By late 1941, the
Riga Ghetto was overcrowded and could not accommodate the
Jewish people being deported from
Central Europe to the
Baltic states. A rail transport of
German Jews arrived unexpectedly in
German-occupied Latvia when train had been rerouted to Riga from its original destination of
Minsk. Nazi authorities intended to send these deportees to the nearby
Salaspils concentration camp, but discovered that it was only in the early stages of construction.
SS-
Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker, commander of
Einsatzgruppen A, sent the next four transports to
Gut Jungfernhof (
Mazjumprava in
Latvian), an abandoned farming estate in the southeastern
Latgale Suburb of Riga on the
Daugava River. The first transport train with 1,053
Berlin Jews arrived at the nearby
Šķirotava Railway Station on 30 November 1941. All persons on board were murdered later the same day at the Rumbula Forest near Riga. Jungfernhof was to have been established as an SS business enterprise, and being under the jurisdiction of the SS it could be employed without consulting with the
Gebietskommissariat (German civil administration) in Latvia. Under the new plan, Jungfernhof would serve as improvised housing in order to make available labor for the construction of the Salaspils camp. The sixth transport, which arrived on 10 December 1941 with
Cologne Jews on board, was the only one which came to the "freed up" Riga ghetto, following the murder there of numerous
Latvian Jews. The Jungfernhof estate was 200
hectares in size, with a
warehouse, three large
barns, five small
barracks and various
cattle sheds. The camp was quickly improvised: there were no
watchtowers or an enclosed perimeter, rather a mobile patrol of ten to fifteen
Latvian Auxiliary Police (
Hilfspolizei) under the German commandant
Rudolf Seck. The
dilapidated and unheatable buildings were unsuitable for the accommodation of several thousand people. In December 1941, a total of 3,984 people were brought in four separate trains to Jungfernhof, including 136 children under ten years old, and 766 elders. On 1 December, 1,013
Württemberg Jews were put on trains and sent to the camp. On 6 December, a further 964 were deported from cities of
Hamburg and
Lübeck (leaving only 90 Jews resident in the city), and the
Schleswig-Holstein region. Further transports came with 1,008 people from
Nuremberg and 1,001 from
Vienna. In March 1942, the Jungfernhof camp was dissolved and between 1,600 and 1,700 inmates were taken to Biķernieki forest as part of the
Dünamünde Action, under the false representation that they would be taken to an (actually non-existing) camp in
Daugavgrīva (Dünamünde), where there would be better conditions and work assignments in a
canning plant. On 26 March 1942, they were shot in Biķernieki and interred in
mass graves, as previously Jews from the Riga Ghetto had been. Among those shot was the camp elder Max Kleemann (b. 1887), a veteran of the
Great War, who had been transported from
Würzburg with his daughter Lore. Viktor Marx, from Württemberg, whose wife Marga and daughter Ruth were shot, reported: == Victims==