Rumbula massacre

This massacre is known by different names, including "The Big Action", and the "Rumbula Action", but in Latvia it is just called "Rumbula" or "Rumbuli". It is sometimes called the Jeckeln Action after its commander Friedrich Jeckeln. The word "Aktion", which translates literally to action or operation in English, was used by the Nazis as a euphemism for murder. For Rumbula, the official euphemism was "shooting action" (Erschiessungsaktion). In the Einsatzgruppen trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, the event was not given a name but simply described as "the murder of 10,600 Jews" on 30 November 1941. ==Location==

At the time, Rumbula was a small railway station south of Riga, the capital and major city of Latvia, which was connected with Daugavpils, the second largest city in Latvia, by the rail line along the north side of the Daugava river. Located on a hill about from the station, the massacre site was a "rather open and accessible place". The view was blocked by vegetation, but the sound of gunfire would have been audible from the station grounds. The area lay between the rail line and the Riga-Daugavpils highway, with the rail line to the north of the highway. Rumbula was part of a forest and swamp area known in Latvian as Vārnu mežs, which means Crow Forest in English. The sounds of gunfire could be heard from the highway. The German occupation authorities carried out a number of other massacres on the north bank of the Daugava in the Rumbula vicinity. The soil was sandy and it was easy to dig graves. While the surrounding pine woods were sparse, there was a heavily forested area in the center which became the execution site. The rail line and highway made it easy to move the victims in from Riga (it had to be within walking distance of the Riga Ghetto on the southeast side of the city), as well as transport the shooters and their weapons. == Holocaust ==

His policy of concentrating the Jews of Latvia into the Riga ghetto made it easier for Friedrich Jeckeln and his unit to kill approximately 24,000 in two days at Rumbula near Riga. The Holocaust in Latvia began on June 22, 1941, when the German army invaded the Soviet Union, including the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia that had been recently occupied by Soviet forces following a period of independence after World War I. Murders of Jews, Communists, and others began almost immediately, perpetrated by German death squads known as Einsatzgruppen (which can be translated as "Special Task Groups" or "Special Assignment Groups"), and also the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) and the Security Service of the SS (Sicherheitsdienst or SD). The first killings were on the night of June 23, 1941, in the town of Grobin near Liepāja, where Sonderkommando 1a members murdered six Jews in the church cemetery. Involvement of locals The Nazis wished to make it appear as if the local populations of Latvians were responsible for killing the Jews. They attempted, without much success, to stir up pogroms against the Jews. They spread rumors that Jews were responsible for widespread arson and other crimes, and also reported this to their superiors. This policy of incitement to what the Nazis called "self-cleansing actions" was a failure acknowledged by Franz Walter Stahlecker, who, as chief of Einsatzgruppe A, was the Nazis' main killing expert in the Baltic states. Creation of the Riga Ghetto The SD's goal was to make Latvia judenrein, a Nazi neologism which can be translated as "Jew free." By October 15, 1941, the Nazis had murdered up to 30,000 and use them as slave laborers for Germany's war effort. This bureaucratic conflict slowed down the pace of the killings in September and October 1941. Lohse, as part of the "civil administration" was perceived by the SD as resisting their plans. On November 15, 1941, Lohse asked for directions from Rosenberg as to whether all Jews were to be murdered "regardless of economic considerations." By the end of October, Lohse had confined all the Jews of Riga, as well some of the surrounding area, into a ghetto within the city, the gates of which were about 10 kilometers from Rumbula. The Riga Ghetto was a creation of the Nazis themselves, and had not existed before the war. == Friedrich Jeckeln==

in Soviet custody after World War II. On January 27, 1942, he was awarded the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords (Kriegsverdienstkreuz or KVK) for his ruthless efficiency. Motive The Nazis wanted to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga to make room for Jews from Germany and Austria to be deported to the Riga ghetto. Similarly motivated mass murders of eastern Jews confined to ghettos were carried out at Kovno on October 28, 1941 (10,000 dead), and at Minsk, where 13,000 were shot on November 7 and an additional 7,000 on November 20. To carry out this plan, Himmler brought Friedrich Jeckeln into Latvia from Ukraine, where he had organized a number of mass murders, including Babi Yar (30,000 dead). Jeckeln's crew of about 50 killers and supporting personnel arrived in Riga on November 5, 1941. Jeckeln did not arrive with them, but went instead to Berlin where sometime between November 10 and November 12, 1941, he met with Himmler. Himmler told Jeckeln to kill the entire Riga ghetto and to instruct Lohse, should he object, that this was an order of Himmler's and also of Adolf Hitler's: "Tell Lohse it is my order, which is also the Führer's wish". Jeckeln then went to Riga and explained the situation to Lohse, who raised no further objection. By mid-November 1941, Jeckeln had set himself up in a building in the old section of Riga known as the Ritterhaus. Jeckeln's construction specialist, Ernst Hemicker, who later claimed he was shocked when he learned in advance of the number of people to be murdered, nevertheless made no objection at the time and proceeded to supervise the digging of six murder pits, sufficient to bury 25,000 people. In particular, Erwin Schulz, head of Einsatzkommando 5, refused to participate in Babi Yar, another Jeckeln atrocity, and at his own request was transferred back to his pre-war position in Berlin with no loss of professional standing. He called it "sardine packing" (Sardinenpackung). The Jeckeln method was noted, although not by name, in the judgment of the Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg Military Tribunal, as a means of avoiding the extra work associated with having to push the bodies into the grave. It was reported that even some of the experienced Einsatzgruppen killers claimed to have been horrified by its cruelty. Otto Ohlendorf, himself a prolific killer, objected to Jeckeln's techniques according to his testimony at his post-war trial for crimes against humanity. Jeckeln had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process, including Genickschußspezialisten"neck shot specialists". There were nine components to this assembly-line method as applied to the Riga ghetto. • The Security Police roused the people out of their houses in the ghetto; • The Jews were organized into columns of 1000 people and marched to the killing grounds; • The German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo) led the columns to Rumbula; • Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously; • The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables; • The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits; • To save the trouble of tossing dead bodies into the pits, the killers forced the living victims into the trench on top of other people who had already been shot; • Russian submachine guns (another source says semi-automatic pistols Arranging transport for infirm victims Jeckeln had at his direct disposal 10 to 12 automobiles and 6 to 8 motorcycles. This was enough to transport the killers themselves and certain official witnesses. Jeckeln needed more and heavier transport for the sick, disabled or other of his intended victims who could not make the march. Jeckeln also anticipated there would be a significant number of people murdered along the march route, and he would need about 25 trucks to pick up the bodies. Consequently, he ordered his men to scrounge through Riga to locate suitable vehicles. Final planning and instructions On or about Thursday, November 27, 1941, Jeckeln held a meeting of the leaders of the participating units at the Riga office of the Protective Police (Schutzpolizei), a branch of the German Order Police, (Ordnungspolizei) to coordinate their actions in the forthcoming massacre. This appears consistent with the substantial role that the Order Police played in the Holocaust, as stated by Professor Browning: Jeckeln convened a second planning session of senior commanders on the afternoon of Saturday, November 29, 1941, this time at the Ritterhaus. According to later versions given by those in attendance, Jeckeln gave a speech to these officers to the effect that it was their patriotic duty to exterminate the Jews of the Riga ghetto, just as much as if they were on the front lines of the battles then currently raging far to the east. Officers also later claimed that Jeckeln told them that failure to participate in the murders would be considered the equivalent of desertion, and that all HSSPF personnel who would not be participating in the action were required to attend the extermination site as official witnesses. No Latvian officials were present at the November 29 Ritterhaus meeting. At about 7:00 p.m. on November 29, a brief (about 15 minutes) third meeting was held, this time at the Protective Police headquarters. This was presided over by Karl Heise, the head of the protective police. He told his men they would have to report the next morning at 4:00 a.m. to carry out a "resettlement" of the people in the Riga ghetto. Although "resettlement" was a Nazi euphemism for mass murder, Heisse and a majority of men of the participating Protective Police knew the true nature of the action. Final instructions were also passed to the Latvian militia and police who would be rounding up people in the ghetto and acting as guards along the way. The Latvian police were told they would be moving the Jews to the Rumbula station for transport to a resettlement camp. The court further found: • That by the evening meeting on November 29, 1941, the intermediate commanders knew the full extent of the intended murders; • That the intermediate commanders also knew that the 20 kilogram luggage rule was a ruse to deceive the victims into a belief that they were truly being resettled; • That the men in the lower ranks did not know what was planned until they saw the shootings in the forest. Professor Ezergailis questioned whether the Latvian police might have had a better idea of what was actually going to happen, this being their native country, but he also noted contrary evidence including misleading instructions given to the Latvian police by the Germans, and the giving of instructions, at least to some Germans, to shoot any guard who might fail to execute a "disobedient" Jew during the course of the march. ==Advance knowledge by Wehrmacht==

According to his later testimony before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal at the High Command Trial, Walter Bruns, a Major General of Engineers, learned on November 28 that planned mass executions would soon take place in Riga. Bruns sent a report to his superiors, then urged a certain "administrative officer", named Walter Altemeyer to postpone the action until Bruns could receive a response. Altemeyer told Bruns that the operation was being carried out pursuant to a "Führer-order". Advance word of the planned murders reached the Wehrmacht intelligence office ("Abwehr") in Riga. This office, which was not connected with the massacre, had received a cable shortly before the executions began, from Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, which in summary instructed the Riga Abwehr that "it is unworthy of an intelligence officer to be party to, or even present at interrogations or maltreatments". By "interrogations and maltreatments", Canaris was referring to the planned massacre. ==Preparation for the massacre==

Able-bodied men separated from the others On about November 27, 1941 a four-block area of the Riga ghetto was cordoned off with barbed wire, and this area became known as the "small ghetto". In July and August, it was the men of Latvia who were shot first, while the women and children were allowed to live, at least for a time. The order for the men to separate themselves from their families was thus perceived as a prerequisite for the murder of the men, the arrangements between Rosenberg and Himmler having been made without their knowledge. By the morning of Saturday, November 29, the Nazis had finished segregating the able-bodied men into the small ghetto. Ghetto survivor Max Kaufmann described the scene somewhat differently, writing that on Thursday morning, November 27, a large poster was put up on Sadornika Street in the ghetto, which said, among other things, that on Saturday, November 29, 1941, all inmates of the ghetto were to form up in columns of 1,000 people each near the ghetto gate for evacuation from the ghetto. The people living closest to the gate would be the first to depart. Kaufmann doesn't describe a specific order separating the able-bodied men from the rest of the people. Instead he states that "the larger work crews were told they had the possibility of staying in the newly formed small camp and rejoining their families later. According to Kaufmann, while the columns of 1,000 were formed on the morning of the 29th, they were later dispersed, causing relief among the inhabitants, who believed that the entire evacuation had been cancelled. 300 women seamstresses were also selected and moved to the Central Prison from the ghetto. Professor Ezergailis states that while the men were at work, the Nazis culled the able-bodied men from those left in the ghetto, and once the work crews returned, the same process was employed again on the returning workers. The total, about 4,000 able-bodied men, were sent to the newly created small ghetto. and arrived in Riga on Saturday, November 29, 1941. Whether the Jews were to be worked and starved to death over time, or simply murdered outright had not yet been decided upon. For this reason, on Sunday, November 30, 1941, Himmler placed a telephone call to Reinhard Heydrich, Thereafter, on December 1, and, in a personal conference on December 4, 1941, Himmler issued strict instructions to Jeckeln that no mass murders of deported German Jews were to occur without his express orders: Jeckeln claimed at his post-war trial that he'd received orders from Himmler on November 10 or 11, that "all the Jews in the Ostland down to the last man must be exterminated." Jeckeln might well have believed that murdering the German Jews on the Riga transport was what Himmler wished, for just before the Rumbula massacre, mass murders of German Jews upon or shortly after arrival in the East had been carried out in Kaunas, Lithuania, on November 25 and 29, 1941, when the SiPo murdered 5,000 German and Austrian Jews who had arrived on transports on November 11, including some 1,000 Jews from Berlin. Professor Fleming suggests several reasons for Himmler's "no liquidation" order. On board the train were 40 to 45 people who were considered "cases of unjustified evacuation", meaning they were either elderly or had been awarded the Iron Cross for heroic service to Germany during the Great War. Another reason may have been that Himmler hesitated to carry out the execution of German Jews for fear of the effect that it might have on the attitude of the United States, which as of November 30, 1941, was not yet at war with Germany. The Jews were allowed to carry some luggage as a sham, to create the impression among the victims that they were simply being resettled. march route. German guards, when later tried for war crimes, claimed it was the Latvians who did most of the killing. In Latvia, however, there were stories about Latvian policemen refusing orders to shoot people. ==Arrival at Rumbula and murder==

The first column of people arrived at Rumbula at about 9:00 am on November 30. The people were ordered to disrobe and deposit their clothing and valuables in designated locations and collection boxes, shoes in one, overcoats in another, and so forth. Schulz-Du Bois stopped to investigate, and because security was weak, was able to observe the murders. A few months later he described what he saw to friends in Germany, who in 1980 reported what Schulz-Du Bois had told them: Official witnesses Jeckeln required high-ranking Nazis to witness the Rumbula murders. Jeckeln himself stood at the top of the pits personally directing the shooters. National Commissioner (Reichskommissar) for the Ostland Hinrich Lohse was there, at least for a while. Dr. Otto Heinrich Drechsler, the Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar) of Latvia may have been present. Roberts Osis, the chief of the Latvian collaborationist militia (Schutzmannschaft) was present for much of the time. Viktors Arajs, who was drunk, worked very close to the pits supervising the Latvian men of his commando, who were guarding and funnelling the victims into the pits. Later murders and body disposal in the ghetto Karl Heise returned from Rumbula to the Riga ghetto by about 1:00 p.m. There he discovered that about 20 Jews too sick to be moved had been taken not to the murder site but rather to the hospital. Heise ordered they be taken out of the hospital, placed on the street on straw mattresses and shot in the head. Killers of the patients in the street included members of the Schutzpolizei, Hesfer, Otto Tuchel, and Neuman, among others. There were still the hundreds of bodies left from the morning's forced evacuation. A squad of able-bodied Jews was delegated to pick them up and take them to the Jewish cemetery using sleds, wheelbarrows and horse carts. Not every one who had been shot down in the streets was dead; those still alive were finished off by the Arajs commando. Individual graves were not dug at the cemetery. Instead, using dynamite, the Germans blew out a large crater in the ground, into which the dead were dumped without ceremony. Aftermath at the pits on the first day By the end of the first day about 13,000 people had been shot but not all were dead. Kaufman reported that "the earth still heaved for a long time because of the many half-dead people." Wounded naked people were wandering about as late as 11:00 am the next day, seeking help but getting none. In the words of Professor Ezergailis: According to historian Bernard Press, himself a survivor of the Holocaust in Latvia: ==Reaction among the survivors==

The ghetto itself was a scene of mass murder after the departure of the columns on November 30, as Kaufmann described: The blood literally ran in the gutters. Frida Michelson, an eyewitness, recorded that the next day, December 1, there were still puddles of blood in the street, frozen by then. They reported these facts to the Jews of the work detachments, who asked them to be released early from work to see to their families. At 14:00 hours this request was granted, at least for a few of the men, and they returned to the ghetto. They found the streets scattered with things, which they were directed to collect and carry to the guardhouse. They also found a small bundle which turned out to be a living child, a baby aged about four weeks. A Latvian guard took the child away. Kaufmann believed the child's murder was a certainty. ==December 8 murders==

1860–1941, Jewish writer, historian and activist, of whom a legend arose At least two policemen who had played some role in the November 30 massacre refused to participate again on December 8. These were the German Zimmermann and the Latvian Vilnis. The march itself was fast-paced and brutal. Many people were trampled to death. Elle Madale claimed to be a Latvian. Matiss Lutrins, a mechanic, persuaded some Latvian truck drivers to allow him and his wife (whom the Germans later found and murdered) to hide under a truckload of clothing from the victims that was being hauled back into Riga. On December 8, 1941, too ill to be marched to the forest, he was murdered in the ghetto. A rumor, which later grew into a legend, stated that Dubnow said to the Jews present at the last moments of his life: "If you survive, never forget what is happening here, give evidence, write and rewrite, keep alive each word and each gesture, each cry and each tear!" What is certain is that the SS stole the historian's library and papers and transported them back to the Reich. ==December 9 massacre==

Some Jews who were not able-bodied working men were able to escape from the mass actions on November 30 and December 8 and hide in the new "small ghetto". On December 9, 1941, the Nazis began a third massacre, this time in the small ghetto. They searched through the ghetto while the men were out at work. Whoever they found in hiding was taken out to the Biķernieki forest, on the northeast side of Riga, in blue buses borrowed from the Riga municipal authorities, where they were murdered and buried in mass graves. About 500 people were murdered in this operation. As with the Rumbula murders, evacuations from the ghetto ceased at 12 noon. ==Effect of Rumbula on plans for the Holocaust==

German Jews replace Latvians in Riga ghetto In December 1941, the Nazis continued issuing directions to Jews in Germany that they were to report to be deported to the East. For most of these people, because of Himmler's change of plan (as shown in his "keine Liquiderung" telephone call) they would get a year or two of life in a ghetto before their turn came to be murdered. One of the first trains to arrive in Riga was called the "Bielefeld Transport." Years later, a German survivor, then a child, remembers being told "Latvians lived here", with no mention they were Jews. The head of the German civil administration in the Baltic area, Wilhelm Kube, who had no objection to killing Jews in general objected to German Jews, "who come from our own cultural circle", being casually murdered by German soldiers. ==Later actions at the site==

In 1943, apparently concerned about leaving evidence behind, Himmler ordered that the bodies at Rumbula be dug up and burned. This work was done by a detachment of Jewish slave laborers. Persons travelling on the railway could readily smell the burning corpses. In 2001, the President of the Republic of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who was a child during World War II, spoke at a 60-year anniversary memorial service about the destruction of the bodies: "We could smell the smoke coming from Rumbula, where corpses were being dug up and burnt to erase the evidence." , standing at left, at his war crimes trial in Riga in early 1946 ==Justice==

Some of the Rumbula murderers were brought to justice. Hinrich Lohse and Friedrich Jahnke were prosecuted in West German courts and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Viktors Arajs served four years in a British POW camp after the war, but avoided detection for years in West Germany. He was finally found and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1979, and died in solitary confinement in 1988. Herberts Cukurs escaped to South America, where he was assassinated by Mossad agents in 1965. Eduard Strauch was convicted in the Einsatzgruppen case and sentenced to death, but he died in prison before the sentence could be carried out. Friedrich Jeckeln was publicly hanged in Riga on February 3, 1946, following a trial before the Soviet authorities. ==Remembrance==

On 29 November 2002, a memorial, comprising memorial stones, sculpture and information panels, was unveiled in the forest at the site where the massacre took place. The center of the memorial is an open area in the form of the Star of David. A sculpture of a menorah stands in the center surrounded by stones bearing the names of Jews murdered at the site. Some of the paving stones bear the names of streets in the former Riga Ghetto. Concrete frames demarcate the mass graves situated in the memorial grounds. On the road leading into the forest, a stone marker next to a large metal sculpture states that thousands of people were driven to their deaths along this road and at the entrance to the memorial grounds, stone plaques are inscribed in four languagesLatvian, Hebrew, English and Germanwith information about the events at Rumbula and the history of memorial. The memorial was designed by architect Sergey Rizh. Financial contributions to build the memorial were made by individuals and organizations in Germany, Israel, Latvia and the USA. ==See also==