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One of the three
countries on, or near, the Baltic Sea. Courland
(Courland)
is a part of today's Latvia. Jews came relatively
late to what is now Latvia; in the early fourteenth century they
had been banned from settling in the area by an official decree of
the ruling Master of the German Order. Until 1725, Jews were
not allowed to bury their dead in Latvia, and had to bury
them in Poland. Because of this restriction, Riga
had just a few hundred Jewish residents. Most of
the Jews lived in an area called "Maskavas", less
that a mile southeast of Old Town. Little remains after WW
II of the area. By 1897, there were more than 20,000 Jews or
8% of Riga's population. There were, at one time, 14 synagogues in the city. In 1940, the Russians arrested about 5,000 prominent Jews and deported them to Siberia along with thousands of other Jews. Others were rounded up, including 77,000 from around Latvia and 30,000 to 40,000 more who were transported from other countries and were then murdered - some in the Rumbula and Bikernicku forests, located just a few miles from Riga's center. Only 150 Jews survived. Jews also died at the Kaiserwald prison camp in Mezaparks - a suburb and at the Salaspils concentration camp located about 12 miles southeast of Riga. The chief Rabbi of Riga and Latvia is Nathan Barkan and there is a substantial Jewish community including several Jewish schools in Riga, and a Jewish hospital. There is an
article "The Jews of Courland"
authored by Martha Lev-Zion - offers the history and the research,
and is in English. Available on the GenAmi web site Ninety-five percent of Latvia's 70,000 Jews were murdered, many by the thousands of Latvian Nazi collaborators; so too were 14,000 of the 20,000 German, Austrian and Czech Jews deported to Latvia during the first years of WW II. There is a Courland
Research Group associated with the Latvia SIG and JewishGen. Welcome to
Latvia - web site is in Latvian
Jews In Latvia in the Early Years
Jews of Latvia
Latvia Genealogy Links
Virtual Tour of Latvia
"A Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Latvia and Estonia" - authored by Arlene Beare and - published in March, 2001by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain - ISBN: 0-9537669-2-6. This is an excellent guide for researching in Latvia and Estonia. Arlene is the President of the Latvia SIG This guide points you in the right direction for researching your roots in both of these countries. Modern and old names of Shtetlach are listed. There are also references to cemeteries, museums and libraries. Resources, addresses of archives, details and copies of documents. Holocaust information, internet advice and travel information will all assist in your research. The guide is price at £4.50 (UK) - £6.00/US $10 (Overseas includes postage) Payment with orders and is available from The JGSGB Membership Secretary, PO Box 27061, London, N2 OGT "Accessible
Vital Records For Jews, Germans, Ukrainians and Poles in Galicia,
Volhynia, Lithuania and Latvia- A Second Zabuzanski
Collection" available at the downtown branch of the Vancouver
Public Library. Other Libraries may also have a copy.
Brian Lenius is Chairperson and Editor of East European
Genealogist "A
Town Named Libau" - a
translation of the 36 page booklet in English, German
and Hebrew
"Austrian, Czech and German Jews in Riga" - http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/translations.html "The Ghetto of Riga" - a book authored by Alfred Winter, a survivor of the Riga Ghetto and a witness at War Crimes trials can be contacted at RigaGhetto@aol.com "The Latvians: A Short History" - authored by Andrejs Plakans and published by Hoover Institution Press - gives a good overview of Latvian history from medieval times to the mid-1990s. "Where
Once They Walked" authored by Barbara Siegel. She
shares her experiences in traveling to Latvia. There
are four parts to her story and they can be found in the Archives
of the JewishGen web site starting on Sunday, Oct. 11, 1998 General
Latvia has been slow to preserve and mark sites related to the Holocaust. I would suggest to the researcher of the following sites, to also check the other two Baltic Country sites, including Estonia and Lithuania, as well as Poland and Belarus and Russia as there may very well be some cross references as the country borders changed many times between wars. Listings of the Jewish files held at the Latvian State Historical Archives http://www.jewishgen.org/latvia An
excellent site to find information about most European countries
is at http://searcheurope.com Global
Gazetteer is a great web site. It
is a directory of 2,880,532 of the world's cities and towns,
sorted by country and linked to a map for each town. A tab
separated list is available for each country In Your
Pocket Guide - a
wonderful, detailed commercial travel site that offers much
information about the history and current traveling conditions in
the country, along with city map information All of the
Pinkasim translations are indexed at: All Latvia
Database - this is a multiple database search facility which
incorporates all of the databases listed below.
Archives
- State Archives - in Riga Files
housed in the Archives of the association of Latvian and Estonian
Jews at Kibbutz Shefayim in Israel compiled by Martha
Levinson Lev-Zion "For
years of coverage beyond what is covered by the Latvia State
Historical
Archives, you can try the Archives of the Registry."
"Holdings are mostly
20th Century, and vary according to locale." "under the heading "Vital Records from 1906". "Despite the statement that "To date, we do not have any experience with Archives of Registry Offices...", I have successfully obtained many vital records there, on three separate occasions." "You will receive a certified abstract in Latvian, and will need to get it translated (although it is possible to figure out a rough translation yourself)." From a posting on JewishGen by Marion Werle werle@linkline.com on 6/19/04 Austrian,
Czech, and German Jews in Riga: Data on 876 forced Jewish
laborers in Riga, Latvia. Bikernicku
- this is a woods near Riga where the Jews who were shot
and buried here in mass graves in 1941-2. There is a
memorial to these victims. These mass graves includes others
such as Jews from Riga and Russian Prisoners of War.
Not all mass grave locations are known and there is no list of
names of the victims in each mass grave. There are lists
of those who were sent from these German cities to
Riga and a copy of these lists are encased in the monument.
Web site is in German Byelorussians
- there are approximately 120,000 Byelorussians in Latvia as
of1993, but about 97,000 as of the year 2000. Source BelaPAN,
a Byelorussian newspaper published in Latvia, Issue no. 17;
Thursday, March 5, 1998. More information at The Center for
Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia - Your help
is needed.
The Latvia Holocaust Jewish Names Project was formally
launched in July
2001 as a Research Project of the Center for Judaic Studies,
University of
Latvia, in order to create a computerized record of the Jews of
Latvia who
perished in the Holocaust or in Holocaust related events and in so
doing to
ensure that their memory is preserved. Consolidated
Jewish Surname Index, which includes the Jewish Records
Indexing - Poland; All-Lithuania Database; All-Belarus
Database; All-Latvia Database and JewishGen Family
Finder is available at Courland
& Latvia SIG Newsgroups - Riga page Riga Jewish Community Europages -
business 2 business company directory and business in Europe,
yellow pages access, international and European business directory
(professional services, addresses and business classifieds JewishGen ShtetlSeeker - locate your town (shtetl) - http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlseeker/loctown.htm Jewish
Families of Dvinsk Database - Jews in
Latvia Jews In
Liepaja/Latvia, 1941 - 45 - a database of Victims and
Survivors Languages - around 1880, Lettish and Russian would probably have been the most commonly spoken languages in Latvia. Jews, of course, also spoke Yiddish, and it was the eastern variety - as distinct from the Yiddish of Alsace. In Courland, the area west of Riga, Jews commonly spoke German, as distinct from Yiddish. From a posting on JewishGen of 3/25/2002 by Charles Pottins charlespottins@aol.com Latvia
- Crimes against Humanity - this site appears to have a lot of
links to many subjects dealing with the WW II time period http://www.jewishgen.org/Shtetlinks/latvia.html Latvia
SIG New additions to the SIG's web site include: 'Shtetl Memories' and it is a memoir by Rita Bogdanova (Archivist at the Latvian State Historical Archives. Another addition
is 'Book Reviews' that includes reviews of Max Michelson's
book 'City of Life, City of Death, Memories of Riga'
This memoir by a Holocaust survivor, recalls family life in
pre-war Riga; describer life in the Riga Ghetto; the
liquidation of the ghetto and the destruction of Riga
Jewish community; and his experiences during the war years in
several concentration camps in Riga and German. An
article about the book may be found at the Jerusalem Post web
site - doing a search using their search box for the book name or
'Articles by Schelly Talalay Dardashti Apr. 24, 2003 or City
Lights column Schelly Dardashti e-mail address: schelly@allrelative.net Latvian Embassy in London - fax number is 0171 312 0042 Latvian Jewish
Genealogy: List of Towns in Latvia - with population figures
The author
of the Website ROOTS=SAKNES is Bruno Martuzāns
Maps
covering the Latvia Region - "The Comprehensive Atlas and
Geography of the World" published 1882 by Blackie and Sons,
Edinburgh, Scotland - The Baltics - East Russian Empire 1882
Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG Maps of Russia and the FSU (Former Soviet Union) Republics - be prepared to stay online for quite some time, if you want to see one of the largest collections of different types of maps.
This site is fabulous and offers a huge variety of maps that
include such titles as Bukovina Maps; Ukraine Maps and Distances;
Ex-USSR map; Maps of Europe in different eras; Russian Far East
Maps; Belarus Maps; Ukraine Maps; Kazakhstan Maps: Georgia
Maps; Tajikistan Maps; Crimea Maps; Uzbekistan Maps; Azerbaijan
Maps; Kyrgyzstan Maps; Moldova Maps; Turkmenistan Maps; Armenia
Maps; Caucuses Region Maps; Baltic States Maps including
Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; and more at Newspapers
- Hamelitz searchable database You may have to do a cut and paste since the URL is so long and then type in Hamelitz
Rumbula
- 28,000 Latvian and Lithuanian Jews were murdered by the Nazis in
this forest. There is a memorial to 'victims of the
fascists' that is barely noticeable behind a used car market on
the Moscow-Riga highway
Search Engines
for Latvia Slavophilia - a comprehensive guide to Internet resources on
Russia and Central/Eastern Europe ShtetlSeeker
- this site gives variant spellings of towns and villages, as well
as map co-ordinates Translating Services - Click Here Translation
Service - a commercial site offering many language translating
programs Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department. They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English. A nominal fee is usually charged.
Yulik Guvitch offers his services as a guide. He has helped guide some well known celebrities touring Belarus and Lithuania. Yulik speaks fluent Hebrew, Yiddish and English. Though I have not met Yulik, or used his services, I have been in correspondence with him yulik@delfi.lt University
of Latvia, Centre for Judaic Studies, University of
Latvia -
LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE - Center of
Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia Cities Alschwangen Bausk -
Contact Constance Whippman. Regional Special Interest Groups
- Courland SIG - Latvia SIG Cesis (Wenden)
- The German domination of some areas of Latvia is well
known as it was a major outpost of the German-dominated Hanseatic
League that dates back to the 1300s. Over the years it has
been a crossroads and attracted different cultures and their
various languages. For current information: Dagda - Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.jewishgen.org/latvia Daugavpils
(Dvinsk, Denenburg, Russia) - A photo of this village can be found
at Boris Feldblyum's Collection at Jewish
Families of Dvinsk Database - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/4100/ Dvinsk -
(Dauagavpils) - the unofficial Dvinsk web site contains some
excellent information and includes photos There is a transcription of the Rezhitsan 1897 census info on the JewishGen database, along with other surrounding towns i.e. Dvinsk (Dauagavpils) and Ludza. Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.jewishgen.org/latvia Dinaburg
- A photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's
Collection Gostini
- Contact Howard V. Epstein, Ph.D. - Regional Special Interest
Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG
Jekabpils - location: 82 km NW of Daugavpils - see also Krustpils ShtetLinks page which is combined with Jekabpils, there is a link to a map and a list of Jekabpils and Krustpils residents and their occupations. The 2 Shtetlach were on east and west banks of the Daugava river http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/jekabpils/jekabpils.htm An excellent resource whose webmaster is Arlene Beare who is President of Latvia SIG. arl@dircon.co.uk www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/jekabpils/jekabpils.htm
Jewish Cemetery List of Jekabpils (incomplete)
Latvia Genealogy Links http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/jekabpils/Jekabpils.htm Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/ Korsovka
- located in Letgale (eastern Latvia) http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/gordin_stories_docs.html Kreslavka
- A photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's
Collection http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/gordin_stories_docs.html Krustspils - see also Jekabpils ShtetLinks page which is combined with Krustspils where there is a link to a map and a list of Jekabpils and Krustspils residents and their occupations. Both Shtetlach were on the east and west banks of the Daugava river and both should be checked for names of family http://www.Shtetlinks.Jewishgen.org/Jekabpils/ Nearly 1,500 names for Krustspils, covering the years 1896/1897 have been added to the All Latvia Database. Addresses are given as well as occupations. A Passport Registration database for this town has also been added. Liepaja (Libau, Libava, Lijepaja) - located in Courland province which was part of East Prussia and a German province before it became part of Poland and then later part of the Russian Empire. German was the official language of the area until some time in the nineteenth century. "A
Town Called Libau" - The
Jewish Community of Libau (Liepaja) - Jews In
LIEPAJA/LATVIA, 1941-45 -a
Database of victims and survivors The record
book of the Liepaja Jewish Cemetery 1909-1941, with 3560
names, is now available on the Web at Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.jewishgen.org/latvia Ludza (Lutzin)
Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG
There is a transcription of the Rezhitsan 1897 census info on the JewishGen database, along with other surrounding towns i.e. Dvinsk (Daugavpils) and Ludza. Marienhausen (now Vilaka) - 161km NNE of Daugavpils (was Dvinsk). Mitau (Jelgava)-
"A Jewish Life Under the Tsars" The autobiography of
Chaim Asonson, 1825-1888" - authored by Ira Leibowitz -
gives some insight into life in that period in Serednik,
Russia (now Seredzius, Lithuania) as well as in Shadova (Seduva),
Kurovian (Kurtuvenai) Mitau (Jelgava,
Latvia) and Telz (Telsiai) http://www.edwardvictor.com/Jelgava_Mitau.htm A photo of this
village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's Collection at Mitava
- A photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's
Collection at Ogre -
located about 21 miles from Riga
Rezekne - A
photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's Collection This town has also has records added to the Passport Registration database of the All Latvia database. Rezhitsa -
A photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's
Collection There is a transcription of the Rezhitsan 1897 census info on the JewishGen database, along with other surrounding towns i.e. Dvinsk (Daugavpils) and Ludza. Riga - known before WW II as "the Paris of the Baltics". The city is located on the Daugava river about 10 miles inland from the Baltic Sea in northeastern Europe. It is the largest city in Latvia with a population of about 850,000. In an area
just east of this city known as Bikernieku forest now
contains a $242,000 memorial to commemorate the killing of some
30,000 Jews from across Europe in 1941 and 1942. Victims'
cities of origin are engraved on miniature obelisks that fill a
hollowed-out section of the forest floor, symbolizing the pits
where Jews were forced to lie on the bodies of previous victims
before being shot. A capsule inside the memorial also
contains the names of Latvian Jews deported to their deaths
1900 Riga Passport database of people connected to Vilna http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/vilna/vilna.htm Big Choral
Synagogue Center for Judaic
Studies Jewish Community
Center Museum of
Occupation of Latvia The
old Jewish cemetery (on Liksnas Street) was
destroyed and is now a park with a memorial plaque. There is
a large, new cemetery. There are no records of any lists of
those buried at the State historical Archives, according to Arlene
Beare, President Latvia SIG Peitav
Shul - the only surviving synagogue of 14 before WW II There is an
article in the October 2003 issue Hadassah Magazine, entitled "Riga"
and authored by Dan Fellner. Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/ Subate (Shubitz) - a wooden synagogue was located in this community http://www.woodensynagogues.com Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/ Talsi (Talsen) -
The name
and address of the Talsi Registrar is
Valdemarpils (Shasmaken)
- Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG -
Latvia SIG http://www.geocities.com/bgephartnet/valdemarpils/history.html Some records are
not held in the Latvian State Historical Archives but
are held in smaller regional Archives. Rita Bogdanova at the
Latvian State Historical Archives is the contact and she
has confirmed after calling the Talsi Archives that there
are Birth Marriage and Death records for the years 1881-1913
for Valdemarpils in the Talsi Regional Archives. Registry Office Varaklani (Varklian)
- Regional Special Interest Groups - Courland SIG - Latvia SIG
http://www.tangodiva.com/index.php?page=features&j=1&cat=2&story_id=343
Yelgava -
A photo of this village can be found at Boris Feldblyum's
Collection at http://www.gorod.lv/news/35050/jews_in_latvia Note: Please let me know if there is a favorite link of yours that is not included in my site and I will be happy to add it to Jewish Web Index
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