Riga Ghetto — Never to forget
The only way to prevent future atrocities is to promote tolerance and awareness of history. Not, we must observe, declaring entire peoples to be fanatical anti-Semites, hounding the innocent based on accusations of collective and universal guilt. As long as Holocaust activists paint the Legionnaire commemoration as confirming that Latvia is the epicenter of European Nazism before WWII, during WWII, and unleashed anew since regaining independence, the gesturing and shouting across barricades will continue.
We highly recommend visiting the Riga Ghetto Museum web site and their virtual walking tour, at www.rgm.lv.
Below, the Rīga Ghetto in 1942, located in "Latgales priekšpilsēta," the "Latgale suburb."1 Looking at distances today, the word "suburb" would hardly seem to apply. We forget by how much the world has shrunk in eighty-two years. Tragically, the ghetto area was out of sight, out of mind for the majority of Rīga dwellers.
Rīga Ghetto, 1942, at jewishvvirtuallibrary.org| 1 | For those doing historical research, until Latvian independence it was "Makavas priekšpilsēta," the "Moscow suburb." Afer being renamed for Latgale after independence, the area was again renamed, to "Maskavas rajons," "Moscow district" by the occupying Soviets. Today, "Maskavas forštate" aka "Maskavas priekšpilsēta" or in slang, "Maskachka", is a section within the larger Latgales priekšpilsēta. |