page_title: Burning of the Riga synagogues
section_title: Destruction of the synagogues and cemeteries
hierarchical_section_title: Burning of the Riga synagogues / Destruction of the synagogues and cemeteries
caption_attribution_description: Latviešu: Rīgas Stabu ielā sinagoga Deutsch: Synagoge Säulenstraße Template:Yd
context_page_description: The burning of the Riga synagogues occurred in 1941, during the first days of the World War II Nazi German occupation of the city of Riga, the capital and largest city in the country of Latvia. Many Jews confined in the synagogues died in the fires, and many other anti-Semitic measures were launched at the same time, ultimately followed by the murder of the vast majority of the Jews of Latvia.
context_section_description: Jews were rounded up and forced into synagogues, which were then set on fire.   The Great Choral Synagogue, on Gogol Street, was burned on July 4, 1941, with 20 Jews locked in the basement.    Historian Press states that some of the victims were Lithuanian Jews who had taken refuge there.  Gertrude Schneider identifies the victims as mostly women and children. Frida Michelson, a Latvian Jew who had been working near Jelgava in a forced labor detail when the synagogues were burned, reported that on her return to Riga, she was told by a friend (who had heard it from someone else) that the halls and the backyard of the Choral Synagogue were filled with refugees from Lithuania. Perkonkrusts and "other Latvian hangers-on" surrounded the building, trapped the people inside, and set it on fire.  The burning of the synagogue was filmed by the Germans and later became part of a Wehrmacht newsreel, with the following narration: "The synagogue in Riga, which had been spared by the GPU commissars in their work of destruction, went up in flames a few hours later."  According to Bernard Press, Herberts Cukurs, a Latvia air force officer, and his gang of thugs, burned the synagogue on Stabu Street, but only after dragging Jews out of the neighboring houses and locking them inside:
  Eyewitnesses heard the people who were locked inside screaming for help and saw them breaking the synagogues windows from inside and trying, like living torches, to get outside.  Cukurs shot them with his revolver.
  The holy scrolls were dragged out of the synagogues and burned.  According to the Press, many Jews wearing prayer shawls and talith went into the fires to save the scrolls, and were all killed.  Ezergailis disputes this, stating that no one entered the flames trying to save the holy scrolls.
  Only the Peitav Synagogue in the center of the city was not burned, and this was because of its location adjacent to apartment buildings and a church.  The interior was however ransacked as had been all the other Jewish places of worship. The mob also attacked the Jewish cemeteries.
  Kaufmann also describes a number of incidents of Jews being locked into synagogues by Latvians which were then set on fire, including:
   * * * a vehicle full of armed Latvian volunteers drove to 9 Kalnu street in the Moscow suburb.  All of the building's Jewish tenants were forced to leave it immediately and taken to the old Jewish cemetery.  Here they were locked into the synagogue and burned alive in it.
  Ezergailis does not find it credible that Jews were locked in the Great Choral Synagogue before it was set on fire.  Ezergailis does acknowledge that there could have been 300 Lithuanian refugees in the synagogue before the fire was set.  He postulates however that they would have been killed before the synagogue was set on fire.
  Among the Jews killed in the synagogue massacres were the cantor Mintz and his whole family, the rabbi Kilov, and Sarah Rashin (or Rashina), a 21-year-old internationally famed violinist.  (Another source says that Sarah Rashina was killed at Rumbula on November 30, 1941.)
  By July 16, 1941, Jews were no longer allowed on the streetcars of Riga.  Armed Latvian policemen wearing red-white-red armbands arrested Jews on the streets.  Those arrested were taken to the police prefecture near the railroad station and to other prisons.
caption: This synagogue on Stabu Street was burned on July 4, 1941. Max Kaufmann, a witness to the fire, stated that 30 Jews were burned alive inside.[12]
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