page_title: Museum of the Occupation of Latvia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Museum of the Occupation of Latvia / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Shack from Gulag - reconstruction in Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. The picture does not say, how many people were crammed into such a shack...
context_page_description: The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia is a museum and historic educational institution located in Riga, Latvia. It was established in 1993 to exhibit artifacts, archive documents, and educate the public about the 51-year period in the 20th century when Latvia was successively occupied by the USSR in 1940–1941, then by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944, and then again by the USSR in 1944–1991. Official programs for visits to Latvia of top level representatives of other countries normally include a visit to the Museum of the Occupation.
context_section_description: The museum was established in 1993 after Paulis Lazda, a History Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, proposed the idea to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia to create a museum covering the occupation period of Latvia, from 1940 to 1991. This led to the establishment of the Occupation Museum Foundation (OMF), now the Occupation Museum Association (OMB), in spring 1993. The OMF was made of 11 people who aimed to establish, administer and finance the museum.
  The first exhibition of the museum opened on 1 July 1993. The exhibition covered the period of the first Soviet occupation of Latvia from 1940 to 1941. The museum was expanded in the following years to cover the whole occupation period.
caption: Reconstruction of a Gulag barrack in the original building
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