Dünamünde Action The Dünamünde Action ( Aktion Dünamünde ) was an operation launched by the Nazi German occupying force in Biķernieki forest , near Riga , Latvia . Its objective was to execute Jews who had recently been deported to Latvia from Germany , Austria , Bohemia and Moravia . These murders are sometimes separated into the First Dünamünde Action , occurring on March 15 , 1942 , and the Second Dünamünde Action on March 26 , 1942 . About 1 , 900 people were killed in the first action and 1 , 840 in the second . The victims were lured to their deaths by a false promise that they would receive easier work at a ( non - existent ) resettlement facility near a former town in Latvia called Daugavgrīva ( Dünamünde ) . Rather than being transported to a new facility , they were trucked to woods north of Riga , shot , and buried in previously dug mass graves . The elderly , the sick and children predominated among the victims . Background . As of February 10 , 1942 , the approximate ghetto and concentration camp populations of German Jews in Riga and the vicinity were : Jungfernhof concentration camp , 2 , 500 ; the German ghetto : 11 , 000 ; Salaspils : 1 , 300 . Of the Latvian Jews , about 3 , 500 men and 300 women were in the Latvian ghetto . In December 1941 , Kurt Krause , whom the author Max Kauffman describes as the " man - eater " , became the German commandant of the Riga ghettos . Krause was a former Berlin police detective . His assistant was Max Gymnich , a Gestapo man from Cologne . Krause and Gymnich used dogs to help enforce their commands . A Latvian Jewish survivor called Joseph Berman , is recorded as stating the following about Gymnich : Altogether 20 , 057 Jews from the Reich were deported to Riga . By February 10 , 1942 , only 15 , 000 remained alive . Many had been simply murdered upon arrival ; how this had occurred was not known to the people arriving on later transport . According to German ghetto survivor Gertrude Schneider , the inhabitants of the ghetto did not realize how many German Jews had been killed following deportation . They remained under the impression that deportation and forced labor were the worst things that were going to happen : The Dünamünde actions . In March 1942 , the Nazi authorities in Riga decided the German ghetto was getting too crowded and organized a massacre which has come to be called the " Dünamünde Action " . ( The word " action " was a euphemism employed by the Germans to describe mass shootings and later this was picked up by the ghetto inmates themselves . ) The Nazis ordered each of the groups in the German ghetto to prepare a list of between 60 to 120 people for further " resettlement " , with the Berlin group required to name 600 . The Nazis informed the Judenrat that the people , who were mostly unable to work , being either elderly , infirm , or mothers with young children , would go to a supposed town called Dünamünde to work at fish processing . This was a ruse put together by Obersturmführer Gerhard Maywald . There was no longer a town called Dünamünde , there had not been one for several decades . The ruse succeeded , many people were anxious to go . Despite the Germans only calling for 1 , 500 to be selected , Sunday March 15 , 1941 , saw about 1 , 900 Jews assembled in the streets of the ghetto , including , as with the Rumbula massacre , many parents with small children . There was to be no resettlement of any kind . Instead the people were taken by motor transport to Biķernieki forest on the north side of Riga , where they were shot and buried in common unmarked graves . On March 26 , 1941 , the same ruse was perpetrated at Jungfernhof concentration camp against the older German Jews . The camp commander , Rudolf Seck , refused young people of working age permission to go with their parents . A total of 1 , 840 people were " resettled " from Jungfernhof that day , again to Biķernieki forest where they were also shot like the 1 , 900 German Jews from the ghetto 11 days earlier . The method employed had been designed by the infamous mass murderer Friedrich Jeckeln and was called " sardine packing " ( " Sardinenpackung " ) . The historians Richard L . Rubenstein and John K . Roth describe Jeckeln ' s system : The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor , or more often , on the bodies of the people who had just been shot . The people were not sprayed with bullets . Rather , to save ammunition , each person was shot just once , in the back of the head . Anyone not killed outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up . After the war , when a number of the Einsatzgruppen commanders were placed on trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen case , the tribunal found that " one defendant did not exclude the possibility that an executee could only seem to be dead because of shock or temporary unconsciousness . In such cases it was inevitable he would be buried alive . " Aftermath . What had happened to the Jews from the ghetto became known when on March 16 and 17 , several vans returned to the ghetto carrying the personal property of the people who had been murdered . The clothing bore mudstains and signs of having been hastily removed . For example , stockings were still attached to garters . A detail was assigned to sort and clean these items , many of the items were recognized by name tags and other indicia of ownership .