Daugavpils Ghetto Following the occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941 , the Daugavpils Ghetto ( ) was established in an old fortress near Daugavpils . Daugavpils is the second largest city in Latvia and the principal city of the Latgalia region . Daugavpils was located in southeastern Latvia on the Daugava River . The city was militarily important as a major road and railway junction . Before World War II , Daugavpils was the center of a thriving Jewish community in the Latgale region and one of the most important centers of Jewish culture in eastern Europe . Over the course of the German occupation of Latvia , the vast majority of the Jews of Latgale were killed as a result of the Nazi extermination policy . Nomenclature . The city of Daugavpils is also known by the Russian name of Dvinsk and the German name of Dünaburg . Many of the killings associated with the ghetto occurred in the nearby Pagulanka forest , which is also seen spelled as Polulanka and Pogulianski . Although known as a " ghetto " , this old fortress was converted into a prison to hold Jews on a temporary basis before they were killed in the Pagulanka forest . Similar places in Latvia were called " concentration camps " . The Holocaust begins in Daugavpils . At that time , about 12 , 000 Jews lived in Daugavpils . In front of the German army , a huge column of refugees , including not only Jews from Lithuania , but Red Army soldiers separated from their units , began to move northeast on the highway from Kaunas ( also known as Kovno ) to Daugavpils , where the refugees expected to find safety or perhaps board a train for the east . Some Jewish refugees managed to reach the Soviet border , but they were prevented from crossing by NKVD guards . Eventually some were allowed to cross , but it was too late for most . Following several days of aerial bombardment , the German army captured Daugavpils on June 26 , 1941 , but there was still fighting in the near vicinity for several days . A fire burned in the city , which the Nazis later chose to blame on the Jews . According to EK 1b ' s official report : On June 29 , 1941 , at the order of Robert Blūzmanis , who had been appointed by the Germans as the police chief of the Latvian police in Daugavpils , large signs were posted around the city announcing in German , Russian and Latvian that all Jewish males below the age of 60 were to report that morning to the main marketplace , failure to do so would be met with " the maximum penalty . " Some of them were put to work burying the bodies of civilians and Red Army soldiers killed in the fighting , and later , dead horses . Many others were forced to dig their own graves and simply murdered outright . Early killings . Mass killings of Jews in Latvia were part of an overall plan developed at the highest level of the German government . Aspects of the plan as it was applied to Latvia had been applied in other countries , such as burning of synagogues ( Germany ) and ghettoization ( Poland ) . Latvia presented a new development in the Holocaust , which was the implementation of mass killings immediately upon the occupation of a country . The " Sicherheitsdienst " ( SD ) attempted to stir up local anti - Jewish feeling by forcing Jews to dig up mass graves of Latvians who had been murdered by the NKVD in the Soviet occupation that had begun in June 1940 . This was part of an overall SD plan to associate the Jews with Communism and Russians , both unpopular in Latvia . Latvian guards at early executions would ask the Jews waiting to be executed if they felt like singing " Katyusha " . ( " Katyusha " was a popular Russian patriotic song of World War II . ) On June 28 , 1941 , two days after the fall of Daugavpils , the Nazis rounded up Jews in a synagogue , and then took them out and shot them . Other Jews were randomly murdered simply walking down the street . On Sunday June 29 , 1941 , the German army began rounding up Jewish men in Daugavpils to subject them to terror , humiliation and imprisonment under brutal and overcrowded conditions . At gun point the Germans made them shout " Heil Hitler " , and sing Deutschland über alles . Survivors reported : The Germans accused them of setting fire to Daugavpils . According to Stahlecker ' s official report : Jews in general and Lithuanian refugees in particular were accused of being communists . On July 8 , 1941 , a newspaper in Daugavpils ( " Daugavpils Latviešu Avīze " ) , published an editorial consistent with the German efforts to blame the Jews for communist atrocities : As time went on , increased numbers of Latvian auxiliary police guarded the prison where the Jewish men were held . By July 8 , the work had become so hard that the Jews were literally being worked to death . One assignment included rolling huge blocks of stone to the top of a hill , another including carrying heavy timbers several kilometers . German guards struck prisoners with whips at will . Later , the expression arose among the widows of the men who were rounded up and killed on June 29 about their husbands was " ' he was taken way to prison that First Sunday . ' " Railroad Park massacre . By July 7 , 1941 , the Latvia police had arrested about 1 , 250 people , including 1 , 125 Jews , and were holding them in the main prison in Daugavpils . Erich Ehrlinger , the commander of " Einsatzkommando Ib " , was tried in a West German court in the 1960s . The court found that four early massacres had occurred in Daugavpils , including two in a place matching the description of ' Railroad Park ' , also called the Railwayman ' s Garden ( Latvian : Dzelzceļniecki dārzs ) , one at the army training grounds near Mežciems , and another near a cemetery about a half hour ' s walking distance to the north of the city . Professor Ezergailis believed these may not have been properly described to the court . Iwens , a survivor of the Railroad Park massacre , gives one of the few descriptions of it . On July 8 , 1941 , the Germans forced a detail of Jews to dig ditches in the Railroad Park , The next day , July 9 , the Germans began shooting Jews and pushing the bodies into the ditches . The sound of gunshots , occurring at regular intervals , could be heard in the city . Among the murdered was one man who tried to explain to a guard that he was a decorated veteran of the German army from the First World War . While the guards in this operation were Latvian , the supervisors were entirely German . One German officer hummed the Beer Barrel Polka in between shooting people in the back of the head . The Germans filled - in all the trenches dug on July 8 with the bodies of the persons murdered on July 9 , but there were still a lot of people left alive whom they had intended to kill . At the end of the killings on July 8 , the survivors were put to work digging new graves and tamping down the earth over the bodies in the previous trenches . The next day , July 10 , the killings resumed . Survivor Iwens reported after the war what he had learned from another survivor , Haim Kuritzky , about what occurred at the pits : Kuritsky was saved when the Germans turned out to have miscalculated the number of bodies they could place in the pits : Anyone not working fast enough to cover the bodies was ordered to lie down on them and was shot by the German officer , who screamed at them " faster , faster " , and raved hysterically against the Jews . The number killed is unclear . Iwens , who while present , was trying to survive , said " thousands " were killed . The Germans reported killing 1 , 150 Jews by July 11 . The Germans later separated from those who identified themselves as craftsmen , such as carpenters , from the professionals . Some of the craftsmen were kept alive for a while , but the professionals were killed immediately . After the Railroad Park massacre , few Germans were seen in the area of the prison , which was run for the most part by the Latvian auxiliary police . Measures against Jews . Blūzmanis , the Latvian police chief in Daugavpils , carried out the SD ' s wishes for certain Jewish restrictions . It was Blūzmanis , acting for the SD , who ordered that all Jews in Daugavpils over four years of age wear six - pointed yellow stars on the front and back of their clothing . According to Stahlecker , chief of " Einsatzgruppe A " : Construction of the ghetto . Construction of the ghetto began on July 18 , 1941 , as confirmed by Stahlecker himself : " Apart from organizing and carrying out measures of execution , the creation of Ghettos was begun in the larger towns at once during the first days of operations . " . Jewish forced labor was used to build the ghetto , which was not an actual housing district , but rather a decrepit fortress on the west side of the Daugava river , a short distance just to the northwest of the suburb of Griva , across from the main city of Daugavpils . : " In July , as the initial wave of shootings subsided , the local Germans and their Latvian counterparts rounded up some 14 , 000 Jews from Daugavpils and the outlying areas of Latgale and crammed them into the old Daugavpils fort , ' the Citadel ' . " Forced relocation to the ghetto . On July 25 , 1941 , the Germans issued an order that all Jews were to relocate to the ghetto by the next day . In addition to all the Jews of Daugavpils , those assembled on July 26 , were to be marched into the fortress , including Jews from Lithuania and from the area surrounding Daugavpils . Frankel - Zaltzman described the scene : Some had been forced to walk up to 50 kilometers . The Latvian guards enforced their commands by beating the workers with clubs that were four or five feet long . Among other things , Jews were beaten if they smiled upon recognizing another Jewish prisoner . Iwens , an eyewitness , reported that " many women had to cope with their children and aged parents all by themselves , for their men had been killed in the prison massacre . " Perpetrators . " Einsatzgruppe A " was assigned by Reinhard Heydrich to kill the Jews of the Baltic states , including Latvia . Franz Walter Stahlecker was in command of " Einsatzgruppen A " . It operated in smaller squads known as " Einsatzkommandos " . Latgale and Daugavpils were assigned to " Einsatzkommando 1b " , who , under Erich Ehrlinger , had killed about 1 , 150 people , mostly Jews , by July 11 , 1941 . Ehrlinger ' s successor as of about July 11 , was Joachim Hamann , who killed 9 , 012 Jews in Daugavpils , including many brought in from small towns in southern Latgale before he was reassigned on August 22 . The chief of the local auxiliary police , Robert Blūzmanis , was in charge of the local Latvian auxiliary police . His role in the killings was to confine the Jews to the Grīva fortress ghetto and move them out to the killing places . Latvian self - defence men and Arājs murderers were also involved . It appears that Latvian police from the Daugavpils municipality were also involved . One of the precinct chiefs , Arvīds Sarkanis , wrote explicitly of " the liquidation of the Jews " , providing the most detailed account of the participation of the Latvian police . Zaube , the German commandant of the Daugavpils ghetto , stood out for his extreme cruelty . He executed people who infringed his many rules , especially those who had smuggled in food , on the inner square of the ghetto in front of all inmates to frighten and to intimidate them . It was in Daugavpils that the liquidation of ghetto inmates started . From November 8 to 10 1941 , 3 , 000 people were killed in Mežciems . The operation was headed by " Obersturmbannführer " ( Lieutenant - Colonel ) Günter Tabbert , who was then 25 . Participation by local Latvians in the Daugavpils killings and ghettoization was initially minimal ; but after two weeks of the German occupation , it became extensive . A Latvian SD unit was set up in Daugavpils , as well as a unit of auxiliary police . Along with the SD , these organizations persecuted , confined and eventually killed the Jews of the Daugavpils ghetto , but the precise extent of their involvement is unclear , because for the major killings , the Arājs commando would be brought in from Riga . July and August killings . Ruse employed . In the parlance of the perpetrators and the victims , the word German word " aktion " ( literally , action ) came to mean " mass shooting . " ' Actions ' went on continuously in the Daugavpils area from late July when the ghetto was formed , until near the end of August . On August 1 , 1941 , Jewish ghetto police announced that a new camp had been prepared not far from the ghetto , and directed that Jews not residents of Daugavpils were to gather their belongings and relocate there . According to Frankel - Zaltzman : Other sources state that it was the old and sick who were called upon to report in the first action ; the date was July 27 , 1941 . Thousands of people were crammed into the small old fortress , with only two water taps , almost no sanitary facilities , and no food . Many people were naturally anxious to leave . A column of 2 , 000 people was quickly formed up , and marched out under the guard of Latvian auxiliary police . A few days later , possibly on August 6 , a similar offer was extended to all parents with small children , with similar results . Murder in the forest . Instead of going to a new camp , these columns were marched to a set of prepared graves at a former Latvian army training ground in the Pogulianka woods , near the resort of Mežciems , where Germans and Latvia auxiliaries shot the people and pushed their bodies into previously excavated pits . It was reported however that babies were not shot , but simply thrown into a pit and buried alive . By July 28 , 1941 , old and sick people had also been taken out of the ghetto in a separate incident . They were also murdered . The earthen cover heaped on the graves was quite thin , and two boys only slightly wounded and on the top of the heaped bodies dug themselves out and escaped . Use of the forested area to conceal the murders was typical of mass shootings in Latvia ; the murders in the Railroad Park were an exception . The executioners were often quite drunk . During the first two weeks in August , 1941 , the SD , carried out additional " selections " at the ghetto , choosing who would live and who would die . There were also major actions on August 18 and 19 . Mothers , children , the aged and the sick were generally picked to die . In particular there was a massacre of 400 children from an orphanage . The only security appeared to be being selected for work by the Germans , which required a document known as a " Schein " to prove that a person was working for a German military unit . While a " Schein " was not a guarantee against execution , lack of one was almost certain to lead to death . As units moved to the front , it became more difficult to procure a " Schein . " Number of victims . As a result of various " Aktions " in August , the ghetto population had been reduced to about 6 , 000 to 7 , 000 people . According to Nazi Karl Jäger , a component of " Einsatzkommando 3 " had killed 9 , 012 Jews in Daugavpils between July 13 and August 21 , 1941 . Another Nazi report states that 9 , 256 Jews were executed in Daugavpils up to October 15 , 1941 . There was a halt in the actions for 10 weeks after August 22 , 1941 , when Hamann was reassigned and " Obersturmbannführer " Günter Hugo Friedrich Tauber took over . He was then 25 years old . Life in the ghetto . Jewish administration . The ghetto was not a ghetto in the sense of a city district mandated or set aside by custom for Jews . It was an improvised prison , to hold the Jews until they could be done away with . The Jews formed their own " committee " ( " komitet " , sometimes translated " council " ) of about 12 inmates , mostly professional and well - known people , to run the internal affairs of the ghetto , which at first had more than 14 , 000 people . Misha Movshenzon ( also spelled Mowshenson ) , an engineer , was the leader of the committee . ( Another source says Movshenzon was on the committee but gives Mosche Galpern as the chairman . ) Movshenzon ' s father had been in charge of the city of Daugavpils in 1918 , when the Germans occupied the city during World War I . Jews from other towns and villages of Latgalia and as far away as Vidzeme province were forced into the ghetto . Men and women were separated in the ghetto . Some income from the labor of the Jews was allocated to the Jewish Council . Treatment by the Germans . Skilled workmen were housed separately and received better treatment , including better rations . Survivors record that cruelty was not universal . Iwens reported a number of instances of kind treatment from , among others , a German airman , who was shocked by the suffering of the children in the ghetto . His brother ( later among the murdered ) , similarly was well - treated by a German unit where he worked in the kitchen . On another occasion , two German soldiers , aware that the SD was selecting for execution Jews who had no work , pretended they were needed for work with their unit , thus saving , at least for a while , a group of about 30 people . Iwens described the situation from his point of view as a Jew who had been allowed to live as a skilled worker : Another survivor , Frankel - Zaltzman , described how the last survivors of the ghetto learned from a German soldier that they would not be massacred , as they had feared , on June 26 , 1942 , which was the one - year anniversary of the fall of Daugavpils : No matter what , the relationship between Jews and Germans remained strange at best : " Regardless of how friendly a German became with a Jew , awareness that one had absolute power over the other made such an association seem unnatural . " Individual executions . The German authorities enforced discipline in the Daugavpils ghetto by hanging people who were perceived as violating their many rules : Sealing of the ghetto . A few days after the November massacre , the ghetto was closed , or in the bureaucratic term , " quarantined " . This meant that the few people who were authorized to leave the ghetto to work in the city could no longer do so . This cut off their ability to smuggle in food . People died of hunger . Typhus epidemics broke out in December 1941 and in February 1942 , killing additional occupants . November shootings . By the end of September 1941 , the Nazis had killed about 30 , 000 Jews in Latvia , mostly in small towns . Three large population centers of Jews still remained , at Riga , Liepāja , and Daugavpils . From November 8 to 10 , 1941 , the Germans killed most of the remaining Jews in the Daugavpils ghetto . The number of victims is in some dispute . Valdis Lumans gives a total of 3 , 000 . Professor Ezergailis accepts the Nazi figure of 1 , 134 , but this was based on a source which apparently refers to shootings on a single day - November 9 , 1941 . The shootings in this case , of about 3 , 000 people , were committed by the Arājs commando under German supervision , and may have been intended as a trial run for the much larger Rumbula massacre near Riga on November 30 and December 8 , 1941 . A survivor who was working in the ghetto hospital at the time later described the scene : A few people were able to survive by hiding in locations , including latrine wells , within the old fortress . Others were hidden in the hospital by the nurses , at mortal risk to themselves . In the four months from July to November 1941 , the Nazis killed at least 15 , 000 Jews in Daugavpils . Of the several thousand people in the ghetto , only about 900 remained alive after the November shootings . Following the November massacre , a number of Jews with work permits were stationed ( " kasierniert " or " barracked " ) outside the ghetto at the larger older fortress , sometimes called the citadel , on the north side of the Daugava River . Here they performed various labor services for the German army , and although they were not paid and food was scarce , they were treated better than the Jews who were confined to the ghetto . Because the citadel was under the administration of the German army , Latvian auxiliary police units were not seen . Associated German and Latvian units . The following units of the German army were associated with the Daugavpils ghetto or the administration of forced labor : May 1 liquidation . On May 1 , 1942 , there were about 1 , 500 survivors in the Griva fortress / ghetto . Rudolf Lange , commander of the SD in Latvia , gave an order to Tabbert to liquidate the ghetto . Tabbert ' s men , and the Arājs commando , entered the ghetto in the morning after the working Jews had been marched out to the job sites . The Nazis conducted another " selection " that day , killing the great majority of Jews in the ghetto . One source states there were 375 survivors of the May 1 selection . Others state that of the Jews in the old fortress on the west side of the river , only one or two survived May 1 . The May 1 selection followed the pattern of assembling the people to be executed , then marching them out to the Pogulianka Forest , where they were all shot and shoved into pre - dug mass graves . According to Iwens , who was at the citadel , and heard the story a few days later : Extraordinary brutality accompanied the May 1 killings . Among other things , the Nazis executed the older children in the ghetto itself by lining them up against a wall and shooting them . Eyewitness Maja Zarch , quoted in Gilbert , stated the following : Following the May 1 shootings , of the 16 , 000 Jews in Daugavpils at the time the city fell to the Germans , there remained alive about 250 working in the citadel and 180 to 200 who were working in the city . There were only " a couple " of small Jewish children left alive . ( Another source says 1 , 000 inmates were left in the ghetto . ) Transfer to Kaiserwald . In late October 1943 , there were still a few Jews housed in the Citadel who were working for the German army . On October 28 , the Nazis and Latvian auxiliaries rounded up these people and transferred them to the Kaiserwald concentration camp . By this time , some of the Jews had managed to find or buy arms , and there was resistance to this action . Others killed their family members and then themselves to prevent being taken . A few escaped or hid , some with the help of at least two German soldiers , one named Liederman , the other Bruendl . A very small number ( said to be 26 total ) , were permitted to stay on in the Citadel to work for the German army . On December 4 , 1943 , the Latvia police arrested these last Jews , leaving only three survivors who were still in hiding in the Citadel . Number of victims . The precise number of victims is not clear . Iwens estimated there were 16 , 000 Jews living in Daugavpils and only 100 survived the Nazi occupation . Iwens does not draw a distinction between total deaths in the early shootings , the ghetto and the Kaiserwald concentration camp . Ezergailis calculates that about 28 , 000 Jews lived in Daugavpils and the Latgale district when the Nazi occupation began . Of these the Nazis killed about 20 , 000 , of which 13 , 000 died in Daugavpils , and 7 , 000 in the smaller towns in the district .