New Holocaust memorial unveiled in Liepāja

On the evening of July 24th, the Liepāja Lighthouse Holocaust Memorial was officially opened. The memorial is dedicated to the Jews of Liepāja who were murdered nearby in 1941–1942 in some of the worst atrocities committed on Latvian soil. Liepaja resident Igors Glazunovs shares the story of his family's tragedy. Photo: Inga Ozola/LSM Igors Glazunovs, Liepājas Bākas Holokausta memoriála atklāšana "I was born in Liepāja on July 26, 1941, in a women's prison. It so happened that when the Germans came, they shot my grandmother and grandfather on the ninth day, on July 4th. She lies here right by the lighthouse. My grandfather was also shot on July 4th, 1941, in Raina Park, but my mother and my mother's grandmother survived only because they were Russian, but my father was Jewish, and therefore, when we left prison, in October they took us to the countryside in Snēpele, so we lived in the countryside in Snēpele until the end of the war." Iļja Ļenskis, director of the Museum "Jews in Latvia", reveals the terrible pages of history related to the mass shooting of Jews in Liepāja. "In this place – in the territory of the fish factory and the port lighthouse – the first major murder campaigns of Jews in Liepāja took place in July and August 1941. That is, they were mostly men who were arrested by local police, and then after a short period of imprisonment or, it seems, without imprisonment at all, they were brought here, where holes had already been dug, and here they were shot," says Ļenskis. "This place became extremely well-known in the world because one of the German sailors who was passing by, at least that's what he said - but we know that other sailors also participated in the killing in some way - he filmed it. He had a hand-held camera, and he filmed it simply for his private archive - here's something interesting happening. And this video, a little over a minute and a half long, I think is the only one that shows the shooting of Jews during the Holocaust," says Ļenskis. Video footage showing the shooting of Jews, which is included in the exhibition of the Liepāja Occupation Museum and other museums such as the Second World War Museum in Gdansk, Poland and is available for everyone to view, has even allowed people to be recognized, says Ilana Ivanova, a representative of the Jewish community and director of the "Liepāja Jewish Heritage" foundation. "The scariest thing is when the decoding is happening... the film has 18 parts, and in one of them you can see how Doctor Schwab is taking men by the hand and helping them get out of the truck. He's barely alive, but he's in his white doctor's coat and they recognized him. It was terrible," Ivanova recalls. She cannot hold back her tears and says words of gratitude to those people of Liepāja such as the Seduls family who helped save some Jews from the death squads. "Every time we talk about the Holocaust, we always remember those people who helped. Now that connection is inseparable... Everything is in our hands, but not in the hands of politicians, and we need to remember this, we need to know this," she emphasizes. The Liepāja Lighthouse Holocaust Memorial symbolically depicts the path to light – black granite and white stones as a contrast to the time-worn concrete. It has texts in in Latvian, English and Hebrew – "I will give them eternal memory and name."