Rumbula massacre

The Rumbula massacre was a mass execution of Jewish people that took place during World War II near the city of Riga, Latvia, on November 30 and December 8, 1941. Approximately twenty-five thousand Jewish people were executed at or while being transported to a massacre site in the nearby Rumbula forest. A mass murder by shooting, the Rumbula massacre was carried out by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe A, one of several Einsatzgruppe paramilitary death squads. Einsatzgruppe A was led by Schutzstaffel (SS) commander Friedrich Jeckeln, who also oversaw similar massacres in Ukraine and elsewhere. Most of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto. Those who were not murdered prior to arriving at the massacre site were forced to strip and made to lay face down on the ground before being shot. After the war, those responsible for the Rumbula massacre and other similar events were held to account at a trial, where several Einsatzgruppe commanders were convicted of crimes against humanity.

Background

The Rumbula massacre was one of the worst events to occur during the early stages of the Holocaust in Latvia. A Baltic state situated south of Estonia and north of Lithuania, Lativa had a Jewish population of about 190,000 people prior to World War I (1914–1918). In the years that followed, however, the nation’s Jewish population began to decline and had dropped to about 90,000 by 1935. The number of Jewish people in Latvia shrank even further to approximately 80,000 by the start of World War II in 1939. About half of Latvia’s Jewish population lived in the capital city of Riga.

At the end of World War I, Latvia became an independent republic. It remained this way until it was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. Latvia’s status changed again when the Soviets were driven out by the Germans in June and July 1941 after Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union. From this point, Latvia was considered part of the Reich Commissariat Ostland, a German civilian administration that included the Baltic states and parts of Belorussia.

Once they seized control of the country, German forces began targeting Latvia’s Jewish population as part of their wider anti-Jewish efforts. In Latvia, their specific goal was to eliminate the local Jewish population to make way for deported German and Austrian Jews who would move into the homes left behind by their Latvian counterparts. With the aid of cooperative Latvian nationalists, the Germans began rounding up and killing Latvian Jews. In some cases, victims were simply shot or beaten to death. Others were forced into synagogues that were then locked and set on fire. The Germans also enacted anti-Jewish laws and promptly began arresting Jewish people for violating them. The accused were incarcerated in prisons that were eventually taken over by the Gestapo, which soon instituted policies of torture and starvation that led to many deaths. Approximately 34,000 Latvian Jews were killed by October 1941. The Latvian Jews who survived the initial slaughter were subsequently forced into several ghettos. The largest of these was the Riga Ghetto, which housed about 30,000 people.

Overview

Late in 1941, German commanders were given orders to start liquidating the Riga Ghetto under the pretense that most of its inhabitants were to be settled somewhere to the east. However, the actual plan was to remove the Latvian Jews from Riga and kill them in a mass execution. Friedrich Jeckeln, the chief of the SS paramilitary force in Latvia, was chosen to lead this operation.

Jeckeln selected a site in nearby Rumbula with soft, sandy soil that could easily be dug up to create mass graves. To execute the Latvian Jews quickly and efficiently, he employed an extermination method that he had previously developed while conducting similar massacres in Ukraine. In accordance with the so-called “Jeckeln system,” the Latvian Jews were pulled from the Riga Ghetto, made to march to the site in Rumbula, stripped of their clothing, and forced to lie face down in a trench dug in the ground before being shot. The killing pits doubled as mass graves, which allowed the executioners to avoid having to move corpses into separate burial places. When the pit floor became filled with corpses, the remaining victims were forced to lie on top of the corpses of those already killed.

The Rumbula massacre took place over the course of two separate days. The first round of killings occurred on November 30, 1941, with the second round following several days later on December 8. Many victims of the massacre died before reaching Rumbula. Older people, pregnant women, and others who could not withstand the brutal march were simply left to die wherever they fell. The German and Latvian guards leading the march were also given strict orders to immediately shoot anyone who showed signs of disobedience.

Once they arrived at Rumbula and took their place in the killing pits, victims were shot once in the back of the head. While this was effective in most cases, the executioners sometimes missed their mark, especially as light began to diminish later in the day. Anyone who survived the shooting was buried alive. As a result, some victims died due to being crushed under the weight of corpses and soil. Latvian guards were also tasked with shooting anyone who managed to escape the killing pits. By the end of the massacre, an estimated twenty-five thousand people had been killed.

After World War II ended, several Einsatzgruppe commanders were captured and brought to justice before an American military court at the Einsatzgruppen trial. All defendants were convicted, with fourteen receiving death sentences and the rest sent to prison. Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes in a separate Soviet military tribunal and ultimately executed in 1946.

Bibliography

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