Rumbula Forest Memorial

Rumbula Forest Memorial was created in memory of the Rumbula Massacre of 1941. Certainly not a happy travel destination, the Rumbula Forest Memorial is an important testimonial to an often overlooked part of the Holocaust of World War II. The memorial is located on the site of a mass grave of about 25,000 Jews who were systematically slaughtered by mostly German soldiers. A large statue of a menorah stands in the middle of a crowd of graves. Around these lies a memorial walk so that visitors can make their way through the site.
Lying just outside the city, there are no plaques to tell visitors what actually happened at this site. In 1941 Latvian Jews were removed from the ghetto within Riga and transported to the forest by train. Heinrich Himmler gave the order so that Jews living in German ghettos could be relocated to others in Eastern Europe. His subordinate Friedrich Jeckeln who had previously overseen massacres in Ukraine came with a supporting crew of only 50 men. These men forced the Jews of the ghetto to dig their own graves and often lie on the bodies of others already killed while they were systematically shot in the back of the head. The victims were those seen as undesirable to work in the labour camps, so mostly women, children and the elderly. Visitors often describe this site as a haunting and moving experience.