Riga, Latvia

RIGA Vidzeme (Livonia) district, Latvia. Jewish merchants began to appear in the city in the 16th century and carried out their trade without being allowed to take up permanent residence, though some managed to filter through and strike roots. Under the Swedish occupation from 1621, residence restrictions were reinforced and Jews were only permitted to reside in a special Jewish inn outside the walls of the city. After the Russian conquest in 1710 a number of Jewish commercial agents representing the czar's court were permitted to settle in the city with their families. A Jewish cemetery was opened in 1725, marking the establishment of the community. In 1743, the Jews of Riga were expelled as part of the general expulsion of the Jews from Russia under Empress Elizabeth. In addition to a few Jewish merchants allowed to settle in 1764 under letters of protection, there were others who again took up residence over the years in the refurbished inn. In 1766 Catherine II canceled the residence ban and additional Jewish merchants were now allowed to stay in the city as tolerated foreigners without permanent residence rights. When the nearby town of Sloka came under her rule, still other Jewish merchants interested in trading in Riga settled there. By 1811 the Jewish population numbered 736, just 77 living within the city and the rest in Sloka, the inn, and the suburbs outside the city walls. Half the Jews were merchants and brokers and a third artisans. When the walls of the city were torn down in 1857 restrictions were lifted and Jews were allowed to purchase property and settle in the city as well as to join guilds. The Jewish community was divided into a Yiddish speaking majority originally from Belorussia, Poland, and Lithuania and a minority from Courland and Germany with a German cultural orientation. Friction between the two carried over from the days when the community was divided between “protected" Jews and temporary residents. Rivalry between the two focused at first on the struggle over control of the synagogue opened by the "protected" Jews in 1767. The community's first rabbi, Moshe Yehezkel Metz, was appointed in the early 19th century. A talmud torah for needy children and a heder also operated from that time, reaching an enrollment of 43 in 1835. A modern Jewish school was founded in 1840, the fourth of its kind in all Russia, differing from the others in that German was the language of instruction. Its first principal was Dr. Max Lilienthal, followed by Reuven Wunderbar, future historian of the Jews of Livonia and Courland. By 1866 it had 500 students in nine grades, with twice as many girls as boys. The community grew rapidly in the second half of the 19th century as did the city. The Jewish population rose from 2,641 in 1864 to 14,222 in 1881 and 22,115 in 1897 (total 282,230), owing mainly to the right accorded to various categories of Jews from the 1860s to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. Jews played a leading role in the dynamic commercial and industrial development of the city in the last third of the century. About a third of the city's trade was in Jewish hands. They controlled a substantial part of the export trade in grain, flax, hides, and eggs. As operators of ten sawmills and as lumber merchants, the Jews helped make Riga one of the great lumber exporting ports in the world. Among the leading Jewish lumber dealers and industrialists were Leib and Shelomo Shalit and Shelomo Zalman and Yeshayahu Berlin, the latter the great grandfather of the British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, who was born and raised in Riga. Jews were also among the city's leading financiers, operating ten banks by the end of the century. Most textile and clothing stores in Riga were owned by Jews and Jews remained well represented in the crafts, with a large number of tailors and about 500 in 50 workshops stitching shoes. Another few hundred labored in light industry (paper, candy, flour, cigarettes, printing) and most of the city's 100-120 dentists and 20% of its doctors were Jews. Though the friction between the Russo-Polish and German Courland elements in the community lessened in time, there remained an economic division between the two. The former was to be found at both ends of the spectrum, as merchants and industrialists and as the poorer class crowded into a slum-like "Moscow" quarter. The latter comprised the professional and skilled artisan class. Numerous welfare agencies existed to aid the needy. From the second half of the 19th century, a number of synagogues were built, including one founded by a group of 135 Cantonists in 1873. From 1886 to 1911, Moshe Shapira served as the community's rabbi. Afterwards two rabbis officiated, one for the Moscow quarter and the other for the rest of the city. The Hasidim were led by Rabbi Leib Schneersohn until 1915. At the same time the historian and poet Aharon Eliyahu Pomiansky (1873-93) and Yehuda Leib Kantor (1909-15), founder of the first Hebrew daily, Ha-Yom, served as official (state appointed) rabbis. From the 1880s to the pre WWI period, a large number of Jewish schools were added to the one founded in 1840: two for boys and two for girls with Russian as the language of instruction; 6-7 modernized heder schools teaching Hebrew through Hebrew and enrolling 270 children in 1911; two night schools; and a vocational school. The first Jewish high school in Riga grew out of the 1840 school and in the 1870s, 750-800 were studying in the local polytechnic institute, though their number dropped to 200 in the decade before WWI. The chief organization promoting Jewish education and culture was the Society for the Promotion of Culture, founded by Leib Shalit and Dr. Paul Mintz in 1898 and the third of its kind to be established in Russia. The Society was responsible for setting up a 7,000volume public library. Zionist activity commenced in the 1880s, with Ze'ev (Wolf) Luntz and Leib Shalit representing Riga at the Kattowitz Hovevei Zion Conference in 1884. In 1890 an Eretz Israel settlement society was founded and Shalit was instrumental in the purchase of 1,000 acres of land around Hadera, where ten local families settled in 1891. Shalit also represented Riga at the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. In the aftermath, Zionist groups began to proliferate. The Bund was also active, leading strikes, organizing Jewish self defense after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, and participating in the revolutionary events of 1905, when a number of its members were shot down. The Jewish population rose to 33,651 in 1913. The period before WWI was marked by economic crisis, with the lumber industry affected by competition with the port of Windau in Courland, leaving many Jews unemployed. In 1915, 40,000-45,000 Jewish refugees received assistance from the community. By the end of 1916 about a third of Riga's Jews had left as well. After the February 1917 Revolution Jewish public life began to revive and under the provisional Latvian government set up in November 1918, the Bund and other Yiddishists gained control of the Jewish educational system. The short lived Bolshevik government of 1919 introduced a regime of nationalization and antisemitic persecution, but Jewish institutions continued to function and became active in the rehabilitation of the community when the Latvians returned to power. Once again the community extended aid to Jewish refugees, now fleeing the Soviet Union on their way west. Most of the aid, along with assistance to the community, was financed by the Joint Distribution Committee. With the return of local Jews after the war and the influx of foreign refugees and other Latvian Jews, the Jewish population rose rapidly to 39,459 in 1925 (total 337,699) and came to represent about half the number of Jews in all Latvia. Jews were largely responsible for the revival of the city's economy after WWI. About 35% were engaged in trade, 30% in crafts (a third tailors), 20% in sales and clerical work, and 12% in the professions (many of them teachers). Jews were again active in the wood industry as well as in textiles, food, and tanning. The Frumchenko family ran a chocolate factory and later founded Israel's well known Elite firm. Others were leading producers of tobacco, beer, and liqueurs. In the 1922-24 period Jews also founded five banks and ran a roof organization for 25 credit societies serving Jews in Latvia's provincial towns. In the 1930s, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the decline of the local wood industry and the trade in grain and flax, Jews were able to maintain a measure of their economic strength, aided by German Jewish capital seeking outlets after the Nazi rise to power. A substantial part of the city's bigger businesses remained in Jewish hands and the Jewish professional class remained prominent. The Jewish educational system was reorganized under the Latvian cultural and educational autonomy law for minorities. In addition to the three city supported Yiddish schools opened in 1919, the Zionists founded two Hebrew public schools with Joint and community aid. The two systems enrolled 2,600 children or 50-60% of the Jewish school age population in the early 1920s and two thirds by the early 1930s. By that time, three kindergartens, a Hebrew high school, and an open university teaching sociology and the natural sciences were operating. Under the Ulmanis regime from 1934, the system was forced to take on a more religious coloration under Agudat Israel influence. In 1924 a six story building was erected to house the Jewish hospital, including a dental clinic, Xray department, and pharmacy. In 1931, 1,434 patients were treated there, a third of them non Jewish The well known surgeon Prof. Vladimir Mintz headed the hospital. Mintz had worked in Moscow and saved Lenin's life after the assassination attempt in 1918, earning him the gratitude of the Soviet leadership and a special dispensation to return to Latvia. His brother, Prof. Paul Mintz, was one of Europe's leading authorities on criminal law and chairman of the National Democratic Party. A maternity ward and nursing school operated in a second medical facility. The community also ran preventive medical services, including psychological counseling, infant care stations, and a tuberculosis clinic treating nearly 4,000 people in 1931. The Jewish health insurance fund was the second largest in Latvia, covering 13,000 members. The old age home was housed in a new four story building from 1932, with 150 beds, and an orphanage accommodated 80 children. From 1915 until his murder by the Nazis in 1941, Menahem Mendel Sack, strongly identified with Agudat Israel, was chief rabbi of the community, founding its first yeshiva in 1921 and educating a generation of rabbis and scholars. About 40 prayer houses were in operation. Among the Hasidim, the Lubavich followers had the largest minyan, also founding a yeshiva in the 1930s. The unification of the Tze'irei Tziyyon Party with the Zionist Socialists in 1931 made it a leading force in the Zionist camp, contending with the Revisionists for primacy in the community. Among its leaders was Prof. Mattityahu (Max) Laserson, an expert in international law who helped draft the Latvian constitution and was later active in founding the Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics (subsequently becoming Tel Aviv University). The Revisionist movement was born in Riga and with it Betar, inspired by a visit by Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923 and under the leadership of Dr. Yaakov Hoffmann. The religious Zionists were led by Rabbi Mordekhai Nurock, a founder of Mizrachi, whose personality left a mark on the community far beyond the limited strength of the movement there. He and his brother Aharon were elected to the Sejm and later he served in the Israeli government. The Bund continued to be influential among the intelligentsia as well as the poorer classes, its strength concentrated in the trade unions and the Yiddish educational institutes. The influence of Agudat Israel derived mainly from the forceful personality of Rabbi Mordekhai Dubin, who was close to Prime Minister Ulmanis and served four consecutive terms in the Sejm. In 1927 he arranged for the Lubavich Rebbe, Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn, to be let out of the Soviet Union and come to Riga and in 1929 he was received by President Hoover in the U.S. Under Ulmanis, he was licensed to publish the Yiddish daily Haynt, which was the only Jewish newspaper to appear in Latvia in 1934-40. Among the Zionist youth movements, Hehalutz operated pioneer training farms for hundreds of its members throughout Latvia. Hashomer Hatzair, reaching a membership of 350-400, was led by Barukh Bag, one of the founders of the Maccabi organization and later of the Wingate Institute in Israel. In addition to sports, Maccabi promoted cultural activities in the city, founding a drama circle, choir, and orchestra. Betar too operated a pioneer training farm and sent its members to Palestine while the local branch headed Betar's world organization from 1926. It also operated a unique naval school whose graduates would one day serve in the Israeli fleet. The Red Army entered the city on 17 June 1940. All Jewish political and cultural organizations were immediately closed down and such leaders as Mordekhai Dubin were exiled to the Soviet Union. The educational network was converted into a Soviet system with Yiddish imposed as the language of instruction. On the other hand, higher education was opened to Jewish students, their percentage at Riga University climbing to 21%. Jewish businesses underwent nationalization, though former owners continued to serve as advisors and experts in their factories. The possibilities for work and study in Riga brought many young Jews there from all over Latvia, pushing the Jewish population up to 50,000. On the eve of the Nazi invasion, thousands of Jews classified as elements hostile to the Soviet regime" were exiled to Siberia. These included Zionist, Bund, and Agudat Israel leaders and big businessmen. Five thousand more fled to the Soviet Union on the evacuation of the city at the end of June 1941. The Germans arrived on 1 July. Latvian "selfdefense" groups, drawing their members from such nationalist and fascist organizations as the Aizsargs and Perkonkrust and led by Voldemars Veiss and Victors Arajs, immediately staged a pogrom, encouraged by the Germans. Mass arrests and imprisonment under nightmarish conditions and sadistic guards followed together with forced labor where beatings and murder occurred daily. Organized executions commenced in the same month when at least 5,000 detainees were led to the Bikernieki forest and shot down. At the same time Latvian volunteers burned down synagogues and Jewish homes were systematically emptied of their contents while Jews were evicted from the better apartments. Among the many anti Jewish measures instituted were a night curfew, impoundment of radios and cameras, restrictions on food purchases, and bans on ritual slaughter, the use of public transportation, and presence in public places. Jewish professionals were not allowed to practice their trades and a work force of around 20,000 able-bodied Jews was placed at the disposal of the Germans for backbreaking labor repairing war damages, emptying Jewish apartments, and wielding spades in peat bogs. In August the Jews were ordered into a ghetto in the Moscow quarter with a council of elders (Aeltestenrat) set up commensurately and bolstered by a Jewish police force. Jewish women in mixed marriages were allowed to remain with their husbands outside the ghetto if they underwent sterilization. On 25 October 1941, the ghetto was officially sealed off, surrounded by a 6foothigh barbed wire fence patrolled by Latvian police. The area of the ghetto was 2,114 acres and it contained about 30,000 Jews under primitive sanitary conditions, the able bodied continuing to be employed in forced labor, mainly at army facilities. In the night Germans and Latvians broke into Jewish homes in the ghetto, robbing, beating, and murdering the inhabitants. On 26 November 1941 the ghettto was divided in two. Workingmen were separated from their families and confined to a “small ghetto" while the rest remained in the “big ghetto". On the night of 29 November the western section of the big ghetto was emptied of its residents. Women, children, the old and the sick were led in the morning to the Rumbuli forest 5 miles outside the city, stripped naked, laid face down in deep pits, layer upon layer of the dead and dying, and executed by German and Latvian firing squads. The process was repeated in the eastern section of the big ghetto on 7-9 December. Among those murdered was the historian Simon Dubnow, who had been living in Riga since 1933. The two Aktions claimed 25,000-28,000 Jewish lives. The big ghetto was now filled by 15,000-16,000 German Jews from a group of 25,000 brought to Riga from the larger cities, including Prague and Vienna. The rest were sent to concentration camps in the area (Salaspils, Jungfernhof, Strazdenhof) or murdered on arrival. Soon afterwards, thousands more were pulled out of the German ghetto and murdered in the nearby forests. Nonetheless, the German Jews tried to maintain a semblance of community life, with public synagogue services, concerts, and lectures. The population of the small ghetto reached 4,000, including 200-300 seamstresses who were spared in the big Aktions. In 1942 around 700 Jews from Kaunas (Kovno) were brought to the small ghetto, a number of them setting up a clandestine bakery and grocery store to ease food shortages. Underground activity in the ghetto commenced in late 1941 and was organized in secret cells comprising 250-300 mostly young Jews, who managed to stockpile a large quantity of weapons. On 28 October 1942, ten attempting to link up with partisan groups clashed with the Germans, with just one escaping. In retaliation, 108 Jews in the ghetto were executed and 42 Jewish police, most also in the underground, were shot. On 11 June 1943 the main arms cache was discovered by the Germans and mass arrests followed, effectively ending underground activity. On 1 November 1942, the two ghettoes were combined and in summer 1943 the liquidation of the ghetto commenced, with inmates transferred to the big labor camps or to the Kaiserwald concentration camp. At the same time, survivors from other ghettoes (Vilna, Liepaja, Dvinsk) were brought to the city. In November large-scale Aktions were carried out, with children sent separately to Auschwitz for extermination. The ghetto area was then transferred to the Riga municipality and the remnant of Latvia's Jews was henceforth sent to Kaiserwald and its branches, which held over 10,000 prisoners. In 1944 thousands of Jewish women from Hungary were also brought there. Before the German evacuation of Latvia in 1944, an effort was made to obliterate the traces of executions by opening the mass graves and burning the bodies. Thousands more Jews were also murdered. The able-bodied were evacuated and mostly brought to concentration camps within Germany. Riga was liberated by the Red Army on 13 October 1944. Few Latvians helped Jews trying to escape during the war. An outstanding exception was Janis Lipke, a former stevedore and smuggler who took advantage of his experience to save 40 Jews and was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. In all, over 100 Jews managed to evade the Germans. After the war, many former residents returned from the Soviet Union along with survivors from the concentration camps. With new Soviet Jewish families settling in Riga, the Jewish population reached 30,267 in 1947, maintaining that level through 1970, after which the emigration that followed Israel's Six Day War reduced the Jewish population to about 20,000. Organized community activity with Zionist overtones continued unabated in the following period until the doors were finally opened in the late 1980s. An estimated 11,000 Jews were living there in 1995.