Ludza

The Jewish community of Ludza (until 1920, Lyutsin) dates back to the mid-eighteenth century. Most of the Jewish population worked as artisans, loaders and tradesmen.

Ludza Jewry was famous for its rabbis. In 1880-1882, Abraham Isaac Kook, the future Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, lived in Ludza and was taught by the local rabbi, Eliezer Don Ichye. Rabbi Eliezer’s son Ben Zion Don Ichye was one of the founders of the Mizrachi movement in Latvia, and the last rabbi of Ludza from 1926 until his death in the Holocaust.

During the period of the Independent Latvian Republic (1919-1940), some Jewish schools operated in Ludza.

After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in June 1940, all private enterprises were nationalized, and Jewish community institutions closed. Numerous Ludzan Jews were arrested on the night of June 14-15, 1941, and exiled to the Soviet interior.

The Germans occupied Ludza on July 3, 1941. The ghetto was established the same month. The Jewish population was murdered in several operations from July 1941 until the spring of 1942.

The Red Army liberated Ludza on July 23, 1944.

On July 20, 1941, an edict to establish a ghetto was issued. The Jews were crowded into a narrow area occupying a few neglected streets on the edge of the town, near the lake. In some cases, as many as eighteen people lived in a single room; the ghetto’s total population numbered over 1,000. Hundreds of Jewish men were rounded up in two synagogues. The ghetto was not fenced in, but black wooden signs hung around its perimeters read: “Jews – Prohibited!” The commander of the ghetto was German, and his two main assistants were Latvian. The ghetto was guarded by Latvian police.Various decrees were imposed on the Jews, including the order to wear a round black patch emblazoned with a yellow Star of David on the chest and back, and a prohibition against using the sidewalks. In the ghetto food store, only meager rations could be obtained via ration cards. The Jews performed forced labor, such as cleaning streets, toilets and garbage containers. Forty Jewish women were sent to a German hospital to clean the premises and perform other menial work. Jewish girls were seized for orgies, raped, and sometimes murdered by German and Latvian policemen.On April 2, 1942, the Germans murdered the last inmates of the ghetto.