Leščinska Park Related Communities
Rēzekne Related Murder Sites
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Murder story of Rēzekne Jews in the Leščinska Park
Murder Site
Leščinska Park
Latvia
Early in the morning of July 15, 1941 members of Einsatzkommando 1b (of the Einzatzgruppe A), commanded by Erich Ehrlinger, with the assistance of local policemen, took between 100 and 120 Jews to the town’s park, situated not far from the Leščinska mill. The owner of the mill, together with his family, had been deportated to the Gulag by the Soviets in June 1941. The local authorities considered the killing of the Jewish workers from the two main factories of the town to be revenge for the deportation. The Jews were shot at the site and buried in a pit that had been prepared in advance. In April 1944 the bodies of the victims were exhumed and burned by the Germans from Special Unit 1005.
Related Resources
ChGK Soviet Reports
Testimony of Ivan (Jan) Matusevič, who was born in 1906, a Righteous Among the Nations (he rescued Chaim and Yakov Izraelit):
… In 1941, while working in the forge of the roads department on First of May Street, number 74/84, I heard a conversation between three local policemen, Pavel Pavlov, Ivan Kraul, and Petr Petrovskiy. I didn’t know where the two first lived, but I knew that the third lived on Lyutsin Street number 52. They bragged about shooting 110 Jews in the park near the Leščinska mill. The grave is located southwest of the mill, about 100 meters from the mill.…
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-93-28 copy YVA M.33 / JM/21221; JM/21222
Testimony of Petr Boiko, a Latvian who was born in 1892:
... In 1941 I worked at the Leskovskii [Leščinska] mill. I was there on July 15, 1941, when Germans shot between 100 and 120 Jews in the park near the mill and buried them there. Before the Red Army arrived on July 2 [27], the bodies were exhumed and burned....
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-93-28 copy YVA M.33 / JM/21221; JM/21222
Leščinska Park
wind mill
Murder Site
Latvia
56.507;27.336
Photos
State Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in the Soviet Union (ChGK) documentation dated 1944, regarding the murder and persecution of Jews in Rezekne, 1941-1943
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-93-28 copy YVA M.33 / JM/21221; JM/21222