At that moment, the Nazi occupation power replaced the Soviet occupation in Latvia, and the Holocaust had already started its horrid passage.
Today, we commemorate those 25 thousand of Jews, who were brutally murdered in the Rumbula forest of 30 November 1941 and 8 December 1941 during the Nazi-organized campaign. Unfortunately, local auxiliary police was involved in implementation thereof.
These crimes against humanity have no limitation period.
These tragic events in the history of Latvia have been concealed and remained hidden from the public for years. During the Soviet occupation, canvassers of the Jewish community managed to install the stone with the inscription “in memory of the victims of fascism” only with dire straits here. After the restoration of the independence of Latvia, a memorial to the Holocaust victims was erected. The history of the Holocaust is taught at Latvian schools. Historians study the events in Rumbula, and there is an exhibition dedicated to the latter at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and the Museum “Jews in Latvia”.
However, no studies, descriptions, or figures cannot display this dreadful, inhuman event and its true extent in full.
Winter days are short in Latvia; these are only 7 hours... Therefore, it seems incomprehensible that just as many of our fellow citizens as are currently living in a medium-sized Latvian town were slaughtered methodically and in cold blood on this small piece of land in two short winter days. Only a few people managed to survive miraculously from “the Jewish town doomed to total destruction” that was called the Riga ghetto at that time, including a resident of Jaungulbene, Frida Michelson. Each Latvian citizen should read her book of bitter memories in order to comprehend the events of those days at least partially.
However, the commemorative events in Rumbula on November 30 are not related to the past only. We may not forget the past events also so that we would be able to live on, to live in democracy-based society, which does not allow any manifestation of intolerance, racism, and anti-Semitism. Today, when the values of liberal democracy are called in question in many parts of the world, this is the moment to think about the society and the state of Latvia, where we are living. Every group of our society must feel safe and secure in Latvia, as it is guaranteed in our Constitution.
Despite the brutal repression and immeasurable losses, the Jewish community in Latvia has revived. I notice development and prosperity in its social, religious, and cultural life. Latvia is becoming stronger and richer thanks to that.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, I call to decline our heads in front of the died victims. I urge to remember the dark events in the past so that they would never happen again in the history of humankind!