Burning of the Riga synagogues
Encyclopedia
The burning of the Riga synagogues occurred in the first days of the German occupation of the city of Riga
, the capital and largest city in the country of Latvia
. A significant, although disputed number of Jews were killed, and many other anti-Semitic measures were launched at the same time, which ultimately led to the murder of the vast majority of the Jews of Latvia.
. There were about 40,000 Jews in the city at that time. The Germans were welcomed by the non-Jewish majority portion of the Latvian population of Riga.
s". Within three months, more than 6,000 people were killed in Riga and the vicinity. Professionals such as lawyers, physicians and engineers in particular were targeted by the Nazis. Frida Michelson reported that they were singled out by fellow Latvian professionals from among the other Jews arrested and immediately shot. Large groups of prisoners were taken out of the Central Prison by truck to Bikernieki Forest, where they were shot. On July 2, at the instigation of the Germans, Latvian armed youths wearing red and white armbands went about the city dragging Jews out of their homes and arresting them. The Latvians assaulted a number of Jews, some so severely they died, and shot others. The same morning, all the telephones of the Jews were disconnnected.
Pērkonkrusts
(Thunder Cross or Swastika) was the name of the Latvian fascist party that was active in the 1930s. Members of Pērkonkrusts including, among others, Viktors Arājs
and Herberts Cukurs
cooperated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of Latvia. The university fraternities were also involved with the party. In July 1941, after the German occupation, Pērkonkrusts took over the house of the Jewish banker Schmulian, in Riga, at 19 Valdemara Street (Gorki Street under Soviet rule), to use as their headquarters. A Riga newspaper Tēvija, ("Fatherland") regularly published anti-Jewish propaganda, such as an editorial on July 11, 1941 entitled "The Jews -- Source of Our Destruction".
The Jews arrested were taken to police headquarters (or "prefecture") and the Central Prison, also known as the Zentralka. Old and sick people were brought in naked. Young women were stripped naked and confined to cellars where they were raped. There were reports of women being raped in front of their husbands and children. Traditionally-attired Jews, especially those with beards, were targeted for humiliations such as dragging them around by their beards and forced shaving. Others were forced at gunpoint to put on the talith (prayer shawl) and tefilin (phylactery), then dance and sing Soviet songs. People, including non-Jews, were commonly accused by their enemies of "Communist-Jewish activities".
In the days following July 2, the Jews at the prefecture were marched out to perform forced labor, then confined back at the prefecture during the night. The Latvian Roberts Stiglics was in charge of the prefecture. Much of this was simply makework designed to humiliate and intimidate the Jews, although in at least one instance a small group of Jewish women was detailed to Jelgava to work in the fields for six weeks. According to Kaufmann, the Latvians were in charge this entire time. Among other things, they forced the Jews to sing Nazi songs and the Internationale. The only Jews not subject to brutality at the hands of Latvian thugs were those who had been members of the Jewish Latvian Freedom Fighters Association (Latvian
: Lačplēsis), but this immunity did not last.
Professor Ezergailis, while not disputing Kaufmann's descriptions of the Latvians' activities, finds the things Kaufmann describes to have been typical of initial Nazi abuse of Jews in other locations. He also draws the inference that the lack of deliberate killings by the Latvians shows the Germans were at the root of the plans for the massacres.
s, which were then set on fire. The Great Choral Synagogue, on Gogol Street, was burned on July 4, 1941, with 300 Jews locked in the basement. Historian Gertrude Schneider, a survivor of the German ghetto, assigns responsibility to Viktors Arājs
, Herberts Cukurs
and Vilis Hazners. Historian Press states that some of the victims were Lithuanian Jews who had taken refuge there. Schneider identifies the victims as mostly women and children. Frida Michelson, a Latvian Jew who had been working near Jelgava
in a forced labor crew when the synagogues were burned, reported that on her return to Riga, she was told by a friend (who had heard it from someone else) that the halls and the backyard of the Choral Synagogue were filled with Lithuania refugees. Perkonkrusts
and "other Latvian hangers-on" surrounded the building, trapped the people inside, and set it on fire. The burning of the synagogue was filmed by the Germans and later became part of a Wehrmacht newsreel, with the following narration: "The synagogue in Riga, which had been spared by the GPU commissars in their work of destruction, went up in flames a few hours later." According to Bernard Press, Herberts Cukurs
, a Latvia air force officer, and his gang of thugs, burned the synagogue on Stabu Street, but only after dragging Jews out of the neighboring houses and locking them inside:
The holy scrolls were dragged out of the synagogues and burned. According to the Press, many Jews wearing prayer shawls and talith went into the fires to save the scrolls, and were all killed. Ezergailis disputes this, stating that no one entered the flames trying to save the holy scrolls.
Only the Peitavus synagogue in the center of the city was not burned, and this was because of its location among apartment buildings. The interior was however ransacked as had been all the other Jewish places of worship. The mob also attacked the Jewish cemeteries.
Kaufmann also describes a number of incidents of Jews being locked into synagogues by Latvians which were then set on fire, including:
Ezergailis does not find it credible that Jews were locked in the Great Choral Synagogue before it was set on fire. Ezergailis does acknowledge that there could have been 300 Lithuanian refugees in the synagogue before the fire was set. He postulates however that they would have been killed before he synagogue was set on fire.
According to Frida Michelson, after she returned to Riga in the summer of 1941 from a forced labor detail near Jelgava
, she was informed by a friend, that the interior halls and backyard of the Gogol Synagogue were filled with refugees from Lithuania
. Perkonkrusts
and "other Latvian hangers on" surrounded the building, trapped the people inside, and set it on fire. Michelson's informant, however, did not witness this herself, but only heard about it from other who had said they had seen the fire.
Among the Jews killed in the synagogue massacres were the cantor Mintz and his whole family, the rabbi Kilov, and Sarah Rashin (or Rashina), an internationally-famed violinist, who was just 21 years of age. (Another source says that Sarah Rashina was killed at Rumbula
on November 30, 1941.
By July 16, 1941, Jews were no longer allowed to be seen on the streetcars of Riga. Armed Latvian policemen wearing red-white-red armbands arrested Jews on the streets. Those arrested were taken to the police prefecture near the railroad station and to other prisons.
At the end of July, the city administration switched from the German military to German civil administration. Head of the civil administration was a German named Nachtigall. Other Germans involved with the civil administration included Hinrich Lohse
and Otto Drechsler. The Germans issued new decrees at this time to govern the Jews. Under "Regulation One", Jews were banned from public places, including city facilities, parks, and swimming pools. A second regulation required Jews to wear a yellow six-pointed star
on their clothing, with violation punishable by death. A Jew was also to be allotted only one-half of the food ration of a non-Jew. By August, a German named Altmayer was in charge of Riga. The Nazis then registered all the Jews of Riga, and they further decreed that all Jews must wear a second yellow star, this one in the middle of their backs, and not use the sidewalks but walk in the roadway instead. Jews could be randomly assaulted with impunity by any non-Jew. The reason for wearing two stars was so Jews could readily be distinguished in a crowd. Later, when Lithuania
n Jews were transported to the ghetto, they were subject to the same two-star rule.
Officially the Gestapo
took over the prisons in Riga on July 11, 1941. By this time, the Latvian gangs had killed a number of the Jewish inmates. The Gestapo initially set up its headquarters in the former Latvian Ministry of Agriculture building on Raina Boulevard. A special Jewish administration was set up. Gestapo torture and similar interrogation tactics were carried out in the basement of this building. Anyone who happened to survive this treatment was then sent to prison, where the inmates were starved to death. The Gestapo later relocated to a former museum at the corner of Kalpaka and Alexander boulevards.
The Nazis also set up a Latvian puppet government, under a Latvian general named Danker, who was himself half-German. A "Bureau of Jewish Affairs" was set up at the Latvian police prefecture. Nuremberg-style laws were introduced, which tried to force people in marriages between a Jew and an non-Jew to divorce. If the couple refused to divorce, the woman, if a Jew, would be forced to undergo sterilization. Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and non-Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat Jews.
on them, which gave them the right to use the sidewalks and the streetcars. The Nazis issued an order that, by October 25, 1941, all Jews were to relocate to the Moscow suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small area known as the Moscow Forshtat by the end of October 1941. The Nazis fenced them in with barbed wire. Anyone who went too close to the barbed wire was shot by the Latvian guards stationed around the ghetto perimeter. German police (Wachmeister) from Danzig commanded the guards. The guards engaged in random firing during the night. Thirty-five days after the Riga ghetto was established, 24,000 of its inhabitants were force marched out of the city and shot at the nearby forest of Rumbula
.
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, the capital and largest city in the country of Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
. A significant, although disputed number of Jews were killed, and many other anti-Semitic measures were launched at the same time, which ultimately led to the murder of the vast majority of the Jews of Latvia.
German occupation
The German army crossed the border in the early morning of Sunday, June 22, 1941. All along the front, the Soviet armed forces suffered a crushing defeat. On June 29, 1941, the Red Army began a disorganized withdrawal from Riga, then under German aerial bombardment. To slow the German advance, the retreating Soviets had blown up all the bridges over the Daugava river. The highest church spire in the city, St. Peter's, has been set on fire by German bombs. Some Soviet sympathizers in the city set out pails of water and gave bread to the retreating troops, but these were futile gestures amid the military disaster. On July 1, 1941, the German army entered RigaRiga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
. There were about 40,000 Jews in the city at that time. The Germans were welcomed by the non-Jewish majority portion of the Latvian population of Riga.
Actions against the Jews
Shortly after German troops entered the city on 1 July 1941, the Nazi occupation authorities attempted to incite Latvian nationalists into committing deadly anti-Jewish riots known as "pogromPogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s". Within three months, more than 6,000 people were killed in Riga and the vicinity. Professionals such as lawyers, physicians and engineers in particular were targeted by the Nazis. Frida Michelson reported that they were singled out by fellow Latvian professionals from among the other Jews arrested and immediately shot. Large groups of prisoners were taken out of the Central Prison by truck to Bikernieki Forest, where they were shot. On July 2, at the instigation of the Germans, Latvian armed youths wearing red and white armbands went about the city dragging Jews out of their homes and arresting them. The Latvians assaulted a number of Jews, some so severely they died, and shot others. The same morning, all the telephones of the Jews were disconnnected.
Pērkonkrusts
Perkonkrusts
Pērkonkrusts , was a Latvian political party founded in the 1930s. This group adapted fascist ideology to the situation in independent Latvia after 1918. It was the largest and longest-lived organisation of its kind in Latvia...
(Thunder Cross or Swastika) was the name of the Latvian fascist party that was active in the 1930s. Members of Pērkonkrusts including, among others, Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
and Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
cooperated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of Latvia. The university fraternities were also involved with the party. In July 1941, after the German occupation, Pērkonkrusts took over the house of the Jewish banker Schmulian, in Riga, at 19 Valdemara Street (Gorki Street under Soviet rule), to use as their headquarters. A Riga newspaper Tēvija, ("Fatherland") regularly published anti-Jewish propaganda, such as an editorial on July 11, 1941 entitled "The Jews -- Source of Our Destruction".
The Jews arrested were taken to police headquarters (or "prefecture") and the Central Prison, also known as the Zentralka. Old and sick people were brought in naked. Young women were stripped naked and confined to cellars where they were raped. There were reports of women being raped in front of their husbands and children. Traditionally-attired Jews, especially those with beards, were targeted for humiliations such as dragging them around by their beards and forced shaving. Others were forced at gunpoint to put on the talith (prayer shawl) and tefilin (phylactery), then dance and sing Soviet songs. People, including non-Jews, were commonly accused by their enemies of "Communist-Jewish activities".
In the days following July 2, the Jews at the prefecture were marched out to perform forced labor, then confined back at the prefecture during the night. The Latvian Roberts Stiglics was in charge of the prefecture. Much of this was simply makework designed to humiliate and intimidate the Jews, although in at least one instance a small group of Jewish women was detailed to Jelgava to work in the fields for six weeks. According to Kaufmann, the Latvians were in charge this entire time. Among other things, they forced the Jews to sing Nazi songs and the Internationale. The only Jews not subject to brutality at the hands of Latvian thugs were those who had been members of the Jewish Latvian Freedom Fighters Association (Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
: Lačplēsis), but this immunity did not last.
Professor Ezergailis, while not disputing Kaufmann's descriptions of the Latvians' activities, finds the things Kaufmann describes to have been typical of initial Nazi abuse of Jews in other locations. He also draws the inference that the lack of deliberate killings by the Latvians shows the Germans were at the root of the plans for the massacres.
Destruction of the synagogues and cemeteries
Jews were rounded up and forced into synagogueSynagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
s, which were then set on fire. The Great Choral Synagogue, on Gogol Street, was burned on July 4, 1941, with 300 Jews locked in the basement. Historian Gertrude Schneider, a survivor of the German ghetto, assigns responsibility to Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
, Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
and Vilis Hazners. Historian Press states that some of the victims were Lithuanian Jews who had taken refuge there. Schneider identifies the victims as mostly women and children. Frida Michelson, a Latvian Jew who had been working near Jelgava
Jelgava
-Sports:The city's main football team, FK Jelgava, plays in the Latvian Higher League and won the 2009/2010 Latvian Football Cup.- Notable people :*August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein - linguist, folklorist, ethnographer...
in a forced labor crew when the synagogues were burned, reported that on her return to Riga, she was told by a friend (who had heard it from someone else) that the halls and the backyard of the Choral Synagogue were filled with Lithuania refugees. Perkonkrusts
Perkonkrusts
Pērkonkrusts , was a Latvian political party founded in the 1930s. This group adapted fascist ideology to the situation in independent Latvia after 1918. It was the largest and longest-lived organisation of its kind in Latvia...
and "other Latvian hangers-on" surrounded the building, trapped the people inside, and set it on fire. The burning of the synagogue was filmed by the Germans and later became part of a Wehrmacht newsreel, with the following narration: "The synagogue in Riga, which had been spared by the GPU commissars in their work of destruction, went up in flames a few hours later." According to Bernard Press, Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
, a Latvia air force officer, and his gang of thugs, burned the synagogue on Stabu Street, but only after dragging Jews out of the neighboring houses and locking them inside:
The holy scrolls were dragged out of the synagogues and burned. According to the Press, many Jews wearing prayer shawls and talith went into the fires to save the scrolls, and were all killed. Ezergailis disputes this, stating that no one entered the flames trying to save the holy scrolls.
Only the Peitavus synagogue in the center of the city was not burned, and this was because of its location among apartment buildings. The interior was however ransacked as had been all the other Jewish places of worship. The mob also attacked the Jewish cemeteries.
Kaufmann also describes a number of incidents of Jews being locked into synagogues by Latvians which were then set on fire, including:
Ezergailis does not find it credible that Jews were locked in the Great Choral Synagogue before it was set on fire. Ezergailis does acknowledge that there could have been 300 Lithuanian refugees in the synagogue before the fire was set. He postulates however that they would have been killed before he synagogue was set on fire.
According to Frida Michelson, after she returned to Riga in the summer of 1941 from a forced labor detail near Jelgava
Jelgava
-Sports:The city's main football team, FK Jelgava, plays in the Latvian Higher League and won the 2009/2010 Latvian Football Cup.- Notable people :*August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein - linguist, folklorist, ethnographer...
, she was informed by a friend, that the interior halls and backyard of the Gogol Synagogue were filled with refugees from Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
. Perkonkrusts
Perkonkrusts
Pērkonkrusts , was a Latvian political party founded in the 1930s. This group adapted fascist ideology to the situation in independent Latvia after 1918. It was the largest and longest-lived organisation of its kind in Latvia...
and "other Latvian hangers on" surrounded the building, trapped the people inside, and set it on fire. Michelson's informant, however, did not witness this herself, but only heard about it from other who had said they had seen the fire.
Among the Jews killed in the synagogue massacres were the cantor Mintz and his whole family, the rabbi Kilov, and Sarah Rashin (or Rashina), an internationally-famed violinist, who was just 21 years of age. (Another source says that Sarah Rashina was killed at Rumbula
Rumbula massacre
The Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps...
on November 30, 1941.
By July 16, 1941, Jews were no longer allowed to be seen on the streetcars of Riga. Armed Latvian policemen wearing red-white-red armbands arrested Jews on the streets. Those arrested were taken to the police prefecture near the railroad station and to other prisons.
Further restrictions on Jews
Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
and Otto Drechsler. The Germans issued new decrees at this time to govern the Jews. Under "Regulation One", Jews were banned from public places, including city facilities, parks, and swimming pools. A second regulation required Jews to wear a yellow six-pointed star
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
on their clothing, with violation punishable by death. A Jew was also to be allotted only one-half of the food ration of a non-Jew. By August, a German named Altmayer was in charge of Riga. The Nazis then registered all the Jews of Riga, and they further decreed that all Jews must wear a second yellow star, this one in the middle of their backs, and not use the sidewalks but walk in the roadway instead. Jews could be randomly assaulted with impunity by any non-Jew. The reason for wearing two stars was so Jews could readily be distinguished in a crowd. Later, when Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n Jews were transported to the ghetto, they were subject to the same two-star rule.
Officially the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
took over the prisons in Riga on July 11, 1941. By this time, the Latvian gangs had killed a number of the Jewish inmates. The Gestapo initially set up its headquarters in the former Latvian Ministry of Agriculture building on Raina Boulevard. A special Jewish administration was set up. Gestapo torture and similar interrogation tactics were carried out in the basement of this building. Anyone who happened to survive this treatment was then sent to prison, where the inmates were starved to death. The Gestapo later relocated to a former museum at the corner of Kalpaka and Alexander boulevards.
The Nazis also set up a Latvian puppet government, under a Latvian general named Danker, who was himself half-German. A "Bureau of Jewish Affairs" was set up at the Latvian police prefecture. Nuremberg-style laws were introduced, which tried to force people in marriages between a Jew and an non-Jew to divorce. If the couple refused to divorce, the woman, if a Jew, would be forced to undergo sterilization. Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and non-Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat Jews.
Construction of the Riga ghetto
On 21 July, the Riga occupation command decided to concentrate the Jewish workers in a ghetto. All Jews were registered; a Jewish council was also set up. Prominent Riga Jews, including Eljaschow, Blumenthal, and Minsker, were chosen to be on the council. All of them had been involved with the Jewish Latvian Freedom Fighters Association and it was hoped this would give them credibility in dealing with the occupation authorities. Council members were given large white armbands with a blue Star of DavidStar of David
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David is a generally recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism.Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles...
on them, which gave them the right to use the sidewalks and the streetcars. The Nazis issued an order that, by October 25, 1941, all Jews were to relocate to the Moscow suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small area known as the Moscow Forshtat by the end of October 1941. The Nazis fenced them in with barbed wire. Anyone who went too close to the barbed wire was shot by the Latvian guards stationed around the ghetto perimeter. German police (Wachmeister) from Danzig commanded the guards. The guards engaged in random firing during the night. Thirty-five days after the Riga ghetto was established, 24,000 of its inhabitants were force marched out of the city and shot at the nearby forest of Rumbula
Rumbula
Rumbula is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia, in which Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. For the air base at Rumbula, see Rumbula ....
.
Historiographical
Angrick, Andrej, and Klein, Peter, Die "Endlösung" in Riga. Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941 - 1944, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8- Ezergailis, AndrewAndrew EzergailisAndrew Ezergailis is a retired Professor of History, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA, known for his research into the 20th-century history of Latvia, particularly of the 1917 Revolution and the Holocaust in Latvia....
, The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944—The Missing Center, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996 ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 - Kaufmann, Max, Die Vernichtung des Judens Lettlands (The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia), Munich, 1947, English translation by Laimdota Mazzarins available on-line as Churbn Lettland -- The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia (all references in this article are to page numbers in the on-line edition)
- Press, Bernhard, The murder of the Jews in Latvia : 1941-1945, Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 2000 ISBN 0810117290
- Schneider, Gertrude, Journey into terror: story of the Riga Ghetto, (2d Ed.) Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2001 ISBN 0275970507
War crimes trials and evidence
- Stahlecker, Franz W.Franz Walter StahleckerFranz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
, "Comprehensive Report of Einsatzgruppe A Operations up to 15 October 1941", Exhibit L-180, translated in part and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume VII, pages 978-995, USGPO, Washington DC 1946 ("Red Series")
Personal accounts
- Michelson, Frida, I Survived Rumbuli, (translated from Russian and edited by Wolf Goodman), The Holocaust Library, New York 1979 ISBN 0-89604-030-5