Fourth of July...Riga, Latvia 1941

Rather than post today, as so many others (ho hum) will, about the American Independence Day, I'll mention the less known fact that on this day 73 years ago, the Great Choral Synagogue in Riga was set aflame by the invading Nazis, with some 300 Jews locked inside.

(I was also prompted by this week's Sepia Saturday theme, which includes -- albeit incidentally -- walls.

Here's what the synagogue looked like a couple of years ago when I visited Riga on a family history trip. Its remains were razed and now the site is a memorial park.

Here's what the synagogue looked like once upon a time.

"Frida Michelson, a Latvian Jew who had been working near Jelgava in a forced labor crew when the synagogues were burned [there were several], 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 Lithuanian refugees. Perkonkrusts ['a Latvian ultra-nationalist, anti-German and anti-Semitic political party founded in 1933'] 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: 'Eyewitnesses heard the people who were locked inside screaming for help and saw them breaking the synagogues windows from inside and trying, like living torches, to get outside....'"

"The holy scrolls were dragged out of the synagogues and burned. According to the Press, many Jewish 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."

Old photos (and quoted text) from thecelotajs.com.

Other info is at haolusa.org.

Scrimmage in Riga

Faux door / doot

Negligee for negligence

A fault in the scrim

Restoring the Riga cathedral tower

Local Color Riga-style

Man without a horn

Riga boogiewoogie

Empty storeys

Passage of Time, Riga Cathedral

Yesterday (Fri) we took a cab across the wide Daugava River to the Latvian National Archives, in a very Russian (read tawdry, low-budget) office building in a rather run-down but EffStoppish neighborhood of old-fashioned wooden houses. There we talked for a hour with a researcher. An even more informative session later was with the young and disheveled but brilliant and articulate assistant to the head of the Jewish Museum, who not only cleared up many "technical" questions of F&D's about language, Jewish provenance, emigration/population stats, etc., but produced a lot of related documents, including a huge contemporary book listing the history of every house in Tukums!! This office was much grander and located in the art nouveau district just beyond Oldtown, where we walked around and lunched in a terrific restaurant, called The Riviera. I had am amazing salad with fruit (strawberies, raspberies, blueberries and more...in a bed of spinach with gorgonzla and nuts) and a bouillabase with calimari, octopus, prawn, mussels, and fish, while "the beautiful people" swished around us. Riga has a high quotient, surprisingly, of very fashionable young people, balanced out by a large number of scruffy bluecollar types and babushkas. As noted, the nightlife is astounding even on weeknights. Reminiscent of Florence or Venice.

Stone

After all these revelations, I took a whirlwind tour of the National Art Museum, which had two fllkors of a wide variety of paintings, including some interesting contemporary stuff and some Russian dada collages. There are many parks, including a strip along the canal, filled wth sculpture from deco to cubist. And finished off the night by going to the opera, in the gilded and maroon-velvet decorated opera house. My feet are killin' me, but I know the layout pretty well by now...lots of squares, each with its clubs, cafés, and bars, winding narrrow streets with enormous cobbles...the architecture is all over the map - some reconstructed after the war, but some very old churches, some 17th C., and of course a lot of colorful and histrionic terra cotta and art nouveau, even outside of the designated district.

Bracing the column

Time past

Walls of Riga

Riga Old Town walls

Saturday started out with a slow bang as we all went to shabbos at the local synagogue. Very interesting from an anthropological standpoint. Deborah had to sit upstairs away from the men. The long-bearded rabbi (who spoke Russian in a brief sermon) stood with his back to us and chanted for an interminable 45 minutes, the congregation also chanting but not in unision – a semi-audible chatoic mumble with an occasional outburst of Amens (?).

City wall abstract

Meanwhile Ran and I thumbed back and forth in the prayer books, which although having English translations, didn’t help us, because we didn’t know where they were reading from in Hebrew. Fascinating...did you know that if you put the (myriad, arcane) ingredients for the holy incense together incorrectly, the Torah advocates being put to death? All made me nervous as a cat, as uncomfortable as I do in any church service but moreso since I was totally lost linguistically.

Fred was invited to join in reading part of the Torah once it was unrolled and brought to the back of the synagogue...the men followed the rabbi and gathered around. Most ranged from 50-80 years old, with a smattering of younger ones and a couple of small boys. Of course no cameras were allowed...the interior was a very light blue, with an almost Egytian gold/maroon decorative motif on pillars and wainscoting.

Rooms where they used to live

Cat house

Old wall, new walls

Cathedral Museum: War and religion