The Rumbula massacre was one of the most horrifying periods of the massacre of the Jews which took place on November 30 and December 8, 1941.
Memorial marker in Rumbula forest Holocaust Site. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
New Delhi: The massacre of Jews by Nazi Germany, known as the Holocaust, was one of the most heinous and terrible periods during World War II. The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, wanted to wipe out the Jews from the face of the earth and to do so, they left no stone unturned. The Rumbula massacre was one of the most horrifying periods of the massacre of the Jews which took place on November 30 and December 8, 1941.
In the massacre, about 25,000 Jews were murdered during World War II in the Rumbula forest near Latvia’s Riga. Apart from Ukraine’s Babi Yar massacre, this was the deadliest Holocaust atrocity of two days until the death camps came into play. About 24,000 of them were Latvian Jews and around 1,000 were German Jews.
The Context of the Rumbula Massacre in the Holocaust
Rumbula was a small railway station south of Riga, Latvia’s capital. The site of the massacre was a “rather open and accessible place”. The Germans had executed several massacres on Daugava’s north bank in the Rumbula vicinity. It was easy to dig graves for the place had sandy soil. The area was heavily forested which became the site of execution.
The Holocaust in Latvia
On June 22, 1941, the Holocaust in Latvia began after the German army’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen, which were the German death squads, the Security Service of the SS and the German Security Police began to murder Jews, Communists and others. The Nazis decided to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga to bring Jews from Germany and Austria to be deported to the Riga ghetto.
On November 30 at 9 am, the first group of people arrived at Rumbula and they were ordered to disrobe and leave their belongings. Then the Jews entered the woods and marched towards the murder pits. If the crowd was huge, they were held in the nearby forest until their turn came. Then the Nazis began to fire on the people and it continued into the twilight. The killings resumed on December 8, 1941, and the Nazis embarked on further massacre on December 9. The Rumbula killings, along with many other massacres led to the Einsatzgruppen trial after World War II where many Einsatzgruppen commanders were found guilty of crimes against humanity.
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