Remembering Salaspils and Bikernieki
During the Nazi occupation of Latvia (1941–1944), the landscapes around Riga became sites of profound violence and loss for Jewish communities from Latvia and across Europe. Two historically linked locations (Salaspils and Bikernieki) bear witness to these tragedies and remain powerful places of remembrance today.
Salaspils Concentration Camp, established by Nazi authorities southeast of Riga, functioned as a police prison, forced labor correction camp, and transit point. Estimates suggest that around 20,000 people were imprisoned there, including Latvian civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, and Jews brought from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Harsh conditions, extreme labor, starvation, disease, and brutality caused the deaths of at least 2,000–3,000 people, including many children. Additionally, several thousand Jewish laborers died during the camp’s construction. The first part of the gallery below shows the memorial ensemble on the camp grounds which was unveiled in 1967. Today, with its incredible stark statues that tower over you, it stands as a solemn recognition of the lives lost there.
Just a short distance away lies Bikernieki Forest, the largest known mass murder site in Latvia from the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi units and collaborators executed tens of thousands of people in the forest; many were Jewish men, women, and children from Latvia and deported from German-occupied Europe. While precise figures vary, around 20,000 Jewish victims are known to be buried here, among an estimated 30,000–40,000 total victims. There are 55 marked mass graves across the site.
In 2001 a memorial complex was opened in the forest, featuring a central black granite cube inscribed with words from the Book of Job: “Earth, do not cover my blood; may my cry never be laid to rest.” Thousands of stones placed around the memorial echo the look of a traditional Jewish cemetery and carry the names of cities from which victims came.
Together, Salaspils and Bikernieki remind us of the human toll of systematic persecution and genocide. For Jewish communities and allies worldwide, they are places of mourning, education, and solemn reflection — honoring individual lives taken and underscoring the imperative to remember the past so that such atrocities never happen again.
