From Bielefeld to Riga

As a history teacher, I have often visited with students the traces of the persecution of Jews in Bielefeld. After the collection at the 'Jewish House Kyffhäuser' at Kesselbrink, the path for many East Westphalian Jews led to the main train station. Their names are also memorialized there. On December 13, 1941, about 200 of them were deported by train to the ghetto in Riga. At the site of the ghetto, they are also remembered by name today, provided they survived the torturous train journey. Most of them were subsequently murdered in Auschwitz.

A private initiative has taken on this commemorative work with good Latvian-English explanations. The only words from our native language that appear here are: Wehrmacht commanding officer, master plan, Riga local command, free of Jews.

This is our language!

Just outside of Riga, we also visited the former Saraspils camp, where especially many children were murdered.

Now it was time to leave these places of horror. So we drove on to the Gauja National Park.