VARAKĻĀNI
Pre-1940: Varakļāni (Yiddish: Varklian), town, Rēzekne aprinka, Latgale reǵions, Latvia; 1940–1941: Varakļāni/Varakliany, Latvian SSR; 1941–1944: Weraklani, Kreis Rositten, Gebiet Dünaburg, Generalkommissariat Lettland; post-1991: Varakļāni, Latgale reǵions, Republic of Latvia
Varakļāni is located about 200 kilometers (124 miles) east-southeast of Riga. According to the 1935 census, a total of 952 Jews resided in Varakļāni, comprising 57 percent of the town’s inhabitants.
German armed forces occupied the town on July 1, 1941, 10 days after their invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. During that time, more than 200 Jews had managed to evacuate eastward. Approximately 700 Jews remained in Varakļāni at the start of the German occupation, including some refugees from places further to the west. After the arrival of German troops, a number of anti-Jewish measures were introduced in Varakļāni. Local Latvians showed the German soldiers where Jewish families lived, and Jewish houses were looted. Large posters announced that Jews were forbidden to associate with non-Jews, could not be treated by non-Jewish doctors, and were forbidden to employ non-Jewish servants. Jews could buy food only in specially designated stores that were poorly supplied. Every day the German authorities rounded up some Jews and organized work details to clean streets and public places. In addition, the victims were insulted and humiliated.1
On July 15, 1941, a rumor spread that all the refugees who had come to Varakļāni would be allowed to return home, but [End Page 1024] the local authorities refused to grant them safe passage. As a result, many of the refugees attempted to return home on their own initiative, usually disguised as non-Jews.
At some time in mid-July 1941, probably after July 15, all the Jews were concentrated in a ghetto in the impoverished “Neustadt” suburb, near the Jewish cemetery. The ghetto was not fenced, but Jews were prohibited from leaving and were not allowed to communicate with non-Jews. In the ghetto, the Jews were subjected to systematic humiliation, beating, and robbery by the Latvian guards. Those Jews able to work were sent out daily for forced labor. All Jewish property was confiscated. The Latvian police also conducted a number of killings of members of the Jewish population.
The Jews stayed in the ghetto for only two or three weeks. On August 4, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated; all the Jews were herded into the building of the consumers’ cooperative at the market square. Some were forced into the basement, and some were in the yard, fenced in on all sides. Blue buses and green army trucks arrived, carrying men in green uniforms. Panic broke out in the yard. The Jews had been told to bring along necessary items, including valuables, as they were to be transferred to another place. All these items were confiscated.
Some 20 to 30 Jews, mainly young, healthy males, were put into each truck. On arrival at their destination, the Jews were pushed out of the trucks, led to a ditch, and shot. Several hours later, more victims were brought. The women, children, and elderly were shot in the evening. They were driven on foot towards the Jewish cemetery; only a few, who were feeble, rode in carts. Rabbi Leizer Grodskii in particular was mistreated. His beard was tied to a horse’s tail, and he was dragged along to the shooting site, while the thugs whistled and whooped. Some witnesses said that local residents were forced to watch the shooting; others claimed that the curious came of their own accord. Thus more than 500 of the town’s Jews were shot at the cemetery.2 The shooting was carried out by a detachment of the Arājs Kommando, sent from Riga, and by the local Latvian police. At the same time 20 local Gypsies were also murdered and thrown into an adjacent pit. The next day, August 5, peasants from surrounding villages were forced to come to the cemetery to fill in the pits.
Two Jews managed to escape the roundup and hid with the help of farmers in the village of Ludane. After several months, their hiding places were discovered, and when they tried to escape, they drowned in the surrounding marshes. Several young Jewish women were temporarily saved by converting to Christianity, but they were later arrested by Latvian police and subsequently executed. Before their retreat in the summer of 1944, the German authorities ordered local farmers to burn the corpses of the murdered Jews to destroy the evidence of the crimes.
SOURCES
The ghetto in Varakļāni is mentioned in the following publications: “Varaklani,” in Dov Levin, ed., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Latvia and Estonia (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1988), pp. 112–116; “Varaklani,” in Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), pp. 1374–1375; “Varakliani,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Estestvennykh Nauk, Nauchnyi fond “Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia,” “Epos,” 2000), 4:205. Additional information on the fate of the Jews of Varakļāni during the Holocaust can be found in Iosif Rochko, “Varakliany,” in Rabbi Menakhem Barkagan, ed., Unichtozhenie evreev v Latvii 1941–1945: Tsikl lektsii (Riga: SHAMIR, 2007), pp. 228–234; and Frida Michelson, I Survived Rumbuli (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979).
Documentation on the murder of the Jews of Varakļāni can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-93); LVVA; and YVA.
