The slaughter of Rumbula it was a slaughter that took place between 30 November and 8 of December of 1941 on the road to the forest of Rumbula near Riga , Latvia . In that place, about 25,000 Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen A with the help of local Latvian collaborators from the Sonderkommando Arājs .
The officer in charge of the operation was SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln , who had previously supervised similar massacres in Ukraine . Rudolf Lange , who later attended the Wannsee Conference, also participated in the organization of the massacre. Some of the accusations against the Latvian Herberts Cukurs are related to the cleaning of the Riga ghetto by Kommando Arajs.
The massacre of Rumbula, along with many others, formed the basis of the Trial to the Einsatzgruppen after the end of World War II . By which a series of commanders of the Einsatzgruppen were found guilty of crimes against humanity . 1
Except for the slaughter of Babi Yar in Ukraine, this was the greatest atrocity of the Holocaust before they started operating the death camps . 2 Some 24,000 victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto and another 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by train.
References
- Back to top↑ Einsatzgruppen Trial , page 16, position in 6.F: “(F)” On November 30, 1941 in Riga, Einsatzkommando 20 men participated in the murder of 10,600 Jews. “
- Back to top↑ Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia , p. 239