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Riga gets new Holocaust memorial

By · July 6, 2007

The Latvian government has dedicated a new memorial to Jewish holocaust victims in the capital of Riga, according to RIA Novosti.The unveiling was held on July 4th, a day officially set aside by the
Latvian government to honor the memory of those Jews lost during World
War II.  On that date in 1941 the occupying Nazi forces burned the Choral Synagogue in the city center, with approximately 1,000 Jews inside.The memorial, a sculpture of several people supporting a collapsing wall, is meant to symbolize the holocaust and was placed on the site of the burnt shul.During the Holocaust Latvia’s Jewish community was almost completely annihilated, primarily by a brigade drawn predominantly from existing citizens.  Of the 90,000 Jews living in Latvia before the war, barely 100 survived.

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