Les Juifs de Riga

Riga, capital of Latvia, was home to an influential Jewish community, blending Germanized Jews oriented toward German culture and Litvaks from the Lithuanian tradition. Its members were active in commerce, industry, the liberal professions, and intellectual life, and the city had synagogues, schools, and a diverse Jewish political life, from Zionism to the labor movement. During the German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto, and a large number of its members were massacred in 1941 in the Rumbula forest. The few survivors emigrated after the war, notably to Israel.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan