The 'Final Solution' in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944

by Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein, Ray Brandon

Overview

Ghetto, forced labor camp, concentration camp: All of the elements of the National Socialists’ policies of annihilation were to be found in Riga. This first analysis of the Riga ghetto and the nearby camps of Salaspils and Jungfernhof addresses all aspects of German occupation policy during the Second World War. Drawing upon a broad array of sources that includes previously inaccessible Soviet archives, postwar criminal investigations, and trial records of alleged perpetrators, and the records of the Society of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto, the authors have produced an in-depth study of the Riga ghetto that never loses sight of the Latvian capital’s place within the overall design of Nazi policy and the all-of-Europe dimension of the Holocaust.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857456014
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	01/01/2012
Series:	War and Genocide , #14
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	530
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.07(d)

About the Author

Andrej Angrick, a native of Berlin, is a historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture. He has published numerous articles about the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and co-edited Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999) and Die Gestapo nach 1945: Karrieren, Konflikte, Konstruktionen (with Klaus-Michael Mallmann, 2009), as well as Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (2003).

Peter Klein, a Berlin-based historian, consultant, and researcher affiliated with the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, has published widely on the Holocaust and German occupation in various parts of central and eastern Europe during the Second World War. Klein was the editor of Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/1942 (1997) and a co-editor of Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (1999). He is the author of “Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt” (2009).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Chart I
Chart II
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Latvia Caught between Two Dictatorships
Chapter 2. Operation Barbarossa: Preparations for the German Attack on the Soviet Union
Chapter 3. From the Pogroms to the Establishment of the Ghetto
Chapter 4. Securing German Rule in Occupied Riga: The Period of the Large Ghetto for Latvian Jews
Chapter 5. Murder on a Massive Scale: The Murder of the Ghetto’s Latvian Jews
Chapter 6. In Search of Territories for the “Final Solution”: The Road to Riga as a Final Destination for Deportations
Chapter 7. Plans for the Salaspils Camp
Chapter 8. The Deportation of German Jews to Riga
Chapter 9. The Salaspils Camp: A Detention Center with Many Functions
Chapter 10. German Jews Build Salaspils: December 1941–August 1942

Excursus I: SS Major Rudolf Lange and the Wannsee Conference

Chapter 11. The Latvian Labor Market and the Compulsory Deployment of Jews in Riga
Chapter 12. The Utilization of Jewish Assets and the Issue of Ghetto Administration
Chapter 13. Ghetto Life and Forced Labor in Riga in the Spring of 1942
Chapter 14. The Turning Point: Operation Dünamünde at Jungfernhof and in the “Ghetto for Reich Jews”
Chapter 15. Forced Labor and Annihilation in County Commissariat Riga City
Chapter 16. Failed Resistance: The Tin Square Operation, October 1942
Chapter 17. Annihilation Instead of Forced Labor: Himmler’s Struggle against Production Constraints and Armaments Interests in General Commissariat Latvia
Chapter 18. Concentration Camp Kaiserwald and the Barrackings

Excursus II: SS Second Lieutenant Fritz Scherwitz, The Commander at Lenta: A Biographical Sketch

Chapter 19. The Decommissioning of Concentration Camp Kaiserwald, Evacuation, and Liberation
Chapter 20. A New Start and the Search for Justice
Chapter 21. Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“With its …[over thousand] detailed and expansive footnotes drawing on twenty-four different archive collections in eight countries and three continents and an enormous secondary literature, this is one of the best researched regional studies of the Holocaust ever to appear. It is helped by the fact that the authors are also always so cognizant of what was happening elsewhere in Europe at the same time and thus frequently draw out the relationship between seemingly haphazard local decisions and trends across Europe…Indeed, the way in which the book ‘makes sense’ of complex institutional behavior is at times breathtaking…The precision in the detail and the scope of the contextualization make this one of the more important works to appear on the Holocaust in recent years.” • English Historical Review

“Translated flawlessly from German into English by Ray Brandon, [this] readable and engaging study eminently meets the series’ high standards of scholarship. Its 17-page bibliography lists old classics as well as the most recent publications, and the copious, annotated endnotes following each chapter constitute a parallel book in themselves. Although the authors rely heavily on the much-researched Federal Republic archives, they also introduce materials that became accessible only with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union itself.” • European History Quarterly

“This very readable and well documented study fills an important gap in the Holocaust literature: it offers insight into the microcosm reflecting the entire terrifying and murderous scenario of the SS State.” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“[This] excellent study of the Riga ghetto, informed by Eastern European sources and available now in English translation, provides a precise and ghastly description of what [the liquidation] meant for the local Jews. With laudable thoroughness, they describe the organized shooting of Jews, the first form of industrial-scale mass murder.” • The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher