Estonia: More Holocaust Labor Camp Markers Unveiled

Kohtla-Nõmme, Estonia. New commemorative marker at Labor Camp sit. Photo: Evgeni Kapov

Kohtla-Nõmme, Estonia. New commemorative marker at Labor Camp site. Lee Seeman (left) member of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, who helped raise funds for the memorial. Photo: Evgeni Kapov

Kohtla-Nõmme, Estonia. New commemorative marker at Labor Camp site. Rabbi Shumuel Kot places stones on the new matzevah-type memorial. Photo: Evgeni Kapov

Estonia: More Holocaust Labor Camp Markers Unveiled
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) The dedication ceremony for new markers on the sites of three former Nazi-created labor camps in Eastern Estonia, originally scheduled for July, took place on August 7th to accommodate distinguished visitors participating in the event. You can read about the camps and markers in my previous blogpost.

Mr. Evgeni Kapov, of the Internet Portal Delfi, has posted pictures online from the Dedication Ceremony in Kohtla-Nõmme. I have posted a few of Mr. Kapov's photos of the ceremony and you can see more pictures here.

The inscripton on the memorial is in three languages - Estonian, Hebrew and English. It reads:

In Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

Between 1941 and 1944 the German occupying powers established 20 labour and concentration camps in Estonia. Thousands of people from a number of countries were killed in these camps because they were Jewish.

This is the site of Soska concentration camp

Lithuania: Time to Save Jewish Partisan Fort in Rundninkai Forest
by Samuel D. Gruber

All photos courtesy of Adalbert Wagner

(ISJM) In the Rundninkai Forest about 25 miles (40 kms) southwest Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and only a few miles (5 kms.) from the village of Senieji Maceliai, is the only vestige of the heroic resistance of Jewish survivors of the Vilna Ghetto. The drive takes about forty minutes to an hour, and in that time one is transported into a different place, and also a different time. Today, one member of that Jewish Resistance group, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, is still alive, and she has made it her cause to tell the story of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania, and to remember their hidden place of refuge. According Dovid Katz of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, at Vilnius university, where Fania Brantsovsky is librarian, in all, “about a hundred escapees from the Vilna Ghetto, lived (literally) under the ground during the period they fought with the anti-Nazi partisans, in alliance with the Allies, during the final period of the Holocaust in Lithuania.”

The 87-year old Brantsovsky, still takes visitors to the site to where she escaped when she fled the Vilna Ghetto on 23 September 1943. The history of the Jewish Partisan struggle is told by historian Dov Levin in his book Fighting Back. Lithuanian Jewry’s armed resistance to the Nazis, 1941-1945. (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1997). Levin recounts the complex history of the partisan units whose size, location and access to arms ebbed and flowed depending on the demands and pressures of the larger more organized Partisan forces - those directed by the Soviets, and those more nationalist groups. Both groups - whether of the left or right - had little love or repect for Jewish partisans - who needs were often sacrificed for the benefit of the non-Jewish groups (this was not unique to Lithuania). The Jews, of course, with no where else to go but the forest, had little recourse. Still, according to Levin, at least four substantial Jeiwsh fighting groups were created in the Rundninkai Forest, totalling about 400 men. There were Jewish families there, too. Any preservation of the site must make sense of the conflicting claims of the different partisan groups and recognize that the political and ideological complexities the past still continue in many ways today.

The “accommodations” at the surviving anti-Nazi Partisan fort were primitive, but the historical significance of the remaining simple dug-out structures and the paths that join them is tremendous. Not only do they represent an important aspect of the anti-Nazi fight in Lithuania – something all Lithuanians should acknowledge – but they also record a momentous movement in Jewish history, comparable to the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, when oppressed Jews chose to fight (sometimes to their death) in the face of overwhelming odds. It is this tradition - an training -of the Holocaust, as much as the suffering and death of Camps (of which Barack Obama has recently spoken), that gave life to the State of Israel in 1948 and afterward.

Adalbert Wagner, a volunteer at the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum/The Green House has documented the forest site (and has graciously provided pictures for this report). For more photos click here.




As an historian, preservationist and a Jew I think it is essential that these remains be protected and preserved. It is not a preposterous goal. Already large sums are being allocated for the preservation of sites of the “Forest Brothers” (many of whom were ex-fascist collaborators and “Jew-shooters” who fled into the forests in 1944 to escape the Soviet advance). This fact should encourage the preservation of this site, too, but in fact the possibility of preserving this site, and teaching its history, aggravates and even enrages those in Lithuania who continue to celebrate the pro-Nazi participants and policies of the war years. Today’s government, while in no way complicit, would rather the whole thing go away. Most likely, like an insurance provider facing a malpractice suit, there are many who are just sitting back and waiting for Faina Brantsovksy to pass away, and her memories to follow.

It would be so much better to celebrate Fania’s life, struggle, survival and accomplishments and protect and preserve the Rundninkai Forest fort in her honor, and in the memory of those who lived and fought from there. I call on the Lithuanian government, which has done so much to preserve the memory of Ghetto Jews at the memorials at Panerai (Ponary) and Kaunus’s Ninth Fort, to step forward to protect this simple site, too. I call on the international community, which has done much to assist in the conservation of Auschwitz and the building of memorials at Mauthausen, Belzec, Rumbula, and most recently the Labor Camps of Estonia, and so many other places, to step forward to assist this effort, too.

The International Survey of Jewish Monuments is ready to act as facilitator for this project, in the right circumstances. If funds are available, ISJM will assist in putting together an international conservation and interpretation team to work with local professionals and authorities for the long-term protection and preservation of the Rundninkai Forest fort.

Estonia: More Concentration Camp Commemorative Markers to Be Dedicated July 7, 2009

Estonia: More Concentration Camp Commemorative Markers to Be Dedicated July 7, 2009

by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) On a recent blogpost I mentioned the on-going project in Estonia to mark the sites of Holocaust-era concentration camps in Estonia, established by the Nazis in large part to develop the oil shale industry in the region. Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and elsewhere were imprisoned and enslaved to labor at the camps. Many died because of brutal conditions; others were executed toward the end of the war as the Germans withdrew from Estonia. While these were not Estonian-created camps, it is true that many Estonians worked in the camps as guards and in other capacities.

The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Estonia and the Jewish Community of Estonia have announced the completion of the second phase of a project to better mark the sites of former Concentration Camps in Estonia, to take place on July 7th, at the former site of Kohtla-Nõmme labor camp. This is one of three markers set up this year as part of the co-operative project “Holocaust markers in Estonia”. The others will be at sites at Asari and Soski.

In 2005, new or additional markers were installed at five sites - Ereda, Kiviõli, Klooga, Illuka, Metsakmistu and Vaivara.

This project was developed over a series of years through the initiative and perseverance of Cilja Laud, former president of the Jewish Community of Estonia and Anton Pärn, Undersecretary, Ministry of Culture of Estonia with continuing support and funding from the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, and especially the involvement of Commission Chairman Warren L. Miller and Commission members Lee Seeman and Gary Lavine. The Commission helped shape the project, negotiate involvement from the Ministry of Culture of Estonia and to raise the funds needed from private donors and foundations.

Having worked on this project for several years in its earliest phases, I am delighted that it has reached this point. I still maintain the hope that this is just the beginning of an even more substantial project in Estonia of Holocaust education. Information about the markers, the sites and what happened at these camps must be widely disseminated. I am encouraged by the remarks of Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip at Klooga May 8, 2005 when he said: "Here in Klooga, we are in a place, which symbolizes the evil and inhumanity of the Nazi ideology...Last Thursday, the Government of the Republic of Estonia released an official statement, in which it regrets the fact that in cooperation with occupying powers, citizens of the Republic of Estonia also participated in the perpetration of crimes against humanity. Although these murderers must answer for their crimes as individuals, the Estonian Government continues to do everything possible to expose these crimes. I apologize for the fact that Estonian citizens could be found among those who participated in the murdering of people or assisted in the perpetration of these crimes.”

Then-Estonian president Arnold Rüütel was even more explicit in his statement at the dedication of the new Klooga marker in July 24, 2005, when he said “Being the President of the Republic of Estonia I feel hurt that among the citizens of our state there were those who participated in Nazi crimes. It does not matter whatever motives they had for such behavior. We condemn the deeds of those people and we apologize for them..”

Brief History of the Concentration Camps in Estonia

(the following account is adapted from project documents prepared by the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad with help from the Jewish Community of Estonia and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and especially historian Nicholas Lane)

There were 22 concentration and labor camps established by the Germans in Estonia during the Second World War. Over 10,000 Jews are believed to have died at these camps. Until now, their enslavement, suffering, and death has hardly been recognized, and never been appropriately commemorated. This project will create a system of memorials throughout Estonia indicating the location of each camp and associated mass graves. The Jewish Community of Estonia is also preparing educational materials as part of this project.

The camps in Estonia were generally set up in forests and marshy regions, in order to prevent contact between the prisoners and the people of the neighborhood.

Many of the camps were labor camps where inmates were brutally worked in an effort to extract oil from shale deposits. The largest number of sites --15-- was in Ida -Virumaa County. Most of the prisoners were housed in wooden huts, often with extremely thin walls made of canvas. It is related how on very cold days the prisoners' hair would freeze to the canvas walls. The camp that was most notorious for its bad conditions was Lower Ereda, which was called by the prisoners "A Grave for the Living". Generally, all the clothing the prisoners had brought with them was confiscated upon arrival. Shoes were made of wood and were a torture to the prisoners.

The camp prisoners were mainly employed in the service of the German authorities and the Wehrmacht. In 1942, when the prisoners were brought to Jagala, their principal task had been to sort out the clothing of the dead; but in 1943, when the Soviet offensive and the German counter-offensive were expected, the prisoners’ main tasks were to work in the Slanietz mines for production of synthetic fuel, and to work for the army doing jobs including road-building, laying railway tracks, digging anti-tank trenches, building bunkers and other military installations from concrete. Labor for the Slanietz mines was drawn especially from the Ereda, Vivikoni, Kivioli and Kunda camps. In the Klooga camp, three shifts worked without a break, mainly on various concrete products.

As the war wound down and the Russians approached from the east, the Germans began to evacuate and execute the thousands of prisoners in the Estonian camps. The mass killing of camp inmates was carried out at the Lagedi camp on September 18, 1944 and in the Klooga camp the following day, as the German armies retreated in confusion. In Lagedi, 426 people were killed and in Klooga about 2,400 Jewish prisoners and some Soviet prisoners-of-war were executed. They were all shot in the back of the neck, and then gasoline was poured on the piles of corpses and set alight. In Klooga, tens of persons were shot as they fled from the scene of the massacre, but a few survived. A few also survived the massacre at Lagedi. During the killing in the forest near Klooga, about 85 people managed to escape from the assembly point to hide in various places, mainly in an attic in one of the huts. After the liberation about 100 escapees from other camps gathered at Klooga, and a few months later they moved on to Vilnius.

These sites and other Holocaust-related sites in Estonia have, for the most part, been neglected for the past sixty years. Five locations were marked as sites of martyrdom during the Soviet period with memorials that were not specific and were even inaccurate in their inscriptions. At least two sites more have received new memorial markers since Estonia achieved independence in 1991. In 1994, the Jewish Community, with the cooperation of the government of Estonia erected a memorial at Klooga using funds received from Germany for survivors of Estonian concentration camps. Also in 1994, private individuals erected a small monument at Vaivara. In 2002, the Jewish Community erected a stone and tablet at Aleve–Liiva with financial assistance from the Polish, Czech, and Germany governments, because citizens of these countries were killed there. Today, only these three camps are at all adequately marked with memorials for those who suffered, and with accurate information for those who visit the sites today. Even these sites require additional on-site information, and in the case of Klooga, restoration of the Soviet-era memorial enclosure at the mass grave.

Estonia: New Info on Jewish Sites Listed On-Line

Tallin, Estonia. Jewish cemetery. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber

Estonia: New Information on Jewish Sites Listed On-Line

(ISJM) New, extensive and up-to-date information about Jewish heritage sites in Estonia has recently been added to the website www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, where detailed lists and descriptions of Jewish sites in a number of little documented countries are being posted, little by little.

The Estonia section includes the most comprehensive information available about synagogues and former synagogues, cemeteries and Holocaust-related sites.

The Jewish Community in Estonia continues to move forward on several heritage documentation projects. The two most prominent are the placement of commemorative marker on the site of the Great Choral Synagogue of Tallinn at 5 Maakri Street, and the erection of more commemorative markers on sites of the approximately 20 Nazi-sounded labor and death sites throughout the country, where up to 20,000 Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and elsewhere toiled - especially in the oil shale industry - and where many died. In the past five years the project has identified these site, some of which were never marked, and others which were marked with non-specific commemorative inscriptions dating from the Soviet period. New or additional markers were installed at five sites - Ereda, Kiviõli, Klooga, Illuka, Metsakmistu and Vaivara, in 2005. Markers are reportedly ready for another three sites, though there have been delays over disputes about who will maintain them.

The Jewish community of Estonia dedicated a new synagogue in Tallinn (photos) in 2007 designed by local architects Kimmel and Stöör and last December (2008) they opened a museum to document the life of Estonian Jews from the second half of the 19th century to the present.