Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

174 Konferences “Baltija Otrajā pasaules karā (1939–1945)” referāti par holokausta tematiku
Secondly, the scholarly factor: considerable results have been achieved in the research
of this topic both in local as and in foreign Holocaust historiography (however, the
Belarusian historical research has failed to carry out a specialised study of the history of
Minsk Ghetto);
Thirdly, the social factor: the tragedy, the scope of which is written in the Holocaust
history with tens of thousands of victims in Minsk and Riga Ghettos, touches the destinies
of not only Belarusian and Latvian Jews, but also Jews from Germany, Austria and other
European countries.
What makes research topical is the need to fulfill the triple research task aimed at
impartial study and modern scholarly explication of the past and application of a differentiated
approach to draw the full picture of the history of the Holocaust in Belarusian and
Latvian territories. The identified documents testify that the Holocaust in the territory of
Reichskommissariat Ostland had specific features that took expression in:
– the concrete chronology of events, related to the foundation, operation and closure
of ghettos in Minsk and Riga in 1941–1943;
– the especially vast scale of the crimes committed in the occupied territories by the
German security services (SD, SS, Police of Public Order), units of Wehrmacht and their
local henchmen;
– the most atrocious forms, means and methods of extermination of Belarusian and
Latvian Jews and the Jewish deportees from other countries.
On the Belarusian soil, 650–680 thousand (according to German data, 500–550 thousand)
Jews were killed in 1941–1944, while more than 270 thousand perished in the
Baltic territory (of these over 70 thousand were annihilated in Latvia). The exact number of
European Jews murdered in Minsk Ghetto has not been established yet, while the number
of victims of Riga Ghetto has been identified with the precision to tens of fractions of per
cent.
Impartial research of all without exception pages of the tragic history of the Holocaust
on Belarusian and Latvian soil is one of the tasks of the local and foreign historical science,
which implies joint comparative studies by scholars of our countries.