Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Josifs Ročko. Tas notika Preiļos
he used to live in Jēkabpils District. The materials of court trials show that the order on
execution of Jews was given by the German occupation power but it was not the result of
local collaborators’ initiative.
Currently, the Preiļi victims of Holocaust are not forgotten. On 8 August 2004, a memorial
monument was set up on the initiative, project and financial means of the architect
David Zilberman, the former resident of Preiļi – now citizen of the USA. A capsule with
the surnames of those innocent killed is bricked up at the foundation of the monument.
The words of sorrow and memory are engraved on granite plates as well as the words of
gratitude to the saver Vladislavs Vuškāns. The inscriptions are made in Latvian, Russian,
Jewish and English. This monument is an impressive embodiment of those Jewish victims
murdered.
Sheina Gram was fighting with Nazi when writing a diary. A Pole Vladislavs Vuškāns
who was saving Jews put up resistance to Nazi because he was not obeying the Nazi
occupation. David Zilberman has created the memorial monument which will always be a
symbol of fight with anti-Semitism. All these are links of one chain… A cemetery, memorial
monument and a small birch-tree wood planted by Jewish children remind us of the Jewish
people of Preiļi. And good memories of the old residents of the town about their Jewish
neighbours who passed to eternity in summer of 1941…
259