Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

328 Novadpētnieku vākums
Holocaust victims were 90% of the Jewish permanent population, in some rural councils
even more. In the opinion of the author, the reason for such a situation was that the German
army reached Jēkabpils in the evening of 28 June 1941 – 12 or even 24 hours later
than Jaunjelgava, Viesīte, Nereta. During these few hours the Daugava bridge in Jēkabpils
remained operational. It was dynamited moments before German tanks appeared.
Judging from the revealed numbers of the killed – 485 – even with the scanty witness
information, one can establish that 300 Hebrews escaped/evacuated to Russia, predominantly
the young and capable ones, to cover tens of kilometres on foot, hiding, and able
to find protection during merciless fascist air raids. Also, able to overcome famine and the
dreadful conditions in the USSR.
Yet the Holocaust consequences were so heavy that in February 2007 only 26 Jews
were known to reside in Jēkabpils District.
In 1941, there were 1700. Of these, 1300 were killed, 400 survived. Numbers are
rounded off.
In this German fascist initiated and organized operation to exterminate human beings,
separate groups of local residents also participated. In all, during the years of
1944–1970, 119 persons were convicted by Soviet tribunals for being implicated to some
degree in the Holocaust. Eleven of these received the highest penalty – death by firing
squad, the remainder, depending on the severity of the crime, 5 to 25 years in Soviet-style
imprisonment spent in labour camps, some behind the Artic Circle, in the most rigorous
conditions. Not all survived. Soviet tribunals and the so called “special conferences”, as
well as pre-tribunal investigations, did not conform to democratic judicial and civil liberty
requirements. Therefore, 40 of the convicts received amnesty from the independent Latvian
State Prosecutor’s Office.
Within the frame of this study, as well as tracing the lost persons in Jēkabpils District,
4000 criminal proceedings have been scrutinized, allowing me to assert that of the many
convicts, not one was pardoned against whom there was proof of direct participation in
the massacre of Jews, Sovet activists or prisoners of war. This was substantiated in my
book Ko neparedzēja hercogs Jēkabs (What was not foreseen by Duke Jakob), published
in 2005. All inhabitants of Jēkabpils involved in the Holocaust were actually disclosed and
analysed precisely during the preparation years of this book.
The above allows me to evaluate the Holocaust events in Jēkabpils District as one of
the most oppressive, merciless periods in the history of this region.
At the same time, one has to state that for this ruthless killing chain, the fuse was
1940–1941 Soviet years of unseen savage regime and to Latvians a totally incomprehensive
mass-scale imprisonment and deportation campaign of citizens and persons representing
the best in society. Murdered bodies left behind by Soviet secret police and fascist anti-
Semitic propaganda together with a drive to avenge, stimulated the Holocaust horror, also
the avalanche to kill Soviet activists.