Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Aigars Urtāns. Holokausts Latvijas provincē: Abrenes apriņķis
which became reinforcements in crimes organized by German institutions. The men who
wanted to revenge upon former power supporters, including Jews, volunteered into Latvian
self-defence forces.
Balvi
Balvi was the first town in the Abrene District where assassination of the Jews began.
First – soon after the German army invaded Latvia (on 2 July 1941) – displacement of
Jews to an enclosed town section which was called either Balvi ghetto or the arrested
Jews camp was started. Several tens of the Jews arrested in the vicinity of Balvi (in civil
parishes) were displaced into this camp. The assassination of the Jews was planned for
the beginning of August 1941. The Arājs Commando arrived in Balvi in the evening of
9 August, after killing the Gulbene Jews in Litene civil parish of the Madona District. On
10 August, Arājs Commando murdered about 200–300 Jews from Balvi town and environs
in the Celmiņi Forest, about 5 km from the town.
Rugāji civil parish
After the assassination of the Jews in Balvi, the murderers from the Arājs Commando left for
to Rugāji Civil Parish in the vicinity of Balvi, where more than a hundred Jews lived before
the war. Approximately on 8 August 1941, several tens of Jewish men were arrested and
transferred to Litene which is situated about 20 km from Rugāji. They were killed together
with the Jews from Gulbene and Litene by Arājs Commando on 9 August. Other Jews,
arrested in Rugāji – mostly women and children – were taken to sand quarry, 5–6 km from
Rugāji, where they were shot by killers from Arājs Commando. Perhaps, several tens of
the Jews arrested in Bērzpils Civil Parish were killed at the same time and place. The total
number of the people killed there is about 200.
Viļaka
After the crime committed in Rugāji, the same evening (i.e. on 10 August) the killers went
to Viļaka. Strong anti-Semitic atmosphere had predominated there already with the entry of
the German troops in to Viļaka, since there had been the largest Jewish community in the
Abrene District and many Jews, proportional to the number of inhabitants, had participated
both in the Soviet power institutions and in Komsomol. In the first part of July 1941, one
of the tasks of the self-defence forces was arrests of the Soviet activists, and therefore,
several people were arrested and Jews were among them. At the same time, the list of the
Jews living in the territory of the civil parish was prepared by the local authorities. In the
middle of July, in the centre of the civil parish Viļaka the Jews living there were dissociated
from the other society. The Jewish ghetto was organized and all the Jews living in the small
village were displaced there. The Jews living outside Viļaka, in rural territories, stayed in
their residences until the beginning of massive arrests. 11 August 1941 was the date of
93