Kaiserwald (Ķeizarmežs) was a

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

near the

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

suburb of

Mežaparks Mežaparks (german: Kaiserwald) is a neighbourhood of Northern District in Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The ...

in modern-day

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

. Kaiserwald was built in March 1943, during the period that the

German army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...

occupied Latvia. The first inmates of the camp were several hundred convicts from Germany. Following the

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end in Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and many other countries. The assets and property of the company are redistrib ...

of the

, Liepāja and Daugavpils (Dvinsk)

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...

s in June 1943, the remainder of the Jews of Latvia, along with most of the survivors of the liquidation of the

Vilna Ghetto The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland. During the approximatel ...

, were

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

to Kaiserwald. In early 1944, a number of smaller camps around Riga were brought under the jurisdiction of the Kaiserwald camp. Following the occupation of Hungary by the Germans, Hungarian Jews were sent to Kaiserwald, as were a number of Jews from

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

, in Poland. By March 1944, there were 11,878 inmates in the camp and its subsidiaries, 6,182 males and 5,696 females, of whom only 95 were

gentile Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym for ...

Use of the inmates

Unlike

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

, Kaiserwald was not an

extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

, and the inmates were put to work by large German companies, notably

Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the World War II, Second W ...

, which used a large number of female

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

s from Kaiserwald in the production of electrical goods, such as batteries.

Evacuation

On 5 August 1944, as the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

advanced westwards and entered Latvia, the Germans began to evacuate the inmates of Kaiserwald to

Stutthof Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof (now Sztutowo) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in the territory of the German-a ...

, in Poland. All Jews under 18 or over 30 were murdered along with anyone who had been convicted of any offence or anyone who it was thought would be unable to survive the trip from Latvia to Poland. The remaining inmates who did not die during the journey arrived at Stutthof in September 1944. The Red Army took over the camp on 15 October 1944 and later used the camp to house Axis prisoners of war.

Bibliography

References

External links

Helen Rodak-Izso - "The Last Chance to Remember"

{{Authority control Nazi concentration camps in Latvia Generalbezirk Lettland

Use of the inmates

Evacuation

See also

Bibliography

References

External links