The Dünamünde Action () were two
mass killings of
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
committed by the
SS and the
Arajs Kommando in Biķernieki forest near
Riga
Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...
,
Latvia
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...
in March 1942. It is sometimes separated into the First Dünamünde Action on 15 March and the Second Dünamünde Action on 26 March.
The objective of the Dünamünde Action was to execute Jews from
Central Europe
Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Eastern, Southern Europe, Southern, Western Europe, Western and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in ...
who were deported to the overcrowded
Riga Ghetto
Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, a neighbourhood of Riga, Latvia, where Nazis forced Latvian Jewish, Jews from Latvia, and later from the German "Reich" (Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia), to live during World War II. On ...
in
German-occupied Latvia. Victims were lured by a false promise of better living conditions and easier work in the town of
Dünamünde but were instead taken to Biķernieki forest, executed, and buried in
mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...
s. An estimated 3,740 people were killed in the Dünamünde action, most of whom were elderly, sick, or children and their mothers. About 1,900 people from Riga Ghetto were killed in the first action, and 1,840 from the
Jungfernhof concentration camp in the second.
Background
By late 1941,
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
was deporting
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
from
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
,
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
,
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...
and
Moravia
Moravia ( ; ) is a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic, roughly encompassing its territory within the Danube River's drainage basin. It is one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The medieval and early ...
to the
Baltic states
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern co ...
which it was occupying at the time. Many were intended to be sent to the
Riga Ghetto
Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, a neighbourhood of Riga, Latvia, where Nazis forced Latvian Jewish, Jews from Latvia, and later from the German "Reich" (Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia), to live during World War II. On ...
, but this was becoming overcrowded and did not have the capacity to house the new arrivals, causing an "overflow" of Jewish deportees in Latvia. In December 1941, Kurt Krause, a former
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
police detective whom the author Max Kauffman describes as the "man-eater", became the German commandant of the Riga ghettos. His assistant, Max Gymnich, was a
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
agent from
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
.
[Kaufmann, ''The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia'', pages 39 and 43] Krause and Gymnich used dogs to help enforce their commands. A
Latvian Jewish survivor called Joseph Berman, is recorded as stating the following about Gymnich:
By 10 February 1942, around 20,057 Jews had been deported to Riga. Approximate populations of
German Jews
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321 CE, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish commu ...
in the vicinity of Riga were 2,500 at
Jungfernhof concentration camp, 11,000 at the German section of the Riga Ghetto, and 1,300 at
Salaspils concentration camp. About 3,500 Latvian Jewish men and 300 women were in the Latvian section of the Riga Ghetto.
[Schneider, ''Journey into Terror'', pages 26 and 27.] Many others had been murdered upon arrival. According to German ghetto survivor Gertrude Schneider, the inhabitants of the ghetto did not realize how many German Jews had been killed following deportation. They remained under the impression that deportation and
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...
were the worst things that were going to happen:
The Dünamünde actions
In March 1942, the Nazi authorities in Riga decided the German ghetto was getting too crowded and organized what came to be called the "Dünamünde Action" to reduce the population. The word "action" was a
euphemism
A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the u ...
employed by the Nazis to describe
mass shooting
A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers use a firearm to Gun violence, kill or injure multiple individuals in rapid succession. There is no widely accepted specific definition, and different organizations tracking su ...
s and later this was picked up by the ghetto inmates themselves. The Nazis ordered each of the groups in the German ghetto to prepare a list of between 60 and 120 people for further "resettlement", with the Berlin group required to name 600. The Nazis informed the local
Judenrat that the people, who were mostly unable to work such as elderly, infirm, or mothers with young children, would go to a supposed town called
Dünamünde to work at a fish
canning
Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container (jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, although under ...
plant. Dünamünde was located northwest of Riga at the
mouth
A mouth also referred to as the oral is the body orifice through which many animals ingest food and animal communication#Auditory, vocalize. The body cavity immediately behind the mouth opening, known as the oral cavity (or in Latin), is also t ...
of the
Daugava on the
Gulf of Riga
The Gulf of Riga, Bay of Riga, or Gulf of Livonia (, , ) is a bay of the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Estonia.
The island of Saaremaa (Estonia) partially separates it from the rest of the Baltic Sea. The main connection between the gulf and t ...
, which made the story believable. ''
Obersturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Ostuf'') was a Nazi Germany paramilitary ranks, Nazi Germany paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organisations, such as the Sturmabteilung, SA, Schutzstaffel, SS, National Socialist Motor Corps, NSKK and the ...
'' Gerhard Maywald conceived the ruse, which succeeded as many people were anxious to go, though there was to be no resettlement of any kind.
An estimated 3,740 people were killed in the two actions at Biķernieki forest, with most of the killings being done by 10 members of the
Arajs Kommando, a Latvian pro-Nazi collaborator group.
First action
On Sunday 15 March 1942, despite the Nazis only calling for 1,500 to be selected, about 1,900 Jews assembled in the streets of the ghetto, including, as with the
Rumbula massacre
The Rumbula massacre is a collective term for incidents on November 30 and December 8, 1941, in which about 25,000 Jews were murdered in or on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during World War II. Except for the Babi Yar massacre in ...
, many parents with small children. Instead the people were taken on
buses
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...
to Biķernieki forest on the north side of Riga, where they were shot and buried in
unmarked
In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
mass graves
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...
.
[ Angrick and Klein, ''Die "Endlösung" in Riga'', pages 338 to 345.][Kaufmann, ''The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia'', page 47][Schneider, ''Journey into Terror'', pages 34 to 37.]
On 16 and 17 March, several vans returned to the Riga Ghetto carrying the personal property of those sent to Dünamünde. Residents became suspicious, particularly after a detail was assigned to sort and clean these items, many of the items were recognized by name tags and other indications of ownership.
[ The clothing bore mudstains and signs of having been hastily removed. For example, stockings were still attached to garters.
]
Second action
On 26 March 1942, the same ruse was perpetrated at Jungfernhof concentration camp against the older German Jews. The camp's commander, Rudolf Seck, refused young people of working age the permission to go with their parents. A total of 1,840 people were taken to Biķernieki forest where they were also shot like those from the Riga Ghetto 11 days earlier.[ The method employed, called ''Sardinenpackung'' ("]sardine
Sardine and pilchard are common names for various species of small, oily forage fish in the herring suborder Clupeoidei. The term "sardine" was first used in English during the early 15th century; a somewhat dubious etymology says it com ...
packing"), had been designed by the infamous ''Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...
'' commander Friedrich Jeckeln.[Ezergailis, ''The Holocaust in Latvia'', pages 359 to 360.] The historians Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth describe Jeckeln's system:
Victims were forced to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people who had just been shot. To save ammunition, each person was shot just once, in the back of the head. Anyone not killed outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up.[Einsatzgruppen trial, page 444] After the war, when a number of the ''Einsatzgruppen'' commanders were placed on trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen case, the tribunal found that "one defendant did not exclude the possibility that an executee could only seem to be dead because of shock or temporary unconsciousness. In such cases it was inevitable he would be buried alive."[
]
See also
* Bikernieki Memorial
Notes
References
Historiographical
* Angrick, Andrej, and Klein, Peter, ''Die "Endlösung" in Riga. Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941 - 1944'', Darmstadt 2006.
* Ezergailis, Andrew, ''The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944—The Missing Center'', Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996.
* Kaufmann, Max, ''Die Vernichtung des Judens Lettlands'' (''The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia''), Munich, 1947, English translation by Laimdota Mazzarins available on-line a
Churbn Lettland -- The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia
(all references in this article are to page numbers in the on-line edition)
* Rubenstein, Richard L., and Roth, John K., ''Approaches to Auschwitz'', Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
* Schneider, Gertrude, ''Journey into terror: story of the Riga Ghetto'', (2d Ed.) Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2001.
Personal accounts
* Abstract: Berman, Joseph, ''"Ascension Commando"; testimony against Max Gymnich'', 1 Dec 1947, provided to the former Association of Baltic Jews, full statement available on line a
Weiner Library, Document 057-EA-1222
War crimes trials and evidence
also available at ttp://www.mazal.org/NMT-HOME.htm Mazel library(well indexed HTML version)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunamunde Action
1942 in Latvia
Mass murder in 1942
Einsatzgruppen
Holocaust massacres and pogroms in Latvia
Jungfernhof concentration camp
March 1942 in Europe
Riga in World War II
1942 murders in Europe
Deaths by live burial