Today, we visited the our first memorial site in Latvia. It is located in a forrest were several mass executions were carried out by the Nazis in 1943 and 1944 in order to conceil their crimes towards the end of the war. The exact number of victims cannot be determined, but it is estimated to be around 43,000, including, but not limited to Jews.
The site is marked with stones and divided into different sections, labeled with the names of cities to indicate the places from which the victims were deported.
There were two things I found particularly shocking. On the one hand, seeing all those German city names, especially smaller towns from the area around Cologne, which I know well since Cologne is my hometown. Seeing those connections resonated with me on a deeply personal level that I find difficult to put into words.
On the other hand, walking through the forest and the memorial site, seeing all these mass graves was deeply unsettling. Looking to the left and right, there were large burial sites marked with stones which served as a visual reminder of the scale of the atrocities. Sometimes when confronted with many numbers, it is easy to lose sight of what 43,000 victims actually means. This made me realise again how many people truly lost their lives there, and this is only one location of so many others.
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