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 Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps. About 24,000 of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and approximately 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by train. The Rumbula massacre was carried out by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe A with the help of local collaborators of the Arajs Kommando, with support from other such Latvian auxiliaries. In charge of the operation was Höherer SS und Polizeiführer Friedrich Jeckeln, who had previously overseen similar massacres in Ukraine. Rudolf Lange, who later participated in the Wannsee Conference, also took part in organizing the massacre. Some of the evidence against Latvian Herberts Cukurs is related to the clearing of the Riga Ghetto by the Arajs Kommando. The Rumbula killings, together with many others, formed the basis of the post-World War II Einsatzgruppen trial where a number of Einsatzgruppen commanders were found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Nomenclature
This massacre is known by different names, including "The Big Action", and the "Rumbula Action", but in Latvia it is just called "Rumbula" or "Rumbuli". It is sometimes called the Jeckeln Action after its commander Friedrich Jeckeln. The word "Aktion", which translates literally to action or operation in English, was used by the Nazis as a euphemism for murder. For Rumbula, the official euphemism was "shooting action" (Erschiessungsaktion). In the Einsatzgruppen trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, the event was not given a name but simply described as "the murder of 10,600 Jews" on 30 November 1941.
Location
At the time, Rumbula was a small railway station 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) south of Riga, the capital and major city of Latvia, which was connected with Daugavpils, the second largest city in Latvia, by the rail line along the north side of the Daugava river. Located on a hill about 250 meters (820 ft) from the station, the massacre site was a "rather open and accessible place". The view was blocked by vegetation, but the sound of gunfire would have been audible from the station grounds. The area lay between the rail line and the Riga-Daugavpils highway, with the rail line to the north of the highway. Rumbula was part of a forest and swamp area known in Latvian as Vārnu mežs, which means Crow Forest in English. The sounds of gunfire could be heard from the highway. The German occupation authorities carried out a number of other massacres on the north bank of the Daugava in the Rumbula vicinity. The soil was sandy and it was easy to dig graves. While the surrounding pine woods were sparse, there was a heavily forested area in the center which became the execution site. The rail line and highway made it easy to move the victims in from Riga (it had to be within walking distance of the Riga Ghetto on the southeast side of the city), as well as transport the shooters and their weapons.
Holocaust
The Holocaust in Latvia began on June 22, 1941, when the German army invaded the Soviet Union, including the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia that had been recently occupied by Soviet forces following a period of independence after World War I. Murders of Jews, Communists, and others began almost immediately, perpetrated by German death squads known as Einsatzgruppen (which can be translated as "Special Task Groups" or "Special Assignment Groups"), and also the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) and the Security Service of the SS (Sicherheitsdienst or SD). The first killings were on the night of June 23, 1941, in the town of Grobin near Liepāja, where Sonderkommando 1a members murdered six Jews in the church cemetery. The Nazi occupiers were also aided by a unit of native Latvians known as the Arājs Commando, and at least to some extent by Latvian auxiliary police.
Involvement of locals
The Nazis wished to make it appear as if the local populations of Latvians were responsible for killing the Jews. They attempted, without much success, to stir up pogroms against the Jews. They spread rumors that Jews were responsible for widespread arson and other crimes, and also reported this to their superiors. This policy of incitement to what the Nazis called "self-cleansing actions" was a failure acknowledged by Franz Walter Stahlecker, who, as chief of Einsatzgruppe A, was the Nazis' main killing expert in the Baltic states.
Creation of the Riga Ghetto
The SD's goal was to make Latvia judenrein, a Nazi neologism which can be translated as "Jew free." By October 15, 1941, the Nazis had murdered up to 30,000 of the approximately 66,000 Jews that had not been able to flee the country before the German occupation was completed. Hinrich Lohse, who reported to Alfred Rosenberg rather than the SD's boss, Heinrich Himmler, wanted not so much to exterminate the Jews but rather to steal all their property, confine them to ghettos, and use them as slave laborers for Germany's war effort. This bureaucratic conflict slowed down the pace of the killings in September and October 1941. Lohse, as part of the "civil administration" was perceived by the SD as resisting their plans. On November 15, 1941, Lohse asked for directions from Rosenberg as to whether all Jews were to be murdered "regardless of economic considerations." By the end of October, Lohse had confined all the Jews of Riga, as well some of the surrounding area, into a ghetto within the city, the gates of which were about 10 kilometers from Rumbula. The Riga Ghetto was a creation of the Nazis themselves, and had not existed before the war.
Friedrich Jeckeln
Motive
The Nazis wanted to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga to make room for Jews from Germany and Austria to be deported to the Riga Ghetto. Similarly motivated mass murders of eastern Jews confined to ghettos were carried out at Kovno on October 28, 1941 (10,000 dead), and at Minsk, where 13,000 were shot on November 7 and an additional 7,000 on November 20. To carry out this plan, Himmler brought Friedrich Jeckeln into Latvia from Ukraine, where he had organized a number of mass murders, including Babi Yar (30,000 dead). Jeckeln's crew of about 50 killers and supporting personnel arrived in Riga on November 5, 1941. Jeckeln did not arrive with them, but went instead to Berlin where sometime between November 10 and November 12, 1941, he met with Himmler. Himmler told Jeckeln to kill the entire Riga Ghetto and to instruct Lohse, should he object, that this was an order of Himmler's and also of Adolf Hitler's: "Tell Lohse it is my order, which is also the Führer's wish".
Jeckeln then went to Riga and explained the situation to Lohse, who raised no further objection. By mid-November 1941, Jeckeln had set himself up in a building in the old section of Riga known as the Ritterhaus. Back in Berlin, Rosenberg, Lohse's superior in the Nazi hierarchy, was able to get one concession out of Himmler, that slave labor extracted from male Jews aged 16–60 would be considered too important to Germany's war effort. Consequently, these people would be spared, while women, children, old and disabled people would be shot. Jeckeln's plan for carrying out this segregation of the victims came to be known as the "Little Ghetto".
Planning the massacre
To fulfill Himmler's order to clear out the Ghetto, Jeckeln would need to kill 12,000 people per day. At that time of year, there were only about eight hours of day and twilight, so, the last column of victims would have to leave the Riga Ghetto no later than 12:00 noon. Guards would be posted on both sides along the entire 10 kilometer column route. The whole process required about 1,700 personnel to carry it out.
Jeckeln's construction specialist, Ernst Hemicker, who later claimed he was shocked when he learned in advance of the number of people to be murdered, nevertheless made no objection at the time and proceeded to supervise the digging of six murder pits, sufficient to bury 25,000 people. The actual excavation of the pits was done by 200 or 300 Russian prisoners of war. The pits themselves were purpose-designed: they were excavated in levels, like an inverted pyramid, with the broader levels towards the top, and a ramp down to the different levels to allow the victims to be literally marched into their own graves. It took about three days to finish the pits which were complete by November 23, 1941.
The actual shooting was done by 10 or 12 men of Jeckeln's bodyguard, including Endl, Lueschen, and Wedekind, all experienced murderers. Much later, Jeckeln's driver, Johannes Zingler, claimed in testimony that Jeckeln had forced him to join in as a killer by making threats to harm Zingler's family. In similar massacres in Russia and Ukraine, however, there were many accounts contrary to Zingler's, to the effect that participation was voluntary, and even sometimes sought after, and that those who refused to take part in shootings suffered no adverse consequences. In particular, Erwin Schulz, head of Einsatzkommando 5, refused to participate in Babi Yar, another Jeckeln atrocity, and at his own request was transferred back to his pre-war position in Berlin with no loss of professional standing.
Jeckeln had no Latvians carrying out shootings. Jeckeln considered the shooting of the victims in the pits to be a deed of marksmanship, and he wanted to prove Germans were inherently more accurate shooters than Latvians. Jeckeln also didn't trust other agencies, even Nazi ones, to carry out his wishes. Although the SD and the Order Police were involved, Jeckeln assigned his own squad to supervise every aspect of the operation.
Deciding on the site
Jeckeln and his aide Paul Degenhardt searched the Riga vicinity to find a site. Riga was located in a swampy area where the water table was close to ground level. This would interfere with the proper disposal of thousands of corpses. Jeckeln needed elevated ground. The site also had to be on the north side of the Daugava River within walking distance of the ghetto, also on the north side. On or about November 18 or 19 Jeckeln came upon Rumbula as he was driving south to the Salaspils concentration camp (then under construction), and it fitted what he was looking for. The site was close to Riga, it was on elevated ground, and it had sandy soil, with the only drawback being its proximity to the highway (about 100 meters).
Jeckeln system
Jeckeln developed his "Jeckeln system" during the many murders he had organized in Ukraine, which included among others Babi Yar and the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. He called it "sardine packing" (Sardinenpackung). The Jeckeln method was noted, although not by name, in the judgment of the Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg Military Tribunal, as a means of avoiding the extra work associated with having to push the bodies into the grave. It was reported that even some of the experienced Einsatzgruppen killers claimed to have been horrified by its cruelty. Extermination by shooting ran into a problem when it came to women and children. Otto Ohlendorf, himself a prolific killer, objected to Jeckeln's techniques according to his testimony at his post-war trial for crimes against humanity. Jeckeln had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process, including Genickschußspezialisten – "neck shot specialists". There were nine components to this assembly-line method as applied to the Riga ghetto.
- The Security Police roused the people out of their houses in the ghetto;
- The Jews were organized into columns of 1000 people and marched to the killing grounds;
- The German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo) led the columns to Rumbula;
- Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously;
- The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables;
- The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits;
- To save the trouble of tossing dead bodies into the pits, the killers forced the living victims into the trench on top of other people who had already been shot;
- Russian submachine guns (another source says semi-automatic pistols) were used rather than German arms, because the magazine held 50 rounds and the weapon could be set to fire one round at a time. This also allowed some deniability because should the bodies be discovered, the claim could be made that since the victims had been shot with Russian bullets, the NKVD or some other Communist organization was responsible.
- The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people who had just been shot. The people were not sprayed with bullets. Rather, to save ammunition, each person was shot just once, in the back of the head. Anyone not murdered outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up.