Riga Jewish history walking guide: sites, stories and context

The community that was

Before the German occupation of Latvia began on 1 July 1941, Riga was home to approximately 35,000 Jews — about 12% of the city’s population. This was a community with centuries of history in the city: Riga’s Jewish community had been significant since the 18th century, and by the early 20th century had produced scholars, businesspeople, artists, and professionals who played central roles in the city’s cultural and commercial life.

The Jewish neighbourhood of Maskavas Forštate (Moscow Suburb), east of Old Town across the central market, was the physical heart of this community: synagogues, schools, cultural organisations, the Riga Ghetto Museum site, and the Great Choral Synagogue on Gogola iela. The community had survived the first Soviet occupation of 1940–41, which was traumatic but did not aim at physical elimination. What came next was categorically different.

In the summer of 1941, as Nazi German forces advanced into Latvia, the Einsatzgruppen killing units and local collaborators began the systematic murder of Latvia’s Jewish population. By the end of 1941 — in less than six months — approximately 70,000 Jews had been killed in Latvia, including most of Riga’s community. By the end of the German occupation in 1944, fewer than 3,000 Latvian Jews had survived.

What remains in Riga today is fragmentary: memorial sites where buildings once stood, a converted ghetto building housing a museum, the shell of the synagogue that was burned, and the forested massacre sites outside the city. Engaging honestly with this history requires confronting both what existed and what was destroyed.

The essential sites

The Riga Ghetto and Holocaust Museum

The Riga Ghetto was established in August 1941 in the Maskavas Forštate neighbourhood, in a small area of streets that was enclosed and designated for the city’s Jewish population. The ghetto existed for only a few months before the mass executions at Rumbula forest began on November 30, 1941 — in two days, approximately 26,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto were marched to Rumbula and shot.

The Riga Ghetto and Holocaust Museum, at Maskavas iela 14a, documents the history of the ghetto, the broader story of Jewish life in Latvia before 1941, and the Holocaust in Latvia. The museum includes a preserved wooden building from the ghetto period, documentary exhibitions, and the Zanis Lipke memorial — an exhibition dedicated to the Latvian docker who saved approximately 55 Jews by hiding them in a bunker beneath his house on Ķīpsala island (see below).

See our full guide to visiting the Riga Ghetto Museum and Zanis Lipke Memorial.

The Great Choral Synagogue memorial

The Great Choral Synagogue on Gogola iela (Gogol Street) was one of the largest and most architecturally significant synagogues in the Baltic states, built in 1871 in the Moorish Revival style that was fashionable for Jewish religious architecture in that period. It was burned on July 4, 1941 — three days after German troops entered Riga — with over 300 Jews locked inside. The massacre in the burning synagogue was carried out by the Arajs Kommando, a Latvian auxiliary unit working with the German SS.

The building was demolished by the Soviets in 1964. The site now has a memorial installation. See our full guide to the Great Choral Synagogue memorial.

The Zanis Lipke Memorial (on Ķīpsala island)

Zanis Lipke was a docker who worked at the Riga port and used his access to German-controlled work crews to bring Jews out of the ghetto, hidden under shipments of goods. He and his wife Johanna hid approximately 55 Jews in a bunker dug beneath their house on Ķīpsala island during the German occupation. After the war, Lipke was recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

The memorial dedicated to Lipke on Ķīpsala island is a moving architectural space — underground, intimate, and carefully designed to communicate the experience of hiding. It is accessible from the centre of Riga by crossing the Vanšu bridge (15 minutes walk from Old Town) and requires a short additional walk on Ķīpsala island. See our full guide for directions and context.

Rumbula and Biķernieki forests

The mass murder of Riga’s Jewish population was carried out primarily at two forest sites outside the city.

Rumbula forest (about 10 km south-east of central Riga, accessible by suburban train or taxi) was the site of the murder of approximately 26,000 Jews on 30 November and 8 December 1941 — the two “Rumbula actions.” These were among the largest single mass murder events of the Holocaust in the Baltic states. The forest has a memorial site with the names of victims inscribed.

Biķernieki forest (about 8 km east of central Riga) was used throughout the occupation period for mass executions of Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and political prisoners. Estimates of the total number killed at Biķernieki range from 25,000 to 46,000. A memorial was inaugurated in 2001.

Both sites require transport beyond the city centre and are best visited with a guide who can provide historical context.

The guided tour question

For Jewish heritage specifically in Riga, guided tours are more important than for most other categories of history tourism. The reason is physical: the traces of the pre-war Jewish community in Riga are largely gone. The Great Choral Synagogue does not exist. Most ghetto buildings have been demolished. The massacre sites are forests outside the city. What remains requires contextual explanation to be understood.

A good guide does three things that self-guided visits cannot replicate: they tell you what stood where and why it matters; they give individual stories to the statistics; and they navigate the sensitive question of Latvian collaboration — the role of the Arajs Kommando and others — with honesty and nuance.

The half-day Jewish history tour (€55, 4 hours) is the most comprehensive guided option available on GetYourGuide and is consistently the highest-rated. It includes transport to sites beyond the walkable centre. For a shorter option, the 2-hour walking tour (€22) covers the walkable sites in the Maskavas Forštate area.

For visitors wanting a private experience — appropriate for those with family connections to the Riga Jewish community — the private guided tour (€110) provides flexibility to focus on specific aspects and to spend more time at individual sites.

The question of Latvian collaboration

Any honest engagement with Riga’s Jewish heritage must include the question of Latvian collaboration in the Holocaust. This is not a comfortable topic and it has been disputed and suppressed at various points in Latvian public life, but the historical evidence is clear.

The Arajs Kommando — a Latvian auxiliary police unit established within days of the German occupation — participated directly in the mass murders at Rumbula, Biķernieki, and elsewhere. Under the command of Viktors Arājs, the unit is estimated to have been responsible for between 30,000 and 60,000 deaths. The unit was composed of Latvian volunteers, not German conscripts.

The question of why Latvians participated — some from genuine antisemitism, some from opportunism, some under coercion, some for complex reasons that defy simple categorisation — is not simple and is still being examined by Latvian historians. The Riga Ghetto Museum and the guided tours address this history directly. So does the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Visitors who want to engage seriously with this history should be prepared for the discomfort that honesty about collaboration requires.

Practical orientation

The central Jewish heritage sites are concentrated in two areas: the Maskavas Forštate neighbourhood (10–15 minutes walk east of Old Town across the Central Market) for the Ghetto Museum; and Gogola iela in Old Town (5 minutes from Town Hall Square) for the Great Choral Synagogue memorial. Ķīpsala island is a 15-minute walk from Old Town across the Vanšu bridge. The forest sites require transport.

For the detailed guide to each site, see: Riga Ghetto Museum and Zanis Lipke Memorial, Great Choral Synagogue memorial, and best Riga Jewish heritage tours compared.

How large was Riga’s Jewish community before World War II?

Before the German occupation began in July 1941, approximately 35,000 Jews lived in Riga, representing about 12% of the city’s population. Latvia as a whole had approximately 95,000 Jewish citizens. By the end of the German occupation in 1944, fewer than 3,000 Latvian Jews had survived.

Where was the Riga Ghetto?

The Riga Ghetto was established in the Maskavas Forštate (Moscow Suburb) neighbourhood in July–August 1941. It occupied a small area of streets including Maskavas iela, Lāčplēša iela, Lauvas iela, and Katolicku iela. Most of the physical structures from the ghetto period have been demolished, but the Riga Ghetto and Holocaust Museum preserves the memory of the site.

Is a guided tour necessary for the Jewish heritage sites?

Strongly recommended. The physical traces of the Jewish community are fragmentary — the Great Choral Synagogue was burned; the ghetto buildings are largely gone; the massacre sites are in forests outside the city. A guided tour provides the connective tissue between surviving sites and explains what no longer exists.

Where are the Rumbula and Biķernieki massacre sites?

Both are in forested areas outside central Riga. Rumbula forest (south-east of the city) was the site of the murder of approximately 26,000 Jews in November–December 1941. Biķernieki forest (east of the city) was used for mass executions throughout the occupation. Both have memorials but require car or taxi transport.

Pre-war Riga Jewish life: what was here before 1941

The memorial sites and museum in Riga document destruction. To understand the full weight of that destruction, visitors benefit from knowing something about what was destroyed.

Riga’s Jewish community had deep roots in the city. Despite periodic restrictions (Jews were officially barred from Riga’s city centre until the late nineteenth century, confined to the Maskavas Forštate), by the early twentieth century the community had established itself across all areas of Riga’s professional and intellectual life. Jewish residents were prominent in commerce, law, medicine, journalism, and the arts. The community had its own educational institutions at every level — from primary schools teaching in both Yiddish and Hebrew to the Riga Jewish high school, which had produced graduates who went on to universities across Europe.

The religious life of Riga’s Jews was internally diverse: Orthodox synagogues, the Reform-influenced Great Choral Synagogue, Zionist organisations, Bundist (socialist) organisations, and a rich associational life. The Yiddish press was active; a Hebrew-language cultural scene existed alongside it. Latvian Jewry in the 1930s was broadly multilingual — Yiddish, Latvian, Russian, and German were all in daily use in different contexts.

This was not a poor or marginalised community by 1939 standards. It was an established, educated, economically active, culturally rich community with roots going back centuries. The murder of approximately 90% of this community in less than two years — mostly in 1941 — represents one of the most complete acts of cultural destruction in European history.

The Riga Ghetto Museum’s pre-war exhibition rooms do this period the most justice among Riga’s memorial sites. Visiting those rooms first — before the rooms documenting the ghetto and the killings — establishes the baseline that makes the subsequent material fully comprehensible.

The timeline of the Holocaust in Latvia: why it happened so fast

Latvia’s was among the most rapid and most complete destructions of a Jewish community in the Holocaust. Understanding why requires understanding the specific conditions.

The sequence of events in 1941 was extraordinarily compressed. The German Army entered Riga on July 1, 1941. By July 4, the Great Choral Synagogue had been burned with people inside. By August, a ghetto had been established in Maskavas Forštate. By November 30, 1941 — less than five months after the German arrival — approximately 27,500 ghetto residents had been marched to Rumbula forest and shot. By the spring of 1942, the surviving Latvian Jewish population (estimated at fewer than 5,000) had been reduced further through smaller massacres.

The role of Latvian collaborators. The speed was possible partly because of Latvian participation in the killing operations. The Arajs Kommando — a Latvian auxiliary unit of approximately 300–500 men, led by Viktors Arājs — participated directly in the mass killings at Rumbula and Biķernieki, as well as in anti-Jewish violence in Riga in the first days of the German occupation. The extent and nature of Latvian collaboration in the Holocaust is a subject of ongoing historical and political debate within Latvia; the Riga Ghetto Museum addresses it more directly than most official Latvian institutions.

This history is part of why the Jewish heritage sites in Riga carry particular weight for visitors from the Latvian-Jewish diaspora. The question of who killed their relatives — German forces? Latvian forces? Both? — is not only historical but personal.

Žanis Lipke and the tradition of Latvian rescue

The Arajs Kommando and the Latvian collaborators represent one dimension of Latvian behaviour during the German occupation. The other dimension — less prominent but essential for a complete picture — is represented by Žanis Lipke and the smaller number of Latvians who rescued Jewish neighbours.

Lipke’s rescue of approximately 50 individuals from the Riga Ghetto is the most famous Latvian example of Holocaust rescue, recognised by Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations designation. He was not alone: other Latvian families and individuals sheltered, fed, or assisted Jewish escapees from the ghetto, at significant personal risk.

The historical significance of Lipke’s rescue is not that it was statistically large — 50 people against tens of thousands murdered — but that it demonstrates individual agency in conditions of extreme pressure. People chose to kill; other people chose to rescue. The Žanis Lipke Memorial on Ķīpsala island is designed to hold this moral reality as a central statement, not an asterisk.

For visitors to Riga, understanding both the Arajs Kommando history and the Lipke history gives a more honest picture of Latvian society during the German occupation than either story alone provides.

The current Jewish community in Riga

Pre-war Riga had approximately 43,000 Jewish residents. The current Riga Jewish community numbers in the low thousands — a combination of survivors and their descendants who remained after independence, and some more recent arrivals. The community is active: the Peitav Shul (Peitavas iela 6–8 in Old Town) functions as a synagogue; there is a Jewish community centre; cultural and educational activities continue.

For visitors from the Latvian Jewish diaspora — families that left before the war, or survivors and their descendants — the community centre is a point of contact. The community is welcoming of visits from interested international visitors and is a source of guidance for family history research.

The Forest Cemetery (Meža kapi) in Riga contains graves of pre-war Jewish community members who died before 1941 — these graves survive because the cemetery was not destroyed. It is worth visiting for visitors with family genealogical interests.

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