"We did survive it" - The Riga Ghetto

Last year the German version of the film was completed and shown in 40 German cities and to over 3,500 people. Due to its length the film will most likely not be aired on German TV. However, survivors of the ghetto, their children and grandchildren, who live in the USA, Israel and the UK, and also relatives of those who did not survive, have requested that the film be translated into English, as many of them do not speak or understand German. Furthermore, it is important that for historical posterity the film is completed to bear witness to the little understood Latvian chapter of the Holocaust; heralded as the second worst atrocity in the Holocaust and yet to date still rarely mentioned and by political opportunists shamefully hushed up and banalised.
The documentary covers the deportation of 25,000 Jews from the German Reich to Riga, of which, on arrival, 20,000 were confined to the so-called “Reich Jews' Ghetto”, and the remaining 5,000, shot.
Before the “Reich Jews” from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were placed into the ghetto, the Latvian ghetto was liquidated. 27,000 Latvian Jews were killed over only two days, on 30.11.41 and 08.12.41, to make room for the Jews from the Reich.
In the new film, German and Latvian interviewees speak out for the first time about the massacre of the Latvian Jews, the living conditions in the ghetto and the means of survival for the minority that succeeded in doing so. Two survivors of the Riga ghetto also revisit with me the places of terror in Latvia, and explain how the deportations were meticulously planned in Germany.
The documentary has already been translated in to English but we need additional funding to be able to include film footage of the SS march we shot on 16 March in Riga this year.
Astoundingly, since 1998 on the 16th of March each and every year, in the very centre of Riga, Latvia, an EU capital and in the heart of the OSCE, marches have been regularly held to praise the ‘heroism’ of the former Latvian Legion, i.e.Waffen SS veterans in their combat against the allies during the Second World War. These events have received tacit (and sometimes very explicit and public) support from state authorities, in 2012 from President Berzins himself. More disturbingly though, is that an increasing number of youngsters and teenagers regularly participate TODAY in the annual march and march under Latvian state symbols and flags with officials and public state and church figures. As Richard Howitt British MEP stated in protest this year, "Almost all of Latvia's 70,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. When survivors of Nazi concentration camps in 1945 stood holding signs saying 'Never Again!' they could not have foreseen what is happening today in Riga. These are the people we should be commemorating and this is the message we should remember."

More information on the film and a number of clips is available online: http://www.phoenix-medienakademie.com/riga-survive/

Riga is one of the crime scenes which has to date been rarely spoken about and where the beginnings of the Holocaust commenced. It is also a place where tragically TODAY memory and myth are merging rapidly if not challenged NOW.
The deportation of the Reich Jews to Riga from November 1941 was the first wave of the deportations to the concentration camps in the east, concluding with the genocide of six million European Jews.
To date over 4,000 people have managed to see the film without us having to pay out for costly advertisements. The target audience for the English version of the film will include school pupils, visitors to Holocaust memorials and events.
For historical truth and for the record, it is vitally important that the English version of this film is completed so that ever growing myths surrounding Latvian collaborators be challenged. It is important that people realise TODAY the atrocities that occurred within Riga by the Nazis and their many Latvian willing collaborators and that:

1. Many of the worst Latvian killers served in the Latvian Security Police prior to joining the Legion. Honouring such persons is a travesty of justice and a whitewash of their heinous crimes.

2. The Legion fought under the Nazi high command for a victory of the Third Reich. They do not deserve to be honoured for fighting for a victory of the most genocidal regime in human history. Ironically, such a victory would have been a disaster for Latvia since the Nazis had no intention or plan to grant Latvia independence. Historians know very well of the Nazis’ plans to do away with the Latvian (among Baltic) peoples after the planned-for victory. There would have been no Latvia to become independent in 1991.

3. About one-third of those who served in the Legion were volunteers, many of them those who had served in Latvian Security Police units which had actively participated in the mass murder of Jews in Latvia and in Belarus, such as the infamous Arajs Commando mass murder squad.

4. When Latvian SS killed Soviet soldiers they in turn allowed Nazis on the western front to kill more British and American soldiers and in turn allowed Auschwitz and other concentration camps to continue their heinous crimes against humanity. During the years of the Latvian Holocaust, the Soviet Union was in alliance with Great Britain, the United States and other Western democracies, whose ranks Latvia has now joined.

5. Democratic Latvia should not glorify those willing to give up their lives for a victory of the Third Reich. The Latvian Righteous Gentiles would make much better role models for today’s young people in Latvia and for future generations.

6. The ultranationalists who support the march are the ones who are seeking to rewrite the historic narrative of the Holocaust in Latvia in order to hide or downgrade the crimes of local Nazi collaborators and promote the canard of equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes.

The film is the first film worldwide which explores, using primary and secondary sources and moving testimonies from survivors, the brutal massacre of 27,000 Latvian Jews in Latvia in November and December 1941.
‘Little by little, imperceptively, the film draws the viewer in. The moving testimonies by survivors, still visibly affected by the events, offer a rare window into the past. A clearer weaving together of such dreadful facts has rarely been accomplished.’ Gießener Allgemeine
With the English version of the film I hope to find new viewers in the USA, Canada, UK and especially in Israel.

Funding is required for:

1. The translation, subtitles and voiceovers into English.
2. The additions, as listed above, to be incorporated in to the start of the film.

To date the Association of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto and the municipality of Paderborn have supported this project. Others have relinquished their fee and requested that a donation, that is the equivalent, be donated to the website www.defendinghistory.com We would like to honour that request.