Delegation from Rheine at the commemoration ceremony in the Latvian capital Riga
RIGA. Massively under the impression of the Russian belligerent invasion of Ukraine was on Sunday the commemoration day of the genocide against the Jews in Riga. “The history of the Holocaust is being instrumentalized here right now to commit heinous crimes,” Latvia’s President Evils Levits said at a commemoration ceremony in the ruins of the Great Choral Synagogue in Riga.
A group from the Riga Committee, which also includes about two dozen towns from Münsterland, took part. Among them were the three deputy mayors Birgit Overesch, Karl-Heinz Brauer and Fabian Lenz. The chairman of the partnership association, Reiner Wellmann, also traveled with them.
On December 13, 1941, 390 Jews were transported from Münsterland to Riga with the so-called “Bielefeld Transport” and shot there.
The commemoration of these people has only been possible since Latvia’s independence in the early 1990s. The Riga Committee, one of whose founders is Winnie Nachtwei from Münster, has also played a large part in this.”Let us be on our guard because war is very close. I, as the defense minister, will do my job and defend our country,” Latvia’s defense minister said during his speech.People in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are watching events in Ukraine with great concern. “We have seen here again in the extreme what the consequence of the Soviet Union’s and Hitler’s Germany’s invasion and occupation means in one country. The invasion was the so-called door opener for gigantic mass crimes against the population. For the people in the Baltic countries today “never again” means that they never again want to be defenseless and never again alone,” said Winnie Nachtwei following the commemoration ceremony.