Kaiserwald concentration camp

56°59′49″N 24°07′53″E / 56.99694°N 24.13139°E / 56.99694; 24.13139

Kaiserwald
Concentration camp
Image of the camp after 1945
Other namesĶeizarmežs
Operated byNazi Germany
CommandantAlbert Sauer
OperationalMarch 1943-15 October 1944
Number of inmates11,878, almost all Jews
Liberated byRed Army

Kaiserwald (Ķeizarmežs) was a Nazi concentration camp near the Riga suburb of Mežaparks in modern-day Latvia.

Kaiserwald was built in March 1943, during the period that the German army occupied Latvia.[1] The first inmates of the camp were several hundred convicts from Germany.

Following the liquidation of the Riga, Liepāja and Daugavpils (Dvinsk) ghettos in June 1943, the remainder of the Jews of Latvia, along with most of the survivors of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, were deported to Kaiserwald.

In early 1944, a number of smaller camps around Riga were brought under the jurisdiction of the Kaiserwald camp.

Following the occupation of Hungary by the Germans, Hungarian Jews were sent to Kaiserwald, as were a number of Jews from Łódź, in Poland. By March 1944, there were 11,878 inmates in the camp and its subsidiaries, 6,182 males and 5,696 females, of whom only 95 were gentiles.

  1. ^ Dribins, Leo; Gūtmanis, Armands; Vesterman, Marger (2001). Latvia's Jewish community: history, tragedy, revival. Publishers of the Institute of the History of Latvia.

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