The corncrake camp in 1945 - a place where destinies were dissolved
Historian Roberts Sipenieks talks about the finds at the site of the Grieze filtration camp
The location of the camp was most likely chosen because it was far from possible guerrilla activities. The camp was located on the road between the church and the cemetery. There are no traces of walls or barracks, but there are smaller and larger pits in the ground, which means that the prisoners have lived in the open air and spent the nights in their own pits, so that they can withstand the cold on the cold spring nights.
After the capitulation of the Kurzeme fortress, about 200 thousand men from the German armed forces surrendered, but the Russians wanted to find out what other men had done in the area during the war. In the absence of clear information, all 16- to 60-year-olds were screened.
The camp in Grieze housed civilians, refugees and, most likely, non-German soldiers. A little further on from the Sāmaiši house was a German soldiers' filtration camp.
If someone escaped from the camp, he was shot on the spot. People remember that women from all over Kurzeme came to the camp to look for their sons, men.
saldus zeme, 26.10.2021.
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Red Army prisoner filtration camp in Grieze and Grieze Church
Grieze is located at the Latvian-Lithuanian border, where the Vadakste River flows into the Venta River. The Grieze church was built in 1580, but the parish existed before 1567. The church was rebuilt several times - in 1769, in 1845 and in 1773 the first organ was installed. Both the altarpiece and the two bells have been lost for various reasons.
In the church garden there is a cemetery where people belonging to the church and noblemen are buried. One of them is Grieze organist Friedrich Baris and his wife Charlotte, who have a...
