Star of David at the Dundaga Concentration Camp Memorial Site
After regaining independence, the residents of Dundaga erected a large wooden Star of David at the site of the murder and reburial of Jews near the Mazirbe-Dundagas road, and later the Council of Jewish Congregations and Communities of Latvia also unveiled a memorial stone next to it.
The Dundaga II concentration camp was opened on 26.11.1943 and its first commandant was Gröschel Max Ernst. From the initial 155 prisoners (1944), the camp was expanded to 1000 prisoners. The majority of the prisoners came from the Riga, Vilnius, Daugavpils and Liepāja ghettos, as well as ghettos in other German-occupied territories. The prisoners were women and children, who were employed in warehouses, barracks construction, forestry work, railway and bunker construction, as well as airfield construction.
The camp is evacuated when the Red Army reaches Tukums on July 24-25, 1944. This takes place by rail to Liepāja and Ventspils and further to the Stutthof concentration camp.
Gräschel tortured prisoners so brutally that many were fatally injured and died. Gräschel was convicted by the SS and police court for crimes committed in the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp (SS camp Dondangen), and was sent to the Stutthof SS and police concentration camp in Danzig-Matzkau. The Dresden court sentenced him to death on 23 February 1951 and executed him in Dresden prison on 23 June 1951.
In June 1992, thanks to the initiative of local historian Jautrīte Freimute, the residents of Dundaga installed a large wooden Star of David at the site of the murder and reburial of Jews in Čiekurai, which has no longer survived at the site.
However, in October 2007, the Council of Jewish Congregations and Communities of Latvia also unveiled a memorial stone next to it with two Stars of David and an inscription in Latvian: “In memory of 1,200 Latvian and European Jews exterminated in the Dundaga death camps in 1943-1944.” Representatives from the Council of Jewish Congregations and Communities of Latvia, the government and local government, as well as the embassies of Germany, Israel, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary participated in the unveiling of the monument.
http://www.tenhumbergreinhard.de/1933-1945-lager-1/1933-1945-lager-d/dundaga-ii-dondangen.html
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