Salaspils Memorial Ensemble II WW2

The construction of the Salaspils camp began in October 1941, when local craftsmen, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners from the Riga Central Prison, were involved in its construction. As of December, the camp's main workforce was around 1,500 to 1,800 Jews deported from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. From May 1942, Salaspils began to operate as an expanded police prison with a labor camp attached to it.

During its existence, about 1,000 to 2,000 absentees were imprisoned in the camp and sentenced to no more than 56 days in prison. The majority of those arrested in the extended police prison were political prisoners held there in security detention (Schutzhaft) until the end of the war, and their release was limited to isolated cases. Many of them were arrested for cooperating with the Soviet occupation regime in 1940-1941. per year. There were also more than 100 members of the Latvian and Polish national resistance movements among political prisoners, incl. Members of the Central Council of Latvia Konstantīns Čakste, Bruno Kalniņš, Ludvigs Sēja and others. The total number of political prisoners in the camp could reach 5,000 to 6,000.

In February-April 1943, at least 4,500 people from Belarus arrested in Salaspils during the Winterzauber anti-partisan campaign. In August-September 1943, 3,284 persons were arrested in Salaspils during the Sommerreise forced labor campaign in Latgale. In both of these actions, able-bodied men and women brought to Salaspils were sent to work in Germany. At least 2741 children were transferred to farmers in the parishes of Riga region and to the families of guardians. Some of the children went to the Riga Holy Trinity-Sergius Monastery, as well as were sent to orphanages in Bulduri and Saulkrasti.

At the turn of 1942 and 1943, a "special unit for Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians convicted by the SS and police courts" was set up in Salaspils, and from the spring of 1943, soldiers from the Baltic and other national police battalions and legions were sentenced in the camp. who had been convicted of various offenses for more than three months. Lithuanian General Pāvils Plehavičs and his staff officers, a total of about 50 people, were temporarily in Salaspils. In the summer and autumn of 1944, about 2,000 of the Salaspils prisoners were involved in several army punishment and construction battalions.

In May 1942, a double barbed wire fence was built around the camp (2 meters in a row). Along the outside, at a distance of 60-70 meters and 6-7 meters above the ground, the guard of the camp was on duty around the clock in six watchtowers built above the barbed wire fences. The area around the fences was lighted. The fence should not be approached closer than 20 meters. In the middle of the camp there was a water tower between the barracks. Spotlights and machine guns were installed on top of it, as well as a siren, which was turned on in case of flight. The prisoners' barracks were arranged in three rows in a horseshoe circle, and their numbering began on the right side of the commandant's office. In May 1943, about 30 residential and working barracks were built in the camp. Of these, between 14 and 15 were barracks for prisoners, which usually housed around 200 people, but there were also cases where there were fewer than 100 or more than 600 prisoners. There was also a command post in the territory of the camp; guard and residential barracks; the senior office and residential barracks of the camp; hospital and barracks for medical purposes; kitchen; mail; a cell in which prisoners' clothes and documents were kept; carpentry, mechanical, straw shoe, cobbler, seamstress, artist, souvenir making workshops; laundry and disinfection room; pen.

Already at the end of 1943, the mass transfer of Salaspils camp prisoners to Stutthof, Neiengamm, Buchenwald, Mauthausen-Gusen, Saxonhausen, Ravensbruck and other concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland and Germany began. The last prisoners left Salaspils on September 29, 1944, when the camp was dismantled and most of the remaining buildings were set on fire. The exact number of prisoners and deaths in the Salaspils camp is not determined by the lack of a register of detainees, as their files were destroyed. It can only be estimated that between 17,000 and 18,000 people were imprisoned in Salaspils at various times, of which between 8,000 and 9,000 were displaced by special actions. Between July and August 1942, about 1,000 foreign Jews died in Salaspils due to harsh living and working conditions, and inhumane executions. According to the calculations of Artur Nepart, a former prisoner of the Salaspils camp, during the existence of the camp, 100 political prisoners were shot on 5/6/1943. on the night of May after their transfer to Riga Central Prison, 400-500 died of disease, about 25 were shot in preparation for or during flight, 100-150 people died from inhuman punishment, but several hundred tired children died of typhoid, dysentery and other epidemics and diseases , which had spread in Salaspils. It can be assumed that the number of deaths in the Salaspils camp reached at least 2,000 people.