Karen Frostig. (2021). Digital drawing from Stuttgart video with scrolling victims’ names.

Karen Frostig. (2021). Digital drawing from Beilefeld stills with scrolling victims’ names.

1941 Deportations to Riga

“1941 Deportations to Riga”. (2021). Trailer. Director and Photographer Karen Frostig. Videographer Nikolajs Krasnopevcevs

The “1941 Deportations to Riga” video was developed as a commemorate event, to mark the 80th anniversary of the earliest deportations from four cities, Nuremburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Hamburg, to the Skirotava train station in Riga, Latvia. Four transports carried 3985 stateless Jews to the Jungfernhof concentration camp where they were brutalized, murdered, and subjected to slave labor. Only 149 persons survived.  To date, there is no signage at the Skirotava train station and the Jungfernhof concentration camp, dedicated to revealing the full history of these two sites.

To imagine the scale and drama of these images and their barbaric simplicity, projected onto the sole remaining symbol of power, the Skirotava train station, would be a crushing image to witness, in the cold, at night, on the anniversary of these horrific deportations.  Permissions were never granted.

The hierarchy between different victim groups in Latvia is a topic that receives very little attention. The fist group meriting memorialization is the 42,00-60,000 Latvian victims deported to Siberia under Soviet occupation. Acknowledging the loss of 70,000 Latvian Jews, murdered by Nazi soldiers and Latvian collaborators under German occupation is still a relatively new phenomenon. Memorialization of 25,000-30,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews deported to Riga and murdered in Latvian forests by German perpetrators and Latvian collaborators, remains a difficult subject, receiving inconsistent treatment. How nations regard different victim groups murdered on their land is often fraught with layers of denial and indifference.

The arrival of 25,000 Reich Jews to the Skirotava train depot (1941-1942) and the departure of 60,000 Latvian civilians from the Skirotava train depot (1941 & 1945-1951) is separated by three years. There is no signage at the Skirotava train station addressing these two genocides, arriving and departing from the same train station. Signage could be introduced to communicate public acknowledgement about these parallel histories. The artistry of memorialization is a complex process, creating safe spaces where these difficult topics can be addressed and assimilated. Learning how to live with these histories in an environment of truth and compassion fosters understanding. It is not about forgetting, but about remembering. Transformation is tied to our capacity to remember.

On January 27, 2023, the deportation video of German and Austrian Jews deported to Riga was displayed at Corner House, the former KGB Headquarters, now housed within the Museum of Occupation of Latvia. Presented as a day long program to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, displaying a video about Jewish victims under Nazi occupation in a setting reserved for the presentation of Latvian victims under Soviet occupation was a milestone for memorial culture in Latvia. This was the first time the. two histories of deportation and genocide, concerning German Jews and Latvians civilians inhabited the same commemorative space.