Riga’s Old Jewish Cemetery is a burial ground whose visible character was profoundly changed by the Holocaust and Soviet-era destruction. Memorials in the present park recall the Jewish community buried here and people killed in the Riga ghetto.
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Riga’s Old Jewish Cemetery now looks much like a small wooded park. The few visible memorials cannot convey the number of graves beneath and around its paths. This was Riga’s first Jewish cemetery, a place of burial for generations before it became bound to the destruction of the city’s Jewish community during the Holocaust.
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UpgradeQuick facts
- Riga’s first Jewish cemetery opened in 1725.
- The cemetery became a burial site for Jews killed in the Riga ghetto during the German occupation.
- A memorial stone and a later explanatory stand mark the cemetery today.
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