Yad Vashem - Untold Stories of the Murder Sites in the Occupied USSR

I just came across a New York Times article published last year about new research being done at Yad Vashem on lesser-known killing fields in the Holocaust: "New Looks at the Fields of Death for Jews" (April 19, 2009). One report about Liepaja is from a German sailor who filmed the killings at Skede.

One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who said he had been a bystander with a movie camera.

According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.

“At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.

Yad Vashem has created a website devoted to this topic - the Untold Stories. There are several pages devoted to what happened in Liepaja.

Websites on journeys to Liepaja

A number of other people have made a similar journey to Liepaja to see where their ancestors lived. I just found a website created by Arturo and Marc Porzecanski about their visit to Liepaja (among other places in eastern Europe) in 2002: Our trip. The direct link to the page on Liepaja is: Our Trip to Liepaja.

Brian Friedman created the Welcome to Avaslan website about his family in eastern Europe, including Liepaja. Like me and the Porzecanskis, he found the house where his relatives in Liepaja had lived. He also has a page on the Killing Fields of Skede and photographs of the memorials there.

Copenhagen - blowing in the wind

I just spent a week in Tartu, Estonia, going to the international Society of Biblical Literature conference, and I have now arrived in Copenhagen for a couple of days of relaxation before returning to the U.S. I'm on the 12th floor of my hotel, so when I looked out over the city from the window, I had a great few of roofs, trees, church spires, and the like - and on the horizon, a whole row of wind turbines actively spinning! I really like the way wind turbines look - in my opinion, they add interest to a landscape, rather than intruding on it (as those opposed to Cape Wind have argued). So, forthwith, some photos of Copenhagen's wind turbines:

From Wind turbines in Copenhagen

From Wind turbines in Copenhagen

And by comparison, a photo I took a few years ago of wind turbines on a ridge on the Golan Heights:

From Wind turbines in Copenhagen

And, in case you've forgotten, a photo of the wind turbines on the way to Liepaja:

From Liepaja, July 22, 2010