Why go
Understanding this deception changes how the Riga ghetto’s history reads: selection for supposed resettlement meant murder, and children, older people and those unable to work were especially exposed. Biķernieki is the place associated with the killings; Dünamünde was the name used in the lie.
The full story
By early 1942, German Jews deported to Riga had been confined in the ghetto and nearby camps. Many did not know the scale of the murders already carried out after earlier transports. In March, the Nazi authorities ordered groups in the German ghetto to nominate people for what they described as work at a fish-processing facility in Dünamünde, the German name for Daugavgrīva. There was no such resettlement. The claim was meant to make people assemble and board vehicles. On 15 March, about 1,900 people were taken from the ghetto to Biķernieki forest and shot. A second operation on 26 March targeted prisoners at Jungfernhof; about 1,840 were killed. Older people, sick people and children were among the victims. The term “action” was the perpetrators’ euphemism for a mass killing. The history belongs with the actual murder site at Biķernieki, rather than an imagined destination named in the deception.