Easter

Hitler and the Nazis may have lost the war, but they succeeded in wiping out the entire Jewish population of Rīga. Thousands of Jews, 25,000+ from Rīga alone, were murdered in the forest several kilometers outside of town. It was a simple matter for the Nazis because a local Latvian 'security' team willingly did most of the work. It's easy to overlook, but anti-Semitism was a virulent force far beyond the borders of Nazi Germany.

This pile of rubble was the Jewish synagogue. A few days after the Nazis arrived it was torched... packed tight with Rīga's first victims.

Apart from this one stone plaque, you wouldn't know that this barren wooded park is actually the city's pre-WWII Jewish graveyard. The gravestones were removed and smashed to bits during the war.

The renovated medieval buildings and flashy new cars can't hide the fact that Rīga is still the capitol of a country on the mend. The city is something like half Russian / half Latvian and the two groups have little interaction or respect for one another. The girl working the desk at my hostel couldn't understand why in the world I would want to visit Lithuania--she never bothered because there's nothing there, she says. An Asian staying at my hostel was attacked in broad daylight by a group of Neo-Nazis. Yup, I think it'll be a few more years before the Japanese tour buses start rolling into this town.