On Monday I
took my Grade 7 (12-13 years old) pupils on a visit to the Riga Ghetto Museum and the Biķernieku
memorial.
The pupils,
guided by Ms Olga Rinkus, heard the story of the Jews and other undesirable
people who were imprisoned within the Riga Ghetto by the Nazi’s during World
War 2. The class saw artefacts from the time and visited a house that has been
faithfully reconstructed so that looks as it would have done in the 1940’s.
The pupils
also saw a special exhibition remembering the Czech Jews who were transported
to Riga for extermination. The image of the glowing cubes, hanging from the
ceiling, each side with another face of a murdered human being was very moving
and the children began to see the horror of the holocaust.
This was
also evident when the pupils started looking at the long white walls marked
with the names of all the people who lived and died in the ghetto. The scale of
the brutality and inhumanity was also in their minds when they visited the
Biķernieku memorial. The memorial which is built over the mass graves of around
30,000 people shot by the Nazi’s, proved quite chilling to the pupils. The
beautiful weather made the visit all the more poignant by the surroundings.
One of the
pupils said to me, “This place is incredible, it’s so quiet.”
The pupils
placed stones on the altar and the grave markers as a sign of respect to those
people that had died for their faith, and I would like to think that this visit
will stay in their memories for a long time.
The
inscription on the altar is from the Book of Job 16:18 and it says
“Earth, don't cover my blood. Let my cry have
no place to rest.”
Hopefully
the Grade 7 class have seen that all people, who hold onto their faith and
dignity under extreme circumstances, deserve our respect.
#rigaghettomuseum
#bikerniekumemorial #holocaust
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