Jewish community in Estonia marks Klooga massacre 76th anniversary
The 76th anniversary of the Klooga concentration camp massacre, which saw up to 2,000 Jews killed, was marked by the Jewish Community of Estonia Monday.
"76 years ago, on September 19 1944 … on the second day of the Rosh Hashanah holiday, the bloodiest murder in the modern history of Estonia was committed at the Klooga concentration camp," the community wrote on its social media page.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year.
September 19 this year fell on the Jewish Shabbat and so the memorial ceremony took place on Monday instead, and was attended by community leader and director of the Tallinn Jewish School Alla Jakobson, 10th grade students from the school, Ministry of Culture adviser Anne-Ly Reima, diplomat and former Estonian ambassador to Israel Malle Talvet-Mustonen, representatives of the Russian embassy, community members and local residents.
The memorial prayer was read by head Rabbi of Estonia, Shmuel Kot.
Klooga was a sub-camp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex, established Estonia in 1943 by occupying Nazi German forces, a force labor camp where inmates, predominantly Jews from the Vilna (Vilnius) and Kovno (Kaunas) ghettos in Lithuania, and also from locations further afield in Europe, were deported.
Ahead of advancing Red Army troops, Waffen SS personnel massacred as many as 2,000 inmates in a single day, during the course of the evacuation of the camp during Sept. 19-22 1944.
Many other inmates were transported to concentration camps in present-day Poland.
A memorial dedicated to those who died was unveiled at the site in 1994.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte