85 years after Jews were burned alive in a synagogue: Holocaust survivor historian passes away at 100
Margers Vestermanis, a survivor of the Riga Ghetto and one of the founders of modern research on Latvian Jewry and the Holocaust in the country, has passed away at the age of 100. For decades, he engaged in documenting, researching, and commemorating the Jewish community and received state decorations.
Holocaust survivor and historian Margers Vestermanis, who founded and directed the "Jews in Latvia" museum, passed away on Friday. Vestermanis was a Knight of the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia's highest civilian honor, and also received a lifetime achievement award from the local government.
He was born on September 18, 1925, in Riga. During the Nazi occupation, he was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto and survived the Holocaust. Afterward, he dedicated his life to researching the history of the Jewish community in Latvia, preserving Jewish memory, and strengthening historical memory in society. He published numerous books and academic articles. Between 1998 and 2019, he was a member of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, where he devoted special attention to documenting the history of Latvian Jews and researching the Holocaust.
Even on the last Holocaust Remembrance Day, he arrived in a wheelchair at a ceremony in front of the ruins of the Great Choral Synagogue of Riga, which was burned with its congregants inside on July 4, 1941, by Germans with the assistance of Latvian auxiliary forces. At the site of the synagogue, Vestermanis established a monument in memory of the 400 "rescuers of Jews" in Latvia and was responsible for their registration.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs paid tribute to him. On social media, Rinkēvičs wrote that he expresses his deepest condolences to the family and colleagues of the senior historian and honors his extraordinary contribution to the study of Jewish history and the Holocaust in the country.
