1 Killing site(s)
Maria D., born in 1923: "My family lived in Manokhnovo, about 200 meters from the Russian border. The nearest village was Gavry, where I went to school. In Gavry, there was only one Jewish family, originally from Kārsava. They ran a small shop. The father’s name was Moulka. My parents knew him, and I often visited their store, where people could buy on credit. This Jewish family observed the Sabbath and did not eat pork.
My parents had a large house and rented part of it to three Jewish families from Kārsava who came for vacations or weekend stays. The family that visited most often was the Kagans—parents and their two sons, Marik and Barik. There was also the Oudim [Oudem?] family with two boys. I also remember other Jewish families: the Zalmans, the Zaidins [Zeidlin?], the Yankinzons, who sold bicycles, and women named Sarah, Hanna, and Rosa. There were also two rather poor Jewish men, known as the Pimines (Pinkous), who made a living buying secondhand clothes." (Testimony N°YIU137LV, interviewed in Malnava, on August 18, 2022)
"Around August 18, 1941, the Germans decided to exterminate the entire Jewish population of the town of Kārsava through a mass shooting and selected the execution site. Near the cemetery on the hill of Naudaskalne, about 4 km from the town, they ordered a large pit to be dug, intended to serve as a mass grave for all the Jews marked for execution.
On August 21, 1941, the entire Jewish population of Kārsava was executed at that location. Eyewitnesses to the crime identified those who organized and carried out the massacre.
Witnesses Lev Markovich Oudem and Sofia Borissovna Minkina—both detained in the ghetto and survivors of the shooting—testified that on the morning of the execution, police officers and aizsargi surrounded the ghetto. The Jews were forced out of their homes, allowed to take only their most essential belongings. Once assembled, Karl Rekstynsh, the district police chief, and a German non-commissioned officer—deputy to the German commander of Ludza—arrived from Ludza and announced that all Jews would be sent to the Viļaka camp. Rekstynsh checked names against a list. Alfred Zalitis, deputy chief of police of Kārsava, and Grave, head of the criminal police, searched the men for hidden weapons. Doudarsen, the chief of police in Kārsava, then divided the Jews into four groups and led them separately to the execution site.
Elderly people and women with children were taken in carts requisitioned from local peasants who had just arrived at the market. Oudem and Minkina recalled that about 50 preschool-aged children were among them.
Former police officer Maikoulis Antonovich Kaunouj testified that he and other policemen were summoned to the station, where Doudars informed them that on August 21, 360 Jews were to be executed at Naudaskalne. Kaunouj escorted the third group of victims. A few dozen meters from the pit, the Jews were partially stripped of clothing, their belongings confiscated, and they were led to the site where the two previous groups had already been killed. The execution was overseen by a German non-commissioned officer and Rekstynsh, with a punitive unit of ten men carrying out the shooting using two machine guns and two submachine guns. Policemen Janis Aikans and Anoufri Narlia also fired with rifles. The bodies were thrown into the pit—group by group—by Soviet prisoners of war. The victims’ belongings were looted by the police.
Resident Nil Sidorovich Bouklovski, from the village of Ledinski, testified that he saw the Jews being transported to the execution site and heard the shooting from less than a kilometer away. Later that evening, he went to the site and saw a large pit, 20 meters long, 4 meters wide, and at least 2 meters deep. It was filled with bodies and only partially covered with earth. Some victims were stripped to their underwear and barefoot; others remained clothed. Pools of blood and pieces of brain lay at the pit’s edge. The next day, some residents of Ledinski were mobilized to finish covering the grave.
Kaunouj also testified that at the same cemetery, in late July 1941, 40 Jews from Baltinava (then Baltinovo) were executed and buried in eight former potato pits.
According to Oudem and Minkina, before the August mass execution, at least 250 Jews—including locals and refugees—were already killed in Kārsava.
At the mass execution site, investigators found a large pit measuring 35 meters by 3 meters. At both ends were traces of large pyres, with scorched earth and small bone fragments. About 100 meters from this grave, near the cemetery’s eastern corner, they located the eight potato pits used for burials in July, filled with loose sand.
The investigation established that during the German occupation of Kārsava, more than 600 local residents were killed. The victims included children and the elderly, subjected to violence, torture, and robbery before their deaths." [Act drawn by State Extraordinary Soviet Commission (ChGK), on December 20, 1944, pp. 11-15; GARF 7021-93-114/Copy USHMM RG.22-002M]
Kārsava, a small town in the Latgale region of Latvia, lies approximately 126 km (78 mi) northeast of Daugavpils. Jewish settlement in the area began in the 1820s, around the same time that a synagogue and a cemetery were established. By 1897, the Jewish population had grown to 609. On the eve of the First World War, the community had expanded significantly, numbering 2,400 individuals—about 60% of the town’s population.
During the interwar years, this number declined. By 1920, the Jewish population had decreased to 910, representing nearly half of the town’s inhabitants. That same year, some community members emigrated to Palestine. The Bund, a Jewish socialist movement, was active in the town at the time.
Throughout the 1920s, Kārsava saw the establishment of several Jewish educational institutions, including a secular school, a religious school, and a gymnasium. Russian was initially the language of instruction, but Yiddish later became predominant, with Hebrew also included in the curriculum. In 1923, an additional synagogue was built.
According to the 1935 census, 785 Jews lived in the town, comprising 42% of the total population. The Jews of Kārsava played a central role in the town’s economic life, operating 180 of the 214 local shops and workshops. Leadership within the community included Rabbi Arye Olschwang and Dr. Mikhail Zeidlin.
The annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1940 marked a turning point for the region’s inhabitants, with the nationalization of private businesses and the closure of community institutions.
The exact number of Jews remaining in Kārsava on the eve of the Second World War is unknown. Nearly half of the town’s Jewish population had either fled eastward to escape the German invasion or were drafted into the Red Army, while others—refugees from Lithuania and other parts of Latvia—became trapped in the town by the rapid German advance.
Kārsava was occupied by German troops on July 3, 1941. A military administration was swiftly established and, in August 1941, replaced by a civil authority. The newly formed Latvian Self-Defense squad—also referred to as the auxiliary police or Aizsargi—operated under the supervision of German authorities and the Security Police.
Immediately after the occupation, Kārsava’s Jews faced brutal repression. 25 people were executed following interrogation; homes were looted; and many residents were beaten or shot. By the time of the first mass shooting in August 1941, approximately 250 Jews had already been killed. Alongside physical violence, a series of restrictive measures were imposed, including the mandatory wearing of the Star of David, which marked and further isolated the Jewish population. While most non-Jewish residents avoided contact out of fear, some locals nevertheless sheltered and provided food to Jews.
On July 20, 1941, between 400 and 500 Jews—including local residents, refugees, and people from surrounding areas—were confined to a ghetto in the town’s poorest district. The ghetto was guarded by members of the Latvian Self-Defense squad, and those deemed capable of work were subjected to forced labor.
The liquidation of the Kārsava ghetto took place on August 20, 21, or 23, 1941. The operation was carried out jointly by German SD forces and members of the Latvian auxiliary police, including the head of the Ludza police unit. On the morning of the Aktion, the ghetto was surrounded, and its inhabitants were forced from their homes, allowed to take only a few personal belongings. Under the false pretext that they were to be relocated to the Vilaka camp, the victims were divided into four groups and taken—on foot or by cart—to Naudaskalns Hill, located about 4 km outside the town. There, near the local cemetery, they were ordered to undress and then shot in groups into a pit that had been dug earlier by Soviet POWs.
Despite the perpetrators’ efforts to prevent panic, many Jews understood what awaited them. According to a Yahad witness Maria D. (born in 1923), shortly before the massacre, the Jewish owner of a veterinary pharmacy took his own life, together with his wife Sarah and their two children.
Soviet archival sources report that at least 350 Jews were killed at Naudaskalns Hill on August 21. The total number of victims buried at the site, however, was likely over 400. This figure includes 40 Jews from Baltinava who had been executed in late July and buried in eight disused potato pits, as well as others from Kārsava killed during a second mass shooting in September 1941.
In May 1944, as part of Operation 1005, the Nazis ordered the exhumation and burning of bodies at Naudaskalns Hill in an effort to destroy evidence of the crime. In 1957, a monument was erected at the site in memory of the victims. Two individual graves belonging to Jews murdered on August 8, 1941, were also later identified in Kārsava’s Jewish cemetery; their remains were reburied there after the war.
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