A little background: Daugavpils has had a long and venerable Jewish history as it has changed hands among Germans (when it was known as Dinaburg), Poland, and Russia (when it was known as Dvinsk) over the last couple hundred years. In particular, when it was part of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, it was a center of Jewish scholarship and culture; a number of important rabbis came from Dvinsk, fully half the population of the city was Jewish, and there were forty synagogues in the city. As one might expect, the Holocaust devastated what by then was known as Daugavpils. The Jewish community now is very small, consisting of about 200 mostly Russian-speaking Latvian Jews who returned after the war. There is currently no rabbi at the synagogue, though there has been in the past. But the fact that there is a functioning synagogue at all is a testament to the dedication of this small community of Jews.
It's also testament to the children of Mark Rothko, the great American abstract expressionist painter, who was born in Dvinsk into a Jewish family. (The new art museum in Daugavpils, which is a stunner, is the Mark Rothko Art Center -- more on it later). The Rothkos emigrated to the United States in the early part of the twentieth century when Mark was only 10. He never returned, but after his death, his children donated original Rothkos to the new museum, as there was no way it could possibly afford to buy even a single Rothko on the current art market. And they gave the money to renovate the Kaddish Synagogue, for which we all should be very grateful. Here's the dedicatory plaque, in Hebrew, English, Latvian, and Russian. As you can see, the synagogue was built in 1850, and the renovation is pretty recent.
I am surprised to admit that this was the first time that I had ever been in a synagogue. Our genial and knowledgeable guide, Iosif, is a member of the congregation, and he explained the basics of Jewish worship practices to us. Anne is Jewish, so I don't think she learned anything that she didn't know already. I knew a fair amount already as well, and I am not sure that I caught everything in translation, but it was so enjoyable to listen to Iosif informing us about a building and the worship practices that he clearly cares so deeply about. Here are some photos of the interior. It is a light, airy, and very lovely space. Perhaps some of my Jewish friends would be willing to comment on some of these photos; as I said, I missed some of the explanations, despite Natālija's superb skills as a translator.
And then there is Iosif himself, here in the small museum attached to the synagogue. This is located upstairs in the gallery where the women of the congregation would sit to observe the services in the sanctuary below. You can see behind him a map of Latvia that has numbers indicating the number of Jews in various Latvian cities. They are presently very low, though I am pleased to report that Rīga now has a Hebrew school, so we shall see what the future may hold for Latvian Judaism.
What struck me hard in visiting the museum is the great, immense silence about the Holocaust in Latvia. I was stunned to learn, for example, that the village on the other side of the Daugava River which is now part of Daugavpils proper was the site of the Jewish ghetto where Jews were forced to live when the Nazis stormed into the city. More shocking was the fact that there were mass exterminations somewhere in the vicinity of the city. There are chilling photographs in the museum of Jewish women, stripped naked and lined up, just before they were executed. Or that 1500 Jews were killed in the Daugavpils prison, the "white swan" as it's known here, a building I have passed a number of times. These are horrific facts, but what might be even more horrific is the fact that I never would have known them at all if it hadn't been for Iosif. The silence surrounding what happened to the Jews of Daugavpils is just that: complete silence.
This is clearly something to ponder. As the most Russian city in Latvia, I would bet that Daugavpils was also the most Jewish, but what you hear about what must have been the great Jewish history here is virtually nothing, other than the renovation of the Kaddish synagogue. Doubtless that the Holocaust is excruciatingly painful to talk about. But then so are any of the atrocities of the Second World War, and they are coming to light; dedicated people, in fact, are insisting that they come to light. The University just opened a traveling exhibit from Poland on the WWII Katyń forest massacre of 15,000 Polish officers, killed by the Soviets on Stalin's orders, who then blamed the Nazis and spent 60 years denying that the Soviet Union was in any way responsible. The truth only came to light when Gorbachev's policy of glasnost made the secret documents available and proved that the Soviets were guilty of the crime. This kind of revisionist history is happening all over Europe, but for these intensely local issues about the Holocaust and what it did, there seems to be an intentional, even willful silence.
And I think in part it's not about the pain that such atrocities must make real and public, as important as that is. I think the real issue here is about facing up to how individual people, villages, and cities were implicated, and how they too must bear the responsibility of allowing such a thing to happen. If Daugavpils established a ghetto, then the city must have been an accomplice to the extermination of many of its own, if even it did so tacitly. Surely some people must have known about 1500 people being killed in the White Swan. Jewish citizens were forced to walk in the street and not on the sidewalks -- photographs at the museum document this -- and Daugavpils citizens must have allowed it to happen. Of course, choosing between saving one's own life under the Nazis by turning one's eyes away and taking a stand for the Jews hardly constitutes an easy choice: it's a choice that almost becomes a non-choice. I wonder, with deep and profound discomfort, what I would have done had I been a Daugavpils citizen. But my gut feeling is that until this kind of silence is made audible -- until everybody is willing to confront that ugly part of the human experience that frankly implicates all of us in this history -- we can't talk fully about the Holocaust. We can't fully talk about anything.
Great post, Rob! As you note, we must pay attention to the gaps and silences as much as we do to what's visible. And your visit to the synagogue is especially meaningful as we approach Passover and consider the socio-historical dimensions of Exodus.
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