What was the Šķēde Beach-massacre and how was it related to the Holocaust



The massacre of the Jews of Liepaja on the beach of Šķēde occurred on December 15, 1941, during World War II. Liepaja was a port city in Latvia that had a significant Jewish population. In the fall of 1941, the Germans began a campaign of mass killings of Jews in the area. Many were rounded up and held in a ghetto in the city before being transported to concentration camps.

On the day of the massacre, the Germans and their Latvian collaborators forced approximately 2,700 Jews from the ghetto to march to the Šķēde beach. The victims were forced to undress and then stand in front of large pits that had been dug in the sand. The Germans and their collaborators then opened fire on the Jews with machine guns, killing most of them. Those who were not killed by the gunfire were buried alive in the pits.
The massacre was carried out by the Einsatzgruppen, a paramilitary death squad that was responsible for carrying out the genocide of Jews in Eastern Europe. The Latvian collaborators who participated in the massacre were members of the Arajs Kommando, a Latvian volunteer police unit that was notorious for its role in the Holocaust.

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