Holocaust Remembrance Day 2015 : Author Magee Returns to Rumbula Forest

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), I share with you a short film of my recent visit to the killing fields of Rumbula forest in Latvia.  In July of 1941, the Nazis entered Riga.  They killed some Jews immediately and moved the remaining ones into the Riga ghetto, closing it in September.   On November 28 and 29 and December 8, 1941,  they marched 24,000 Riga Jews and 1,000 German Jews to the Rumbula forest and murdered them.  They kept 4,000 young, healthy Jews in the ghetto to do slave labor.  Kalman Aron and his brother were among them.

In 2004, when I was researching Kalman’s life for the book INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron, I went to Riga and visited the relatively new memorial at Rumbula.  I arranged to have a stone placed in honor of Kalman’s mother and father.  Ten years later the memorial has grown as more stones have been placed to remember those who died there.

Let us remember those who were lost and celebrate those who survived. May we learn to live in peace with ourselves and each other.