The Jungfernhof Concentration Camp Memorial Project: Reclaiming a Lost History with Karen Frostig

In November and December 1941, nearly 4,000 German and Austrian Jews — entire families — were deported by the Nazi government from their homes in their native countries to occupied Latvia. The name of each one of them is known from the deportation train rosters. Taken to an abandoned manor home at the Jungfernhof site near Riga, these people died of exposure to the elements by the hundreds, after which thousands more were shot by the German Nazis and their Latvian accomplices, with the remnants used for slave labor. 149 of the people survived the Holocaust. 

Since 2019, the Locker of Memory Project has sought to recover the history of this unremembered concentration camp. The 2024 discovery of the buried remains of the barracks building has set the stage for the project to move into a new phase: commemoration. Join members of the Locker of Memory Project as they explain the origin and purpose of the project, relate the history the project has uncovered, and discuss ongoing efforts to place a memorial at the site.

Register to join us online on February 22 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Please contact cajl@tisrael.org with questions.

Panelists

Public memory artist, project lead and founder, and descendant of victims of the camp, 
Dr. Karen Frostig, Professor, Lesley University, Cambridge, and Scholar at HBI, at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

the project's lead historian, American Latvian
Dr. Richards Plavnieks, Associate Professor, Florida Southern College, Lakeland, FL

the Holocaust archaeologist who located proof of the camp's existence, 
Dr. Philip Reeder, Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA

and the Latvian Jewish community leader,
Ilya Lensky, Director, Museum "Jews in Latvia," Riga, Latvia

Moderator

Paula S. Apsell, Senior Executive Producer Emerita NOVA, the CEO Leading Edge Productions and the Executive Producer and Co-Director of a feature documentary about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust entitled Resistance – They Fought Back.