Žanis Lipke Memorial

At the beginning of World War II, Žanis Lipke hid the first Jewish refugees in temporary hiding places in different locations in Riga.

Her idea for the external appearance of the building came from tarred sheds of Ķīpsala fishermen and seamen, who built them of heavy floated logs, with their characteristic color and smell.

Conceptually and visually, the shape of the museum evokes Noah's Ark or an overturned boat, which too could be considered as a shelter of life.

During the construction of the bunker Žanis Lipke did not know how long people would have to hide in it, so he built it in such manner that kept its inhabitants connected to the outside world.

[3] Right above the bunker, on the first floor of the building, stands sukkah, a fragile scaffold-like wooden construction with transparent paper inner walls.

To Jews sukkah serves as a reminder of the tents and other fragile shelters of the ancient Israelites where they lived for forty years after God, with the help of Moses, had freed them from slavery in Egypt but had yet to bring them to the Promised Land.

The author of art conception of the Memorial, Viktors Jansons, conceived of the sukkah as a symbolic double of the bunker, the temporary shelter that hangs in between the heaven and the earth.

First of all, it implies looking back at the past from a point in the future where one no longer can discern details but has gained a perspective on the bigger picture: interconnections, immutable values, the intransient.

Second, it resembles looking from the vantage point of view, the one of a narrator or, figuratively speaking, God, for we know that the people who found shelter in the bunker survived the war whereas at the time, they could only hope for such an outcome.

Esther Schumacher and Jeanna Levitt, the daughters of Ābrams Lībhens who was also saved, brought a branch from the tree Žanis Lipke planted in Jerusalem in 1977 near Yad Vashem memorial.