[1] Over the course of the German occupation of Latvia, the vast majority of the Jews of Latgale were killed as a result of the Nazi extermination policy.

[9]On June 29, 1941, at the order of Robert Blūzmanis, who had been appointed by the Germans as the police chief of the Latvian police in Daugavpils,[11] large signs were posted around the city announcing in German, Russian and Latvian that all Jewish males below the age of 60 were to report that morning to the main marketplace, failure to do so would be met with "the maximum penalty.

"[12][13][14] Some of them were put to work burying the bodies of civilians and Red Army soldiers killed in the fighting, and later, dead horses.

[15] The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) attempted to stir up local anti-Jewish feeling by forcing Jews to dig up mass graves of Latvians who had been murdered by the NKVD in the Soviet occupation that had begun in June 1940.

[17] On Sunday June 29, 1941, the German army began rounding up Jewish men in Daugavpils to subject them to terror, humiliation and imprisonment under brutal and overcrowded conditions.

According to Stahlecker's official report: In Latvia as well the Jews participated in acts of sabotage and arson after the invasion of the German Armed Forces.

... One must remember that it was the Jews who greeted the Red Army in July 1940 and enslaved, tortured and killed Latvians during communist rule.

The court found that four early massacres had occurred in Daugavpils, including two in a place matching the description of 'Railroad Park', also called the Railwayman's Garden (Latvian: Dzelzceļniecki dārzs), one at the army training grounds near Mežciems, and another near a cemetery about a half hour's walking distance to the north of the city.

At the end of the killings on July 8, the survivors were put to work digging new graves and tamping down the earth over the bodies in the previous trenches.

[25]Kuritsky was saved when the Germans turned out to have miscalculated the number of bodies they could place in the pits: But then, the remaining prisoners were given spades and ordered to cover the ditches with dirt – there was no more room.

[26] Roberts Blūzmanis, the Latvian police chief in Daugavpils, carried out the SD's wishes for certain Jewish restrictions.

It was Blūzmanis, acting for the SD, who ordered that all Jews in Daugavpils over four years of age wear six-pointed yellow stars on the front and back of their clothing.

[27] Jewish forced labor was used to build the ghetto, which was not an actual housing district, but rather a decrepit fortress on the west side of the Daugava river, a short distance just to the northwest of the suburb of Griva, across from the main city of Daugavpils.

Iwens, an eyewitness, reported that "many women had to cope with their children and aged parents all by themselves, for their men had been killed in the prison massacre.

[9] Ehrlinger's successor as of about July 11, was Joachim Hamann, who killed 9,012 Jews in Daugavpils, including many brought in from small towns in southern Latgale before he was reassigned on August 22.

One of the precinct chiefs, Arvīds Sarkanis, wrote explicitly of "the liquidation of the Jews", providing the most detailed account of the participation of the Latvian police.

He executed people who infringed his many rules, especially those who had smuggled in food, on the inner square of the ghetto in front of all inmates to frighten and to intimidate them.

[39] Participation by local Latvians in the Daugavpils killings and ghettoization was initially minimal; but after two weeks of the German occupation, it became extensive.

Iwens reported a number of instances of kind treatment from, among others, a German airman, who was shocked by the suffering of the children in the ghetto.

Finally we decided to believe the soldier because he was always very friendly to us, helped us carry food to our brothers at the fortress and even used to bring a long piece of white bread for the sick.

"[54] The German authorities enforced discipline in the Daugavpils ghetto by hanging people who were perceived as violating their many rules: One Sunday, when no one was going to work, an order was issued.

[57] In that case, the body of the executed woman, Mina Gittelson, whose crime was walking on the sidewalk and not in the street, and not wearing the Jewish badge, was left hanging for three days.

[58] Also executed was 48-year-old Chaya Mayerova (other sources give her name as Meyorvich[18] and Mejerow[58]), who was shot before the assembled ghetto inhabitants for exchanging a piece of cloth for two kilograms of flour.

[62] Professor Ezergailis accepts the Nazi figure of 1,134, but this was based on a source which apparently refers to shootings on a single day - November 9, 1941.

[41] The shootings in this case, of about 3,000 people, were committed by the Arājs commando under German supervision, and may have been intended as a trial run for the much larger Rumbula massacre near Riga on November 30 and December 8, 1941.

Suddenly, a nurse ran in out of breath and told everyone in the hospital that the commandant of the ghetto was coming here with some bandits to search for people who were hiding [.]

[66] Following the November massacre, a number of Jews with work permits were stationed (kasierniert or "barracked") outside the ghetto at the larger older fortress, sometimes called the citadel, on the north side of the Daugava River.

Tabbert's men, and the Arājs commando, entered the ghetto in the morning after the working Jews had been marched out to the job sites.

The May 1 selection followed the pattern of assembling the people to be executed, then marching them out to the Pogulianka Forest, where they were all shot and shoved into pre-dug mass graves.

They threw old and sick people through second floor windows, shot those who refused to leave their rooms, and killed some of the very small children by cracking their heads against the concrete walls of the buildings.