[2] The German army crossed the Soviet frontier in the early morning of Sunday 22 June 1941, on a broad front from the Baltic Sea to Hungary.

The name Einsatzgruppen ("special assignment units") was a euphemism; their real purpose was to murder people the Nazis saw as "undesirable".

[3] They wore a SD patch on the left sleeve, a yellowish shirt, and the Death's Head (Totenkopf) symbol on their caps.

The KdS took orders both from RSHA in Berlin and from another official called the Befehlshaber (commander) der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS.

Both the KdS and the BdS were subordinate to another official called the Ranking (or Higher) SS and Police Commander (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer), or HPSSF.

[3] In Latvia, the Holocaust started on the night of 23 to 24 June 1941, when in the Grobiņa cemetery an SD detachment killed six local Jews, including the town pharmacist.

[6] The killing was supervised by German SD officers Rudolf Batz and Alfred Becu, who involved the Einsatzgruppe in the action.

After the invasion of Riga, Walter Stahlecker, assisted by the members of Pērkonkrusts and other local collaborationists, organised the pogrom of Jews in the capital of Latvia.

He was an idle eternal student who was supported by his wife, a rich shop owner, who was ten years older than he was.

The closest assistants of Viktors Arājs included Konstantīns Kaķis, Alfrēds Dikmanis, Boris Kinsler and Herberts Cukurs.

In carts and blue buses, the men of Arajs Kommando went to different places in Courland, Zemgale and Vidzeme, murdering thousands of Jews there.

The killings were headed by Sturmbannführers (majors) H. Barth, R. Batz, and the newly appointed chief of the Riga SD Rudolf Lange.

They were allotted lower food rations, they could only shop in some special stores, and they had to wear the mark of recognition – the yellow Star of David on their clothes.

[10] They were not allowed to use trains and trams, to go to bath-houses, use pavements, attend libraries and museums or to go to schools, and they had to hand over bicycles and radios.

The German group of SD and policemen did the shooting, while the members of Latvian Selbstschutz convoyed victims to the killing site.

The Scripture rolls were spread on the Ugunsdzēsēju Square, and the Jews were forced to march across their sacred things, with watchers merrily laughing at the amusing scene.

The chief of the local auxiliary police Roberts Blūzmanis had rendered active assistance by ensuring the moving of the Jews to the Grīva ghetto and transporting them to the killing places.

For their actions, both Varushkyna and the Matusevich family were awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.

[18] On July 27, 1941, State Commissar (Reichskommissar) Hinrich Lohse (earlier Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein), ruler of the Baltic lands and Belarus or Ostland as the territory was called by the invaders – made his guidelines on Jewish question public.

The ghetto bordered on Maskavas, Vitebskas, Ebreju (Jewish), Līksnas, Lauvas, Lazdonas, Lielā Kalnu, Katoļu, Jēkabpils and Lāčplēša Streets.

The historian Marģers Vestermanis writes: "The members of the Jewish Council, including the lawyers D. Elyashev, M. Mintz and Iliya Yevelson, and their volunteer assistants did all they could to somehow relieve general suffering.

[25] On December 4, 1941, Hinrich Lohse issued a decree which stated: Gypsies who wander about in the countryside represent a two-fold danger.

"[27] By May 18, 1942, the German police and SS commander in Liepāja indicated in a log that over a previous unspecified period, 174 Gypsies had been killed by shooting.

In 1962, the Soviets staged an officially sanctioned memorial service at Bikernieki (another murder site) which made no mention of the Jews but spoke only of "Nazi victims".

In 1963, groups of young Jews from Riga came out to Rumbula weekly and cleaned up and restored the site using shovels, wheelbarrows and other hand tools.

The poet Ojārs Vācietis often referred to the Holocaust in his work, including in particular his well-regarded poem "Rumbula", written in the early 1960s.

[44] One notable survivor of the Latvian Holocaust was Michael Genchik, who escaped from Latvia and joined the Red Army, where he served for 30 years.

[46] This was complicated by the passage of time and the loss of some records and the concealment of others by the NKVD and its successor agencies of the Soviet secret police.

[46] On November 29, 2002, sixty-one years after the murders, the highest officials of the Republic of Latvia, together with representatives of the Latvian Jewish community, foreign ambassadors, and others attended a memorial dedication at the Rumbula massacre site.

Once they arrived, President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga addressed the gathering: The Holocaust, in its many forms, has painfully struck Latvia.