Day 5
On our way out of Estonia, we stop at Paernu, a seaside resort used by the Russian monarch and then by generations of local people eager for the sun and sand of a peaceful town. There are beautiful old buildings in a small area. Several churches and a town hall built in 1797 which is now used for art exhibits. My friend and I climbed up the ancient stairs and entered the exhibit of a Lithuanian artist whose visual images included top hats, reminding me of my Charles’ love of Magritte. Good interesting art and I wish we had more time to absorb it.
My friend and I sit and have a rest with a croissant and fresh orange juice and coffee on a sunlit outdoor patio. All seems well in the world.
And then the hard part. Visiting Rumbula, the site of the massacre of 25000 Jews marched in columns of 1000 each to their death by gunfire in the forest. It is hard to imagine: 24000 men women and children from the ghetto of Riga and 1000 German Jews transported out of their country in 1941, all believing they were being relocated to a new location. Good citizens and believing they understood the moral values of the culture they lived in, roused from their beds and confined into a very crowded ghetto area and then moved en masse by train from a city they thought of as home to a rural location. In this beautiful isolated forest where this horror occurred, there have been placed a number of memorials over time; during the Soviet occupation, only a memorial to Soviet citizens, then later memorials to the Jews who died here. There is a memorable symbolic path leading to the train tracks from where the victims had descended after their from Riga.
At this site, we each are given a paper to read the name of someone who died there, to remember them, for a brief moment, before we wring out our tears and our lives go on.
On to Riga, known as one of the most beautiful old world cities, the heart of Latvia, for the next few days. It is Friday night so we celebrate Shabbat together in the hotel with dinner, remembering what we experienced today and grateful for our freedom.