The Jewish Community of Estonia marked the 76th anniversary of the Klooga concentration camp massacre, in which as many as 2,000 Jews were killed.
“76 years ago, on September 19 1944 … on the second day of the Rosh Hashanah holiday, the bloodiest murder in the modern history of Estonia was committed at the Klooga concentration camp,” the community wrote on its social media page.
The memorial ceremony took place on September 21st, and was attended by community leader and director of the Tallinn Jewish School Alla Jakobson, 10th grade students from the school, Ministry of Culture adviser Anne-Ly Reima, diplomat and former Estonian ambassador to Israel Malle Talvet-Mustonen, representatives of the Russian embassy, community members and local residents.
The memorial prayer was read by head Rabbi of Estonia, Shmuel Kot.
Klooga was a sub-camp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex, established Estonia in 1943 by occupying Nazi German forces, a force labor camp where inmates, predominantly Jews from the Vilnius and Kaunas ghettos in Lithuania, and also from locations further afield in Europe, were deported.
Ahead of advancing Red Army troops, Waffen SS personnel massacred as many as 2,000 inmates in a single day, during the course of the evacuation of the camp during Sept. 19-22 1944.
Many other inmates were transported to concentration and death camps in present-day Poland.
A memorial dedicated to the victims was unveiled at the site in 1994.
