(also called Rumbali), site of a 1941 massacre, located five miles from Riga, Latvia. From November 29 to December 9, 1941, some 38,000 Jews were executed at Rumbala, a woodsy area situated near a train station. These included 28,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto and 10,000 from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who had been brought to Riga by train.
After World War II, the massacre site lacked a sign memorializing the massacre victims. In 1962 a group of Jewish activists erected a wooden sign at Rumbala, which read: "On this site the voice of 38,000 Jews of Riga were stilled, November 29--30, 1941 to December 8--9, 1941." However, the Soviet authorities refused to sanction any memorial that singled out Jewish victims, and took down the sign. The Jewish activists refused to back down; as a result, the authorities agreed to erect a non-specific memorial at Rumbala. The inscription, written in Russian, Latvian, and Yiddish, read: "To the memory of the victims of the Nazis, 1941--1944."
Rumbala has since developed into a place of Jewish gathering, especially on the Jewish High Holidays and on the yearly observances of the Rumbala massacre and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
