85 Years After Jews Were Burned Alive in the Synagogue: Holocaust Survivor Historian Passes Away at 100

Margers Vestermanis, a survivor of the Riga Ghetto and a historian, passed away at the age of 100. Born in 1925, he survived the Holocaust and researched the history of Latvian Jewry. He was a member of the Latvian Historians' Commission and established a memorial to 400 rescuers of Jews.

Margers Vestermanis, a Holocaust survivor and historian, passed away at the age of 100. He was born on September 18, 1925, in Riga, was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and survived. After the war, he devoted his life to researching the history of Latvian Jewry and the Holocaust, publishing books and academic articles, and was a member of the Latvian Historians' Commission from 1998 to 2019. On the last Holocaust Remembrance Day, he arrived in a wheelchair to a ceremony in front of the ruins of the Great Synagogue of Riga, which was burned with its occupants on July 4, 1941, by Germans with the assistance of Latvian auxiliary forces. Vestermanis initiated and established a memorial to 400 'rescuers of Jews' in Latvia and was responsible for their registration. His work was recognized by the state.