Churbn Lettland

George Schwab, Foreword (Extract) Max Kaufmann's Churbn Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia, is a classic. Published in Munich, Germany, in 1947, only two years after Nazi Germany's collapse, the book contains Kaufmann's recollections and those of other Latvian Jewish survivors whom he was able to buttonhole in the tumultuous immediate postwar period. In Yiddish, Russian, German, and Latvian he grilled them in Riga, Berlin, and Munich on their wartime reminiscences. With little more than pen, pencil, and slips of paper, Kaufmann made copious notes and painstakingly reconstructed what had transpired between 1941 and 1945. What makes this work unique is Kaufmann's account to record for posterity the deliberate destruction of the once culturally rich Latvian Jewish community. Why publish this oeuvre in English now? Notwithstanding the fact that Holocaust studies have been and still are widely pursued, serious gaps in the analysis of the enormity of this heinous crime perpetrated by Germans and their local collaborators still remain. The case of Latvia, where more than 80,000 Latvian Jews and thousands non-Latvian Jews were slaughtered, is but one example. Though it is true that a few eyewitness accounts and some scholarly works by Latvian and non-Latvian scholars have appeared since 1947, especially in the recent past, much still needs to be researched in general and also in the wake of the huge, recently released trove of declassified documents stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Another reason why this work should be known today is the need to counter the works of charlatan writers who, out of ignorance or prejudice or malice, deny that the Holocaust in Latvia and elsewhere ever took place and dismiss eyewitness accounts and documentary evidence as inventions by Jews and their sympathizers.