RIGA, LATVIA – December 8, 2011. December 8 is a somber day in history. Seventy years ago, Nazis assisted by Latvian collaborators, completed a Holocaust firing squad aktion at Rumbula Forest in Riga, Latvia. On November 30 and December 8, they murdered 25,000 people.
Relatives gathered at memorial services at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Riga’s Rumbula killing site and New York’s Park East Synagogue to mourn the loss. Rumbula’s Echo, a documentary film in production, is providing new insight into the terror of Holocaust firing squads, which killed an estimated 1.5 million. Carolina Taitz, was in one of the columns of 1,000 souls being marched to Rumbula. She experienced, “shooting and shooting and shooting… It was blood, blood, and water, and snow.”
The December 8, 1941 Rumbula murders mark the Nazi transition from mass shootings to death camps. The first death camp began murder operations that same day.
Rumbula’s Echo is being produced by award-winning TV and documentary veterans, with guidance from the world’s five leading historians on the Holocaust in Latvia. The international production is funded by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research and others. The movie’s production company is the non-profit Luminescence Media Group NFP.