Riga Jewish Heritage Tour

A Rich Introduction to the Jewish Past in Riga city.

The tour begins with pickup from your hotel or the port if you are on a cruise ship.  Meet your private guide to set out towards the heart of Riga and walk through the old town for an introduction of the Jewish history in Riga.

Visit Riga Synagogue which is the only synagogue that survived the Holocaust and is currently active. Start learning about Jewish history in Latvia before and after WWII. Travel in time to Soviet Riga to discuss with your guide about the unspoken prohibition of Jewish religious life and constant supervision by the Soviet state security authority and how the synagogue remained the heart of the city’s Jewish life.
Continue with your guide through the Latvian Holocaust Museum: a very impressive museum of the Holocaust. See the list of the names of 70000 lost lives and photographs.

Head to the memorial of the Great Choral Synagogue and pay respect to the events of 1941 during which hundreds of Jewish people were forced into the basement that was later intentionally burned to the ground. From this horrible event, only the ruins of a metal menorah and memorial stone are left but they still paint an incredibly somber image of the atrocity.

Travel through the historical Jewish quarter of Maskavas Forstate suburb next, and look out for the little wooden houses where the Jewish people used to live.

Visit the old Jewish cemetery which was a part of the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation. When the war ended and the Soviets took over many of the headstones and bricks from the walls were pilfered. Local Jews were executed at the site on Aug. 1, 1941, and a monument there commemorates the victims.

See the Salaspils Memorial Ensemble which was erected where an extended police prison and labor correctional camp of the Nazis was located from 1941 to 1945. Over the various periods that the Salaspils camp was in operation, more than 20,000 individuals found themselves there. Because of heavy labor, illness, starvation, and inhumane treatment and punishments, at least 2,000 to 3,000 people died in the camp.

Continue to Rumbula to visit and learn about one of the largest sites of mass murders of Jews in Europe. Start your tour with a number of stone plaques with inscriptions in Latvian, English, German, and Hebrew to provide an insight into the events of Rumbula tragedy and the history of the memorial. Continue to the central part of the square, which has been designed in the form of the Star of David, and a menorah, surrounded by stones with the names of Jews murdered in Rumbula carved into them. See the names of Riga streets engraved in some stones paving the square. Lastly, talk about the number of mass graves located within the territory of the memorial, marked by rectangular concrete borders.

Finish your tour at a high note to learn about Zanis Lipke and his wife Johanna creating an underground bunker to save Jews from Nazis.

After the tour ends we can bring you to the Jewish Community Center with the museum of Jews in Latvia to continue to deepen your knowledge.

You can also choose to end the tour at the Museum of Occupation of Latvia for an introduction into the history of how Jews survived under Soviet rule.

Join our private tour led by a local expert guide and supported by a private vehicle to learn about Jewish history in Riga.