Rumbula Forest is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia, in which Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. On two days, November 30, 1941
and December 8, 1941, 25,000 Jews were murdered in Rumbula Forest. Of them, 24,000 were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and
1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by freight train. The systematic mass murder was carried out by the Nazi
Einsatzgruppen with the help of the fascist collaborators of the Arājs commando, with support from other such
Latvian auxiliaries.

These tens of thousands of Jews were ordered to disrobe in freezing weather to be shot in the back of the head at close range in pits that were
mass graves. Two women survived. One of them, Frida Michelson, took advantage of a distraction and fell into the pit, feigning death among
the dead bodies. She survived the war to write the book I Survived Rumbula, later translated into English and published by the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum.

During the Holocaust, 90% of Latvia's Jews were murdered at Rumbula, Liepaja (Libau) and other locations. When the war turned against
Germany, the bodies at the Rumbula Forest site were ordered dug up and burned. The site has been marked by a series of makeshift
memorials over the years. A Rumbula memorial was dedicated in November 2002, 61 years after the killings.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumbula

Bottom Photo: Laura Bush lays flowers at the Rumbula Holocaust Memorial on Saturday, May 7, 2005.

http://www.am.gov.lv/data/photo/hz2h0680.jpg

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
Text from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/images/20050507-8_webp44815-634-515h.html