Page 43 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Estonia Latvia & Lithuania

THE HIST OR Y OF EST ONIA , LA T VIA AND LITHU ANIA 41

Kenesa, a 20th-century synagogue in Trakai, is where
the Karaim (see p257) congregate. An ethnically Turkish
community from the northern shores of the Black Sea,
they first settled in Trakai in the 14th century.

The Makkabi Sports Association was
one of the Jewish organizations that
thrived in independent Latvia between
1920 and 1940, when the government
worked hard to eliminate anti-Semitism.

The Paneriai Holocaust Memorial (see
p248), just outside Vilnius, commemorates the
70,000 Jews who were murdered here during
the Nazi occu pation (1941–44). In Latvia,
66,000 Jews were massacred, while Estonia,
where 4,300 Jews lived prior to World War II,
was declared “Jew free”.

Tallinn’s Beit Bella
Synagogue was
opened on 16 May 2007.
The city had been with-
out a synagogue since
the destruction of an
earlier one during
World War II. Today, a
3,000-strong Jewish
Rīga’s Museum of the Jews in community lives in
Latvia documents 500 years of Estonia, while in Latvia
Jewish history in the region, and Lithuania, the Jews
and includes this poster used now number over 9,000
by anti-Semitic groups. and 4,000 respectively.