Riga, Latvia

I remember first learning about this country when I was in second grade. August, 1990. We had these Weekly Readers we would painstakingly stammer our way through every week. One week, not too long after school had started up, the main topic of the Reader’s discussion was about this very strange area of the world called the “Baltics”. This area was made up of three countries that not one of us in class could read, much less pronounce.

I think that after some doing I eventually wrapped my mind – and my toungue – around “Latvia”. I can’t remember if I ever figured out Estonia, but I do know that Lithuania was a lost cause. That was just the country to the south of the other two, with more letters than either. Anyway, we all knew that our second-grade teacher was very excited about these countries, but I don’t think anyone ever understood why.

Of course, a precursory look at history will remind anyone of the events going in in 1990 – 1991. And one day in Riga will be more than enough to learn about the travails endured by the Latvians during the Soviet Occupation. The Russians basically denied these people everything near and dear to them – not just culture and language, but imagination and possibility. The past 18 years have been an admirable striving to reclaim what is theirs.

So it’s cool to be here, and see the beautiful reconstruction of this country and its national identity.

Apparently Adidas went through the four gardens that surround the city, and painted a triple white line to mark out a running route around them. This was done to promote the Riga marathon, which was held in May.

What's good enough for Adidas is good enough for me. Route 1, ole!

“Isn’t one concentration camp enough?” Mark asked me, when I told him my plans for the day.

Perhaps yes. Visiting one concentration camp is definitely more than enough for one lifetime, and I had my experience last year when I went to Auschwitz.

But the truth is no – as long as there is this gaping black void in the portrait of history, it will be our responsibility to recognize it, to visit it, to pay it our respects. To remember. No matter whether we really want to go to a concentration camp that day, no matter whether it one is enough for one lifetime.

To get to Salaspuls, the concentration camp just outside of Riga, you take bus 6317 from Academia Nayk (the big Stalin skyscraper-like building) to one stop just before Salaspuls town proper. I write this here because the people at the Tourist Information place didn’t tell me this, and it took my Russian language skills to figure this out.

And maybe that’s why I found myself utterly alone at the haunting memorial to the thousands of victims, Latvian Jews and Jews from all around Europe.

Remembering is a responsibility.

At home we learn with disdain how the republics of Eastern Europe rescued the Nazis into their countries in 1940-41. Well, to be honest, if we learned about what they experienced under the Soviet occupation prior to that, we may have a better understanding about why.

There’s a lot of history we don’t get in the United States. For example, your first question upon reading the above paragraph should be, “What Soviet occupation?” In fact, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact – the one that divided Eastern Europe between Germany and Russia and signed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania over to the Russians in 1939, they went through their own kind of nightmare. Thousands of people – men, women, and children – were herded onto cattlecars and disappeared into the night. Freedom of speech, freedom of ownership, freedom of belief, forget it. They were all stripped away.

Then the Nazis came in, and even if maybe they were “welcomed” at first, the warmth of that welcome wore off pretty quick. The next five years the people of these countries were conscripted, forced to work, and sentenced to die in a war they had had no part in.

Then the war ended, and the Soviets came back. There went freedom of culture, freedom of language, freedom of everything.

It’s sad, how often today people confuse the Baltic states, or the Balkan states, or the Middle European states, with being part of the Soviet Union, and Russia. Let me tell you, I’ve lived in Russia. And not only are these countries very different from Russia, they are almost the opposite. They are so very Western.

So I can only imagine the indignation, and the horror, of what these people must have gone through, as they were subjected to the Russian whims. I’m very happy for them, that they made it out. I am impressed by they way they try to lay plain their history, not just so Westerners understand, but so they can exercise their freedom to overcome tyranny, to remember.