January 27 is officially acknowledged in Estonia as Holocaust Remembrance Day, as in numerous other countries. On that morning, Jews and guests gathered for a commemoration ceremony near the memorial complex established on the site of the former Klooga concentration camp. In the Klooga camp, the Nazis and local collaborators killed nearly 2,000 Jews.
Along with members of the Jewish community, teachers and students of Jewish schools, the gathering to honor the memory of Holocaust victims involved representatives of diplomatic missions of foreign countries in Estonia and other officials.
Chief Rabbi of Estonia Shmuel Kot read the Kaddish memorial prayer and a shofar was sounded in memory of the Holocaust victims. Alla Jakobson, the President of the Jewish community of Estonia, was the keynote speaker. “Why has it become a tradition to gather by this memorial today? Because it is necessary to remember the Holocaust, to remember it so that it may never happen again neither with our own nor any other people,” noted Ms. Jakobson. Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet also spoke at the gathering.
After the memorial service in Klooga, the Tallinn Jewish Community Center hosted a concert by Timur Fishel, who performed Yiddish songs and songs of the Jewish ghetto. For representatives of foreign diplomatic missions, a special tour of the Jewish Community Museum was organized, particularly the exposition featuring materials on the Holocaust in Estonia.
The Jewish community of Kohtla-Jarve also held a Holocaust memorial event. During the Nazi occupation, thousands of Jews were sent to perform hard labor in other European countries or were killed. The Jewish community held a gathering, where its chairman, Alexander Dousman, and community member Emma Goffman, spoke about the tragic events of that dark period in the Jewish history of Estonia. Last year, Ms. Goffman visited Sweden, where she met with another survivor of the former concentration camp in Ereda, a small community located near Kohtla-Jarve.
Participating community members also watched films on this devastating tragedy for the Jewish people and a short film providing an update on the ongoing search for wanted Nazi war criminals.