Žanis Lipke Memorial

Žaņa Lipkes memoriāls Ķīpsalā

Žanis Lipke Memorial is located on the island of Ķīpsala in Riga, Latvia, at 9 Mazais Balasta dambis. It was built next to the home of Žanis Lipke, where he had arranged a shelter for rescued Jews from the ghetto during World War II.

Firewood shed which housed the bunker. 1970s. Riga. Latvia.

At the beginning of World War II, Žanis Lipke hid the first Jewish refugees in temporary hiding places in different locations in Riga. During winter of 1941/1942 harboring people in hideouts in Riga and his own house became too dangerous, so he started building a shelter under the woodshed that stood next to his house. In January 1942 he dug out the first bunker all on his own, working at nights. At the very beginning this bunker housed four people. In 1942 it collapsed as soon as thaw set in. Right afterwards Žanis Lipke built a new one, much more thought-out. Bunker beneath the shed housed 8-12 Jews simultaneously from 1942 to summer of 1944.

After the war Žanis Lipke used the bunker as a car pit. Over time, the pit caved in and the shed burned down in 1980s. Before the construction of the museum, creators of the Memorial built a new shed for Lipke family in the very place where the old shed with the secret bunker once stood.

The basic idea

Founders of the society “Žanis Lipke Memorial” – entrepreneur Māris Gailis, the honorary director of International Film Forum “Arsenāls”, Augusts Sukuts and the daughter-in-law of Žanis Lipke, Ārija Lipke came to the idea of creating the memorial in 2000, after the revealing of a memorial plaque by Lipke’s house in Ķīpsala, 8 Mazais Balasta dambis. The aim that these people share with their collaborators is to bring to the attention of the local, as well as the international society the historical phenomenon of Žanis Lipke. In 2005 they founded a society to begin fundraising for building a memorial in Riga.^[1]

The project

Sketch of Žanis Lipke memorial.

The author of project of Žanis Lipke Memorial is architect Zaiga Gaile. Her idea for the visual image of the building came from tarred sheds of Ķīpsala fishermen and seamen, who built them of heavy floated logs with their characteristic color and smell. Conceptually and visually, the shape of the museum evokes Noah's Ark or an overturned boat, which too could be considered as a shelter of life.

On the basement floor of the memorial there is a bunker that matches the size of the original cache – 3x3m. Along its walls there are nine bunks dropping down from the wall. The bunker had two entrances – one was covered by a kennel, the other led to a nearby ravine, should the bunker be discovered. During the construction of the bunker Žanis Lipke did not know how long people would have to hide in it, so he built it in such manner that kept its inhabitants connected to the outside world. They had newspapers brought to them as well as books. There was even electricity installed in the bunker and a radio was brought. Electricity was also used as a signal – if someone from Lipke family turned it off, it served as a signal that a stranger was approaching. Inhabitants of the bunker were supplied with weapons so they could defend themselves if necessary. Life in tight circumstances and uncertainty of the future was a great emotional and spiritual challenge that sometimes led to conflicts.^[2]

Right above the bunker, on the first floor of the building, stands sukkah, a fragile scaffold-like wooden construction with transparent paper inner walls. The outside of it is sheathed with black boards to resemble the woodshed of Lipke. In Judaism, sukkah is a temporary shelter whose religious significance is celebrated during Sukkot or the Feast of Booths. To Jews sukkah serves as a reminder of the tents and other fragile shelters of the ancient Israelites where they lived for forty years after God, with the help of Moses, had freed them from slavery in Egypt but had yet to bring them to the Promised Land. This joyful celebration takes place shortly after days of Yom-Kippur fasting and repentance. Sukkah is a temporary shelter, and as such it must be simple to build. The author of art conception of the Memorial, Viktors Jansons, has conceived of the sukkah as a symbolic double of the bunker, the temporary shelter that hangs in between the heaven and the earth. This tent stands for the fragility of life and its dependence on God, reminding that it is not the walls that provide security, it is the faith. On the thin walls of the sukkah artist Kristaps Ģelzis has drawn – with light strokes discernible only in good light – a landscape with a verdant valley at the height of the summer. This landscape that Ģelzis calls “a meditation” and be seen both as meditation on the Promised Land and a vision of a summer in the Latvian countryside before the war. It is nature in its primeval simplicity and beauty, an archetypical testimony to life, the source of life and constant rebirth. The drawing is dim and vague as an image that is stored only in memories, or the one that is conjured in one’s imagination by hope and longing for freedom. Above the sukkah on the attic level, there is an open hatch in the floor through which the lower two levels can be ob¬served. The authors of the memorial consider it essential for the visitor to look at the real shelter, the bunker, and the symbolic shelter, the sukkah, from above. First of all, it implies looking back at the past from a point in the future where one no longer can discern details but has gained a perspective on the bigger picture: interconnections, immutable values, the intransient. Second, it resembles looking from the vantage point of view, the one of a narrator or, figuratively speaking, God, for we know that the people who found shelter in the bunker survived the war whereas at the time, they could only hope for such an outcome.

Development

Žanis Lipke memorial was ceremonially opened in 2012. President of Israel Shimon Peres (in the middle), president of Republic of Latvia Andris Bērziņš (first from the right) and entrepreneur, author of the idea of memorial, Māris Gailis.

Construction of the memorial, which started in 2009, lasted for three years. Memorial was paid solely by private donations and cost around half million euros altogether. In 2012 memorial was officially opened by both president of Latvia Andris Bērziņš and president of Israel Shimon Peres.

Among the guests of the opening there were descendants of the saved Jews – representatives of Smoļanski, Cesvaini, Lībheni families who came from Israel. Boriss Smoļanskis held a speech during the opening ceremony and also deposited a relic of his family to the memorial – Tora that belonged to his father Haims Smoļanskis, a close friend of Žanis Lipke. Tora was preserved during the fateful events of the family – Jewish persecution, imprisonment in the ghettos and hiding places. The daughters of Ābrams Lībhens, who was also saved, Esther Schumacher and Jeanna Levitt, brought a branch from the very same tree Žanis Lipke planted in Jerusalem in 1977 near Yad Vashem memorial.

References

See also

The Holocaust in Latvia

Coordinates: 56°57′14″N 24°05′05″E / 56.9540°N 24.0846°E / 56.9540; 24.0846