The Riga Ghetto was established in Latvia's largest city and capital. Late in 1941, the vast majority of Latvian Jews in this ghetto were shot in the nearby Rumbula Forest by pro-Nazi Latvian militiamen and SS Einsatzgruppen. In December 1941 and throughout 1942, nearly 20,000 German Jews were deported to the Riga Ghetto where they were either murdered in the Rumbula Forest or exploited for their labor. Bert and his family were among those deportees, and it was at Riga that Bert's mother and aunts died. The surviving prisoners of the Riga Ghetto, Bert among them, were transported to Kaiserwald and other camps in 1943.
