The museum “Jews in Latvia” was established in 1989 to research, popularize and commemorate the history of Latvia's Jewish community. The museum's exhibition is housed in three halls in the historical building of former Jewish theatre.
The visitors of the museum can get acquainted with different aspects of Latvian Jewish history and culture from the beginnings in XVI century and to 1945 – legal status and economic activities, education and religion, political and intellectual pursuits. The special section is dedicated to Holocaust and rescuing of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Latvia.
In the collection of the museum are stored close to 14,000 units – documents, photos, books and artifacts. Of special interest is wide range of XIX-XX century memoirs, the rich collection of family photos, as well as printed materials of different Jewish organizations from interwar era.
We will be grateful for help provided in broadening the collection of the museum with the documents and photos from your private archives and family albums.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.