Project Description

Locker of Memory is a multimedia project dealing with genocide at the Jungfernhof concentration camp, Latvia’s first Nazi concentration camp established under German occupation. In December of 1941, four different transports from Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Hamburg brought 3,985 German and Austrian Jews to the Jungfernhof concentration camp. Up to 800 prisoners were killed or died of inhumane treatment during that first winter and were buried at the site. Elderly prisoners deemed unfit for working were taken routinely to nearby forests and shot. Up to two thousand more were murdered in the Bikernieki Massacre, referred to as the Dünamünde Action. Four hundred remained at the camp, which was converted into a slave labor farm. Only 149 persons survived. Prof. Karen Frostig, granddaughter of victims deported to Jungfernhof, first visited the concentration camp in 2007 and again in 2010 to present a memorial for the site. She proposed a second memorial for the site in 2019. During that visit, she learned that in 2013, the camp had been converted into a public park, an idyllic setting for relaxation and recreation.

Dedicated to restoring memory to the land belonging to the former Jungfernhof concentration camp, beginning in 2021, a team of four geospatial scientists conducted land explorations, using non-invasive ground penetrating radar, to search for a mass grave. Concurrent with this research, a team of three historians pursued extensive archival research gathered from numerous archives world-wide. Working with a graphic designer and technologist, the research was translated into two mapping projects: a 3-D tour and an interactive timeline and mapping project.

The 3-D tour represents seven killing sites: the Jungfernhof concentration camp, the Skirotava train station, the Riga Ghetto, Bikernieki and Rumbula Forests, Salaspils and Kaiserwald concentration camps, and the remains of a Soviet runway. The tour also features two dozen audio tapes depicting the harsh reality and daily existence at the camp, as well as random murders by SS officer Rudolf Seck, occurring on a daily basis. The tour includes an accompanying essay and timeline, featuring five distinct narratives, taking place over 800 years. The interactive timeline and map delivers an in-depth presentation of the camp’s history. The Jewish narrative of murder is placed at the center of the camp’s history. Both mapping projects were generously funded by the German Embassy in Latvia and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

Two videos provide additional insights about the camp’s history. A twenty-minute video uses contemporary footage to depict the history of the Jungfernhof concentration camp. The visible loss of the Jewish narrative on the land is addressed, as are efforts to recover the location of lost mass grave containing up to 800 bodies. A second video called “1941 Deportations to Riga” uses rare archival photos to depict multiple deportations bound for Riga. Originally developed as a nighttime projection onto the Skirotava train station to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the earliest deportations to Riga, covid interrupted these plans. The length of the video was extended to include an eighty-year period of neglect, before becoming a bucolic public park. On January 27, 2023, the “1941 Deportations to Riga” video was presented as a day-long viewing experience at Corner House, the former KGB headquarters, now incorporated into Latvia’s Museum of Occupation. The video played concurrently with Karen Frostig’s speech about her family’s history and her work as a public memory artist, delivered at the UN General Assembly, as part of 2023 International Holocaust Remembrance program.

Creating a public presentation about the camp’s history took place on two occasions. The first commemorative event took place at the camp on July 4, 2022, Latvia’s National Day of Holocaust Remembrance. Ilya Lensky, Director of the Museum Jews in Latvia, led a presentation of the site to Latvian officials, and visiting mayors from Germany, which coincided with phase two of scientific land explorations. During this event, a laying of wreaths conveyed the significance of the site.

On July 4, 2024, a formal ceremony of remembrance will take place around the recovered gravesite, at which time, Karen Frostig and Ilya Lensky will present conclusive data identifying the location of the mass grave. A large-scale expertly crafted “Mourning Shroud for 800 Souls” will be used to cover the mass grave in a symbolic act of commemoration. Four metal stakes engraved with detailed data about the four transports, will be inserted into the ground to correspond with the perimeter of the recovered mass grave. The stakes will be incorporated into a memorial fence that will surround and protect the gravesite from foot traffic. These acts of remembrance will lay the groundwork for establishing a permanent memorial at the camp site. Developed as an inclusive event, dignitaries and VIP’s and stakeholders from three countries, survivors, descendants, leaders of Jewish communities, Holocaust scholars, local residents, and students will be invited to participate in the ceremony. At this time, a public statement developed by survivors and descendants of the Jungfernhof concentration camp will address the history of the camp and the nature of the crimes, followed by 80 years of neglect. The statement will also recognize Latvia, Germany, and Austria’s readiness to embrace this history. Forming a coalition of remembrance, plans for memorial development will begin immediately, by installing placards identifying the precise location for a permanent memorial at the Jungfernhof concentration camp.

Phase One: Research

Over a two-year period, Frostig conceived, designed, funded, implemented, and produced a multi-dimensional project representing a team of historians, scientists, artists, technologists, and educators. The history team, led by chief advisor, Ilya Lensky, Director of the Museum Jews in Latvia and chief historian Dr. Richards Plavnieks, in collaboration with historians, Evan Robins and Fred Zimmak, independent scholar and descendant of two survivors, have recovered scores of files and documents. This material, containing valuable historic data, lies on the back shelves of various archives. The scientific team, led by world-renowned Holocaust archeologist, Prof. Richard Freund and joined by Prof. Harry Jol, geographer and cartographer, Prof. Phillip Reeder, geographer and cartographer, and Paul Bauman, distinguished geophysicist are credited for finding the lost mass grave containing up to 800 bodies at the Jungfernhof camp site, Non-invasive land explorations began in July 2021 and continued through July 2022 and 2023. Hazal Uzunkaya, technologist and Shalini Prasad, graphic designer led the design and tech team. They were tasked to integrate history with scientific findings, in a visually-rich presentation of the resaerch. The 3-D tour is now a significant meeting ground that integrates the different disciplines. Corresponding to the Director’s overarching ideas and vision for the project, the five-part narrative is now central to the tour, involving all members of the project team. This model of collaboration was replicated in the interactive timeline and map project. Aristotle’s phrase, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,’ conveys the synergy of these dual collaborations, individual initiatives are not excluded from this proposition. As director, I also worked with Ulrike Krippner and Julia Backhausen-Nikolic, faculty at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, to develop an educational seminar for landscape architectural students, addressing memorial development at the site. I joined the seminar on multiple occasions to stimulate alternative approaches to landscape architecture in relation to memorial development. Additional team members included Kabren Levinson, strategic advisor and website designer, Nikolajs Krasnopevcevs, videographer, and gedenkdienst interns Kilian Ottitsch, Constantin Cerha, and Camillo Spiegelfeld, who coordianated the project’s Facebook page. The research phase of project development continued into 2023. 

Phase Two: Online presentation of the research

History focuses on the past. Memorialization focuses on the past in the present. Exhibitions become curated arenas, inviting visitors to examine history with a new lens, provoking new questions and possibly producing new perspectives.

A fully developed exhibition combining history, art, science, and technology, will tell the complete story about this forgotten camp. Populated with pictures, maps, data-driven graphics, and models, the research also becomes a form of documentation.

Initially, we will present the work on the website. Content is extensive. containing 3-D tours, 3-D maps, archival maps, base maps, photogrammetry, video, photography, digital drawings, ERT archeological data, animated models, animated timelines, animated maps, family heirlooms optimized by VR, printed tapestries, a wall-sized projection video, and architectural drawings are in the works. Identifying appropriate venues for a traveling exhibition is the next step.

Phase Three: Memorial development

Memorials combine scientific evidence with the artistry of social engagement. Imbued with measures of social consciousness, memorials provide everyday citizens with a transformative experience of remembrance.  

Memorial projects become gathering places to discuss difficult histories. Painful memories, often covered by shame and sometimes overlooked for decades, become a public call to action, a “Never Again” moment. Turning isolation into connection, memorials serve communities by strengthening national identity and bringing a degree of cohesion to bear on fractured memories.

The presence of a memorial installed at the site where crimes against humanity took place, carries enormous gravitas. The Locker of Memory memorial will tell the story of the camp as a three-tier experience. Four vertical steel tablets loosely clustered in a circular arrangement, will be inscribed with victims’ names, corresponding to the four transports. Situated amid the steel tablets will be four transparent panels, ghostly in appearance, and engraved with four stark images—the train station, the mass grave, the forest, and the farm. The glass-like panels will capture the changing light of the park, presenting the invisible story of this forsaken camp, obliterated from public memory for 80 long years. Seen as a glistening apparition of an unspoken truth, the story of murder will linger on the land, sending a clear message that we can no longer bury the past. A floating canopy covering the mass grave will embody movement through light, simulating the rhythm of human breath. An imaginative memorial garden with a meandering commemorative walkway will create a reflective sense of place, connecting the names to the burial site.    

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