Riga Jewish city tour with a private guide

We will start Riga Jewish tour by visiting Synagogue on Peitavas street. It is one of the very few Art Noveau synagogues in the world. Here your guide will tell how Jewish people arrived in Riga and where they settled first. 

After an introduction, we will coque on architectural pearls of the Synagogue designed by architect Wilhelm Neumann. The 120 years old Synagogue was always in operation except for three years of Nazi occupation. Even during Soviet rule, it was one of few operating in the soviet union. 

From the Synagogue, we will walk on Richarda Vagnera street and will talk about the controversy about R. Vagner’s personality. Then we will stop Near the house of Phillipe Halsman – a famous American portrait photographer. You will hear why he spend two years in prison and how he linked to Salvador Dali.

We will see the “Laima Clock,” which decorated the central street in Riga since 1936. Laima is the best known Latvian chocolate brand.

We will visit an impressive Jewish theatre, nowadays accommodating the Jewish Community with most of its institutions, including the museum Jews of Latvia. Kosher restaurant “7:40” is in the same premice, where we can make a stop for lunch. 

After lunch, we will continue to the Riga Ghetto Museum. Rabbi Menachem Barkan, leader of Riga’s Shamir Jewish community, started it in 2010. The vibrant exhibition, various stories, and interesting artifacts are awaiting you there. 

From here, we will continue to the territory of the Jewish quarter and the ghetto in Moscow district. We will start from the memorial to the Choral Synagogue. Latvian nationalist unit led by Victor Arajs burned it on July 4, 1941. Today, an imposing monument marks one of the darkest moments in the history of local Jews. 

In the same park, we will learn about Latvians who resisted the Nazis. Their names inscribed on the Whitewall monument of Latvian Righteous Among the Nations.

Afterward, we will drive through ghetto streets. Will see the first Riga synagogue, “Alte Noye shul.” Will stop at the Jewish hospital “Bicur Holim,” where Dr. Vladimirs Mincs used to work, who successfully operated Lenin after the attempt on assassination by Fannie Kaplan. 

At the exit from the city, we will see the former Jewish cemetery. City authorities desecrated it and opened on its spot the stone art “Park of Communistic Brigades.”

We will pay respect to Holocaust victims at the Riga Jews massacre sites in Rumbula and Bikiernieki. 

Another landmark of WW II is labor camps in Kaizerwald and Salaspils. Nazis have destroyed both to eradicate the evidence of their crimes. In Salaspils, Communist authority created an impressive memorial in 1967. It is an outstanding example of a totalitarian regime’s monumental art.

We will finish Riga Jewish city tour visiting the Janis Lipke museum on Kipsala. Janis Lipke saved more than 40 Jews and is a national hero in Latvia. His hard and uplifting story is an excellent moral lesson that there is always a choice to be a good man.