Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1945 — The Missing Center

This massive study...spares no detail....Ezergailis is no youngster and he spent many years gathering the facts and writing the text. He has complete command of the literature and the trial records. His research took him to many archives. Needless to say, he could read the Latvian sources with full understanding of all nuances of the language. He is painstakingly objective and he tries to the utmost to be precise.

What he wrote about is limited in scope but not minor in importance. Latvia affords a window to the crucial topic of the initiation of the final solution. The Jewish victims there were not only local inhabitants but also deportees from the Reich. The Rīga massacres in the late fall of 1941 were, after Odessa and Kiev, the largest in Europe. Most important, however, must be our recognition of the fact that Ezergailis represents the next wave of Holocaust research: the in-depth exploration of a particular aspect or territory. In that sense, he is a pioneer and his work serves as a model.