History of the Soviet Era
Rumbula Marker

Soviets Required Design Change to Eliminate Jewish Reference
by Alex Gertsmark, son of marker designer, Leo Herzmark

The Soviet Era Marker in Rumbula, photo of which you have on your site, was designed by my father, Leo Herzmark, approximately in the early 1960-ies. My father was born in Riga on July 20, 1901. He attended the Arts Academy in Riga in 1920-ies, and throughout his life was an artist, mostly creating theatrical stage sets, as well as the original paintings. In the 1930-ies and until the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, my father was a stage set designer in the Yiddish Theater in Riga. He was a very good friend and a colleague of Mikhail Yoffe (Mikhail Yo), who was also a set designer in the same theater. To this day I am very fortunate to have saved several original clips from the Yiddish newspapers in Riga with reviews and photographs of my father's works.

After fighting against Nazis in 1941-1945, my father continued working in Riga, staging theatrical plays and painting. While the Jewish population was still very significant in Riga after the war, all aspects of Jewish culture were officially banned in Soviet Latvia. Despite that, the remaining Jewish activists staged several plays in Yiddish in Riga at that time. All of those plays had the stage sets designed by my father. I remember attending every single one of them with my parents and my brother.

I was about 15 or 16 years old when my father was asked to design the Rumbula Monument. To this day nothing can make me prouder. The original design was quite different from what was eventually allowed. Instead of Hummer and Sickle, it originally had a Star of David with an embedded tear-shaped piece of red granite, making it look like the stone was crying blood. The copy on the left was in Yiddish only. I do not remember exactly what it said, but it was definitely dedicated to Jews as victims. In order to have the monument approved by the authorities, my father was ordered to change the whole concept of his work. He was told by Soviet authorities in Riga that it should not be about the Jews, and that it should be dedicated to all the victims of fascism. Even despite all the changes forced upon my father, the artist, the ultimate unveiling of this monument in Rumbula, was one of the major events for the Riga Jews. I remember a massive number of the police and KGB agents with video and photo cameras, forming a corridor leading to the site and taking pictures of every person in the crowd. It stopped almost nobody from attending.

Several years ago the Detroit Free Press published a series of articles on Jews in Riga. One of them had a picture of a Holocaust survivor standing in front of this monument. Later, the reporter for the paper has sent me several original photos of the monument in Rumbula, which I cherish to this day.

My father, Leo Herzmark, died in Riga on January 4, 1970.

I immigrated to the United States from Riga, Latvia in 1976, and live with my family...( here). The spelling of my last name was changed to reflect the Russian and Latvian pronunciation. I have numerous Yiddish, Russian and Latvian theatrical posters, programs and articles, where the name is spelled Herzmark, Hertzmark of Gertcmark ( Latvian for Gertsmark). All the original pre-war documents concerning my father still have the Herzmark.

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