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JewishHistoryעברית

Klooga massacre

Date
19 September 1944Hebrew date: 2nd of Tishrei, 5705
Location
KloogaEstonia
Then part of
Generalbezirk Estland
Perpetrators
  • German camp guards (State)
  • Estonian collaborators (Militia / auxiliaries)
Killed (estimate)
2,500[1]Yad Vashem states that about 2,500 Jews were murdered at Klooga on 19 September 1944, including 73 Soviet prisoners of war and Estonian prisoners, and that about 80 people survived. USHMM confirms that Nazi guards and Estonian collaborators executed the prisoners and stacked the bodies for burning before Soviet troops reached the camp in September 1944, but does not give a count.
Country

0.71% – 1% of the Jewish population of Reichskommissariat Ostland (c. 1941)[54]

Worldwide

0.023% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1945)[4]

Category
Massacre
Confidence
Medium

Summary

From 1942 the Germans sent Jews from other occupied countries, including survivors of the Vilna ghetto, to forced-labor camps in Estonia administered from Vaivara; Klooga was one of the large camps. As the Soviet front approached in 1944, German guards and Estonian collaborators shot the prisoners and stacked the corpses for burning. Yad Vashem dates the killing at Klooga to 19 September 1944 and gives about 2,500 dead and about 80 survivors. Soviet troops found the unburned bodies when they reached the camp later that month.

Sources

  1. Deportations of Jews from Vilna to Camps in Estonia and Latvia. Yad Vashem
  2. Estonia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  3. Murder of the Jews of the Baltic States. Yad Vashem

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,000,000[4]c. 1945DellaPergola's core estimate for 1 May 1945, matching the 11 million figure he and the 1948–49 Year Book use for the immediate postwar world total.
  • Reichskommissariat Ostland: 250,000 – 350,000[54]c. 1941Partial wartime Baltic figures only (not a full Ostland census). USHMM Lithuania: prewar about 160,000, swollen to about 250,000 by 1941 with Polish refugees; Latvia article: 94,000 in 1935; Losses Estonia 4,500 (1937). Combined Baltic range roughly 250,000–350,000 depending on whether the enlarged Lithuania figure is used. Still excludes Weissruthenien.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
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  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
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  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
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  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
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