Estonia, Israel mark 1944 massacre of some 2,000 Jews
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonian and Israeli officials have marked the 75th anniversary of a massacre of some 2,000 Jews at a World War II Nazi concentration camp, just three days before the Soviet Red Army liberated it.
Michael Tal, curator with the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum, joined Estonian officials at a ceremony Thursday on the site of the Klooga forced labor camp in northern Estonia.
On Sept. 19, 1944, with advancing Soviet forces drawing near, Nazi troops rushed to evacuate the camp and a special Waffen-SS commando shot the Jews in a single day. Their corpses were burnt in the surrounding woods.
Most of the victims were Jews from Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania.
Klooga was one of the first Nazi concentration camps revealed to the outside world, in October 1944.
