Klooga, Estonia Forced Labor Camp Prisoners July, 1944

Background

The Klooga concentration camp was a forced labor sub-camp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex. The Klooga camp was located in Estonia, west of Tallinn, and was established as early as 1942 but was only used for Jews some time later. By 1944 it held between 2,000 - 3,000 Jewish prisoners. The majority of the prisoners were forcibly relocated in August and September 1943 from the ghettos of Kovno and Vilna in Lithuania and Salaspils in Latvia. A smaller number were from Estonia, Russia and Romania.

As the Russians approached after the summer of 1944, the Germans stated to evacuate the prisoners from the camp. In September 1944, the Germans started to systematically massacre the remaining 2,000 prisoners, with very few survivors.

This collection consists of the names of Jewish men and women who were held in Klooga in July 1944. In a few cases, dates of death are noted but for most, the date of death is not given and there is no list of all those who perished or survived in the September massacre.

The information was taken from holdings of the International Tracing Service, available at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In each case there is at least one card (available on request) relating to each prisoner, but the cards do not add to the information contained in this overall list.

• Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945 Vol. 1, Indiana University Press, 2009
• The Holocaust in Lithuania 1941-1945 by Rose Lerer Cohen and Saul Issroff, Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem ,2002
• Klooga on the North -Testimonies of Survivors of a Concentration Camp in Estonia 1997, Maarechet Kibutz Dalia, Israel.

Database

This database includes 2,186 prisoners at the Klooga camp in July 1944. The fields for this database are as follows:

• Surname
• Given name
• Date of Birth
• Last Residence
• Occupation (see note below)
• Prisoner Number
• Comments

Acknowledgments

Additional information submitted from personal research done by Ken Ird, April, 2020. Please click here to see copies of three letters from the investigation file of Elmar Hausenberg (ERAF.129SM.1.11024), located in the collection of unfinished investigation files of the national security committee of the Estonian SSR, which stored in the Estonian National Archives (Nooruse 3, 50411 Tartu, Estonia).

Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects - Holocaust Collection. coordinator of Holocaust files.

Searching the Database

This database is searchable by clicking here.