Jewish Museum in Riga

Back in Riga, I went to check out the Jewish Museum. My grandfather Shalom was born in Latvia so I thought it would be interesting. Just as I got there, a group of elderly Israelis was getting a tour so I tagged along. A Latvian guide would speak in English, and then the Israeli tour guide would translate to Hebrew, so I got to hear everything twice. I learned that my grandfather's village - Valdemārpils - was over half Jewish. When my grandfather left Latvia for Israel in the 1930's there were about 100,000 Jews in Latvia. Only about 1000 survied the Holocaust. In the museum there were posters from the 1930's in Yiddish advocating aliyah (emmigration to Israel). Turned out to be a pretty good time to leave.