Valdemārpils, Latvia

Today I embarked on a trip to visit my grandfathers home town. Its a little village in northwest Latvia called Valdemārpils. My grandfather Shalom Glickman (Sulems Glikmanis in Latvian) was born here in 1921 and left for Israel in 1934 when his mother predicted that Hitler's rise in Germany would eventually impact Jews in Latvia. It was a good call because in 1941 the Nazis swept through and deported all the Jews to concentration camps. My humble mission was to find the town find his childhood home at 6 cuncs iela.

I departed by bus from Liepāja at 8:05, transferred at Talsi, and arrived at Valdemārpils around noon. I got off the bus and asked a young looking guy where the tourist office was. With very good English he explained there was no tourist office but he'd be happy to help. I explained my story to him and he gave me a ride (30 second ride - this town is tiny) to the town's municipal building to ask around if someone could help. We waited 30 minutes or so until after siesta was over (there was no siesta in Riga) and walked into the building. There were a bunch of old pictures of the town including one called cuncs iela! My grandfather's house was just out of view but the man working there told my friend he would show us to the house. We hopped back in the car and the municipal worker into his and our caravan drove (30 seconds) to my grandfather' old house. It turned out that the street was no longer named cuncs iela and my grandfathers house had actually been destroyed and rebuilt, but nevertheless I was standing a cuncs iela 6 - the spot my grandfather grew up!



The municipal worker went back to work and my friend then drove me to a Jewish memorial / cemetery in town. It was obvious the original Jewish cemetery was destroyed (in Riga the Nazis had used Jewish tombstones to line swimming pools) but someone had managed to find a dozen or so Jewish tombstones and put them up in a makeshift memorial. They were all in Hebrew or German. My friend then drove me back to the center of town and he departed back to his home in Riga. He offered to drive me back to Talsi but I declined so that I could hang around for a bit longer.

I then picked up a Latvian SIM card at the (there was one) Valdemārpils corner store. I had trouble activating it because the instructions were in Latvian but a guy who saw I was struggling offered to help. He got my Sim card working and then asked me if I knew the story of the 'Jewish Gold'. Apparently before the Nazis came a bunch of rich Jews buried their gold somewhere in town. And locals were always looking for this mythical gold. Of course I have no idea whether the story is true but I told the guy that if I found the Jew Gold I'd give him a 10% cut for the lead. I then called my parents (pretty sure I woke them up - Sorry!) and had them tell my grandfather to call me. He was very happy to hear from me and I walked around town describing what I saw. Afterwards I tried to find a Valdemārpils postcard to mail him but they apparently do not exist so I sent him a generic card, making sure it had a Valdemārpils postmark. I then caught the bus to Talsi and was on my way back to Liepāja.



Overall everyone was really nice. When my dad visited his mother's home town in Poland they found pro-Hitler graffiti. The only graffiti I could understand in Valdemārpils was some praising the Wu Tang Clan. I guess here they prefer the American Ol' Dirty Bastard over the German one.