Angrick and Klein provide one of the most in-depth accountings of how and when the “final solution” took place in a crucial area. Research for the original German version was thorough and imaginative, especially by integrating accounts from perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, with meticulous control of original sources. The resulting translation reads very well. Both exploitation and annihilation are presented in grisly detail using an effective organizational pattern.

The introduction states the purpose: “to submit the first comprehensive history of the Riga ghetto, the people who lived there—and for the most part died there—the evolution of the crimes committed, and the perpetrators” (p. 3). In fact the authors do more, since the first chapter provides the interwar history of Latvia “caught between two dictatorships,” and the second examines Operation Barbarossa, reaffirming the murderous intentions beyond the military front as well as the Wehrmacht's knowledge and general acquiescence with those intentions. In the third chapter the pogroms that preceded the establishment of the ghetto underscore the role of nationalist Lithuanian and Latvian collaborators who greatly aided the German occupiers. Exemplar of the depth of information offered is the following: “The number of Riga Jews killed during the first days of the occupation is known from a July [1941] report sent to Berlin describing the persecution: ‘Einsatzkommando 2 [Ek 2] has viewed all of the material in Riga, searched all of the offices, arrested all of the Communists, inasmuch as identifiable, and continued to carry out the operations introduced against the Jews in an outstanding fashion under the direction of SS Maj. Barth [sic]. There are at present 600 Communists and 2,000 Jews in custody. Four hundred Jews have perished in Riga by means of pogroms, and since Ek 2 moved in, 2,300 by means of Latvian auxiliary police, in part by means of our own forces . . .’ The summer executions continued consequently, only to be curtailed when Latvian territory was transferred from military to civil administration. By mid October . . . the mass murder carried out under the aegis of [Einsatzgruppe] A had claimed altogether 30,025 Jewish lives throughout Latvia, 6,378 of them from in and around Riga” (p. 76). The individual persons who directed and controlled the process as well as the conflicts between bureaucracies that sought to exploit versus those that sought to eliminate are minutely recounted. The strength of this study is in the manner in which it lays bare the “logic” of so many players with different ambitions, conflicting institutional interests, and disregard for the victims.

The chapter detailing the mass murder of the ghetto's Latvian Jews illustrates well the tensions between the ideological activists pushing for annihilation and other groups’ demands for labor. Most important though, it outlines the precise planning for organizing the killing, including evaluation of sites, assignment and choice of shooting squads, the gathering of people in staged groups, and moving victims by secured and fairly isolated routes to where prepared pits awaited them with rotations of designated shooters. The machine-like movement to death did not always proceed smoothly, but generally death was wrought according to the calculated schedules and minute preparations.

Among the topics systematically explored are the searches for annihilation sites, the multifunction camp at Salaspils including its operations, and the victims’ experiences. Especially well outlined is how and why Riga became one of the killing centers and the process of getting German Jews to the camp. The expansion of camps through Jewish labor is placed within the context of the Latvian labor market and the Wehrmacht's demands. As expected, ghetto life is depressingly detailed through survivor accounts but also through perpetrator depositions. All the topics such as forced labor, resistance, and decisions as well as actions to annihilate are presented with a wealth of new information. The generally chronological presentation is stopped at two points to depict the main responsible persons, Rudolf Lange and Fritz Schwerwitz. Their motivations and modes of operation make for engaging reading. The dissolution of the camps and their liberation are followed by an account of those who had to restart their lives as well as some of their search for justice. Through its detailed information the lengthy study makes the Holocaust more understandable in terms of how it functioned, if not in terms of its inhumanity.

The immense distance that knowledge has traveled in the past thirty years could be measured by comparing Gerald Fleming's 1982 attempt to trace the final solution in Riga with Angrick and Klein's information and findings. Whereas Fleming could only provide a few cases demonstrating the operations of the Einsatzgruppen and the chain of command, this study provides a comprehensive and minutely detailed account set in context.

Books that make a major contribution to knowledge should be widely available. The publisher deserves to be lauded for having this lengthy, important book translated and sold at a reasonable price. The project was supported by the Society of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto founded in 1970 to collect survivor information and to document crimes. The publication also received the financial support of Jan Philipp Reemtsma and the academic support of the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture. The maps and illustrations appropriately complement the text.