Riebiņi


Riebiņi is a village in and the centre of both Riebiņi Parish and Riebiņi Municipality, Latvia.

History

The village was a shtetl, and most of the inhabitants were Jewish. According to the census of 1897, there were 533 Jews living in the village. In the beginning of the 20th century, many of the Jews left for Israel or the United States, and in 1935, Jews constituted 68% of the total population.
At the end of August 1941, Latvian civil defense police arrested Jews and locked them into the synagogues. Then they were moved to Ribiniški Forest and murdered there in a mass execution. There were some local inhabitants from Soluions district who took part in the massacre and several Germans who watched it.