But the Nazis did not plan to restore Latvia’s national independence. They wanted to subjugate and deport it. During the Holocaust carried out by the German authorities, approximately 70 thousand local Jews were killed, as well as approximately 20 thousand Jews brought from other European countries. The Roma population of Latvia, as well as patients of psychiatric hospitals, were also subjected to extermination. Individual brave fellow citizens, risking their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, tried to save Jews from death.

Pictured: Memorial site for Jews - victims of the Holocaust in Liepāja - Šķēde Memorial. Memorial sites for victims of the Holocaust can be found throughout Latvia - in places where Jews were killed.

135 Jewish rescuers from Latvia have been awarded the honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel.

In violation of international agreements, both the USSR and Germany mobilized more than 200 thousand Latvian residents into their armed forces. Almost half of them died in World War II, many were seriously injured.

During World War II, nationally minded people began a struggle to restore Latvia's independence. This goal was set, for example, by the Central Council of Latvia, which was oriented towards democratic Western countries and did not want to cooperate with either Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union; such a goal was also shared by the Kurelians - a group of Latvian legionnaires in Courland, surrounded by the Soviet army, at the end of World War II.

Pictured: A refugee boat from Courland. 1944.

At the end of the war, thousands of Latvians fled to the West, where they escaped Soviet repression and established a large emigration or exile (see the chapter "Latvians in the World").

World War II on the territory of Latvia ended on May 8, 1945, with the capitulation of parts of German troops in Courland.

For the third time in five years, the Latvian population was subjected to a foreign power - the Soviet occupation. The Soviet occupation continued for almost fifty years - until the beginning of the 1990s, when Latvia's independence was restored.