RIGA, Latvia — Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday took part in a ceremony to open a museum honoring a couple who saved some 50 Jews from extermination in Nazi-occupied Latvia.
Latvia unveils museum to husband and wife who hid Jews during WWII
July 30, 2013 at 12:35PM
The museum in downtown Riga, Latvia's capital, is located next to the property once owned by Zanis Lipke, a port worker who together with his wife hid Jews in an underground pit measuring some 9 square meters (90 square feet).
The three-story museum of dark gray wood resembles an overturned ship and is designed to give visitors a claustrophobic sense of life in a tiny bunker.
Peres took part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony together with his Latvian counterpart, Andris Berzins.
In 1966, Yad Vashem, an Israel-based center for studying the Holocaust, recognized Zanis and Johanna Lipke as rescuers of Jews.
Lipke died in 1987 and his wife in 1990.
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Five generations have vacationed at Ely’s charming, rustic Camp Van Vac. As the end of a family legacy approached, guests anxiously awaited its fate.
