Šķēde

For other uses, see Šķēde (Šķēde parish).

Members of the 21st Latvian Police Battalion assemble a group of Jewish women for execution on a beach near Liepāja, 15 December 1941.

File:Menorah - jewish memorial cemetery.jpg

Memorial cemetery

Šķēde is a suburban settlement near Liepāja, Latvia, in Medze parish. It is located on the north border of the city. Šķēde was the biggest dacha cooperative in Latvia in the times of Latvian SSR. One of the Šķēde's notable features are street names, which are called "lines" and numbered from 1 to 18. Typical Šķēde addresses look like: Šķēde 1-15-2. Until 2005, the main Liepāja landfill was located near Šķēde.

History

Šķēde is known also because of the activities involving the Nazi Liepāja massacres in 1941. The main perpetrators were detachments of the Einsatzgruppen, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, the Ordnungspolizei and Latvian auxiliary police and militia forces. Wehrmacht and German naval forces participated in the shootings. In addition to Jews, the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators also killed Gypsies, communists, the mentally ill and so-called "hostages". In the memory of this event, a memorial stone has been installed in the dunes near the settlement.