This project is the first attempt to investigate, identify and record the fate of Latvian Jewry in the Holocaust and in Holocaust related events. The fundamental principle is that by starting with the most comprehensive and accurate list possible of pre-war Latvian Jews, one can then collate relevant direct evidence as to their fate with a view to identifying, to a high degree of probability, the fate or likely fate of each individual. This approach relies on familiarity with, and access to, a wide range of archival sources both in Latvia and abroad.

The first stage of the project is to establish a database of the names of the Latvian Jewish community prior to 1941. According to 1935 census figures the Jewish community in Latvia numbered 93,479. Census material can be corroborated by a variety of pre-war material including surviving inhabitants lists of 1939-1940, house lists, passports, business directories and records, ghetto and execution lists, etc.

In addition to considering census and other material it is important to factor in information from Jewish birth and death records so that Jews born in the period between 1935 and 1941 are entered into the database and Jews whose deaths were recorded in the normal way are accounted for and "signed out" of the database.

The purpose is to ensure that there is, as a starting point, as complete and accurate a record of the existing members of the Jewish community as possible from which further research proceeds. The information recorded includes name, address, date of birth, occupation, present and previous address, documentary reference and any other comment that may be pertinent to identifying or linking later records.

Once the database of pre-Holocaust Jews is created, the second stage of the project is to work from the core database of identified Jews to record subsequent "data layers", matching them where it is reasonably possible to do so. Inevitably, this information is piecemeal, involving information currently held in the State Historical Archives but also in archives in the former Soviet Union, particularly Moscow and St Petersburg, the database held by Yad Vashem, documents in the archive of the Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews held at Kibbutz Beth Shefayim, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The point of the exercise is continually to cross-reference and build up from the original core database, accounting for each member of the Jewish community. Records from the Stutthof and Kaiserwald camps, the Red Cross International Tracing Service, etc., all contain information about the fate of individual Latvian Jews that needs to be collated, analyzed and matched with the information in the Stage 1 database.

Records held in both Riga and the former Soviet Union relating to deportees, Jews seeking refuge, and Jews enlisted to fight the Nazis, will form part of the comprehensive review. Data relating to those who fled to the USSR after the German attack, including data such as the list of Jews returning to Riga in 1944/5 and the Inquiry carried out by the Soviet Union after reconquest 1944/45, also known as the "Extraordinary Commission Records", are less complete and have not yet been fully analyzed, but will be consulted for this project.

Stated simply, the reasonable inference to draw is that Jews identified as living in Latvia in 1940/41 who cannot be traced as survivors or have not previously been recorded as victims are likely to have been unidentified victims of the Holocaust. This "indirect" approach is complementary to the "direct" approach used by Yad Vashem and most other databases of Holocaust victims.

In addition it is anticipated that some direct evidence will emerge as to the fates of individuals Jews from sources such as the house lists, which show individuals being signed off from their previous residences to the ghetto.

The disadvantage of the indirect method is that it will inevitably include some living among the dead, e.g., refugees who fled the USSR, prisoners omitted from the camp records, etc. An important aspect of the final stages of the project is that when survivors have the opportunity to examine the list they will be able to contribute further as to its accuracy. The third phase of the project is to use the list as a basis for seeking further information from the survivor community and from friends and families of those who perished. It is believed that the list can operate as a final prompt to the frailty of human memory. The project is now urgent because the number of survivors and family who have direct evidence diminishes by the passing day.

In short, we have set ourselves the task of producing an accurate and reliable list of those who perished with a view to it become an important historic and humanitarian record of a human tragedy.