In these woods near the mushroom centre of Salaspils, the Nazis ran a concentration camp of 39 barrack buildings which from 1941 to 1944 housed thousands of inmates. Jews and resistance fighters from Riga and elsewhere in the occupied areas were massacred here. The memorial which today stands at the centre of this huge clearing is of sloped concrete, the “wall of life and death” declaring “beyond this point, the earth groaned”.