Friedrich Jeckeln in Soviet custody afterWorld War II. On January 27, 1942, he was awarded a Nazi medal, the "War Merit Cross (Kriegsverdienst or KVK) with Swords" for killing 25,000 at Rumbula Motive

Himmler's motive was to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga so that Jews from Germany and Austria could be deported to the Riga ghetto and housed in their place. Similarly-motivated mass killings of eastern Jews confined to ghettos were carried out at Kovno on October 28, 1941 (10,000 dead), and at Minsk, where 13,000 were shot on November 7 and an additional 7,000 on November 20.

To carry out this plan, Himmler brought Friedrich Jeckeln into Latvia from the Ukraine, where he had organized a number of mass killings, including Babi Yar (30,000 dead). Jeckeln's crew of about 50 killers and supporting personnel arrived in Riga on November 5, 1941. Jeckeln did not arrive with them, but went instead to Berlin where sometime between November 10 and November 12, 1941, he met with Himmler. Himmler told Jeckeln to kill the entire Riga ghetto and to instruct Lohse, should he object that this was an order of Himmler's and also of Adolf Hitler's: "Tell Lohse it is my order, which is also the Führer's wish"

Jeckeln then went to Riga and explained to situation to Lohse, who raised no further objection. By mid-November 1941, Jeckeln had set himself up in a building in the old section of Riga known as the Ritterhaus.

Back in Berlin, Rosenberg, Lohse's superior in the Nazi hierarchy, was able to get one concession out of Himmler, that slave labor extracted from male Jews aged 16–60 would be considered too important to Germany's war effort. Consequently, these people would be spared, while women, children, old and disabled people would be shot. Jeckeln's plan for carrying out this segregation of the victims came to be known as the "Little Ghetto".

Planning the crime Nazi Franz Walter Stahlecker, another perpetrator of the Latvian Holocaust, prepared this map. Illustrated with coffins, it shows there were still 35,000 Jews remaining in Latvia before the Rumbula massacres. Estonia, the report states, is "Jew-free" (judenfrei).

To fulfill Himmler's order to clear out the Ghetto, Jeckeln would need to kill 12,000 people per day. At that time of year, there were only about eight hours of day and twilight, so, the last column of victims would have to leave the Riga ghetto no later than 12:00 noon. Guards would be posted on both sides along the entire 10 kilometer column route. The whole process required about 1,700 personnel to carry it out.

Jeckeln's construction specialist, Ernst Hennicker, who later claimed he was shocked when he learned in advance of the number of people to be killed, nevertheless made no objection at the time and proceeded to supervise the digging of six murder pits, sufficient to bury 25,000 people.

The actual excavation of the pits was done by 200 or 300 Russian prisoners of war. The pits themselves were purpose-designed: they were excavated in levels, like an inverted pyramid, with the broader levels towards the top, and a ramp down to the different levels to allow the victims to be literally marched into their own graves. It took about three days to finish the pits which were complete by November 23, 1941.

The actual shooting would be done by only 10 or 12 men of Jeckeln's bodyguard, including Endl, Lueschen, and Wedekind, all experienced murderers. Much later, Jeckeln's driver, Johannes Zingler, claimed in testimony that Jeckeln had forced him to join in as a killer by making threats to harm Zingler's family.

In similar massacres in Russia and the Ukraine, there were many accounts contrary to Zingler's to the effect that participation was voluntary, and even sometimes sought after, and that those who refused to take part in shootings suffered no adverse consequences. In particular, Erwin Schulz, head of Einsatzkommando 5 refused to participate in Babi Yar, another Jeckeln atrocity, and at his own request was transferred back to his pre-war position in Berlin with no loss of professional standing.

Jeckeln had no Latvians carrying out shootings. Jeckeln considered the shooting of the victims in the pits to be a deed of marksmanship, and he wanted to prove Germans were inherently more accurate shooters than Latvians. Jeckeln also didn't trust other agencies, even Nazi ones, to carry out his wishes. Although the SD and the Order Police were involved, Jeckeln assigned his own squad to supervise every aspect of the operation.

Deciding on the site The Riga Ghetto in 1942, after the Rumbula massacre

Jeckeln and his aide Paul Degenhart searched the Riga vicinity to find a site. Riga was located in a swampy area where the water table was close to ground level. This would interfere with the proper disposal of thousands of corpses. Jeckeln needed elevated ground.

The site also had to be on the north side of the Daugava River within walking distance of the ghetto, also on the north side. On or about November 18 or 19 Jeckeln came upon Rumbula as he was driving south to the Salaspils concentration camp (then under construction), and it fit what he was looking for. The site was close to Riga, it was on elevated ground, and it had sandy soil, with the only drawback being the proximity to the highway (about 100 meters).

The Jeckeln system

Jeckeln developed his "Jeckeln system" during the many killings he had organized in the Ukraine, which included among others Babi Yar and the Kamianets-Podilskyi Massacre[]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumbulamassacre#citenote-Ezer240-31) He called it "sardine packing" (Sardinenpackung_).

The Jeckeln method was noted, although not by name, in the judgment of the Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg Military Tribunal, as a means of avoiding the extra work associated with having to push the bodies into the grave. It was reported that even some of the experienced Einsatzgruppen killers claimed to have been horrified by its cruelty.

Extermination by shooting ran into a problem when it came to women and children. Otto Ohlendorf, himself a prolific killer, objected to Jeckeln's techniques according to his testimony at his post-war trial for crimes against humanity.Jeckeln had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process, including Genickschussspezialisten -- "neck shot specialists". There were nine components to this assembly-line method as applied to the Riga ghetto.

The Security Police roused the people out of their houses in the ghetto;
The Jews were organized into columns of 1000 people and driven to the killing grounds;
The German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo) led the columns to Rumbula;
Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously;
The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables;
The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits;
To save the trouble of tossing dead bodies into the pits, the killers forced the living victims into the trench on top of other people who had already been shot;
Russian submachine guns (another source says semi-automatic pistols )were used rather than German arms, because the magazine held 50 rounds, but the weapon could be set to fire one round at a time.
The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people had just been shot. The people were not sprayed with bullets. Rather, to save ammunition, each person was shot just once, in the back of the head. Anyone not killed outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up.

Arranging transport for infirm victims

Jeckeln had at his direct disposal only 10 to 12 automobiles and 6 to 8 motorcycles. This was enough to transport the killers themselves and certain official witnesses. However Jeckeln needed more and heavier transport for the sick, disabled or other of his intended victims who could not make the 10 kilometer march.

Jeckeln also anticipated there would be a significant number of people killed along the march route, and he would need about 25 trucks to pick up the bodies. Consequently he ordered his men to scrounge through Riga to locate suitable vehicles.

Final planning and instructions

On or about Thursday, November 27, 1941, Jeckeln held a meeting of the leaders of the participating units at the Riga office of the Protective Police (Schutzpolizei), a branch of the German Order Police, (Ordnungspolizei) to coordinate their actions in the forthcoming massacre. This appears consistent with the substantial role that the Order Police played in the Holocaust, as stated by Professor Browning:

It is no longer seriously in question that members of the German Order Police, both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service or Einzeldienst, were at the center of the Holocaust, providing a major manpower source for carrying out numerous deportations, ghetto-clearing operations, and massacres.

Jeckeln convened a second planning session of senior commanders on the afternoon of Saturday, November 29, 1941, this time at the Ritterhaus. According to later versions given by those in attendance, Jeckeln gave a speech to these officers to the effect that it was their patriotic duty to exterminate the Jews of the Riga ghetto, just as much as if they were on the front lines of the battles then currently raging far to the east.

Officers also later claimed that Jeckeln told them that failure to participate in the murders would be considered the equivalent of desertion, and that all HSSPF personnel who would not be participating in the action were required to attend the extermination site as official witnesses. No Latvian officials were present at the November 29 Ritterhaus meeting.

At about 7:00 p.m. on November 29, a brief (about 15 minutes) third meeting was held, this time at the Protective Police headquarters. This was presided over by Karl Heise, the head of the protective police. He told his men they would have to report the next morning at 4:00 a.m. to carry out a "resettlement" of the people in the Riga ghetto.

Although "resettlement" was a Nazi euphemism for mass murder, Heisse and a majority men of the Protective Police knew the true nature of what they would be participating in. Final instructions were also passed to the Latvian militia and police who would be rounding up people in the ghetto and acting as guards along the way. The Latvian police were told they would be moving the Jews to the Rumbula station for transport to a resettlement camp.

In the Jahnke trial in the early 1970s, the West German court in Hamburg found that a purpose of the Jeckeln system was to conceal the murderous purpose until the very last. The court further found:

That by the evening meeting on November 29, 1941, the intermediate commanders knew the full extent of the intended killings;
That the intermediate commanders also knew that the 20 kilogram luggage rule was a ruse to deceive the victims into a belief that they were truly being resettled;
That the men in the lower ranks did not know what was planned until they saw the shootings in the forest.

Professor Ezergailis questioned whether the Latvian police might have had a better idea of what was actually going to happen, this being their native country, but he also noted contrary evidence including misleading instructions given to the Latvian police by the Germans, and the giving of instructions, at least to some Germans, to shoot any guard who might fail to execute a "disobedient" Jew during the course of the march.