In August 1942, the German Security Police and SD established a camp for Jews at the
former Estonian military summer camp in Jägala, Harju County, approximately 25 kilometres
east of Tallinn. Estonian officials who were part of the German Security Police, were tasked
with managing the camp, while additional Estonians were hired as guards.
The Jägala camp was established as a temporary site, and was not intended for use as a long-
term accommodation or forced labor facility. On 5 September 1942, a train carrying 1002
Jews from the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto in Czechoslovakia arrived at the Raasiku
railway station near Jägala. The second train, carrying 1049 Jews (or 1089 persons according
to other sources) from Frankfurt and Berlin, arrived in Raasiku station on 30 September
1942.
Officers of the Security Police selected approximately 400 younger persons from the arrivals
in the Raasiku railway station to be sent to work in the Jägala camp. Another approximately
100 Jewish men from Germany were immediately sent back to Riga aboard the same train.
The remaining Jews, totalling nearly 1,600 persons, were executed immediately upon arrival,
at the nearby Kalevi-Liiva military training ground. The execution was facilitated by the
German Security Police’s high-ranking officials, as well as the Estonians in its ranks.
The 400 detainees were forced to work in construction, forestry, and agriculture in smaller
groups outside of the camp. Additionally, many were tasked with sorting the possessions of
the executed arrivals`, some of which inevitably belonged to relatives, neighbors, and
friends. Those who were accused of disobedience or fell ill were subsequently executed on
the same Kalevi-Liiva grounds.
Some local Roma were also executed on the Kalevi-Liiva grounds during the occupation. The
bodies of the executed were burned in 1944, before the departure of German forces from
Estonia.
Jägala camp was shut down by 1 September 1943, when the last detainees were transferred
to Tallinn Central Prison. Women were further transferred to the Vaivara concentration
camp, though the fate of the men is unknown. According to known data, only 74 of the more
than 2,000 Jews that had been brought to Jägala camp in September 1942 survived the war.