Salaspils is a town

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 in Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, the administrative centre of Salaspils municipality

Salaspils municipality

Salaspils municipality is a municipality in Vidzeme, Latvia. The municipality was formed in 2004 by reorganization of Salaspils town and its countryside territory the administrative centre being Salaspils.- References :...

. The town is situated on the northern bank of the Daugava River 18 kilometers to the south-east of the city of Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

.

History

Salaspils is one of the oldest settlements in Latvia. Archaeological excavations of 1964-1975 (during the construction of Riga HES) in ancient settlements, burial grounds and castle mounds give evidence of very dense population of the region. At this time, the remains of 11,000-year-old reindeer hunters were found (the oldest known human settlement in all of Latvia) and 3500-year-old remains of Baltic hunters, buried in hollowed out oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

-tree trunks, were found as well. There is evidence that both Livs

Livonian people

The Livonians or Livs are the indigenous inhabitants of Livonia, a large part of what is today northwestern Latvia and southwestern Estonia. They spoke the Uralic Livonian language, a language which is closely related to Estonian and Finnish...

 and Balts

Balts

The Balts or Baltic peoples , defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east...

 built hill forts in the region.

At the end of the 12th century, German crusaders and merchants travelled up the Daugava, establishing missionaries among the Liv settlements. One important Daugava Liv centre, the small island Mārtiņsala (German:Kircholm) had a Christian church as early as 1186. So began the Christianizing and gradual subjection of the local Liv tribes – took place. In 1206 the Liv chieftain Ako

Ako

Ako or AKO may refer to:*Akō, Hyōgo, a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan*Ako, Cameroon, a town in Cameroon*Ako, the Japanese name of Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky*Ako, the Livonian chieftain of Salaspils, killed in 1206*Alpha Kai Omega...

 organized the first revolt against the German crusaders but suffered defeat.

The Latvian name of the Salaspils "island castle" is probably derived from Mārtiņsala Island castle, but the Germanized name Kircholm – from the Mārtiņsala Island church. Both names were used when referring to the territory on the northern bank of the Daugava.

In 1380 the Livonian Order built Salspils castle (Neu-Kircholm) on the mainland, with St George’s church by it. The castle was an important support-point outside of Riga, and a small town grew up around it. Both the castle and village were destroyed in 1577 during the Livonian War

Livonian War

The Livonian War was fought for control of Old Livonia in the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia when the Tsardom of Russia faced a varying coalition of Denmark–Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.During the period 1558–1578,...

.

In 1605 the village was a site of the Battle of Kircholm

Battle of Kircholm

The Battle of Kircholm was one of the major battles in the Polish-Swedish War of 1600-1611. The battle was decided in 20 minutes by the devastating charge of Polish-Lithuanian cavalry, the Winged Hussars...

 in which forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...

 defeated a much more numerous army of Sweden

Swedish Empire

The Swedish Empire refers to the Kingdom of Sweden between 1561 and 1721 . During this time, Sweden was one of the great European powers. In Swedish, the period is called Stormaktstiden, literally meaning "the Great Power Era"...

. This was the biggest battle of the Polish-Swedish war. The battle took place near St George’s church and about 9000 Swedish soldiers were buried there. Two memorial stones in Salaspils commemorate of one of the biggest battles in Europe in the 17th century – in memory of the victory of the Polish-Lithuanian forces. Up to the second part of the 20th century a magnificent 17th century military fortification near the Daugava – the Swedish rampart. The destroyed church was renovated in 1631, but later – in 1896 and 1923 - rebuilt.

In the 17th-19th century the surrounding area of Salaspils was governed by the Salaspils Estate which, was established near the destroyed Order’s castle and was a part of Riga since 1630, and the Kurtes Estate which was situated in the territory of present Līvzemes street in Salaspils.

The Riga – Daugavpils railway opened in 1861, and the new center of the town developed near Salaspils station just opposite the Kurtes Estate. In the second part of the 19th century, military summer camps were organized in the territory of Salaspils and an Orthodox church was built into a garrison. During the World War I, the front line was at Salaspils for two years, and many of the buildings and farmsteads, especially along the river, were destroyed. The infamous battles at Nāves Sala and Mazā Jugla were fought nearby.

During the first Republic of Latvia there were three parishes in Salaspils territory – Stopiņi, Salaspils (Ķesterciems) and Dole.

World War II

During World War II, the Nazis established Stalag

Stalag

In Germany, stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is a contraction of "Stammlager", itself short for Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager.- Legal definitions :...

-350-s, a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, in Salaspils. Two km outside of the city, in the nearby forest, the Nazi SS also established the largest civilian concentration camp in the Baltics. The exact numbers of those who died at Stalag-350-s is the subject of ongoing debate. According to a report compiled in 1944 by the Soviet authorities, 43,000 captured Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 personnel were either killed or died from diseases and starvation there. Three other numbers have been mentioned in accounts published subsequently by Soviet historians. The history of the Latvian SSR

Latvian SSR

The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Latvian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the Soviet Union. Established on 21 July 1940 as a puppet state during World War II in the territory of the previously independent Republic of Latvia after it had been occupied by...

 printed in 1959 claims 56,000 people were killed. The Little Latvian Encyclopedia published in the 1970s claims 53,000 were killed. History textbooks published in the 1980s by the Soviet Union claim that over 100,000 people were killed in Salaspils. Similarly, archival documents of Soviet provenance recently published in Russia estimate the total number killed in Salaspils concentration camp

Salaspils concentration camp

Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga . The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp...

 to be 101,000. Recent scholarship produced outside Russia questions the magnitude of these Soviet-era figures. The Latvian historian Heinrihs Strods and the German Holocaust historians Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein conclude that a more a realistic number of deaths at Salaspils is 2,000–3,000 in total, including children. At the site of Stalag-350-s, a major monument complex in remembrance of the Soviet victims of Nazism was opened on 31 October 1967.

Camp survivor H. Baermann, who was imprisoned at Salaspils from December 1941 to August 1942, reported that in this period 15,000 persons passed through the camp, and almost all of them were killed, only 192 survived. According to another eye-witness account, by E. K. Salijums, Soviet children in particular were annihilated by the Nazis through "medical experiments", from which some 150 children died each day. In total from 1942 to 1944 some 12,000 Soviet children passed through the camp, most of them being tortured by pumping out their blood (500 grams from each). In one of the burial places by the camp, 632 corpses of children of ages 5 to 9 were revealed, with total number of Soviet children killed in the camp estimated to be 7,000.

As indicated in the notes and elsewhere http://www.gorod.lv/news/18620/esesovtsam_privileges_to_prisoners_poverty, the civilian and military concentration and death camp victims, children and adults, Latvian and "Soviet," civilian and POW, included Jews. {See also

City growth in '50s and '60s

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, various industrial enterprises and governmental institutions developed in Salaspils, such as the nuclear plant and four branches of the Academy of Science. Large multi-storied housing blocks appeared to house incoming power plant workers, many of whom were Russians. In a few decades Salaspils transformed from a very peaceful rural settlement to a mikroraion-style town. Due to the rapid development, Soviet authorities ordered construction of the Riga HES and Riga TEC-2. The dam created a massive reservoir that flooded monuments of Salaspils ancient history. The last unsubmerged sections of old Salaspils have been preserved at Salaspils railway station.

Demographics

Due to the industrial development of Salaspils, the population has reached 21,000. As of 2000 census, 42% of population is Latvian, 42% is Russian and 16% belongs to other ethnic groups.

The National Botanical Gardens

The National Botanical Gardens occupy 129 ha in the northern part of Salaspils between the railway and former peat extraction site. The National Botanical Gardens are famous for their richest plant collection in the Baltic States, as well as they have one of the biggest arboretum

Arboretum

An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...

s in the world. The gardens are open to visitors, their territory is used as a walkabout place by the inhabitants of Salaspils.

Nuclear reactor

The reactor site is located in the forest, to the west of the institute of physics, in the northeastern part of the town. The reactor was operational from 1969 to 1998. The plant partook in neutron activation

Neutron activation

Neutron activation is the process in which neutron radiation induces radioactivity in materials, and occurs when atomic nuclei capture free neutrons, becoming heavier and entering excited states. The excited nucleus often decays immediately by emitting particles such as neutrons, protons, or alpha...

 analysis and gamma irradiation for various materials. It was a pool-type reactor. It is now being demolished.