Officially Jägala was a "labour education camp" or "Arbeitserziehungslager" for forced forestry and field workers.[3] The camp housed Jews deported to Estonia from other countries,[4] including Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland. About 3,000 Jews who were not selected for work at their arrival at Raasiku railway station were taken directly from the station and shot at the nearby Kalevi-Liiva extermination site.[2]
The camp never held more than 200 prisoners and had a short life span of several months.[4] In November 1942 it was reported that the camp held 53 men and 150 women.[3] Most of the prisoners were eventually transferred to Tallinn Central Prison [et] starting with about half of the prisoners moved in December 1942 and the rest in June and July.[3] By August 1943 the camp was closed and most of the remaining inmates were shot.[2] Several sick prisoners were shot at the Jägala camp while about 15 hospitalised prisoners were sent to Kalevi-Liiva to be executed, Laak also killed three women, one of them his sex slave; the camp was then dismantled by September 1943.[5]
The estimates for the number of killed at Jägala concentration camp vary. Soviet investigators concluded that 2,000-3,000 were killed in Jägala and Kalevi-Liiva taken together, but the number 5,000 (as determined by the Extraordinary State Commission in 1944) was written into the verdict.[6][7]
^ abcWeiss-Wendt, Anton (30 June 2009). Murder Without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust). Syracuse University Press. p. 351. ISBN978-0-8156-3228-3.
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