History of the Jews in Latvia International Refugee Organization (IRO), and other relief organizations for Nazi victims, and some of them immigrated to the U.S. and other countries abroad. Nevertheless, there were also Latvians who risked their lives in order to save Jews. One such, Jānis Lipke, helped to save several dozen Jews of the Riga ghetto by providing them with hideouts. The Jewish population of Latvia declined from 28,300 in 1979 to 22,900 in 1989, when 18,800 of its Jews lived in the capital Riga. Part of this was due to a high rate of emigration to Israel; the Soviet Union allowed limited numbers of
Geology of Latvia Geology of Latvia The geology of Latvia includes an ancient Archean and Proterozoic crystalline basement overlain with Neoproterozoic volcanic rocks and numerous sedimentary rock sequences from the Paleozoic, some from the Mesozoic and many from the recent Quaternary past. Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. Several hundred boreholes have returned data about the Precambrian crystalline basement of Latvia, indicating young Middle Proterozoic intrusive rocks such as 1.65 billion year old rapakivi granite or 1.82 billion year old granodiorite in the northeast. Most basement probably formed before the Svecofennian orogeny, between the Archean and Proterozoic. The