During the years of the Nazi occupation of Latvia, Zhanis Lipke and his wife Johanna saved 57 Jews from the Riga ghetto from death: initially they hid them in a small bunker dug under a barn in their garden. When there were too many hiding places, some were placed in above-ground buildings, others were secretly taken to a farm belonging to the Lipke spouses. But it was the bunker that became the basis for the decision of the memorial museum.
Until recently, the island of Kipsala retained a rural type of building, mostly fishermen lived there, but each house had a garden, a cattle yard, etc. The memorial was built next to the Lipke house on the bank of the Daugava. It is surrounded by walls of dark tarred wood, and its above-ground part resembles the black sheds lagging from the wind, typical for Kipsala, which were often built with the planks of old boats.
Also, the shape of the building is an allusion to an overturned boat of a carrier returning from a last voyage, or Noah's ark, sticking to land. However, a visit to the museum does not start from its above-ground part. Immediately after the gate, you should go down into the tunnel, from where a gradual ascent begins. On the lower level there is a reconstruction of a bunker measuring 3 mx 3 m, with 9 bunks. But you cannot see it at eye level - only from above. Above it is a sukkah, in Judaism - a temporary dwelling for the holiday of Sukkot. This structure, with walls made of white paper, is covered with black boards on the outside to remind of the shed in Lipke's garden, which in the same way hid a bunker under it.
The religious meaning of the sukkah is to remind of the tents in which the Israelites lived in the desert after the exodus from Egypt. In this case, it is a temporary refuge between heaven and earth, the opposite of the harsh reality of a bunker. A summer landscape, a collective image of nature and liberation, is painted on the paper walls with almost imperceptible strokes.
If you can look into the sukkah through small windows, then the bunker can be seen only from the upper tier, through a hatch in the floor (the sukkah has no floors and no floor). This point of view should emphasize the remoteness in time from the events of 1941-1945, which allows them to be seen in perspective, more coherently and clearly.
On the top floor there are showcases with an exposition dedicated to Lipke's feat. In 1966, Janis and Johanna Lipke were recognized as the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem by the Righteous Among the Nations.
