Liepaja, Part 1

The first picture shows the beautifully restored train station of Liepaja, serving a city of some 90,000 inhabitants that is the third largest in Latvia, located some 225km southwest of the capital city of Riga. This station was the terminus for a rail line that went deep into Russian territory – all the way to Omsk, near Siberia.



The second picture is of an intersection (Kurmajas and Graudu) with, on the left, the former offices and passenger hall for the Russian-East Asian Shipping Company, a building from the 1910s.



The third picture is of the Liepaja Marine School, built in the 1870s.



The fourth picture is of the Nicolai Grammar School, built in the 1880s, a school for boys that became the state technical school after World War I. When the Porzecanskis were of school age, high schools had a quota for Jews such that no more than 10% of students could be Jewish; universities had an even lower quota, and thus many Jews converted to Christianity for the sole purpose of gaining admission, and would come back to the Jewish community upon graduation.



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