Born in 1900, Žanis Lipke fought for Latvian independence following World War I before marrying his wife Johanna Novicka and starting a family in western Riga and taking up work as a stevedore and dock worker at the local port. However, Lipke also had strong left-leaning political inclinations and became involved in subversive activities against the government in 1934, although he was never jailed. When German forces invaded Latvia in 1941, Lipke ended up working in warehouses near the Jewish ghetto, which included transporting Jewish workers between the ghetto and…
