The Liepāja Museum’s branch “Liepāja Occupation Museum” was opened on January 21, 2001. Its mission is to preserve the nation’s collective historical memory to strengthen national self-awareness, which serves as the ideological and emotional foundation of statehood, and to provide insight into the history of lost independence and foreign occupation. The branch is located in a building that, during the Latvian National Awakening (Atmoda), housed the Liepāja branch of the Latvian Popular Front.
The main exhibition reflects the impact of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Pact on the social, political, economic, and cultural life of the Liepāja region. It tells the story of the repatriation of Baltic Germans, the events of 1940/1941 — the beginning of the Soviet occupation regime, Liepāja during World War II, the second Soviet occupation, the mass deportations of 1941 and 1949, and the Gulag system. A continuation of the exhibition, titled “Unyielding Defiance. Liepāja Resists”, is dedicated to the local resistance movement during the occupation periods, highlighting organizations such as the unit led by Jānis Kurelis and the underground armed youth group “Kursa” formed by students in Liepāja.
The exhibition also includes a section dedicated to the Holocaust — the targeted and systematic extermination of Jews carried out by the Nazi regime during World War II. As a result of the mass murder, only 25 of approximately 5,500 Jews from Liepāja survived the Holocaust. Across Europe, by the end of World War II, two-thirds of the Jewish population — about 6 million people, including 1 million children — had been killed.