The dark history of a historic Latvian water mill.

In the town of Kuldiga in Courland, the western district of Latvia, a family, the Hirschovitzes, lived for many decades. They were Jews, part of a community of people of this faith that had settled in Courland/Kurzeme centuries ago and became Courlanders along with the other peoples and faiths of this region. Their family tree included a prominent rabbi. but not all men of the Hirschovitz family chose the rabbinate. One, named for a great Biblical leader — Moses Hirschovitz — became a miller. This was a profession and an enterprise much needed in the first decades of…