Small Riga Ghetto

111
XXVIII.
Our situation, which had grown very tense during all these events, began to
calm down again.
The eight o'clock evening curfew was once again canceled, and it became
easier for our people to enter the Reich Jewish ghetto.
In general, apathy prevailed. People didn't want to take responsibility for the
future and lived only for the moment. Those who still had some money or
other hidden valuables, or had earned any money, lived prodigally. People indulged
themselves in whatever luxuries were available, and ate and drank the
best.
On this subject I would like to emphasize that in other ghettos (Warsaw,
Lodz, Vilno) there were two categories of people: the fed and the hungry. By
contrast, in our ghetto nobody had to go hungry – we made sure of that.
It was a great blunder on the part of the young men to take everything they
could get their hands on to the German women in the ghetto, for this convinced
them that "the Latvians are rich, the Latvians have more than enough"!
Through this kind of talk, which was repeated constantly, these views gradually
filtered through to the people at the command headquarters, who naturally
drew the logical conclusion.
During this period foreign Jews were also brought from the city into the
ghetto (Gurwitsch). A large proportion of the foreign Jews were arrested in the
city and taken to prison (see the chapter on the Terminal and Central Prisons).
An Italian from the Orient Halvah Company, an Aryan, had to stay in the
ghetto with his Jewish wife, though only for a short time.
The winter, which in contrast to the previous one was short and mild, nonetheless
brought us many cares. The main problem was a great shortage of fuel.
If we brought fuel into the ghetto it was taken away from us by the police,
partly for themselves and partly for the bathhouse.
At the end of the winter there were great changes in our command headquarters.
"Bloody" Krause disappeared and was replaced by Eddi (Eduard) Roschmann,
who had a fairly low rank (Unterscharführer). He was said to come
from Steiermark in Austria and to be a jurist by profession. When we heard
this news, of course we all gave a sigh of relief, for naturally we expected that
a man so well-educated, a jurist from a good family – in contrast to Krause,