Small Riga Ghetto

112
the detective from Berlin * – would be incapable of committing the same
crimes. Unfortunately, we were very much mistaken in this opinion.
Krause, who was a psychopath and a sadist, acted suddenly and spontaneously,
handing down his verdicts without a detailed examination of the situation
and executing them immediately; Roschmann, the jurist, deliberated for a
long time, investigated thoroughly, and thus pulled more and more people
down to their destruction. Because of his character he also especially enjoyed
disentangling the very twisted threads of the weapons incident. Now, through
him, a small and hardly noticeable fire developed into a brightly burning blaze
that later claimed many, many victims.
In fact, Krause had not altogether disappeared from the ghetto. He was appointed
Kommandant of the large Salaspils extermination camp, but he was
still "temporarily" in the ghetto every day, gathering information about everything.
Roschmann delivered his first report of the day to Krause while the latter
was still sitting in his car. Was Krause perhaps still partially responsible for
the ghetto as well?
As soon as Krause entered the ghetto, the streets near Command Headquarters
were blocked off by the police so that nothing unforeseen could happen.
Before Roschmann took over his position, Krause crowned his departure
from the ghetto with renewed bloodshed. One winter evening the Kommandant
left Command Headquarters, accompanied by his "Adjutant" Haar, and started
walking toward our ghetto. This disturbed us at once, and we waited for the
result of his visit. Soon it became clear that Krause had gone directly to 14
Viļānu Street and used hand grenades to murder the policeman Damski, who
had hidden there. It remained a riddle to us how he had found out about Damski's
hideout at all. Rumor had it that the German Jewish policemen were to
blame.
While Damski was in hiding, his comrades had advised him either to look
for a hiding place with Aryans in the city or to make contact with the partisans.
He had not managed to do either of these things.
Right after his murder certain people were arrested, but they were soon released.
Later the guards managed to arrest those comrades who had really
helped him and hidden him. There were three men, including Herbert Machtus
(a journalist for the newspaper "Segodnia") and Willy Kohn.
* [Ed.: Breslau]