Small Riga Ghetto

15
stood what they had to do. He also did not know that they were Latvia's famous
and most efficient export to other ghettos and camps in the Europe.
Jeckeln was given the well deserved death sentence, and he showed no remorse
at all.
During the trial, Kaufmann met one of the survivors of the German ghetto in
Riga, and it turned out that he knew him. The young man had been part of the
Vienna group. His name was Erich Pinkassowitsch, son of Jakob Pinkassowitsch,
former attaché of the Soviet Union, who lived with his wife, son,
and daughter in Vienna; all four were taken into custody shortly after June 22,
1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The whole family was added
to the Riga transport of January 11, 1942, and soon made friends with several
of the Latvian Jews. In fact, for a while, the older Pinkassowitsch worked in
Kaufmann's Kommando. Kaufmann was stunned to see Erich and asked him
what he was doing in Riga. The story was typical of the chaotic time in which
we lived. Erich had been with the father, and Dolly, his sister, had been with
her mother, once they had left Kaiserwald for Stutthof. They were sent to satellite
labor camps of Stutthof. Both parents died during their deathmarch, and
the daughter had crawled to the edge of a road, where the Russians found her,
took her to a field hospital and brought her to Riga, since she told them that
she came from there. Two of her toes were amputated, but she soon recovered
and convinced one of the Jewish nurses to try to find her brother who was
somewhere near Gdansk. Through the grapevine, Erich, who had made his
way to Vienna after his liberation, heard that his sister was in a hospital in
Riga, and, just like Kaufmann, made his way there. Latvian Jews helped him
to find her, but while it was not all that hard to go there, it was almost impossible
to leave. Kaufmann, too, wanted to leave; he still had connections and
the three of them, he, Erich, and Dolly, were able to make their way to the
West. Kaufmann went to Berlin and Munich, and the siblings came back to
Vienna.
Only three years later, they met at one of the gatherings organized by Kaufmann
in New York and I was there too, with my mother and sister as well as
other Viennese survivors of our ghetto.
Kaufmann attended their weddings and was always ready to help when needed.
When he gave me his book, I looked for some sign of the family Pinkassowitsch
and when I could not find it, I called Kaufmann and asked him why
he had not mentioned them or their parents in his opus. He told me sternly,
that he had written and dedicated his book to the trials and tribulations of Latvian
Jews, and not about Jews from other countries. Although he had men-