Small Riga Ghetto

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also a Russian newspaper founded by staff members of the old "Tschornaja
Sotnia" (Black Newspaper). The notorious Leri (Klopotowsky) worked very
actively for this newspaper. It too was very preoccupied with the Jewish question.
It was printed in the printing house of the old "Segodnia" newspaper.
Here too they printed various appeals to the Russian population in those parts
of Russia that had not yet been occupied by the Germans; the flyers were
dropped from airplanes. I remember one flyer addressed to the population of
the city of Leningrad that was supposed to be distributed there after the occupation.
But there was never an occupation, and the flyers stayed in Riga.
Besides these daily newspapers, various brochures and whole albums of
propagandistic pictorial materials concerning the Soviet Union and the Jews
were printed in Latvian. The authors wrote quite openly that they would not
rest until the last Jew in Latvia had been exterminated.
But history decided otherwise!
Jumpravmuiža
(Jungfernhof)
This place is not well-known; even we old inhabitants of Riga hardly knew of
its existence. It cannot be found on the map. The only ones who really got to
know it are the few remaining Jews from Germany and Austria, and they will
never forget it. The Jumpravmuiža estate is located about five kilometers from
Riga and used to belong to a German baron. Three kilometers from this estate
lies the notorious Rumbula, the place where the German and Latvian murderers
committed their crimes against Latvian Jewry.
After World War I (1914–1918) only two half-ruined houses and a barn remained
standing in Jumpravmuiza. In the ghetto period some barracks were
built there. Some of the people in the Kommandos who were forced to work
for the ghetto there mysteriously disappeared.
"The Latvians laid the groundwork": that is what the chief murderer, General
Jeckeln, said at his trial in Riga on 5 February 1946. But it was the Germans
who really made use of the groundwork laid by the Latvians. They were
the ones who started to transport Jews from Germany, Austria and other countries
to Riga in order to exterminate them.
The next transport, on 3 December 1941, came from Nuremberg and Würzburg
(in Bavaria).