Small Riga Ghetto

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ficult to make a fire. And if one thing was achieved, then the next one was
certainly lacking. A bit of salt, pepper, or onions – where to get them?
In our home it was my son who did the housework. How and where he had
learned this art remained a constant mystery to me. He had lost his mother in
the ghetto at the tender age of sixteen, and in the good old days at home he had
certainly never paid any attention to these things. Apparently he had inherited
this talent, for his mother had been a splendid housekeeper and was known in
Riga for her excellent cooking.
I was the one who went shopping. First I would get the rations we were officially
entitled to, which were very meager. Often the bread had not been
baked properly; moreover, we received many "good things". For example, the
fish was never fresh and always stank.
There was always a lot of activity in the German ghetto, where the main
food distribution warehouse was located, on Ludzas Street next to the Command
Headquarters. (Four times as many people lived there as in our ghetto.)
Unlike us, they received their food from the Economic Authority of the Gestapo.
In their ghetto one could nearly always see barrels full of large stinking
fishheads. The stink was noticeable as soon as one entered the ghetto. Vegetables
too were often delivered there in a barely edible condition. But in spite of
all this, the German Jewish women were still able to produce something edible
from these raw materials. In the German Jewish ghetto and in ours, there was
meat only once a week, and it was only horsemeat. So we only shuddered
"Brrr" when we picked up this meat. Of course all this was only a supplement
to what we scrounged at our work stations or bought from those who had
smuggled food into the ghettos at great risk.
There were various places to shop. The most important one was the Lithuanian
market (see the chapter on the Small Ghetto). Though I speak here of a
market, the reader should not imagine one in the normal sense of the word.
The people stood around in this market, and they had in their pockets or hands
a cigarette or a pack of cigarettes, onions, some salt, and so on. A person had
to be very careful when buying or selling, for woe betide him if the guards
came upon him and found anything. If that happened, one's life was on the
line. The "Litvaks" (Lithuanian Jews) also traded in secret at their homes, and
in view of the circumstances some of them did so on a large scale. The bestknown
traders were the Lithuanian Jews Gedalie and Sane. Who among us
does not know these two names? We believed Gedalie to be a bit foolish, but
in business matters he made fools of us. He preached his own philosophy and