Small Riga Ghetto

16
tioned some of the transports that brought them, he felt that they had come to
replace his own people, who had been killed to make room for them. Thus,
they could not be considered to be included in his lament for Latvian Jewry. I
could not believe that such a gifted man remained so obstinate to the truth: All
of us were to be killed!
In Munich, Kaufmann finished the book. He used his own system of research,
by interviewing his fellow Jewish Latvians. One of them, Professor
George Schwab, a teenager at the time, still laughs about the way Kaufmann
would buttonhole him and his mother in Berlin and ask them questions about
Libau (Liepāja). The youngster eventually became a historian, but used conventional
methods of doing research.
Even if Kaufmann's methods were unorthodox, he managed to flesh out the
tragic events in a way that is still considered a tour de force. From reading his
opus, it becomes clear that this is not written by a man of letters, but by a man
suffering enormous heartache, with a need to write so that others, after his
passing, would know what he had done. Painstakingly, he enumerates horrific
crimes, very often complete with names, and describing the inhumane treatment
suffered by him and other Latvian Jews. To quote "The Song of the Partisans,"
brought to Kaiserwald by the remnant of the Wilnaer Ghetto, the book
is written not with a pencil, nor with a pen, but in blood.
As mentioned earlier, Latvian Jews in Munich saw to it that it was published,
and Kaufmann could now return to his original quest to seek revenge.
He became a Nazi Hunter, looking for perpetrators in general and for his son's
murderers in particular. He managed to visit Max Gymnich in his cell, after
the former chauffeur of Krause and Roschmann was apprehended, and even
spoke to him. Whatever he said, worked very well. Gymnich committed suicide
a short time later.
Kurt Migge, at one time deputy commander of the ghetto, was caught and
brought to trial for his crimes as Kommandant of Salaspils during 1942. He
got away with a few years of jail. That left Eduard Roschmann, the Kommandant
of the ghetto and overseer of Stuetzpunkt. With the help of Bishop Alois
Hudal, a functionary at the Vatican and fellow Austrian, he escaped to South
America.
In 1948, Kaufmann came to New York, got married, found work, and devoted
the rest of his life to keep the Latvian Jews living in America aware of
what had happened during these hard years, for he knew well that everyone
knew only the fragment that he or she endured. That is why he had asked all
those questions… to combine the destruction and the life lived during it.