Small Riga Ghetto

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even tried to convert us to it. For Purim, Gedalie and Sane even managed to
bake the triangular Hamantaschen pastries.
Besides these two traders there were also butchers. Of course they too were
not butchers in the normal sense of the word. They were people who worked
in the slaughterhouse work crew and took back with them whatever scraps of
meat they could get hold of. My meat provider was the well-known Riga meat
dealer Dumesch. For a time I bought meat from him, until one day it came out
that he had always given us horsemeat instead of beef. But this didn't matter –
we were satisfied with that too. There were also special providers of spleens,
udders and liver. We made various dishes using them.
As I have already mentioned, my son was a veritable artist in the kitchen.
His puddings and other dishes were famous in our building, and everyone
came to confer with him on how and what to cook. Everyone would ask, "Arthur,
what are you cooking today?" Very often, just as everything was ready to
eat, a message would come: "The Kommandant is walking through the
ghetto." And as the reader already knows, one of his specialties was to scrutinize
the kitchens and cooking pots so that he could draw his conclusions. In
this case there was only one thing to do: throw the food, together with the
cooking pots, into the latrine. After that one had to go to bed hungry, and on
the following day there were many cares, for new dishes and new food had to
be scavenged.
A small number of men went to the women's ghetto or to the German ghetto
to eat there. But this was always connected with difficulties. In the first few
months the food problem was the most difficult, but later on it became easier
through our connections with the city. In any case, there were no starving
people in our ghetto, for nobody let the others down.
Of course the gwirim (wealthy people) could afford more; they included the
drivers and those who worked in the HVL (Chap and Nehm), who had the opportunity
to scavenge and bring in more than all the others.
On Sundays people also came from the satellite camps to the ghetto to shop.
In addition to the worries about food we were also busy with other housekeeping
tasks. We had to wash the laundry, sew, and so on. In a word: men in
women's roles!