Small Riga Ghetto

155
The fate of the men in the prison was terrible. The authorities promised to
send them to work, but what then happened was that they were sent away and
never returned. They were executed near the prison in the well-known Eisenbahngarten
(railroad park). Of course all this did not take place on a single
day, and in order to conceal this from the outside world, individual prisoners
were even released from prison.
In the meantime, the Germans had settled down in Daugavpils. They established
the notorious Gestapo and an area command headquarters. Now they
took over the civil administration, including the Latvian prison. There the
number of Jews had already shrunk considerably. From that time on, the Jews
worked in all the German units, even Gestapo headquarters, which set up
workshops and shoemakers' and tailors' shops. Jews also worked in the field
command headquarters and later in the city command headquarters as cleaners,
boilermen and so on. Women, men and teenagers worked. The rations in the
city were very bad, for none were provided regularly. People had to scavenge
something edible for themselves through the units they worked for. Some units
set up satellite camps so as to exploit the prisoners twenty-four hours a day.
These Jews lived under heavy guard in special buildings that they were not allowed
to leave. All contact with the outside world was forbidden on pain of
death. The same punishment was decreed for reading newspapers or speaking
to Aryans.
V.
The few Daugavpils Jews were now moved into a ghetto. Among them was the
well-known physician Dr. Kretzer, who immediately committed suicide.
The ghetto was set up outside the city, across from the huge, ancient Daugavpils
fortress on the other (Kurzeme) side of the Daugava River. Cavalry
barracks with large stalls for horses were still standing there from the time of
the Russian czar Peter the Great. Besides the Daugavpils Jews, the Jews from
the countryside were also taken to this ghetto on foot. Because there was not
enough room for everyone, the Fascist German murderers hit upon the following
solution: they asked the "surplus" new arrivals to volunteer so that they
could receive better housing. A large number of women, children, and men as
well volunteered. Thereupon they were taken to the Poguļanka spa on the opposite
bank of the Daugava. All of them were killed on the shooting range
there next to the forest, which in my time was called Peski (Sand). The executions
were carried out in the same way everywhere. The unfortunate people