Small Riga Ghetto

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an "Aktion" in Poguļanka. She was already lying completely naked in a ditch
and waiting to be murdered. Suddenly she began to scream, "It's a mistake,
I'm not a Jew!" The people genuinely believed that it was a mistake and released
her. Then she lived for quite a while in Daugavpils using identification
papers that made her seem Aryan. When the Jews went to work, they always
encountered "pretty Mascha", sometimes even in the company of German soldiers.
The Gestapo got wind of this, and she was arrested and quickly brought
to the ghetto to be hanged. Then all the ghetto inmates, even the children,
were herded together to watch Mascha's execution. Her body remained hanging
in the ghetto for a long time, because the murderers wanted the Jews who
were in satellite camps in the city and seldom came to the ghetto to see her
hanging there.
The second woman, who was shot, was the wife of the tailor Meierow. She
was in the ghetto with five small children and was suspected of trading. The
Jews had to give up their last possessions for a piece of bread, and it often
happened that the Latvians took the gold and didn't give anything in return.
There was no higher authority to which one could complain or apply for redress.
Mrs. Meierow too was executed in the presence of her five children and
the rest of the ghetto.
The third woman was Minna Gitelsohn. It was said that she had resisted the
business manager of the Hotel Kontinent, where she worked, when he tried to
molest her. He then lodged a complaint with the Gestapo, in which he claimed
that she had been trading. She was taken directly from the hotel to the ghetto
and hanged. Everyone was forced to witness the death of this woman too. Her
body hung from the gallows for three days.
VI.
After the liquidation of this ghetto a smaller one was set up in the city. All the
Jews of Daugavpils, as well as the rest of the Jews who had been herded in
from Latgale, were crowded into a single house (which had belonged to the
Klingmann) in the city center on Riga Street across from the Catholic church.
Seven children who had happened to survive were also taken there.
Once again the Jews worked in the workshops of the area command headquarters
and also in those of the Gestapo. A short time later a transport to Riga
was decreed. Nobody believed this would take place, so many committed suicide
on the way. Later another small transport was sent, and then finally the
last transport, consisting of the sixty workers of the Gestapo workshops. All of
the transports arrived "safely", the first two in the Kaiserwald concentration