Small Riga Ghetto

211
People said that one day Private First Class Schmidt went to the ghetto
Kommandant Krause to ask him to release from prison a number of people
whose names were on a list of various specialists he said he needed. Presumably
Schmidt had been paid well by these people's relatives. At first Krause
postponed the whole matter, but eventually he ordered Schmidt to go to the
prison to fetch these people. He made him wait there, and in the meantime
shot all the people whose names were on the list. After that he called Schmidt,
pointed to the corpses, and said: "Now you can take your 'specialists' away
with you."
During the period when I too was housed there, the following people worked
in the various sections of this work crew: Waldenberg, Patzkin, Peretz,
Brandt, Raikin, Kapulski, Löw, Schelkan, Berner, Michlin, the Rabinowitsch
brothers and others. The shoemaker Fischelsohn also worked together with us.
He was an especially hard-working and decent person, and he saved up a great
deal of money in order to rescue his two children, who were in prison on account
of the weapons incident. Through the mediation of the German Jew
Kohn, he personally handed over to Kommandant Roschmann a large number
of gold coins. Roschmann took them with thanks and promised that everything
would be put in order, but nothing happened. Roschmann was given further
payments via Kohn, but nothing was ever done. Later, when Kohn himself fled
from Kaiserwald, he received his "reward" from the Russians, who shot him.
On the evening of 20 November 1943 after the Hawdole (Saturday evening
prayer), Patzkin and Raikin disappeared. Consequently we were badly terrorized
all night by Schmidt and Bendel, and the next day all the Jews in the Billeting
Department satellite camp were assembled, thoroughly searched by the
aforementioned "gentlemen", beaten, and transported to the ghetto, which had
been nearly liquidated by then. *
e) Spilve
This name was known to us natives of Riga as the site of the largest airport on
that side of the Daugava. Now the airport's administrators ordered the delivery
of about 350 Jews from Kovno in Lithuania to work there. Those Kovno natives
who had relatives in the Riga ghetto immediately volunteered for this
transport; others had to be forced to join it. The transport, which arrived in
Riga on 25 October 1942, included men, women and a small number of children.
The Kovno Jews had with them not only their large pieces of luggage but
* [Ed.: There were very few people left in the ghetto. It had been liquidated on November 2,
1943.]