Small Riga Ghetto

213
ous in Kaiserwald. He was assisted by Raikin, whom the Jews tried to get rid
of as soon as possible. Mr. X was succeeded by the SS murderers Sorge and
Greschel, * who are already known to the reader, then by a Swiss prisoner, and
after that by the SS man Blatterspiegel. These conditions forced many people
to flee. The first ones to make the attempt were Boris Schmuljan, Gruschko
(both of them were found and shot), Jeletzki, the engineer Kodesch, Monastirski
and others. Schneidermann, well-known because of the Trud tobacco factory,
threw himself under a train. "Iron Gustav" ordered that the corpse,
whose head had been separated from the body, should be "punished" by being
locked in a bunker for three days. Blatterspiegel ordered the hanging of a
Czech Jew. These are only a few cases, but they are probably sufficient to illustrate
the conditions at Spilve.
In April 1944 a large work crew of men and women was transported to
Ponewesch and Siauliai in Lithuania. They had to work at the airport there and
lived in wooden huts. When the front moved closer, they were taken via Stutthof
to Dachau. The physician Dr. Solomir was among those who died in Dachau.
A small group of Lithuanian Jews was sent from Spilve to Daudzeva-Viesīte
in Latvia to do logging. They worked there for seven months, and the following
people risked an escape attempt: the Safir brothers, Miller and Winokur
(all of them were from Kovno). After the Russians had advanced to this point
as well, the work crew was moved to Liepāja, where fourteen more people
escaped. In Liepāja the work crew had to work for the navy. Later it was combined
with the small remainder of the Army Clothing Department (ABA) camp
in Riga, transferred to the prison in Hamburg, and taken from there in groups
to Bergen-Belsen. Among those who survived was my comrade Hermann.
Of course extermination Aktionen were carried out in Spilve, as they were
everywhere else, beginning with the children and ending with the old people.
The usual haircut, which I have already described, was given to the inmates
here too. The hair was collected and sent to Germany to be processed.
On 6 August 1944 the remainder of the Spilve barracks camp was sent by
ship to Germany. Only a small group remained to do the clearing up. But because
they had sung Soviet songs they were punished by being sent to Kaiserwald.
From there the "guilty ones" were sent to Stützpunkt to work in the notorious
"potato Kommando" (see the chapter on Jumpravmuiža), where their lives
ended.
* [Ed.: Kroeschel]