Small Riga Ghetto

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strated his power as much as possible. But his "reign" did not last long, for he
was liquidated together with his two sons at the first opportunity. I happened to
be in Kaiserwald to pick up rations just as he arrived there. When the German
Jews in Kaiserwald heard he was coming, they prepared quite a "reception"
for him. In particular, he was taught how to work, and during the one or two
days he was in the concentration camp the "poor man" was forced to suffer in
abundance everything he had missed in the ghetto; he was beaten as well. *
The guards consisted mostly of Germans from Siebenbürgen (Transylvania
in Romania). They were headed by the SS men Hoffmann and Dering. They
punished even the smallest infraction with the greatest cruelty. For example,
Mrs. Irka Jerusalimska from Vilno was horribly beaten with a truncheon. Others
who lost consciousness during these beatings were doused with water and
then tormented further. On Sundays, when they did not go to work, everyone
had to clean the latrines.
Of course, because of this treatment everyone looked for contacts that could
help them escape. The first ones to do so were the Keile sisters, Rachel Brudner
and Miss Raja. After them came Ljolja Gitelsohn and Ljuba Drujan (all of
them were from Vilno). Some of the Latvian Jews also escaped: Behrmann,
the engineer Seidemann and his brother, and Sallgaller. The latter, however,
was unlucky. Later the leader of the work crew, Morein, also escaped.
The German prisoner Hans Bruns was the camp elder. This political criminal,
who had already spent a long time in concentration camps, made life difficult
for everyone. For a short time Reinhold Rosenmayer was the camp elder;
later on it was the engineer Rago.
Of course Strazdumuiža was not immune from extermination actions; these
were carried out on 28 July and 3 August 1944. The last action was implemented
with especial cruelty, so that two-thirds of the entire work crew were
killed. No action of this kind – in which the teengers up to the age of eighteen
and the men and women older than thirty were killed without exception – had
ever been carried out before. Some of the people who had hidden in an attempt
to save themselves were found and shot (Leib Machelsohn, Buchbinder, Hamburger
from Vienna and others). Among the participants of this persecution
were the extremely sadistic SS man Hoffmann and "Uscha" Dering. **
* [Ed.: Baum was well liked, and so were his sons. He was taken ill and was therefore sent to
Kaiserwald's sick bay. His boys, 18 and 20 at the time, volunteered to go with him. The German
Jews at the camp were glad to see him. Mr. Baum was killed by injection at the sick bay.
The boys ended up at Stützpunkt.]
** [Ed.: Uscha stands for Unterscharführer.]