Small Riga Ghetto

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But some people did manage to save themselves. For example, Rabbi Spitz
hid in the factory's large chimney, and the camp elder, engineer Rago, was
taken out of the camp in the garbage truck, completely covered with garbage.
Both of them survived.
From later reports we learned that some members of the work crew were
taken to the delousing station of the former ghetto on Ludzas Street and gassed
there. * The rest were taken to the Biķernieki forest and shot. After these murders
a group of women was sent to the delousing station to sort the dead people's
clothes. They recognized many items of clothing that had belonged to
their relatives who had been in Strazdumuiža.
Thus only about 700 people aged between eighteen and thirty remained from
the large satellite camp that had once numbered several thousand. All of them
were put into prisoners' uniforms and transported by ship to Stutthof on 6 August
1944, together with the Jews who had arrived in the meantime from the
HKP camp. The survivors of this transport include the following women from
Vilno: Lisa and Sarah Pruchno, Mascha Tschernuska, Dusia Atlas, Frieda
Zewin, Rachil and Sarah Delatitzka, Schulkin, Mania Lewin, Rita and Rachel
Lekachowisch and others.
A very small number of Jews who had been kept in Strazdumuiža for
cleanup work – these included the Gottlieb brothers, their sister, and Edelstein,
all of them from Liepāja – were taken a short time later to the Kaiserwald concentration
camp and there put onto the next transport ship to Germany.
i) Reichskommissariat (Reich Commissary)
In the center of the city, on Vaļņu Street, there was a small satellite camp consisting
of about 350 men, women and children. It was called the Reich Commissary.
It consisted of tailoring workshops that belonged to the Reich Commissary.
Good specialized workers and also people they had trained (such as Mrs.
Pikielni from Lodz) worked there. The head of this barracks camp was Leibsohn
(a familiar figure because of the Jockey Club Company).
The inmates came to the ghetto very seldom and lived in their camp as if
they were in a small prison. This was also the last camp in the city to be liquidated
and sent to Kaiserwald. From there the inmates were sent to the large
TWL satellite camp.
* [Ed.: Uscha stands for Unterscharführer.]