Small Riga Ghetto

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work, and had contact with many Aryans from foreign countries who were
also housed in this barracks camp but were free.
Medical services were provided initially by Dr. Berkowitsch and later on by
Dr. Jakobsohn. On 8 February 1944, 102 persons were taken away from this
camp to the Dundaga satellite camp. Among them were Lewenstein, Pitum,
Moisej Igdalski and others. Dr. Berkowitsch was also among them; he was
tortured in Dundaga and sent back half-dead to Kaiserwald, where he was
killed under unknown circumstances.
In the summer of 1944 the Dünawerke barracks camp was closed down. The
inmates were taken to Siauliai in Lithuania and from there to Stutthof. Regrettably,
one of those who died there was the pretty Liesel.
m) The Dondangen (Dundaga) Satellite or Labor Camp
In the Kaiserwald card file Dundaga was called a work camp, but I can only
call it an extermination camp, for it had practically nothing to do with work
and a great deal to do with extermination! Only a few work crews went to
work, and all of the others worked inside the camp. Dundaga is a well-known
fishing town near the Baltic Sea, not far from the well-known Dundaga Forest.
Formerly, prominent Latvian public men went boar hunting there. People said
that Göring too once went on a boar hunt there.
Now a training ground for some of Adolf Hitler's Leibstandarte (personal
SS guards), the tank grenadiers, was set up there. But this plan could not be
implemented because of the clayey soil, into which the "victorious tigers" (the
tanks) sank too deeply in their training maneuvers.
The actual "host" of the Jews was an SS division that also served as a guard
unit. The whole division took orders from the commandant of Kaiserwald. Initially
it was commanded by the SS man Greschel (Kroeschel) and later on by
"Iron Gustav". There was no permanent housing at all. People lived summer
and winter in tents whose floors were strewn with straw that did not give sufficient
protection from the damp earth. A great hardship was the scarcity of water,
not only for washing but also for drinking.
The work consisted of building barracks for the soldiers stationed there.
There were also a few other work crews, for example one that put up telegraph
poles from Talsi to Stende and another that worked in the construction
yard. The rations were so miserable that many people fell ill.
There was no clinic. The sick inmates were given only two days off work
and then sent to the central clinic in Kaiserwald. Thus Kaiserwald constantly