Small Riga Ghetto

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There lie your dead father and mother!
Do you know, Jew, where the souls are wandering
Of tortured mother, father, child?
There heaven and earth scream: VENGEANCE!
Vengeance for the hideous sins!)
"Mein Cawoe" * (My Testament), Jakob Rassein,
Popevalns concentration camp 1943
Near Dundaga there was another satellite camp: Poperwalen, to which Jews
were brought from Kaiserwald. Although these inmates worked under somewhat
more bearable conditions, nonetheless the mortality rate was very high.
The camp elder was the Jew Scheinberger, and the commander was the SS
Rottenführer Baufeldt. For listening to a secret radio station, Soloweitschik,
Korotkin and others were shot, and the industrialist Tankelowitsch from
Livonia was killed in a work crew that worked nearby. Before their liquidation,
the two barracks camps were merged and then evacuated together.
o) Other Satellite Camps (Kasernierungen)
During the summers between 1941 and 1943, Jews were sent from the ghetto
to cut peatmoss.
Every summer a large satellite camp was set up under the command of the
camp representative Schwabe in the peat factory of Sloka (see the chapter
"Bloody Sloka"). Jews also worked in the peat factory at Olaine. The post of
camp elder was held there one summer by Fisch and then by Magon-Polski
from Vilno.
During a visit by Kommandant Roschmann and Gymnich in 1943, the singer
Karp was shot in Sloka because five eggs had been found in his possession.
There were also camps for peatmoss-cutting in Ploce and Aizpute in Kurzeme.
The conditions there were not bad, and the main thing was one's awareness
that the murderers of Riga were far away. Four Jews escaped from Aizpute.
They hid for a long time in the old fortress of Aizpute, but were finally
found and shot by the Latvians in January 1944. Those who died were the Usdin
brothers from Višķi, the medical aide Heifetz and Gotz.
After the sugar beet harvest Jews were also sent to the sugar factory in Jelgava.
As they worked there they learned the exact procedure of sugar production,
so that later on they were able to manufacture sugar themselves by primitive
methods in the ghetto.
* [Ed.: Tzevue – testament]