Small Riga Ghetto

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A large satellite camp with workers from the Kaiserwald concentration camp
was set up in the paper factory at Sloka. They lived and worked under very
difficult conditions.
There was also a satellite camp in the Meteor rubber factory (of Sobolewitsch).
During the final days before it was liquidated, Fedja Lew escaped
together with a woman from Vienna and a German doctor and his wife. The
doctor and his wife were unlucky: they were discovered and transported via
Kaiserwald to Stützpunkt. *
The large TWL satellite camp was located near Kaiserwald. Mostly German
Jewish men and women worked there. The camp elder was Kagan, who had
been an employee of the Letre Company. He had a very sadistic nature, and
nobody could elude his hands (I. Springenfeldt and others). The reader will
hear more about him in the chapter on Buchenwald and Magdeburg.
A small satellite camp consisting of more than 100 Latvian and Lithuanian
Jews was put to work very close to Salaspils in the stone quarries of the Behm
Company. Their camp elder was Jakobsohn (of the Riga Yacht Club). Until
July 1944 we heard no more news at all about these people. Later, when the
Aryan camp in Salaspils was liquidated, people reported that all of them had
been shot.
The Evacuation
We were taken in trucks to the harbor. The route was already familiar to us
from the daily work we had done there. We noticed that a large-scale voluntary
evacuation was taking place in the city. Large carts loaded with suitcases
and other baggage were being pulled to the harbor and the freight depot on
Pulkveža Brieža Street. We also saw at the freight depot some trains that had
already been prepared for the evacuation. I had no doubt that those who had
our sisters and brothers on their conscience would now head for safety with
our possessions. On the way we met Gymnich, the "terror of the ghetto", on a
bicycle. He gave his "old acquaintances" a very sidelong look.
In the city center people were already busy setting up street barricades. Our
truck was the first one to reach the harbor. The others followed one by one.
* [Ed.: Fedia Lew escaped in April. Mrs. Schwartz from Vienna, Lotte Adler from Cologne,
Dr. Rolf and his wife Ruth Bischofswerder, also from Cologne, came back to Kaiserwald in
July. At the end of August, these 4 escaped, hoping to be met by Janis Lipke. They met and
he took Mrs. Schwartz to a safe house. When Lipke came for the others, they had been
stopped by a German patrol and were brought back to Kaiserwald. The 2 women were shot
and Dr. Bishofswerder was sent to Stützpunkt, where he was killed. Mrs. Schwartz came back
to Vienna after the war and I met with her.]