Small Riga Ghetto

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blanket. Initially the blanket distribution was very disorganized, and one often
had to sleep without a blanket. Every barrack received its block elder with his
rubber truncheon. First we had a Polish Jew, Ignatz, who was always using his
rubber truncheon. After him came one of our own, who was milder. The block
elder who ruled the second block was clearly a sadist: a German Jew named
Salomon who made everyone feel his power. We trembled in fear of him, just
as we trembled in fear of the camp elder. There were also some associates of
the camp representative (Izke and others), who had also received directions
from Kagan. The camp elder had a small room of his own in which he lived
together with his younger brother, who was considerably more decent than he
was, and the quartermaster Wilner, a very honorable and pious German Jew.
Workshops were set up once again. There was a small shoemaker's workshop,
a tailoring shop and a barbershop. A special barber was appointed for
the SS men; this was Fonarjow, who had already held this position in Kaiserwald.
He often assured us that more than once he had wanted to slit his customers'
throats. A carpentry workshop was also set up with the engineer
Mischkinski as foreman. Mischkinski was one of Schuller's favorites. The internal
work was done by a special work crew led by our comrade Nachke.
This group (which included Dsemse, Zapp and others) received privileged
treatment from the camp elder, and it was deployed wherever there was "easy
work" and good opportunities to "organize" things. It also had a special corner
in the barrack; there the members of the group ate together. Whenever we
passed this table our mouths watered. All the members of this work crew were
part of the camp's VIPs, and everyone was afraid of falling into "their hands".
We were allowed to use the sleeping barracks only for sleeping, and there
was a special dining hall for meals. The tables were numbered and everyone
had his assigned place. Every table had a table representative who received the
food from the block elder and had to distribute it. The food was brought in
buckets from the kitchen of the women's camp. The kitchen was headed by the
SS man Drybe, who had carried out the large action to exterminate the Jews in
Klooga, Estonia. All the signs in the dining hall and all the numbers in it had
been painted by our comrade Joffe with my help.
The elder of Table No. 1 was the well-known Zionist activist Rosenthal.
Then came the Czech table, where only Czech Jews sat and only Czech was
spoken. As always, I was "lucky" with the number 13. My table was No. 13,
and its elderwas my comrade Njoma Kurin. Sometimes he took a bit more for
himself, but in spite of our great hunger we overlooked this. Because a more
educated group of people had clustered together at our table, the others called