Small Riga Ghetto

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Godes and Schalit. Their health condition was especially bad. In a quiet corner
of this barrack one could also find the prominent Riga painter Rudi. He generally
worked on drawings ordered by people who paid for them in bread.
Because we almost never had a real day of rest on Sundays, we waited for
the next morning and our factory work with impatience.
The day began at four in the morning. Within a few minutes we had to be on
our feet and make our beds army-style. For a long time I slept next to my
comrade Joffe to warm myself, but he needed more space, so he found himself
a better sleeping place on the second level. Now came the order: "Get coffee!"
A different group was appointed every week to do this job. The coffee had to
be fetched from the kitchen of the women's camp, where only women worked,
including a couple of Jewish women. One day this job was assigned to me. I
still remember exactly: it was the morning of 1 January 1945. The personnel,
including the guards, were still in a New Year's Eve mood. I immediately took
advantage of this unique opportunity, and out of a pail of leavings from the
previous evening's holiday feast I took as much goose goulash as I could stash
away. Because I was totally unprepared for this "find", I had to put everything
I managed to grab into my pockets and my cap. I reached our barrack successfully
with this precious booty. I gave my comrades some of it, ate my fill, and
still had some left over to trade with. Of course I had customers from the best
social circles for these goods, so I had enough food for myself that whole
week.
Once a similar coincidence occurred in the factory, and it helped me a great
deal. A foreman from another department, who assumed I was a doctor, asked
me to translate a letter for him. I took the letter with me to the camp and asked
a friend of mine who was a genuine doctor to translate it. It was a letter in
German containing Latin medical terms. The foreman wanted to receive the
treatment described in the letter so that he would be exempted from military
service. He was very satisfied with my performance and told me later that the
letter had saved him. To reward me, he gave me between five and ten potatoes
a day for several weeks. Cooking them in the factory was by no means easy,
but we found a way to do even this. Cooking potatoes in the camp was also
very difficult. There was only a single small iron stove in the washroom. To
get permission to use it, we had to pay a percentage of our potatoes to the
room elder there. The stolen potato peelings were also cooked, and we made a
"tsimmes”, dish of carrots. Every one of us suffered from stomach aches.
One Sunday I was supposed to fetch our lunch together with a group of other
men. We were standing next to the kitchen and waiting for the pails. At this