Small Riga Ghetto

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for a long time in an unknown direction. We noticed that the Germans were
preparing to resist and fortifying the access roads to the bridges. After several
hours of marching we stopped at a tennis court to rest. The women were separated
from the men. Two large trucks full of the weak and the sick, including
Dubin's son, also arrived. I was standing next to a certain Oscar Fain. Fortunately,
I left this spot to gather kindling. At that moment the English and the
Americans flew over us and bombarded us heavily. Shots hailed down from all
directions. There was screaming and weeping everywhere. Our guards disappeared,
and the place was full of victims. Fain and the very popular Dr. May
had been smashed to pieces. Many women had also been wounded. My comrade
Mrs. Betty Segal lay on the ground screaming, her foot shattered. I was
so disoriented that I couldn't give her any help. A long time later I still suffered
from remorse, and I couldn't free myself of it until I had heard that Mrs.
Segal was well again.
We left about thirty to forty dead and wounded comrades behind on the tennis
court. It looked just like a battlefield. The rest of us were gathered together
anew and forced to march on. From town to town, we were handed over to
new Volkssturm recruits, and nobody actually knew what our destination was.
En route, my comrades Scheftel and Senitzki also disappeared, which I regretted
very much. The trucks for the weak and the sick were commanded by the
former physician Hirschowitsch from Estonia. I too was put into one of these
transports. As we were driving down a broad avenue the English bombarded
us, and even a large white flag did not save us. Once again, I survived by pure
chance. We had eight victims in our group. At last we reached a railroad station,
where the Volkssturm recruits handed us over to SS people. The next
morning we made a detour around Berlin and arrived at the Oranienburg station.
The "Sachsenhausen" Concentration Camp
(Oranienburg)
Oranienburg is the main station of Sachsenhausen. On the morning we arrived
we immediately received a visit from the English bomber pilots; it was clear
that they were growing more and more impudent. They flew quite low and attacked
the arriving passenger trains with machine guns that could be seen with
the naked eye. Our transport was not spared. We ran in all directions into the
open fields, and so did our "brave heroes", the SS guards. Some of us used the
opportunity to make their way back to the town and hide there. When it grew