Small Riga Ghetto

64
The lawyer Wittenberg had taken this holy mission upon himself, and he
mobilized the remaining young people for this task.
Back and forth drove the hearse, collecting all the corpses and taking them
to the Old Jewish Cemetery. Those who were already half-dead were also
taken away and died on the way.
Blood flowed like water!
Large common graves were dug in the old Jewish cemetery. Certainly more
than a thousand murdered people were buried in each of them, and it was no
longer possible to record exactly who was among them.
The Latvians also brought Dr. Freidmann's family to the cemetery. His wife
and his child, although they had been shot, were still alive. Only here were
they shot dead, and after that Dr. Freidmann himself was forced to bury them.
Bernhardt, the son-in-law of Maikapar (owner of a cigarette factory), was
also brought to the cemetery from the city, where he had hidden with his wife
and children near Baltezers (White Lake) in Jugla. He had been betrayed by an
Aryan woman who was after his property. He and his family were shot. Only
he was Jewish, for his wife came from a well-known Karaim family. The same
fate overtook Bernhardt's mother and his two sisters.
The Aryans who lived in the surrounding houses cold-bloodedly watched all
of these events in the ghetto. Of course the news of our great catastrophe was
immediately circulated in the city.
Through this operation, all the inhabitants of Sadovnika Street and all the
streets near it (Katoļu, Daugavpils, Jēkabpils, Ludzas and Lielā Kalna Street,
as well as part of Maskavas Street) had been exterminated.
This bloody night and the following morning had swallowed up more than
15,000 men, women and children!
VI.
On this bloody Sunday as always, we were driven out of our new camp sites to
our work stations in the darkness of early morning. Because our camp was in
the furthest-back part of the ghetto, we didn't know what had happened in the
front part.
Through the fence we saw the columns of people departing; we heard weeping,
screaming, and shooting, but we could not find out any details.
Completely distraught and half-dead with fear for our family members, we
began to work. My son came to work with me. To gain certainty and reassurance,
we exploited our acquaintance with German soldiers and sent some of
them to the ghetto to have a look. Not even these soldiers were let in; they