Small Riga Ghetto

71
That is how monstrously cynical the SA people were then, and in the great
trial that is now going on in Nuremberg they denied having participated in any
way in the bestial actions of those days.
That bloody Tuesday had claimed about five hundred victims.
During the bloody ten days we lost more than 27,000 people – men, women
and children!
The Small Riga Ghetto
(Kasernierung - Satellite Camp)
and the Reichs-Juden-Ghetto (Reich Jewish Ghetto)
(1 December 1941 – 2 November 1943)
I.
After the liquidation of the large ghetto, first our satellite camp, which became
the so-called Small Ghetto was set up. Its administration was taken over by
Kölmann, a well-known figure in Riga. At the head of the Jewish police force
was the German Jew Wand, who was also a member of the ghetto administration.
To supplement the few policemen remaining from the Large Ghetto, others
were recruited now for police duty, for example the engineer Hofschowitsch
and Isaak Berner, both of whom held important positions. A large
building in Līksnas Street was chosen to be the official building that housed the
offices of all the authorities.
The registration carried out right at the beginning revealed that there were
about 4,500 people in this ghetto. In addition there was a small number of
people in satellite camps in the city of Riga, plus those who had been assigned
to work outside the city cutting peat, and finally a few hundred women in the
Terminal Prison who were to be released.
The Bureau of Statistics, the address file, and the chevro-kadischo (burial
society) were managed by the lawyer Wittenberg.
A special ghetto was established for the women who were still alive and
those who were returning from the prisons. The children were also quartered
there. The women's ghetto consisted of a complex of houses at 68 – 70 Ludzas
Steet and on Līksnas Street. It was said that ninety of the so-called seamstresses
(many women had registered as members of this profession) were
missing when the group came back from the Terminal Prison.
The Economic Authority also took up its activities again. First one shop and
then several more were opened. We received food from the area commissary,