Small Riga Ghetto

83
work under very harsh and inhuman conditions. The Gestapo chief Dr. Lange
could be seen at least once a week in the new satellite camp. By his own account,
he had been a school friend of Horst Wessel. Every time this crafty
murderer visited the camp, blood flowed. He punished every small misstep
immediately and without further inquiry by shooting the person on the spot.
Very many people were also hanged in Salaspils. Executions of this kind were
always carried out in the presence of the camp's inmates. The SS man Richard
Nickel, who "worked" nearby in Jumpravmuiža, also proved to be a good
shot.
The satellite camp ended with the return of sixty to seventy living skeletons
to the ghetto in the summer of 1942. All of the others had died and been buried
in the woods of Salaspils.
Concerning Salaspils I would also like to mention that since the beginning of
the war it had been the site of large prison camps (stalag) for Russians. After
the prison camps were liquidated, large numbers of Russians with children
from the occupied territories were quartered there. All of them died of the cold
and starvation.
There was also a forced labor camp in Salaspils for Aryans who had been
convicted of either political or ordinary crimes. Our Krause was its commandant
for a long time, and there too he made sure that much blood was shed.
A selection for a second satellite camp in Daugavgrīva (Dünamünde) was
made in the German ghetto. Only older men and women were selected for this
camp; they were told they would work in a canning factory. Each group had to
provide a certain number of people. The group leaders did not care if parents
were separated from their children or wives from their husbands. Only through
the protection of the powerful could a person escape such a fate.
This transfer or action was staged on a day when I was not working. From
my window in Ludzas Street I could look right across the street at the courtyard
of 25 Ludzas Street, where the people were gathering. It was snowing as
these pitiable people arrived there with their few belongings. Refined elderly
Jews stood there in rows of ten and waited calmly and quietly for the truck that
was supposed to pick them up. Chairs were even brought for those who were
unable to stand for a long time. Two large trucks accompanied by Latvian volunteers
drove back and forth. The German Jewish policemen kept order and
helped people climb into the trucks. The round trip for each truck lasted between
thirty and thirty-five minutes, which I measured precisely by my watch.
This length of time would never have been enough to reach Daugavgrīva.