Small Riga Ghetto

98
An eyewitness told me about this incident. All kinds of accidents happened
at the work stations. Some of them even resulted in the amputation of a leg (as
in the case of Schlossberg) or the loss of other limbs.
On another occasion the Jewish policeman Blankenfeldt was killed by a car
that hit him as he was on his way to work in the city. His corpse was brought
back to the ghetto, and here the patrolman Albrecht spoke the following cynical
words about the incident: "This is the only Jew who has died a natural
death."
XIX.
In contrast to the Reich Jewish ghetto, cultural and religious life seemed to be
quite dead in our ghetto; but it continued to exist unofficially.
I can no longer remember whether ordinances or prohibitions were also
passed against culture and religion. I don't believe they were. In any case, we
had already experienced such an endless number of hardships, everything Jewish
had been so destroyed and besmirched to the last remnant, that we were
simply frightened to provide any occasion for new acts of malice and repression.
Therefore we prayed in silence and studied in silence.
There was an unofficial house of prayer on Līksnas Street, and people still
gathered in some private homes for religious services as well. For example,
people prayed at the home of the lawyer Wittenberg and in the evening after
the Maarew (evening prayer) they studied a blatt Gemore (page of the Talmud).
Besides the host, the participants of these discussions of the Talmud usually
included Dubin's son and his brother, Golowtschiner, Feinstein and his sons,
Borchowik and many others. On the holy days our cantors prayed (see the
chapter "Art in the Riga Ghettos and Concentration Camps"). In the house I
lived in, there was also a house of prayer in the room of our "custodian" Feinstein,
who had formerly been a schochat (ritual slaughterer) and a maschgiach
(supervisor in a yeshiva, or Talmud school).
We had saved the holy writings (sifrei toras) from the Large Ghetto, and
later on when the transports to the satellite camps and concentration camps
started, we secretly took them with us to these places.
There were also some rabbis in the ghetto. I hadn't known them as rabbis in
Riga, for they were actually Talmud students. They had to go to work just as
we did, but they were put into work crews that left them free on Saturdays and
holy days.