Riga Ghetto
Encyclopedia
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate
, neighborhood of Riga
, Latvia
, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the non-Jewish inhabitants were evicted. Most of the Latvian Jews (about 24,000) were killed on November 30 and December 8, 1941 in the Rumbula massacre
. The Nazis transported a large number of German Jews to the ghetto; most of them were later killed in massacres.
While the Riga Ghetto is commonly referred to as a single entity, in fact there were several "ghettos". The first was the large Latvian ghetto. After the Rumbula massacre, the surviving Latvian Jews were concentrated in a smaller area within the original ghetto, which became known as the "small ghetto". The small ghetto was divided into men's and women's sections. The area of the ghetto not allocated to the small ghetto was then reallocated to the Jews being deported from Germany, and became known as the German ghetto.
At the beginning of July, the Nazi occupation regime had organized the burning of the synagogues in Riga, and attempted, with varying degrees of success, to incite the Latvian population into taking murderous action against the Latvian Jewish population. At the end of July, the city administration switched from the German military to German civil administration
. Head of the civil administration was a German named Heinz Nachtigall. Other Germans involved with the civil administration included Hinrich Lohse
and Otto Drechsler. The Germans issued new decrees at this time to govern the Jews. Under "Regulation One", Jews were banned from public places, including city facilities, parks, and swimming pools. A second regulation required Jews to wear a yellow six-pointed star
on their clothing, with violation punishable by death. A Jew was also to be allotted only one-half the food ration of a non-Jew. By August, a German named Altmayer was in charge of Riga. The Nazis then registered all the Jews of Riga. Further decrees mandated that all Jews wear a second yellow star, this one in the middle of their backs, and not use the sidewalks. The reason for the second star was so Jews could be readily distinguished in a crowd. Later, when Lithuanian Jews
were transported to the ghetto, they were subject to the same two-star rule. Jews could be randomly assaulted with impunity by any non-Jew.
Officially the Gestapo
took over the prisons in Riga on July 11, 1941, however by this time the Latvian gangs had killed a number of the Jewish inmates. The Gestapo initially set up its headquarters in the building of the former Latvian Ministry of Agriculture on Raiņa Boulevard. A special Jewish administration was set up. Gestapo torture and interrogation were carried out in the basement of this building. After this treatment the arrested were sent to prison, where the inmates were starved to death. Later the Gestapo relocated to the former museum at the corner of Kalpaka and Brīvības boulevards. The Nazis also set up a Latvia puppet government, under a Latvian General Oskars Dankers
, who was himself half-German. A "Bureau of Jewish Affairs" was set up at the Latvian police prefecture. Nuremberg-style laws
were introduced, which tried to force people in marriages between a Jew and an non-Jew to divorce. If the couple refused to divorce, the woman, if a Jew, would be forced to undergo sterilization. Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and non-Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat Jews.
) was set up. Prominent Riga Jews, including Eljaschow, Blumenthal, and Minsker, were chosen for the council. All of them had been involved with the Jewish Latvian Freedom Fighters Association and hopes were this would give them leverage in dealing with the occupation authorities. Council members were given large white armbands with a blue Star of David
on them, which gave them the right to use the sidewalks and the street cars. On October 23, 1941, the Nazi occupation authorities issued an order that by October 25, 1941, all Jews were to relocate to the Maskavas Forštate
(Moscow Forshtat) suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small 16-block area The Nazis fenced them in with barbed wire. Anyone who went too close to the barbed wire was shot by the Latvian guards stationed around the ghetto perimeter. German police (Wachmeister) from Danzig commanded the guards. The guards engaged in random firing during the night.
While the Jews were relocating to the ghetto, the Nazis stole their property. The Jews were allowed to take very little into the ghetto, and what was left was handled by an occupation authority known as the Trusteeship Office (Treuhandverwaltung). Entire trainloads of goods were sent back to Germany. The Germans overlooked the theft of large amounts of other, generally less valuable, property by Latvian police, regarding it as a form of compensation for engaging in the killings. Individual appropriations and self-interested appropriations by Germans were also common. Author Ezergailis believes that the SD
was more interested in murdering the Jews than in stealing their property, whereas the reverse was true among the men of Lohse's
"civilian" administration.
In September 1941, Adolf Hitler
, at the urging of Reinhard Heydrich
and Joseph Goebbels
, had decreed the deportation of German Jews to the east. Since the originally planned destination Minsk
was already overcrowded, further deportation trains were rerouted to Riga, which itself was overcrowded.
On November 30 and December 8 and 9, the Nazis shot about 27,500 Latvian Jews from the ghetto at pre-dug pits in the nearby forest of Rumbula
. The large ghetto had been in existence for only 37 days. Only about 4,500 skilled male workers from the work commands, which were held in "the small ghetto", and about 500 women, who had been classified as seamstresses, survived the Rumbula massacres.
The first transport with 1,053 of Berlin Jews reached the Šķirotava Railway Station in Riga on November 30, 1941. All persons were murdered on the same day in the Rumbula Forest. The next four arriving transports with approximately 4,000 persons were accommodated on instruction of the SS-Brigadeführers and commander of Einsatzgruppen A, Walter Stahlecker
, on an empty yard, the so-called provisional concentration camp Jungfernhof
.
There has been a historical dispute about whether the Latvian Jews were killed at Rumbula to make room for the Reich Jews, and it has long caused bitter feelings between Latvian and German survivors. The evidence is not clear on this, but certainly deportations of Reich Jews followed closely in time after the Rumbula shootings.
A work detail of Jews from the small ghetto was formed to gather up the property in the large ghetto of the Jews killed in the Rumbula shootings. The detail was headed by Aismann, a Jew from Daugavpils
, who stood in favor with the Nazis and was distrusted by the other Jews. Many Jews tried to get back into the large ghetto to claim their property, including the valuables they had hidden. The guards were quick to execute any Jew from the small ghetto whom they found in the large one without authorization. Some of the effects from the large ghetto were redistributed to the Latvians by the occupation authorities. In other cases the German military authorities sent in trucks to load up furniture and other items. One general, Dr. Bamberg, picked out some items for himself and had them shipped back to Germany.
Following the first train on November 29, whose occupants were killed at Rumbula, Jews from Germany, Austria, Bohemia
, and Moravia
(the so-called "Reich Jews") began arriving in Riga on December 3, 1941. The Reich Jews were not immediately housed in the ghetto, but rather they were left at a provisional concentration camp established at Jumpravmuiza
, also known as Jungfrauhof. Rudolf Lange
supervised the arrival of the transports in Riga, aided by Obersturmbannführer
Gerhard Maywald, whom Schneider describes as Lange's "sidekick
". Lange personally shot a young man, Werner Koppel, whom he felt was not opening a rail car door fast enough.
A local Nazi occupation official, Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar) Otto Drechsler, who was a subordinate of Lohse
wrote a memo to Lange
protesting the relocation of Jews into the Ghetto. Drechsler's real concern, however, was that Drechsler's men were still busy searching the buildings recently vacated by the murdered Latvian Jews for money, jewelry and furs. Consistent with this purpose, buildings were declared off-limits to the arriving Jews from Germany until they could be combed through by Drechsler's squads.
The first transport to go directly to the ghetto arrived on December 13, 1941, carrying Jews from Cologne
. Their luggage had come with them on the train but it was all confiscated by the Gestapo
using a ruse. Each piece of luggage had the owner's name on it. For men, the name "Isaac" had been added, and for women "Sarah". Schneider reports that a gas van
was used in Riga to kill some of the arrivals from the last transport from Germany.
At least in the case of the December 11, 1941 transport from Düsseldorf, the train was composed of third class passenger cars for the Jews and a second class passenger car for the guards. Apparently efforts were made to keep the train heated. A rail car on another transport to Riga from Vienna was reported not to have been heated, which resulted in at least one person having frostbit feet, which later turned gangrenous and had to be amputated.
In cold weather, the people were taken to the ghetto on the same day they arrived, without any property of any kind other than what they were wearing or carrying, under the guard of SS Death's Head troops. They were given no food of any kind, and had to live from whatever they could find in the vacated sector of the large ghetto to which they'd been assigned. In the next month, trains arrived from Vienna
, Hanover
, Bielefeld
, Hamburg
, Bavaria
, Saxony
, and from Theresienstadt concentration camp
, Czech Jews who originally came from Prague
. About 15,000 to 18,000 people arrived on the German transports. Some German women who arrived in the ghetto were not Jews but were married to Jewish men and had refused to leave them. In contrast to the Latvian Jews, the German Jews wore only one star, on their chests, and the word Jude (Jew) was written on the star.
The German Jews organized themselves by their cities of origin. Each group had a representative on the Jewish Council. The head of the Jewish Council was a man from Cologne named Max Leiser. Unable to pronounce the Latvian street names, the German Jews renamed most of the streets in the German ghetto after the cities in Germany from whence they had come. Unlike the Latvian Jews, the German Jews were directly under the authority of the Gestapo, which set up an office in the German ghetto on Ludzas street. A Jewish Ghetto Police
force was also established. In general the Latvian and the German ghettos were subject to separate administration, although the occupation Labor Authority drew personnel from both ghettos.
man from Cologne
. (Ghetto survivor Jeanette Wolff mistakenly identifies this commandant as Karl Wilhelm Krause, who was in fact Hitler's valet and is not known to have had any association with the Riga ghetto.)
Krause and Gymnich used a large and dangerous dog to help enforce their commands. A Latvian Jewish survivor Joseph Berman, is recorded as stating the following about described Gymnich:
were deported to the Latvian ghetto from the Kaunas Ghetto
. They told the Latvian Jews of the mass killings that had taken place in the old forts around Kaunas (see Ninth Fort
). There were many skilled craftsmen among the Lithuanian Jews, who gradually merged into the Lithuania Jewish population of the ghetto. Very few of them were to survive.
). Frida Michelson wrote much later that while some members of the Jewish Council tried to improve things for the Jews, in her opinion, "the Judenrat was a fiction, created to help the Nazis organized the annihilation of the Jewish population". Gertrude Schneider, said of the German Judenrat that it employed a number people, worked efficiently, but "was sometimes used for sinister purposes, mainly in the beginning when the German authorities decided that the ghetto was becoming too crowded, with many people drawing food rations but not producing enough".
In 1942, the official rations in the German ghetto were 220 grams of bread per day, one portion of fish gone somewhat bad per week, and occasional servings of turnips, cabbage or frozen potatoes. Once in a while there would be horse meat. Most of the small children had been killed in the Dünamünde Action in March 1942. Those who survived received one liter of fat-free milk per week.
, entitled "Directions concerning treatment of Jewish property" officially decreed the forfeiture of almost every item of value possessed by the Jews. As a result, the Jews concealed as much property and valuables as they could in hiding places within the ghetto.
. Work was not always a protection from attack. About thirty young women and two young men were detailed to work in the Olaine forest near Riga, and at the end of the work day they were murdered by their Latvian guards. On another occasion, the highranking Nazi SS leader Friedrich Jeckeln
ordered shot three Jewish women who worked at the Ritterhaus. Their smoking of cigarettes had offended him.
Special efforts, including smuggling and bribery of the Latvian guards, were made to make sure that food, which was allocated by the Germans according to work outside the ghetto, could be obtained for the teachers. The separate schools were consolidated after the murder of large number of parents and smaller children in the Dünamünde Action, and despite this shock, Professor Lemberger continued to develop separate lesson plans for each pupil. Other academics continued to give lessons privately. Their payment was food. For example, Professor Schwartz gave instructions in mathematics to older students so that when they should be released from the ghetto, they would not have fallen behind their peers.
Knowledge of a trade was especially valuable to help ensure survival, as skilled tradesmen could earn extra food. Some of the Latvian Jews, among whom there were a greater number of skilled craftsmen, helped teach their trades to the German Jews. Carpentry lessons were given to four older boys by one Felix, a Berliner who had owned a furniture store. Once the children turned 14, they were sent out in labor details. Possession of craft skills, such as plumber, painter, electrician, roofer, mechanic or welder could save their lives. Women had more difficulty acquiring a craft, most of which were reserved by tradition for men, but many were trained as seamstresses.
During the summer of 1942, singing events were held out of doors in the vacant lots behind the houses. Krause, Gymnich, and Neumann attended a few of these, but stood off a bit, not sitting on the ground like the Jews but leaning up against a tree or a building smoking cigarettes.
Dances were also put on for young people. Popular music was provided with the help of Ludwig Pick, a Jew from Prague, stole a phonograph
from one of the German occupation facilities in the city, dismantled it and brought it into the ghetto through the check point bit by bit into the ghetto, where he put it back to together. Teenage workers stole phonograph records from places employment, which they played at the dances on the phonograph.
. Kaufmann, a survivor of the Latvian ghetto, praised the actions of the ghetto police: "all of them risked their lives during these difficult times in order to help us." Most of the Latvian ghetto police were members of Betar
, a Zionist organization founded in Riga
in the 1920s.
Each German group had their own police force and the size depended on the number of the deportees from the particular vicinity in Germany. The overall titular head of the German ghetto police force was Friedrich Frankenburg, but the actual person in charge was Max Haar, of Cologne.
The Jewish council established a Technical Authority, which attempted to set up a public bath. The Riga city government refused to pick up refuse from the ghetto. The occupants had to dig huge garbage pits in courtyards, but this was an inadequate measure. Survivor Kaufmann estimated that if the ghetto had lasted much longer the sanitary problems would have caused an epidemic to have broken out.
After the surviving Latvian Jews were moved into the small ghetto, the German Jews took over the clinic in the large ghetto. This was staffed by Latvian physicians who treated Germans also.
Some buildings in the ghetto had interior plumbing, however this failed during cold weather. In the German ghetto this meant that water would have to be hauled from the well on Tin Square, which was right underneath the gallows. Cesspools had to be cleaned out, this was originally assigned as a punishment in the German ghetto by the Judenrat, however later it became a necessary task done by everyone. The sewage was used as fertilizer, and the smell was terrible.
Ausweis) issued by the German occupation authorities as protection against daily brutalities by Latvians. Some Germans were protective and even kind towards the Jews who were working for them. Another survivor, Frida Michelson, sent to work on sugar beet fields near Jelgava
for six weeks in the summer of 1941, told her fellow forced laborers:
On the other hand, the occupation authorities, including both the Gestapo
and the Wehrmacht
confiscated both housing and furniture at will from Jews. Anyone standing in the way was simply murdered. A Jewish work detail was formed up to remove belongings from Jewish homes and shops.
The first tasks assigned to the German Jews were to shovel snow, clean up the apartments of the Latvian Jews who had been "evacuated", or unload cargo in the harbor. Later, the German and the Latvian Jews were formed into combined work details. Commandant Krause appointed Herbert Schultz as "Work Detail Administrator, and he dealt with the German and Latvians outside the ghetto. Skilled craftsmen worked for the German war effort in various positions. They had a better chance to survive and these positions were sought after. Many of the German Jews had been professionals or merchants, and lacked the ability to perform a craft, and without this, their rate of survival would be much less.
At the end of 1942 approximately 12,000 Jews of the Riga ghetto were in work assignments. Of these, about 2,000 were housed outside the ghetto at their workplaces, 2,000 worked in workshops within the ghetto, and more than 7,300 were led from the ghetto in columns to their workplaces. An account from the year 1943 lists 13.200 Jews in the ghetto.
There were many instances of work-related killings during the history of the Riga ghetto.
German ghetto survivor Ruth Foster's father was working outside the Riga Ghetto sawing wood for the SS
. A German solder from their home town passed him, and said "Wilhelm, what are you doing here?" The father only answered "Bring me some bread." The soldier did so, but it did not help the father. As the Jews were marched back into the ghetto that evening from their work assignments, they were search, and those that were found with food, even potato peelings, were arrested. Later, the Nazis forced all the Jews of the Ghetto to assemble, and he shot the father and two others in the back of the head with his pistol, as the family watched along with the other Jews of the ghetto.
. Krause had wanted the men retained in the ghetto, while Lange
wanted them transferred to Salaspils for work duties. Conditions at Salaspils were harsh. In August, 1942 about one third of the transportees to Salapils were returned to the ghetto. Many of those returned were in poor health and died shortly after their return.
The German Jews in the ghetto began to rumor among themselves that the Germans had brought them to Riga to be exterminated. Outside of the ghetto there were housed a few Jews whose work duties gave them confirmation of the overall Nazi plan. Some Jews worked at the headquarters of Einsatzkommando 2c
were given the task of sorting the clothing and jewelry that had come from the victims of the massacres in Latvia. Many of these came in suitcases, and from the names and addresses on the luggage, the Jews charged with sorting the items could tell where they'd come from. Other personal effects from the victims came into Riga from all over Latvia where murders were occurring. The local SS picked over the effects before they were sent back to Germany, and Jewish women who cleaned the apartments of officers found many valuable things, such drawers full of watches, closets full of furs (with the labels of their original owners still on them).
The Nazi gave the task of digging graves to a work detail called "Kommando Krause 2." This group of 38 Jewish men, was housed at the Central Prison. They were instructed not to tell anyone about the mass killings. 16 of these men survived long enough to be returned to the German ghetto, violated their instructions, and told the people there about the mass killings that had been perpetrated in the forests around Riga.
Lilli Henoch
, a German world record holder in the discus, shot put, and 4 × 100 meters relay events, and the holder of 10 German national championships, was deported to the ghetto on September 5, 1942, and killed by machine gun and buried in a mass grave shortly thereafter.
drew by the hiring from Jewish forced laborers, did not protect however permanently against the destruction intentions of the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler
arranged in June 1943 on to seize:
In the summer of 1943, in the Riga suburb of Kaiserwald (Latvian:
Mežaparks) the Nazis constructed Kaiserwald concentration camp, where eight barracks for prisoners were planned. The first four hundred Jews were transferred there in July 1943 from the ghetto. For them, this meant separation from family. They were confronted also with prisoner clothing, shearing of their hair, and loss of privacy.
From this time on the gradual dissolution of the ghetto in Riga began. For the most part it was vacated in November 1943. Extensive planning to remove and second establish the concentration camp, was not no more realised. Several enterprises furnished camps, in which the forced laborers were housed. Older people, children, people who cared for the surviving children, and persons with illnesses were transferred by train in November 1943 to Auschwitz concentration camp
. The total on this transport is in dispute, but most observers believe that 2,000 people were included on the Auschwitz train. By the end of November all the Jews who were not murdered in Biķernieki or elsewhere had been transferred out of the ghetto.
Maskavas Forštate
Maskavas Forštate , also Maskačka is an old Riga neighbourhood situated on the right bank of the river Daugava. This neighborhood is located to the south of the old City of Riga along the road connecting Riga to Moscow, from which its name is derived....
, neighborhood of Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the non-Jewish inhabitants were evicted. Most of the Latvian Jews (about 24,000) were killed on November 30 and December 8, 1941 in the Rumbula massacre
Rumbula massacre
The Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps...
. The Nazis transported a large number of German Jews to the ghetto; most of them were later killed in massacres.
While the Riga Ghetto is commonly referred to as a single entity, in fact there were several "ghettos". The first was the large Latvian ghetto. After the Rumbula massacre, the surviving Latvian Jews were concentrated in a smaller area within the original ghetto, which became known as the "small ghetto". The small ghetto was divided into men's and women's sections. The area of the ghetto not allocated to the small ghetto was then reallocated to the Jews being deported from Germany, and became known as the German ghetto.
Restrictions imposed on Jews
Reichskommissariat Ostland
Reichskommissariat Ostland, literally "Reich Commissariat Eastland", was the civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany in the Baltic states and much of Belarus during World War II. It was also known as Reichskommissariat Baltenland initially...
. Head of the civil administration was a German named Heinz Nachtigall. Other Germans involved with the civil administration included Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
and Otto Drechsler. The Germans issued new decrees at this time to govern the Jews. Under "Regulation One", Jews were banned from public places, including city facilities, parks, and swimming pools. A second regulation required Jews to wear a yellow six-pointed star
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
on their clothing, with violation punishable by death. A Jew was also to be allotted only one-half the food ration of a non-Jew. By August, a German named Altmayer was in charge of Riga. The Nazis then registered all the Jews of Riga. Further decrees mandated that all Jews wear a second yellow star, this one in the middle of their backs, and not use the sidewalks. The reason for the second star was so Jews could be readily distinguished in a crowd. Later, when Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...
were transported to the ghetto, they were subject to the same two-star rule. Jews could be randomly assaulted with impunity by any non-Jew.
Officially the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
took over the prisons in Riga on July 11, 1941, however by this time the Latvian gangs had killed a number of the Jewish inmates. The Gestapo initially set up its headquarters in the building of the former Latvian Ministry of Agriculture on Raiņa Boulevard. A special Jewish administration was set up. Gestapo torture and interrogation were carried out in the basement of this building. After this treatment the arrested were sent to prison, where the inmates were starved to death. Later the Gestapo relocated to the former museum at the corner of Kalpaka and Brīvības boulevards. The Nazis also set up a Latvia puppet government, under a Latvian General Oskars Dankers
Oskars Dankers
Oskars Dankers was a Latvian general. He participated in World War I and in the Latvian War of Independence. He was a recipient of the Order of Lāčplēsis, 2nd and 3rd class. During the occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany, Dankers cooperated with the Nazis.- Biography :He was born in Lielauce...
, who was himself half-German. A "Bureau of Jewish Affairs" was set up at the Latvian police prefecture. Nuremberg-style laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
were introduced, which tried to force people in marriages between a Jew and an non-Jew to divorce. If the couple refused to divorce, the woman, if a Jew, would be forced to undergo sterilization. Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat non-Jews, and non-Jewish physicians were forbidden to treat Jews.
Construction of the ghetto
On July 21, the Riga occupation command decided to concentrate the Jewish workers in a ghetto. All Jews were registered and a Jewish Council (JudenratJudenrat
Judenräte were administrative bodies during the Second World War that the Germans required Jews to form in the German occupied territory of Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union It is the overall term for the enforcement bodies established by the Nazi occupiers to...
) was set up. Prominent Riga Jews, including Eljaschow, Blumenthal, and Minsker, were chosen for the council. All of them had been involved with the Jewish Latvian Freedom Fighters Association and hopes were this would give them leverage in dealing with the occupation authorities. Council members were given large white armbands with a blue Star of David
Star of David
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David is a generally recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism.Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles...
on them, which gave them the right to use the sidewalks and the street cars. On October 23, 1941, the Nazi occupation authorities issued an order that by October 25, 1941, all Jews were to relocate to the Maskavas Forštate
Maskavas Forštate
Maskavas Forštate , also Maskačka is an old Riga neighbourhood situated on the right bank of the river Daugava. This neighborhood is located to the south of the old City of Riga along the road connecting Riga to Moscow, from which its name is derived....
(Moscow Forshtat) suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small 16-block area The Nazis fenced them in with barbed wire. Anyone who went too close to the barbed wire was shot by the Latvian guards stationed around the ghetto perimeter. German police (Wachmeister) from Danzig commanded the guards. The guards engaged in random firing during the night.
While the Jews were relocating to the ghetto, the Nazis stole their property. The Jews were allowed to take very little into the ghetto, and what was left was handled by an occupation authority known as the Trusteeship Office (Treuhandverwaltung). Entire trainloads of goods were sent back to Germany. The Germans overlooked the theft of large amounts of other, generally less valuable, property by Latvian police, regarding it as a form of compensation for engaging in the killings. Individual appropriations and self-interested appropriations by Germans were also common. Author Ezergailis believes that the SD
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
was more interested in murdering the Jews than in stealing their property, whereas the reverse was true among the men of Lohse's
Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
"civilian" administration.
Mass killings
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, at the urging of Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
and Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
, had decreed the deportation of German Jews to the east. Since the originally planned destination Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
was already overcrowded, further deportation trains were rerouted to Riga, which itself was overcrowded.
On November 30 and December 8 and 9, the Nazis shot about 27,500 Latvian Jews from the ghetto at pre-dug pits in the nearby forest of Rumbula
Rumbula
Rumbula is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia, in which Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. For the air base at Rumbula, see Rumbula ....
. The large ghetto had been in existence for only 37 days. Only about 4,500 skilled male workers from the work commands, which were held in "the small ghetto", and about 500 women, who had been classified as seamstresses, survived the Rumbula massacres.
The first transport with 1,053 of Berlin Jews reached the Šķirotava Railway Station in Riga on November 30, 1941. All persons were murdered on the same day in the Rumbula Forest. The next four arriving transports with approximately 4,000 persons were accommodated on instruction of the SS-Brigadeführers and commander of Einsatzgruppen A, Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker
Franz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
, on an empty yard, the so-called provisional concentration camp Jungfernhof
Jungfernhof concentration camp
The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga...
.
There has been a historical dispute about whether the Latvian Jews were killed at Rumbula to make room for the Reich Jews, and it has long caused bitter feelings between Latvian and German survivors. The evidence is not clear on this, but certainly deportations of Reich Jews followed closely in time after the Rumbula shootings.
Setting up the small ghetto
After the mass killings at Rumbula, the survivors were formed into the small ghetto. Large posters were placed around Riga, stating "Anyone reporting to the authorities a suspicious person or a hidden Jew will receive a large sum of money and many other gratuities and privileges". Jews could sometimes be identified by whether they would eat pork. Internal passports were used to control the population, being necessary, for example, to obtain a medical prescription. The Nazi commandant of the small ghetto was named Stanke, who had also participated in the liquidation of the large ghetto. He was assisted by a Latvian named Dralle, who earned a reputation for brutality among the Jews. As with the large ghetto, the perimeter was also guarded by Latvians. Within the ghetto, on Ludzas Street, the Nazis maintained a special company of guards, consisting of policemen from Danzig, commanded by Hesfer.A work detail of Jews from the small ghetto was formed to gather up the property in the large ghetto of the Jews killed in the Rumbula shootings. The detail was headed by Aismann, a Jew from Daugavpils
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, who stood in favor with the Nazis and was distrusted by the other Jews. Many Jews tried to get back into the large ghetto to claim their property, including the valuables they had hidden. The guards were quick to execute any Jew from the small ghetto whom they found in the large one without authorization. Some of the effects from the large ghetto were redistributed to the Latvians by the occupation authorities. In other cases the German military authorities sent in trucks to load up furniture and other items. One general, Dr. Bamberg, picked out some items for himself and had them shipped back to Germany.
Jews from Germany
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, and Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
(the so-called "Reich Jews") began arriving in Riga on December 3, 1941. The Reich Jews were not immediately housed in the ghetto, but rather they were left at a provisional concentration camp established at Jumpravmuiza
Jungfernhof concentration camp
The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga...
, also known as Jungfrauhof. Rudolf Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
supervised the arrival of the transports in Riga, aided by Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer was a paramilitary Nazi Party rank used by both the SA and the SS. It was created in May 1933 to fill the need for an additional field grade officer rank above Sturmbannführer as the SA expanded. It became an SS rank at the same time...
Gerhard Maywald, whom Schneider describes as Lange's "sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
". Lange personally shot a young man, Werner Koppel, whom he felt was not opening a rail car door fast enough.
A local Nazi occupation official, Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar) Otto Drechsler, who was a subordinate of Lohse
Hinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
wrote a memo to Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
protesting the relocation of Jews into the Ghetto. Drechsler's real concern, however, was that Drechsler's men were still busy searching the buildings recently vacated by the murdered Latvian Jews for money, jewelry and furs. Consistent with this purpose, buildings were declared off-limits to the arriving Jews from Germany until they could be combed through by Drechsler's squads.
The first transport to go directly to the ghetto arrived on December 13, 1941, carrying Jews from Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. Their luggage had come with them on the train but it was all confiscated by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
using a ruse. Each piece of luggage had the owner's name on it. For men, the name "Isaac" had been added, and for women "Sarah". Schneider reports that a gas van
Gas van
The gas van or gas wagon was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge-Nazi Germany:...
was used in Riga to kill some of the arrivals from the last transport from Germany.
At least in the case of the December 11, 1941 transport from Düsseldorf, the train was composed of third class passenger cars for the Jews and a second class passenger car for the guards. Apparently efforts were made to keep the train heated. A rail car on another transport to Riga from Vienna was reported not to have been heated, which resulted in at least one person having frostbit feet, which later turned gangrenous and had to be amputated.
In cold weather, the people were taken to the ghetto on the same day they arrived, without any property of any kind other than what they were wearing or carrying, under the guard of SS Death's Head troops. They were given no food of any kind, and had to live from whatever they could find in the vacated sector of the large ghetto to which they'd been assigned. In the next month, trains arrived from Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
, Bielefeld
Bielefeld
Bielefeld is an independent city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 323,000, it is also the most populous city in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, and from Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...
, Czech Jews who originally came from Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. About 15,000 to 18,000 people arrived on the German transports. Some German women who arrived in the ghetto were not Jews but were married to Jewish men and had refused to leave them. In contrast to the Latvian Jews, the German Jews wore only one star, on their chests, and the word Jude (Jew) was written on the star.
| Origin | Depart date | Arrive date | Destination | Number | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin | 27 Nov 1941 | 29 Nov 1941 | Rumbula Rumbula massacre The Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps... |
1000 | All transported except about 50 young men shot at Rumbula Rumbula massacre The Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps... , 30 Nov 1941 |
| Nürnberg | 29 Nov 1941 | Jungfernhof Jungfernhof concentration camp The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga... |
714 | ||
| Stuttgart Stuttgart Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million .... |
1 Dec 1941 | Jungfernhof | 1,200 | ||
| Vienna Vienna Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre... |
3 Dec 1941 | Jungfernhof | 1,042 | ||
| Hamburg Hamburg -History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808... |
4 Dec 1941 | Jungfernhof | 808 | ||
| Cologne Cologne Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the... |
7 Dec 1941 | Ghetto | 1,000 | ||
| Cassel Kassel Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :... |
9 Dec 1941 | Ghetto | 991 | ||
| Düsseldorf Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the... |
11 Dec 1941 | Ghetto | 1,007 | ||
| Bielefeld Bielefeld Bielefeld is an independent city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 323,000, it is also the most populous city in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold... |
12 Dec 1941 | Ghetto | 1,000 | ||
| Hanover Hanover Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg... |
15 Dec 1941 | Ghetto | 1,001 | ||
| Theresienstadt | 9 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,000 | ||
| Vienna | 11 Jan 1942 | Ghetto and Jungfernhof | 1,000 | ||
| Berlin | 13 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,037 | ||
| Theresienstadt | 15 Jan 1942 | Ghetto and Salaspils Salaspils Salaspils is a town in Latvia, the administrative centre of Salaspils municipality. The town is situated on the northern bank of the Daugava River 18 kilometers to the south-east of the city of Riga.-History:... |
1,000 | ||
| Berlin | 19 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,006 | ||
| Leipzig Leipzig Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing... |
21 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,000 | ||
| Berlin | 25 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,051 | ||
| Vienna | 26 Jan 1942 | Ghetto | 1,200 | ||
| Dortmund | 27 Jan 42 | Dortmund Dortmund Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union.... |
1,000 | ||
| Vienna | 6 Feb 1942 | Ghetto and Rumbula forest | 1,000 | Notorious war criminal Alois Brunner Alois Brunner Alois Brunner is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner was Adolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man." As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to... was in command of this transport. |
|
Organization of the German ghetto
Jewish Ghetto Police
Jewish Ghetto Police , also known as the Jewish Police Service and referred to by the Jews as the Jewish Police, were the auxiliary police units organized in the Jewish ghettos of Europe by local Judenrat councils under orders of occupying German Nazis.Members of the did not have official...
force was also established. In general the Latvian and the German ghettos were subject to separate administration, although the occupation Labor Authority drew personnel from both ghettos.
Krause becomes commandant
In December 1941, Kurt Krause, whom Kauffman describes as the "man-eater", became the German commandant. Krause was a former Berlin police detective. His assistant was Max Gymnich, a GestapoGestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
man from Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. (Ghetto survivor Jeanette Wolff mistakenly identifies this commandant as Karl Wilhelm Krause, who was in fact Hitler's valet and is not known to have had any association with the Riga ghetto.)
Krause and Gymnich used a large and dangerous dog to help enforce their commands. A Latvian Jewish survivor Joseph Berman, is recorded as stating the following about described Gymnich:
Lithuanian Jews deported to ghetto
In February 1942 about 500 Lithuanian JewsLithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...
were deported to the Latvian ghetto from the Kaunas Ghetto
Kaunas Ghetto
The Kovno ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas during the Holocaust. At its peak, the Ghetto held 40,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort...
. They told the Latvian Jews of the mass killings that had taken place in the old forts around Kaunas (see Ninth Fort
Ninth Fort
The Ninth Fort is a stronghold in the northern part of Šilainiai elderate, Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a part of the Kaunas Fortress, which was constructed in the late 19th century. During the occupation of Kaunas and the rest of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, the fort was used as a prison and...
). There were many skilled craftsmen among the Lithuanian Jews, who gradually merged into the Lithuania Jewish population of the ghetto. Very few of them were to survive.
Ghetto population changes
By December 22, 1941 there were about 4,000 German and 3,000 Latvian Jews housed in the entire ghetto. As of February 10, 1942, the approximate ghetto and concentration camp populations of German Jews in Riga and the vicinity were: Jungfrauhof: 2,500, German ghetto: 11,000, Salaspils: 1,300. Of the Latvian Jews, there were about 3,500 men and 300 women in the Latvian ghetto. Altogether 20,057 Jews from the Reich were deported to Riga by February 10, 1942. Only 15,000 remained alive on that date. According to German ghetto survivor Schneider, the inhabitants of the German ghetto did not realize how many German Jews had been killed following deportation, and remained under the impression that deportation and forced labor were the worst that were going to happen:Conditions in the ghetto
Access to and from the ghetto could only be made through the police yard. People exiting or entering the ghetto were searched here and often beaten up.Internal government
Both the Latvian and German ghettos had an internal government of Jews. All communications form the "Aryan" society with Jews were to go through the Jewish Council (JudenratJudenrat
Judenräte were administrative bodies during the Second World War that the Germans required Jews to form in the German occupied territory of Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union It is the overall term for the enforcement bodies established by the Nazi occupiers to...
). Frida Michelson wrote much later that while some members of the Jewish Council tried to improve things for the Jews, in her opinion, "the Judenrat was a fiction, created to help the Nazis organized the annihilation of the Jewish population". Gertrude Schneider, said of the German Judenrat that it employed a number people, worked efficiently, but "was sometimes used for sinister purposes, mainly in the beginning when the German authorities decided that the ghetto was becoming too crowded, with many people drawing food rations but not producing enough".
Food
Legally, food could only be purchased from shops within the ghetto, and only with ration books. What food was available was of poor quality. These books were printed with yellow covers which were imprinted with Jude and Zhid ("Jew" in German and Yiddish). The council made the decision to allocate ration cards according to how much work a person was performing for the occupation authorities. There was a black market in food. People working outside the ghetto tried to get food and bring into the ghetto, but it was extremely difficult to get it past the police checkpoint at the ghetto entrance. Once the ghetto was sealed, the ghetto guards searched the returning work crews and anyone trying to smuggle in food were beaten, sometimes to death, or shot.In 1942, the official rations in the German ghetto were 220 grams of bread per day, one portion of fish gone somewhat bad per week, and occasional servings of turnips, cabbage or frozen potatoes. Once in a while there would be horse meat. Most of the small children had been killed in the Dünamünde Action in March 1942. Those who survived received one liter of fat-free milk per week.
Finances and property
The Nazis, under an October 13, 1941 edict issued by LohseHinrich Lohse
Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
, entitled "Directions concerning treatment of Jewish property" officially decreed the forfeiture of almost every item of value possessed by the Jews. As a result, the Jews concealed as much property and valuables as they could in hiding places within the ghetto.
Housing
The housing problem in the ghetto was severe. Many houses had no electricity, plumbing, gas, or central heating. Only a few thousand people had lived in the Moscow suburb before it was designated as the ghetto, and now with the overcrowding, each person was allotted only 6, later reduced to 4, square meters of private living space. There was contention for living space among the Jews. High-ranking occupation officials pressured the Jewish council to give the best apartments for the Jews who were working for them. The Jewish council appointed inspectors to address the housing issue. Minsker on the Jewish council put an end to this by forbidding Jews to enter the council building with a non-Jew. A special residence on Ludzas Street was established for older people.Employment
The Nazis had set up a Labor Authority staffed by representatives of the German military command, including two people named Stanke and Drall. The Jewish committee had a liaison man with the Labor Authority, a Jew from the town of Rujene named Goldberg. Every morning the work crews would assemble in the streets according to their work assignments. There was no pay or food given for work. Work sites included the Field Headquarters, the Billeting Department, the Gestapo, HVL, the Ritterhaus, the Army Vehicle Park (HKP) and others. Other people worked within the ghetto, for example, at a ghetto laundry, or built barracks at Jungfrauhof. The Labor Authority issued a limited quantity of yellow-colored work permits to specialists. Highly skilled craftsmen received special certificates with the legend WJ for "valuable Jew" (wertvoller Jude)Useful Jew
The term useful Jew was used in various historical contexts, typically describing a Jewish person useful in implementing an official authorities' policy, sometimes by oppressing other Jews....
. Work was not always a protection from attack. About thirty young women and two young men were detailed to work in the Olaine forest near Riga, and at the end of the work day they were murdered by their Latvian guards. On another occasion, the highranking Nazi SS leader Friedrich Jeckeln
Friedrich Jeckeln
Friedrich Jeckeln was an SS-Obergruppenführer who served as an SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II...
ordered shot three Jewish women who worked at the Ritterhaus. Their smoking of cigarettes had offended him.
Schools in the ghetto
Krause allowed the German Jews to set up schools for the children aged 5 to 14 years. The larger groups of deportees established schools for their children. There were a large number of male teachers available, but because it appeared that the only way for the people of the ghetto to survive was to marshal the greatest number of men for work for the Germans outside the ghetto, the teaching duties were assigned to women. For example, the head of the Vienna school was known as "Aunt Mary" (Tante Mary) Korwill. While Korwill was a trained teacher, many of the other women teachers were not. Among the deportees from Vienna was Professor Alfred Lemberger, who had taught at an academic high school, who supervised the lesson plans for Tante Korwill. The Berlin school was also supervised by a elderly former academic high school teacher. School supplies, such as paper, were short, and as a result training was done mainly by rote, with the older children helping with the younger ones.Special efforts, including smuggling and bribery of the Latvian guards, were made to make sure that food, which was allocated by the Germans according to work outside the ghetto, could be obtained for the teachers. The separate schools were consolidated after the murder of large number of parents and smaller children in the Dünamünde Action, and despite this shock, Professor Lemberger continued to develop separate lesson plans for each pupil. Other academics continued to give lessons privately. Their payment was food. For example, Professor Schwartz gave instructions in mathematics to older students so that when they should be released from the ghetto, they would not have fallen behind their peers.
Knowledge of a trade was especially valuable to help ensure survival, as skilled tradesmen could earn extra food. Some of the Latvian Jews, among whom there were a greater number of skilled craftsmen, helped teach their trades to the German Jews. Carpentry lessons were given to four older boys by one Felix, a Berliner who had owned a furniture store. Once the children turned 14, they were sent out in labor details. Possession of craft skills, such as plumber, painter, electrician, roofer, mechanic or welder could save their lives. Women had more difficulty acquiring a craft, most of which were reserved by tradition for men, but many were trained as seamstresses.
Culture and recreation
The occupants of the German ghetto made an effort to perform musical works and plays. There were many talented people among them. The Nazi commandant, Krause, and his staff, often attended and enthusiastically applauded the performances. The concerts and the more formal plays were given in the same factory-like structure which was used for sorting the effects of the victims of the various massacres and "actions" that took place in Riga and the rest of Latvia. For these events, Krause and other Nazis sat in the front row. Krause assisted the orchestra, by providing instruments, such as a cello (whose original owner had been murdered or worked to death at Salaspils), from the confiscated baggage from the transports.During the summer of 1942, singing events were held out of doors in the vacant lots behind the houses. Krause, Gymnich, and Neumann attended a few of these, but stood off a bit, not sitting on the ground like the Jews but leaning up against a tree or a building smoking cigarettes.
Dances were also put on for young people. Popular music was provided with the help of Ludwig Pick, a Jew from Prague, stole a phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
from one of the German occupation facilities in the city, dismantled it and brought it into the ghetto through the check point bit by bit into the ghetto, where he put it back to together. Teenage workers stole phonograph records from places employment, which they played at the dances on the phonograph.
Ghetto police
Both the German and the Latvian Jewish councils establish ghetto police forces. Michael Rosenthal, a Riga jeweler, was appointed the Latvian chief, and he recruited some of the younger men to act as policemen. They wore uniforms and blue caps which bore the Star of DavidStar of David
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David is a generally recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism.Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles...
. Kaufmann, a survivor of the Latvian ghetto, praised the actions of the ghetto police: "all of them risked their lives during these difficult times in order to help us." Most of the Latvian ghetto police were members of Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...
, a Zionist organization founded in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
in the 1920s.
Each German group had their own police force and the size depended on the number of the deportees from the particular vicinity in Germany. The overall titular head of the German ghetto police force was Friedrich Frankenburg, but the actual person in charge was Max Haar, of Cologne.
Medical care and sanitation
At the outset of the Latvian ghetto, there was only a single out-patient clinic available for medical care, although because the ghetto was only in existence for a short time, medical supplies were more than sufficient. The people were also under extreme psychological pressure and there were suicides. Latvian ghetto survivor Kaufmann praised the efforts of the physicians:The Jewish council established a Technical Authority, which attempted to set up a public bath. The Riga city government refused to pick up refuse from the ghetto. The occupants had to dig huge garbage pits in courtyards, but this was an inadequate measure. Survivor Kaufmann estimated that if the ghetto had lasted much longer the sanitary problems would have caused an epidemic to have broken out.
After the surviving Latvian Jews were moved into the small ghetto, the German Jews took over the clinic in the large ghetto. This was staffed by Latvian physicians who treated Germans also.
Some buildings in the ghetto had interior plumbing, however this failed during cold weather. In the German ghetto this meant that water would have to be hauled from the well on Tin Square, which was right underneath the gallows. Cesspools had to be cleaned out, this was originally assigned as a punishment in the German ghetto by the Judenrat, however later it became a necessary task done by everyone. The sewage was used as fertilizer, and the smell was terrible.
Forced abortions and sterilization
Children were not supposed to be born in the ghetto. After the Rumbula massacres, very few women survived in the Latvian ghetto, and they were housed separately from the men. In the German ghetto, there was no segregation of the sexes. Even so, the Germans forbade sexual relations. This proved impossible to enforce. However, the consequences were that abortions were the most common sort of medical operation performed by the Jewish doctors. A few children were born alive in the ghetto in the first year; they were killed by an injection of poison. Krause, the German commandant, hated the idea of young Jewish women becoming pregnant, and often watched abortions at the clinic. He would threaten to have both the father and the mother sterilized. For a woman to have a second abortion meant mandatory sterilization, consequently the Jewish doctors attempted to perform such abortions in secret.Forced labor
During the early days of the occupation, Latvian Jews came to rely on work permits (German:German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Ausweis) issued by the German occupation authorities as protection against daily brutalities by Latvians. Some Germans were protective and even kind towards the Jews who were working for them. Another survivor, Frida Michelson, sent to work on sugar beet fields near Jelgava
Jelgava
-Sports:The city's main football team, FK Jelgava, plays in the Latvian Higher League and won the 2009/2010 Latvian Football Cup.- Notable people :*August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein - linguist, folklorist, ethnographer...
for six weeks in the summer of 1941, told her fellow forced laborers:
On the other hand, the occupation authorities, including both the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
and the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
confiscated both housing and furniture at will from Jews. Anyone standing in the way was simply murdered. A Jewish work detail was formed up to remove belongings from Jewish homes and shops.
The first tasks assigned to the German Jews were to shovel snow, clean up the apartments of the Latvian Jews who had been "evacuated", or unload cargo in the harbor. Later, the German and the Latvian Jews were formed into combined work details. Commandant Krause appointed Herbert Schultz as "Work Detail Administrator, and he dealt with the German and Latvians outside the ghetto. Skilled craftsmen worked for the German war effort in various positions. They had a better chance to survive and these positions were sought after. Many of the German Jews had been professionals or merchants, and lacked the ability to perform a craft, and without this, their rate of survival would be much less.
At the end of 1942 approximately 12,000 Jews of the Riga ghetto were in work assignments. Of these, about 2,000 were housed outside the ghetto at their workplaces, 2,000 worked in workshops within the ghetto, and more than 7,300 were led from the ghetto in columns to their workplaces. An account from the year 1943 lists 13.200 Jews in the ghetto.
There were many instances of work-related killings during the history of the Riga ghetto.
- Shortly after the German Jews arrived, the guard Danskop accused 18 young German women of stealing during the course of the work they were doing cleaning of the apartments of the murdered Latvian Jews, and had them shot.
- In January 1942, the Nazi authorities picked 900 of the youngest and strongest Jews and sent them southeast to a town 18 km from Riga to build a concentration camp, which became known as the Salaspils concentration camp. There these Jews were worked to death, so that in June 1942, only 60 to 70 "living skeletons" returned to Riga. In addition to the many who died during the course of the camp construction, Rudolf LangeRudolf LangeDr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
and the SchutzstaffelSchutzstaffelThe Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
Nazi SS man Richard NickelRichard NickelRichard Stanley Nickel was an American photographer and historian of Polish descent best known for his efforts to preserve and document the buildings of architect Louis Sullivan.-Early life:...
executed a number of people for even the slightest infractions.
The Dünamünde Action
In March, 1942, the Nazi authorities in Riga decided the German ghetto was getting too crowded, and organized two massacres of the German Jews. These massacres became known as the "Dünamünde Action" in which they killed about 3,800 people, mostly children, the elderly and the sick, using a ruse to trick the victims into believing they would be going to an easier work assignment. Instead they were all shot.Executions in the ghetto
The Nazi authorities established a prison in the German ghetto, and both German and Latvian Jews were subject to being thrown in it on even a suspicion of infraction of the many ghetto rules. Many were never seen again after being taken to the ghetto prison. Among other things, bartering, and smuggling forbidden items, such as food, into the ghetto, which were necessary for survival, were punishable by death if one were apprehended. It was also punishable by death to possess a newspaper or other written material. Hangings were frequent in the ghetto, almost a daily occurrence. Generally men were hanged, while women were taken to the cemetery and shot by Commandant Krause. Krause in particular seemed to enjoy shooting women himself; for example, about 10 days after the Dünamünde operation he shot the teacher Mary Korwill, who had made the mistake of wearing her own gold watch, a "crime" in the ghetto. Krause was somewhat erratic in that he did not always execute an offender. Male violators could expect no mercy from Krause; they were always hanged, although in one case, of Johann Weiss, a lawyer and an Austrian veteran of World War I, he allowed a "commutation" to shooting.German ghetto survivor Ruth Foster's father was working outside the Riga Ghetto sawing wood for the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. A German solder from their home town passed him, and said "Wilhelm, what are you doing here?" The father only answered "Bring me some bread." The soldier did so, but it did not help the father. As the Jews were marched back into the ghetto that evening from their work assignments, they were search, and those that were found with food, even potato peelings, were arrested. Later, the Nazis forced all the Jews of the Ghetto to assemble, and he shot the father and two others in the back of the head with his pistol, as the family watched along with the other Jews of the ghetto.
1942 in the German Ghetto
On April 2 and May 4, 1942 two transports of Jewish men were taken from the ghetto to Salaspils concentration campSalaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga . The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp...
. Krause had wanted the men retained in the ghetto, while Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
wanted them transferred to Salaspils for work duties. Conditions at Salaspils were harsh. In August, 1942 about one third of the transportees to Salapils were returned to the ghetto. Many of those returned were in poor health and died shortly after their return.
The German Jews in the ghetto began to rumor among themselves that the Germans had brought them to Riga to be exterminated. Outside of the ghetto there were housed a few Jews whose work duties gave them confirmation of the overall Nazi plan. Some Jews worked at the headquarters of Einsatzkommando 2c
Einsatzkommando
During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads—up to 3,000 men each—usually composed of 500-1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to kill Jews, Romani, communists and the NKVD collaborators in the captured...
were given the task of sorting the clothing and jewelry that had come from the victims of the massacres in Latvia. Many of these came in suitcases, and from the names and addresses on the luggage, the Jews charged with sorting the items could tell where they'd come from. Other personal effects from the victims came into Riga from all over Latvia where murders were occurring. The local SS picked over the effects before they were sent back to Germany, and Jewish women who cleaned the apartments of officers found many valuable things, such drawers full of watches, closets full of furs (with the labels of their original owners still on them).
The Nazi gave the task of digging graves to a work detail called "Kommando Krause 2." This group of 38 Jewish men, was housed at the Central Prison. They were instructed not to tell anyone about the mass killings. 16 of these men survived long enough to be returned to the German ghetto, violated their instructions, and told the people there about the mass killings that had been perpetrated in the forests around Riga.
Lilli Henoch
Lilli Henoch
Lilli Henoch was a German track and field athlete who set four world records and won 10 German national championships, in four different disciplines....
, a German world record holder in the discus, shot put, and 4 × 100 meters relay events, and the holder of 10 German national championships, was deported to the ghetto on September 5, 1942, and killed by machine gun and buried in a mass grave shortly thereafter.
Dissolution and KZ Kaiserwald
The lack of workers for important war enterprises, and the economic advantage, which the WVHASS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt was responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects for the Allgemeine-SS...
drew by the hiring from Jewish forced laborers, did not protect however permanently against the destruction intentions of the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
arranged in June 1943 on to seize:
In the summer of 1943, in the Riga suburb of Kaiserwald (Latvian:
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
Mežaparks) the Nazis constructed Kaiserwald concentration camp, where eight barracks for prisoners were planned. The first four hundred Jews were transferred there in July 1943 from the ghetto. For them, this meant separation from family. They were confronted also with prisoner clothing, shearing of their hair, and loss of privacy.
From this time on the gradual dissolution of the ghetto in Riga began. For the most part it was vacated in November 1943. Extensive planning to remove and second establish the concentration camp, was not no more realised. Several enterprises furnished camps, in which the forced laborers were housed. Older people, children, people who cared for the surviving children, and persons with illnesses were transferred by train in November 1943 to Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. The total on this transport is in dispute, but most observers believe that 2,000 people were included on the Auschwitz train. By the end of November all the Jews who were not murdered in Biķernieki or elsewhere had been transferred out of the ghetto.
Time line
- 22 Jun 41: German invasion.
- 1 Jul 41: Riga falls to German forces.
- 13 Oct 41: German occupation civil chief Hinrich LohseHinrich LohseHinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
issues forfeiture decree. - 24 Oct 41: Ghetto completely enclosed by barbed wire.
- 25 Oct 41: All Latvian Jews in Riga and vicinity required to live in ghetto.
- 29 Nov 41: First trainload of about 1,000 German Jews arrives in Riga.
- 30 Nov 41: First day of Rumbula massacreRumbula massacreThe Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps...
; approximately 12,000 Latvian Jews from the ghetto murdered; 1,000 German Jews from first train also murdered. - 1 Dec to 8 Dec 1941: Four trainloads of Jews deported from the Reich arrive in Riga and are housed initially at Jumpravuiža under atrocious conditions; many are shot by the Arājs commandoArajs CommandoThe Arajs Kommando , led by SS-Sturmbannführer Viktors Arājs, was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police subordinated to the Nazi SD...
in the Biķernieki forest, others are transferred to Salaspils to continue the construction of the concentration camp there. - 8 Dec 41: Second day of Rumbula; approximately 12,000 more Latvian Jews from the ghetto are murdered.
- 16 Mar 1942: First Dünamünde Action. 1,900 Reich Jews from the ghetto are murdered.
- 25 Mar 1942: Second Dünamünde Action. 1,840 Reich Jews from Jumpravmuiža are murdered.
- 31 Oct 1942: Execution of the Latvian ghetto police.
- July 1943: Transfer of ghetto occupants to Kaiserwald (Mežaparks) concentration camp begins.
- 8 Oct 1943: Transfer of LiepājaLiepajaLiepāja ; ), is a republican city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea directly at 21°E. It is the largest city in the Kurzeme Region of Latvia, the third largest city in Latvia after Riga and Daugavpils and an important ice-free port...
Ghetto survivors to Riga Ghetto - 2 Nov 1943: About 2,000 people, including children, their caregivers, the old and the sick, are transported from the ghetto to Auschwitz concentration camp.
- End of Nov 1943: All Jews removed from the ghetto, either by transport to another camp or by murder.
Historiographical
Angrick, Andrej, and Klein, Peter, Die "Endlösung" in Riga. Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941–1944, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8- Wolff, Jeannette, published in Boehm, Eric H., ed., We Survived: Fourteen Histories of the Hidden and Hunted in Nazi Germany, Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2003 ISBN 0813340586
- Dobroszycki, Lucjan, and Gurock, Jeffrey S.Jeffrey S. GurockJeffrey S. Gurock is Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University. He has written over a dozen books in the field of American Jewish History and also served as associate editor to American Jewish History, the most important journal in that field...
, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union : studies and sources on the destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied territories of the USSR, 1941–1945 - Ezergailis, AndrewAndrew EzergailisAndrew Ezergailis is a retired Professor of History, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA, known for his research into the 20th-century history of Latvia, particularly of the 1917 Revolution and the Holocaust in Latvia....
, The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944—The Missing Center, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996 ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 Gottwald, Alfred, and Shulle, Diana, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945 Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 - Hilberg, RaulRaul HilbergRaul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, The destruction of the European Jews, (3d ed.) New Haven, Connecticut ; London : Yale University Press 2003 ISBN 0300095929 - Kaufmann, Max, Die Vernichtung des Judens Lettlands (The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia), Munich, 1947, English translation by Laimdota Mazzarins available on-line as Churbn Lettland -- The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia (all references in this article are to page numbers in the on-line edition)
- Press, Bernhard, The murder of the Jews in Latvia,The murder of the Jews in Latvia : 1941–1945, Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 2000 ISBN 0810117290
- Schneider, Gertrude, Journey into terror: story of the Riga Ghetto, (2d Ed.) Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2001 ISBN 0275970507
War crimes trials and evidence
- Brätigam, Otto, Memorandum dated 18 Dec. 1941, "Jewish Question re correspondence of 15 Nov. 1941" translated and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Exhibit 3666-PS, Volume VII, pages 978-995, USGPO, Washington, D.C. 1946 ("Red Series")
- Lohse, HinrichHinrich LohseHinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician, best known for his World War II rule of the Baltic states.-Early life:...
, Directions concerning treatment of Jewish property 13 October 1941, translated and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Exhibit 342-PS, Volume III, pages 264-265, USGPO, Washington, D.C. 1946 ("Red Series") - Stahlecker, Franz W.Franz Walter StahleckerFranz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...
, "Comprehensive Report of Einsatzgruppe A Operations up to 15 October 1941", Exhibit L-180, translated in part and reprinted in Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume VII, pages 978-995, USGPO, Washington, D.C. 1946 ("Red Series")
Personal accounts
- Abstract: Berman, Joseph, "Ascension Commando"; testimony against Max Gymnich, 1 Dec 1947, provided to the former Association of Baltic Jews, full statement available on line at Weiner Library, Document 057-EA-1222
- Landau, Antoine, Evidence against various Nazi criminals in Latvia, statement dated May 25, 1948, provided to the Association of Baltic Jews, available on line at Weiner Library (abstract is in English; statement is in German)
- Michelson, Frida, I Survived Rumbuli, (translated from Russian and edited by Wolf Goodman), The Holocaust Library, New York 1979 ISBN 0-89604-030-5
- Smith, Lyn, Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust, Carroll & Graf, New York 2005 ISBN 0-7867-1640-1
Newsreels,films and books
Fritz Bauer Institut · Cinematographie des Holocaust (describes in detail the Nazi propaganda newsreel DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU // [NR. 567 / 30 / 16.07.1941] ///, which includes scenes which the film says are of war damage in Riga, Latvians lining streets and welcoming German soldiers, NKVD atrocities, Jews forced to clean up war damage, Jews being attacked by angry Latvians, and the burning of the Great Choral Synagogue.)- "The Odessa FileThe Odessa FileThe Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander....
" by Frederick ForsythFrederick ForsythFrederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
.. The book contains a fictionalized description of the Riga Ghetto. The plot of the book states a German Freelance Journalist trying to track down "Butcher of Riga" for personal reasons. The book has been criticized as "lurid" and containing many historical inaccuracies.