Deportations to the "Reichskommissariat Ostland" in 1941/42

Riga

In Riga, the capital of Latvia which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, there lived 43,600 Jews in 1935, which corresponded to 11.3 percent of the population. Excesses directed against the Jewish population followed immediately after the invasion by German troops on July 1, 1941. After the introduction of numerous discriminatory decrees, and after plunderings and massacres, the ghetto was installed and surrounded by a wall in September/Oktober 1941.

Between the end of November and the beginning of December 1941, 27,000 Jews, most of them from Latvia, but including about 400 elderly people from Vienna, were shot in Rumbula forest. In this way space was to be provided for fresh transports from Germany and Austria.

Transports with totaly 4,200 Jews arrived from Austria in Riga after a journey lasting 8 days, on December 3, 1941, and on January 11 and 26 and February 6, 1942. The deportees were put into those areas of the ghetto which had been emptied by the murder programme or else had to perform forced labour in the outpost of Salaspils. The mortality rate of those interned in the ghetto rose sharply because of the frightful living conditions, particularly among the weaker ones, but above all among the elderly and the children.

When on February 6, 1942, the last transport from Vienna arrived in Riga, on arrival at Skrotave station those to whom the kilometre-long march on foot to the ghetto seemed too exhausting were offered lorries - which in fact were camouflaged gasvans - to travel to the ghetto. Of 1,000 deportees from Vienna, only 300 reached the ghetto on foot.

Only about 800 of the 20,000 men, women and children deported to Riga survived the selection for forced labour, the ghetto and the various concentration camps, and among them were about 100 Austrian Jews.

Schneider family.
First row: Abraham (born on June 18, 1885), Robert (born on March 25, 1936) and Josefine (born on August 18, 1892) Schneider were deported together from Vienna to Riga on February 6, 1942, and killed there.
Second row: Gertrude (born on August 10, 1923) and Max (born on December 4, 1921) Schneider managed to escape to Great Britain.




Elfriede Frischmann (born on November 10, 1933) lived until 1939 with her parents, Geza and Ella Frischmann, in Franziskanergasse in St. Pölten. Then the family moved to Vienna, and lived at Dorotheergasse 6/13 in the first district. On January 26, 1942, they were deported to Riga, and murdered shortly afterwards.


» Minsk

« back to database