The Odessa File

‘Dance,’ he snarled.

She made a few little shuffling movements, then stopped. Roschmann drew his Lüger, eased back the hammer and fired it into the sand an inch from her feet. She jumped a foot in the air from fright.

‘Dance … dance … dance for us, you hideous Jewish bitch,’ he shouted, firing a bullet into the sand beneath her feet each time he said ‘Dance’.

Smacking in one spare magazine after another until he had used up the three in his pouch, he made her dance for half an hour, leaping ever higher and higher, her skirts flying round her hips with each jump, until at last she fell to the sand unable to rise whether she lived or died. Roschmann fired his last three slugs into the sand in front of her face, blasting the sand up into her eyes. Between the crash of each shot came the old woman’s rattling wheeze that could be heard across the parade square.

When he had no more ammunition left he shouted ‘Dance’ again and slammed his jackboot into her belly. All this had happened in complete silence from us, until the man next to me started to pray. He was a Hassid, small and bearded, still wearing the rags of his long black coat; despite the cold which forced most of us to wear ear-muffs on our caps, he had the broad-brimmed hat of his sect. He began to recite the Shema, over and over again, in a quavering voice that grew steadily louder. Knowing that Roschmann was in his most vicious mood, I too began to pray, silently, that the Hassid would be quiet. But he would not.

‘Hear O Israel …’

‘Shut up,’ I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.

‘Adonai elohenu … the Lord is our God …’

‘Will you be quiet. You’ll get us all killed.’

‘The Lord is One … Adonai Eha-a-ad.’

Like a cantor he drew out the last syllable in the traditional way, as Rabbi Akiva had done as he died in the amphitheatre at Caesarea on the orders of Tinius Rufus. It was just at that moment that Roschmann stopped screaming at the old woman. He lifted his head like an animal scenting the wind and turned towards us. As I stood a head taller than the Hassid, he looked at me.

‘Who was that talking?’ he screamed, striding towards me across the sand. ‘You … step out of line.’ There was no doubt he was pointing at me. I thought, ‘This is the end then. So what? It doesn’t matter, it had to happen, now or some other time.’ I stepped forward as he arrived in front of me.

He did not say anything, but his face was twitching like a maniac. Then it relaxed and he gave his quiet, wolfish smile that struck terror into everyone in the ghetto, even the Latvian SS men.

His hand moved so quickly no one could see it. I felt only a sort of thump down the left side of my face, simultaneous with a tremendous bang as if a bomb had gone off next to my ear-drums. Then the quite distinct but detached feeling of my own skin splitting like rotten calico from temple to mouth. Even before it had started to bleed, Roschmann’s hand moved again, the other way this time, and his quirt ripped open the other side of my face with the same loud bang in the ear and the feeling of something tearing. It was a two-foot quirt, sprung with whippy steel core at the handle end, the remaining foot-length being of plaited leather thongs without the core, and when drawn across and down the human skin at the same time the plaiting could split the hide like tissue paper. I had seen it done.

Within a matter of seconds I felt the trickle of warm blood beginning to flow down the front of my jacket, dripping off my chin in two little red fountains. Roschmann swung away from me, then back, pointing to the old woman still sobbing in the centre of the square.

‘Pick up that old hag and take her to the van,’ he barked.

And so, a few minutes ahead of the arrival of the other hundred victims, I picked up the old woman and carried her down Little Hill Street to the gate and the waiting van, pouring blood on to her from my chin. I set her down in the back of the van and made to leave her there. As I did so she gripped my wrist in withered fingers, with a strength I would not have thought she still possessed. She pulled me down towards her, squatting on the floor of the death-van, and with a small cambric handkerchief that must have come from better days staunched some of the still flowing blood.

She looked up at me from a face streaked with mascara, rouge, tears and sand, but with dark eyes bright as stars.

‘Jew, my son,’ she hissed, ‘you must live. Swear to me that you will live. Swear to me you will get out of this place alive. You must live, so that you can tell them, them outside in the other world, what happened to our people here. Promise me, swear it by Sefer Torah.’

And so I swore that I would live, somehow, no matter what the cost. Then she let me go. I stumbled back down the road into the ghetto, and halfway down I fainted …

Shortly after returning to work I made two decisions. One was to keep a secret diary, nightly tattooing words and dates with a pin and black ink into the skin of my feet and legs, so that one day I would be able to transcribe all that had happened in Riga, and give precise evidence against those responsible.

The second decision was to become a Kapo, a member of the Jewish police.

The decision was hard, for these were men who herded their fellow Jews to work and back, and often to the place of execution. Moreover, they carried a pickaxe handle and occasionally, when under the eye of a German SS officer, used them liberally to beat their fellow Jews to work harder. Nevertheless, on 1st April, 1942, I went to the chief of the Kapos and volunteered, thus becoming an outcast from the company of my fellow Jews. There was always room for an extra Kapo, for despite the better rations, living conditions and release from slave labour, very few agreed to become one …

I should here describe the method of execution of those unfit for labour, for in this manner between 70,000 and 80,000 Jews were exterminated under the orders of Eduard Roschmann at Riga. When the cattle train arrived at the station with a new consignment of prisoners, usually about 5000 strong, there were always close to a thousand already dead from the journey. Only occasionally was it as low as a few hundred, scattered between fifty cars.

When the new arrivals were lined up on Tin Square the selections for extermination too

k place, not merely among the new arrivals but among us all. That was the point of the head-count each morning and evening. Among the new arrivals those weak or frail, old or diseased, most of the women and almost all the children, were singled out as being unfit for work. These were set on one side. The remainder were then counted. If they totalled 2000, then 2000 of the existing inmates were also picked out, so that 5000 had arrived and 5000 went to execution hill. That way there was no overcrowding. A man might survive six months of slave labour, seldom more, then, when his health was reduced to ruins, Roschmann’s quirt would tap him on the chest one day and he would go to join the ranks of the dead … At first these victims were marched in column to a forest outside the town. The Latvians called it Bickernicker Forest, and the Germans renamed it the Hochwald or High Forest. Here, in clearings between the pines, enormous open ditches had been dug by the Riga Jews before they died. And here the Latvian SS guards, under the eye and orders of Eduard Roschmann, mowed them down so that they fell into the ditches. The remaining Riga Jews then filled in enough earth to cover the bodies, adding one more layer of corpses to those underneath until the ditch was full. Then a new one was started.

From the ghetto we could hear the chattering of the machine guns when each new consignment was liquidated, and watch Roschmann riding back down the hill and through the ghetto gates in his open car when it was over …

After I became a Kapo all social contact between me and the other internees ceased. There was no point in explaining why I had done it, that one Kapo more or less would make no difference, not increasing the death toll by the single digit; but that one single surviving witness might make all the difference, not to save the Jews of Germany, but to avenge them. This at least was the argument I repeated to myself, but was it the real reason? Or was I just afraid to die? Whatever it was, fear soon ceased to be a factor, for in August that year something happened that caused my soul to die inside my body, leaving only the husk struggling to survive …

In July 1942 a big new transport of Austrian Jews came through from Vienna. Apparently they were marked without exception for ‘special treatment’, for the entire shipment never came to the ghetto. We did not see them, for they were all marched from the station to High Forest and machine-gunned. Later that evening down the hill rolled four lorries full of clothes, which were brought to the Tin Square for sorting. They made a mound as big as a house until they were sorted out into piles of shoes, socks, underpants, trousers, dresses, jackets, shaving brushes, spectacles, dentures, wedding rings, signet rings, caps and so forth.

Of course, this was standard procedure for executed transports. All those killed on execution hill were stripped at the graveside and their effects brought down later. These were then sorted and sent back to the Reich. The gold, silver and jewellery was taken in charge by Roschmann personally …