Prague Journal

Tuesday, May 31, 2005.

After a long morning’s work together on a case study project at Ebel’s Café in Old Town, Veena and I went to the Robert Guttmann Gallery at the back entrance of the Spanish Synagogue to see the exhibit of the 1942 transports of the Bohemian Protectorate Jews to the Baltic States, entitled “Since then I have believed in fate…” Having just returned from a Baltic state, and having just learned about the treatment of the Jews in Lithuania during this time, seeing this exhibit was particularly timely for me. This exhibit deals with the transport trains that were dispatched from the Terezín ghetto before October 26, 1942, when deportations to Auschwitz began. The first part of the exhibition is on the fate of Bohemian Jews who were transported between January 9 and October 22, 1942 to the Nazi-occupied Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia. There is a second part currently under preparation that will be on deportations to Belarus and eastern Poland. Both exhibits are based on Lukáš Přibyl’s long-term studies, his photography collection and his interviews with Shoah survivors, which will be presented in the spring of 2006 in a four-part documentary film. The exhibit contained some of the material brought together for this film.
The Latvian capital Riga was the destination for the first two transports – “O” and “P” – which left the Terezín ghetto on the 9th and 15th of January 1942. The prisoners from the first Czech transport, together with German Jews, replaced the original inhabitants of the Riga ghetto, most of whom had been shot during two extensive massacres in the nearby forests of Rumbula and Bikernieki. Dozens of fit young men from the Czech transports were taken away to work in the labor camp at Salaspils, where many of them perished due to the harsh winter and the barbaric conditions. Life in the ghetto was not any easier – male and female inmates were forced to do the hardest labor and all had to struggle to get a little extra to make up for the meager rations. In addition, there were occasional liquidation campaigns, directed mostly at the elderly, children and the sick. After the liquidation of the ghetto in the summer of 1943, the remaining Jews were relocated to the newly opened concentration camp of Kaiserwald. The vast majority were then sent via the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig to another slave labor camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the US and British forces, or to the area around Stutthof, where, after the Death Marches, they were found in the spring of 1945 by the Soviet army.
The transports “Bb” and “Be”, which were dispatched in the same year (on August 20 and September 1, 1942), were also directed to the Baltic states. Of the one thousand prisoners on transport “Bb,” not a single survivor was found after the war; it is most probably that they were all murdered immediately upon arrival. Transport “Be,” which was apparently originally destined for Riga, was sent on to Estonia, due to “overcrowding” at the Riga ghetto. It pulled into the small station of Raasiku, where a selection was carried out, after which most of the people were taken away in buses. At a sandbank called Kalevi Liiva, all the men, women and children who were “unfit for work” were forced to undress and to hand over all valuables. They were then shot and pushed into freshly dug mass graves. The only ones to survive the war were a few women who had been sent to Tallinn via the Jägala concentration camp at the end of 1942 and in the course of 1943, where they were put to work clearing up the ruins after air raids and laboring on construction sites, among other things. They were then sent to other concentration camps in Estonia, particularly in Ereda and Goldfields. After the evacuation of these camps at the end of the summer of 1944, the women were relocated to Stutthof, where they met with survivors from Latvia. The largest group of women was then transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Ochsenzoll, where they were put to work in the munitions factory. From there they were deported to Bergen-Belsen, although some of them were reclaimed by Ochsenzoll after a few days. Shortly before the end of the war, they left on a Red Cross transport via Denmark to Sweden. Having managed to survive the appalling conditions at Bergen-Belsen, these women were liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945.
This exhibition features hitherto little-known information not only on the ghettos and camps in this area, but also on the lives of the inmates who were forcibly dragged here. Filmclips of authentic testimony of those who survived the horrors, conveying their impressions and individual experiences, were extremely heart-rending. The photographs and quotes on display filled in the context of the conditions of the time. Despite the tiny size of the museum, we were there nearly two hours, taking in the filmed testimonials, written quotes and photographs.

posted by JWinn @ 5:11 PM