Synopses & Reviews
At the end of June 1941, Latvia fell into the hands of the Germans. This book is an account of life and death during the subsequent Nazi reign of terror. Press describes his escape from the Riga ghetto, his three years in hiding, and the trials that awaited the surviving Jews of Riga after it was "liberated" by the Red Army. Recounting his own harrowing experience and detailing the plight of Eastern European Jews faced with the anti-Semitism of their homelands, the Germans, and the Soviets, Press recovers a lost chapter in the history of the Holocaust.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-209) and index.
About the Author
Bernhard Press was born in Riga in 1917. Because of overt anti-Semitism in Latvia, he began medical school at the University of Florence but returned home in 1938. In 1951, while at Riga University, Press was accused of high treason and sentenced to twenty-five years in the arctic labor camp at Norilsk. He was released in 1956. Press and his family emigrated to West Germany in 1979. He is Honorary Professor of Pathology at the Free University of Berlin.
Laimdota Mazzarins is a translator and an editor living in Cologne.
Table of Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Preface
The Dead
1. On the History of Jews in Latvia
2. On the Political Situation of the Jews in Latvia
3. Terror
4. Imprisonment
5. The Ghetto Is Established
6. Daily Life in the Ghetto
7. Extermination
The Martyrs
8. The Small Ghetto
9. The Large German Ghetto
10. The Kaiserwald Concentration Camp
11. Genocide in Latvia
The Survivors
12. Flight
13. Freedom
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index