The Odessa File Page #2

But Esther and I survived

through that year.

I had been an architect before the war...

...and knew enough of carpentry

to get skilled work.

We laboured 12 hours a day

in the camp workshops...

...or else at the lumber mills

in the damp frozen woods near the coast.

Several times during the following winter,

I thought Esther would die.

The hunger, the cold,

the constant brutalities...

...seemed to have broken her spirit

and her will to live.

Yet, compared to some, we were fortunate.

Many of the prisoners

were given no food at all...

...until they died of starvation.

Roschmann had a hobby.

He liked to destroy human beings.

First their soul, then their body.

Sometimes Roschmann amused himself...

...by kicking those about to die

as they huddled together naked...

...stripped of dignity and of all hope.

He liked watching the dogs feed on them

while they were still breathing.

We had seen a strange van...

...grey coloured,

waiting near the gates of the camp.

It had false windows painted on it.

There were drawings

of people laughing and picnicking.

To the workers in the fields

outside the camp...

...when the van went by...

...it must have looked like there was

a holiday party...

...eating and drinking inside.

Some prisoner musicians

were made to play...

...to add to the festivities.

But we soon found out

that the van had a very different purpose.

Roschmann had converted it

into a gas chamber.

The exhaust pipe

had been fed back into the van...

...so that everyone inside

was suffocated by the fumes.

The expression in Esther's eyes

has stayed with me always.

After her death, my soul died inside me.

But my body and mind remained alive.

I was determined to survive...

...and one day tell the world

what Roschmann did to our people here.

Peter?

It's after 8:
00.

- Aren't you supposed to be at the club?

- I tried to call a taxi, but I couldn't get one.

A taxi? What do you need a taxi for?

Don't I always take you?

Between 1941 and the end of the war...

...over 200,000 German Jews

were brought to Riga.

400 came out alive.

In late 1944, we began to hear

the crump of mortar fire.

There were rumours that the Russians

had taken the suburbs of Riga...

...and that the German army

would be forced to retreat.

On October 11,

50 of us survivors were taken to the docks.

We were helping wounded soldiers

to go on deck...

...when Roschmann drove up

in a staff car...

...and gave instructions

that they should be brought ashore again.

He intended to commandeer the ship

for the SS.

The Captain was dead

before he hit the ground.

The medal that fell from him

into the snow...

...was the Knights Cross

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