The Murder of the Jews in Latvia: 1941-1945 FROM THE PUBLISHER
At the end of June 1941, Latvia fell into the hands of the Germans. Within months the command was given to "evacuate" the Jews of the Riga ghetto. Armed gangs of Latvians and Germans forced their way into Jewish homes, startling the occupants out of their sleep and shooting them in their beds. On streets, in shops, and in factories, the Jews of Riga were hunted down. Men, women, and children were driven into groves on the outskirts of town, forced to dig mass graves or stand over those already dug, and shot by the hundreds of thousands. Bernhard Press was one of the few to survive.
This book is Press's account of life and death during the Nazi reign of terror in Latvia. Press describes his escape from the Riga ghetto, his three years in hiding with the family of a friend, and the further trials that awaited the surviving Jews of Riga after Latvia 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.
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