I was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1924, the second child in an upper-middle-class Jewish family. My sister, Sylvia, eight years my senior, was born in Moscow. My parents had delayed having a second child because of the disruption of World War I, the family’s evacuation to Moscow and eventual return to Riga, as well as the political uncertainties of the period. By the early 1920s the situation in the now independent Latvia had stabilized, and my family resumed a comfortable existence in the large villa adjoining our plywood factory. The household was ruled by a matriarch, my paternal grandmother...

My paternal grandmother Emma—I called her Omama (the German intimate appellation for grandmother), or Oma for short—was the head of our household. Only in the early 1930s, when her health began to fail, did she relinquish her position. My bedroom was next to my grandmother’s, and we spent many afternoons together there. It was a quiet and comfortable place, an escape from my outdoor games and sandlot soccer matches. I enjoyed being with her. I watched her play solitaire and cheat whenever an impasse occurred. Oma would teach me the game and let me help her play, or...

Riga was part of the province of Livland, which was outside the Pale of Jewish Settlement. With a number of individual exceptions, Jews were not permitted to live there. Livland, originally named Livonia by the conquering German knights, was called Vidzeme after Latvian independence. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a few Jews were granted the right to settle in Riga, and in 1842 the Jewish community was officially recognized. Gradually, more Jewish families moved there to share in the business opportunities offered by this burgeoning commercial center. The initiative and entrepreneurial spirit of the Jewish merchants and businessmen...

My father, along with his brothers, attended the Riga Stadt-Realschule, a German-language public city high school for boys. The Realschule taught modern languages—Russian, German, and French—but Latvian was not offered. The Gymnasium, the other high school in Riga, was oriented toward a classical education. In addition to Russian and German, it emphasized Latin and Greek. After completing high school, my father entered the Riga Polytechnic Institute (later Riga University), where he studied commerce (business management). He graduated with a degree in economics in 1900 and joined his father’s business.

In 1888 my grandfather Max had started a factory...

Mama never told me how she and my father met. I believe they must have been formally introduced by a marriage broker. A contemporary photograph reveals that Mama was a beautiful woman. Having met her, Papa acted promptly and forcefully. Emma wrote to her daughter Clara that my father’s sudden decision to get married caused some consternation among the mothers of Riga’s eligible young women. Nevertheless, in June 1914 my father and his mother traveled to Dvinsk to meet the prospective in-laws, for the formal announcement, and to settle the dowry. In a letter to Clara, Emma described them as...

My maternal grandmother Sophie lived in Dvinsk (Daugavpils in Latvian), a city 150 miles southeast of Riga. Sophie visited Riga infrequently. She was observant, and as we did not keep kosher she came mostly during Passover, when we used special kosher dishes with separate sets for meat and dairy.

Grandmother Sophie was a soft-spoken and slightly built, almost frail lady. On several occasions she fell and broke her arm or wrist, so she may have suffered from osteoporosis. Although I liked her and thought of her as a warm and loving person, I never felt as close to her as...

My sister, Sylvia, was born in 1916 in Moscow. The family had moved there the previous year when Riga was threatened by the Germans. Quiet, studious, and hard-working, Sylvia was a diligent student who prided herself in getting top grades in all her subjects. When I was very young she would sometimes play with me in our yard, but once Sylvia started high school she spent most of her time at home doing schoolwork. Then she seldom played with me, and I saw little of her except at mealtimes.

Sylvia’s room was off my parents’ bedroom, with no connection directly...

Of my aunts and uncles I knew my father’s sisters and brothers best. Aunts Clara and Thea and Uncle Leo visited Riga nearly every year, and Uncle Eduard lived and shared his meals with us. I knew them all well and considered them members of the immediate family.

Aunt Clara, Emma and Max’s second child and oldest daughter, was a tiny woman who never married. My grandmother told me she was sure Clara’s growth had been stunted because as a little girl she had a dark room. After World War II I heard that when she was young she had...

My aunt Thea was the baby in Grandmother Emma’s family. She died in 1977, having retained her childlike innocence and sweetness until the end. She once told us that even as an old person she still felt like a young girl.

Thea was the only one of Emma’s children whose marriage plans Emma was able to influence. The others were independent-minded and would not even consider Emma’s suggestions in this important matter. As Thea became of marriageable age, Emma began looking for a suitable husband. It was important that Thea’s future husband have a German background. Accordingly, after World War...

The highlight of our year in Latvia was spending the summer at Jurmala (or Riga Beach), a resort area 15 miles from Riga. Jurmala means “seaside” in Latvian. While my grandmother was alive, it was an annual family reunion. Aunt Thea and Peter regularly spent most of the summer with us, and Arthur joined us for a shorter period. Aunt Clara was also a steady visitor. Uncle Leo dropped by for shorter visits. Uncle Eduard generally preferred to remain in Riga and came to the beach only occasionally.

Jurmala is a long, narrow strip of land between the River Lielupe...

The course of my education was strongly influenced by the political events in Latvia. School was divided into a seven-year elementary school followed by a five-year high school. For me as for many of my friends, the orderly progression through elementary and high school was repeatedly unsettled by changes not only in schools but also by abrupt shifts in the language of instruction. During my ten years of schooling in Riga I attended three schools and was taught in four different languages: German, Latvian, Hebrew, and Russian. Switching to a new school or changing the language of instruction was always...

During the summer of 1940, just prior to the Soviet annexation of Latvia, I went to work on a farm for an obligatory four-week term. Germany’s attack on Poland had caused a shortage of imported farm labor, and the Ulmanis regime decided to mobilize high school and university students, boys and girls age fifteen and older, to help bring in the harvest. My father arranged for me to do my stint at a farm named Kauli (Latvian for “bones”) near Jekabpils, about two hours from Riga by train. The parents of some of my friends paid the farmers for taking...

In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Stalin and the Red Army were caught totally by surprise, and the precipitous retreat of the Red Army almost immediately became a rout. The previous week I had started a summer job at a furniture factory, but the factory closed within a couple of days after the start of the war. During the days following the attack I witnessed endless columns of trucks carrying Red Army soldiers driving east through town. It was a time of general confusion; rumors were rampant.

Shortly after the war...

The nazi invasion of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a new phase of World War II, one that brought the hostilities to our doorstep. German army units did not actually enter Riga until July 1, 1941. In the Jewish community it is generally believed that the attacks on the Jews started even before the nazis’ arrival, although Marger Vesterman, a Jewish historian now working in Riga, has been unable to find any documentary evidence of attacks on Jews prior to the nazi occupation. There was a great deal of confusion at the time, so the difference in our...

The area allocated to the newly established Riga Ghetto, later called the Large Ghetto, was located in a poor, run-down suburb of Riga. Although in previous years it had been a predominantly Jewish area, it was now populated by ethnic Russians who were displaced to make room for the Jews.

Inside the designated ghetto area there were not enough housing units to accommodate the number of people forced to move there. Moreover, most of the buildings were small and dilapidated, and whole families had to squeeze into a single room. Sometimes one room was shared by several unrelated groups. Originally,...

In mid-November 1941 vague rumors began to circulate: our ghetto would be closed, and we would be resettled in some work camp farther east. Within a few days workmen started to erect a barbed wire fence, partitioning off a two-block area in the far corner of the ghetto. This section was to become a barracks camp for men of working age, while all other residents of the Riga Ghetto were to be evacuated to an undisclosed destination. The prospect of being sent away from Riga was very unsettling. However bad the conditions might be, in Riga one at least had...

Five months after the nazis had taken over Riga, our entire Jewish community was gone. The majority of my relatives and friends were killed during the liquidation of the ghetto, which we later called the Large Aktion. Just thirty-seven days after being locked in the Large Ghetto, most of us—about 27,000 people—had been killed. In the Little Ghetto, the barbed wire–enclosed enclave in the corner of the former ghetto, about 4,500 people remained, among them just 500 women and only 20 to 30 children. Many of the women were seamstresses who had worked for the Germans. During...

After a short truck ride through Riga we arrived at Kaiserwald, the feared camp I had tried so long to avoid. We were met by SS men who ordered us off the truck shouting “schneller, schneller” (faster, faster). Pushed and prodded with sticks and truncheons by German and Polish inmates, we were driven into and out of showers so quickly we barely had a chance to get wet. Striped prisoners’ pajamas were thrust at us. We always had to move on the run—to and from the showers, to and from roll call, to and from the barracks, and so...

We were locked in the cargo holds of the freighter for the duration of the voyage. With the hatches covered and no sanitary facilities available, the foul, stifling air in the holds grew ever more rank. There was no water in the holds, and we suffered miserably from thirst. At one point we were “given” water by having a high-pressure fire hose turned on us. I think it was potable water, but we could not collect enough to assuage our thirst. We did not know where we were headed or when we would arrive. We were concerned that the Germans...

We arrived in Magdeburg and were immediately installed in a small slave labor camp attached to a munitions factory—Polte-Werke. In our part of the camp 500 inmates, mostly from Riga, were housed in two barracks. The camp was under the jurisdiction of KZ Buchenwald and was administered by the SS. Our commandant was Hoffman, and his assistant was Schuller. Both of these Germans had been on the SS staff of the commandant of KZ Kaiserwald, where they had been notorious for killing and beating inmates. I received a Buchenwald number: 95985.* Unlike our stay at Stutthof, we now were...

Spring found me and my 500 fellow inmates still in the small slave labor camp at Polte-Werke at the outskirts of Magdeburg. We occasionally worked at clearing debris in the city but were mostly awaiting the imminent collapse of the Third Reich. On the morning of April 11, 1945, we unexpectedly found our camp unguarded. Four of us, led by my friend Mulya Atlas, immediately left the camp and set out toward the center of the city.

After a fifteen-minute walk we found ourselves surrounded by the ruins of what once had been a residential neighborhood. Allied bombing had gutted...

My recollections of the first months after liberation are hazy. For the first time in four years I could let down my guard. I felt cared for and was completely relaxed. After a few days in the military field hospital, I was transferred to a hospital for Soviet civilians where most of the patients were former slave laborers and concentration camp inmates. I spent several months in this hospital. Although the food was adequate, it was of poor quality: a lot of soup and potatoes and very little meat or protein. It was just as well. I was severely malnourished,...

As soon as the war in Europe ended, survivors started searching frantically for their lost relatives and friends. Lists of survivors from different towns were posted in Jewish displaced persons camps, and stories as to who had been seen and where they were headed circulated widely by word of mouth. Everybody was on the move: back to their native cities and towns or away toward the West or to Israel. Most survivors were soon in touch with each other. Only the dead were not heard from, and unfortunately there were all too many of them. People caught in the Soviet...

In New York Leo greeted me at the dock and took me to his studio apartment at 58 West 57th Street, where I was installed on a couch in the foyer. Leo and Jennie Tourel had separated and now had their own apartments, although they continued to care deeply for each other and maintained a lifelong friendship. They simply could not live together. Leo confided that living with a temperamental artist had become too difficult. Leo could also be difficult to live with. He would, in a disarmingly charming manner and without explicitly raising any objection, stubbornly persist in doing...

When Julie and I married, she was a social worker with the Department of Public Welfare. Later she worked as probation officer for the Domestic Relations Court. We were able to live quite comfortably on her salary, supplemented by my earnings from the laboratory job. Upon my graduation from CCNY in spring of 1951, Sintercast, my employer the previous three years, offered me a permanent position as a metallurgical engineer. Having no formal training in metallurgy, I felt inadequately prepared. Metallurgy seemed an art, whereas electronics, a more exact science, held more appeal for me. I had trained long and...