Journey into Terror: Story of the Riga Ghetto, New and Expanded Edition by Gertrude Schneider

Author:Gertrude Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-01-27T19:45:00+00:00

8

Romance in the Ghetto

It was common knowledge in the ghetto that Commandant Kurt Krause was quite fond of one Jewess, the beautiful Oily Adler who had been sent to Riga from Vienna in January and had been made a member of the Prague group. Krause permitted her to run the ghetto's only beauty parlor on Prager Strasse, complete with hair dryers, mirrors, and wash basins. He also saw to it that her younger sister, Gerda Hacker, was assigned to a labor detail which was known to be very desirable because those employed in it had many chances to get food.

In addition to the commandant, any SS man in the ghetto who wanted to help a Jew, or more often a Jewess, could easily get him or her into a "good" labor detail by just contacting Schultz, the labor detail administrator. Krause seldom interfered with labor detail assignments, but whenever he liked a young girl, he would see to it that she got a better job. He was reported to have also had several affairs with other Jewish girls in the ghetto besides Oily Adler. Consorting with a Jewess was a serious crime; it was referred to as Rassenschande (racial violation), and the usual punishment was death for the Jew and either prison or death for the "Aryan" partner. But Krause did not seem to fear the consequences. The Riga Ghetto seemed oblivious to any laws except those made by Krause, and apparently the stigma of Rassenschande did not bother him, nor was he the only German to feel that way. Oberzaacht- meister Neumann had a girlfriend from the Leipzig group, whom he met regularly in the garden in back of No. 17 Berliner Strasse. Krause's chauffeur, Gymnich, was very friendly with a girl from the Cologne group, and rumor had it that he even smuggled letters from her to Gentile friends in the Reich.

Since there was not much to do at the beauty parlor, it became a hangout for the ghetto's elite, who would stop in and chat with Olly. Yet, though she enjoyed a certain status, most of the ghetto inmates regarded her not as another Queen Esther, but simply as a Jewish girl who had compromised herself.

Olly's beauty proved to be her undoing. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Olly, along with all the others, was taken to Camp Kaiserwald. There, Hans Hannes, one of the Gentile "professional criminals" imprisoned at the camp, fell in love with her. The affair was quite obvious and Emilie Kowa, the SS overseer of women, reported it. It was believed that Kowa herself liked Hannes and therefore wanted to be rid of her hated rival. Olly was incarcerated at the Central Prison, and executed there in July 1944; Hannes was merely transferred to one of the camps in the vicinity. When he later returned to Kaiserwald, rumor had it that he now had a liaison with Emilie Kowa, since he once remarked that he had exchanged "a lovely swan for a goose.""

But all that still lay in the future.

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