Hate Vanquished, Lives Remembered: A Survivor's Story

There are few first-person accounts of the Riga Ghetto since few survived. Most of the Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and their brutal Latvian allies, taken to the outskirts of the city, and massacred. The original Ghetto existed for only 35 days. Charlotte Arpadi was not a native of Riga. Brought up in Berlin, her father ran a popular restaurant. With pressures mounting the Arpadis jumped at the chance for exit visas to Latvia, where they had relatives. They hoped to find sanctuary in Shanghai, but the family instead received visas to America. They pleaded with Charlotte to leave, but she insisted on staying, since she had fallen in love with her brother's boss. When Germany invaded, she was caught. Spared the fate of most of the other Jews, she worked in a hospital. When the former Ghetto was re-populated with Jews from Germany and elsewhere, she continued to work, but in 1943 she was sent to the newly-established concentration camp, Kaiserwald. During the next year, she and her fellow inmates were evacuated to Stutthof, an even more horrifying camp. After enduring a forced march, she was finally liberated. She made her way to Paris and was able to contact her parents in New York. Her troubles were not over; she had contracted tuberculosis. It was years before she was able to resume a normal life. Charlotte Arpadi Baum died in 2001, but she left us with her powerfully told story of determination and survival.