journey into terror - story of the riga ghetto
prof. gertrude schneider, née hirschhorn (born 1928) was deported from vienna to riga with her parents and her younger sister in february 1942; she survived. she wrote a diary and precisely recorded the cruel conditions of ghetto life. however, she not only wrote about the victims, the selfless heroes and tragic martyrs. she took note of daily life and survival just as well, and also of the fact that, even in the shadow of death, there were moments of happiness, love, and poetry. many years later, in the u.s. and as a trained historian, the author systematically reviewed all documents, witness statements, and memories of the riga ghetto and the history of the persecuted german, austrian and czech jews, and focused her academic work on the issue. the book’s unique flavour is due to this blend between the unbiased, precise recollections of a young girl, a contemporary witness, and the simultaneous painstaking and methodically controlled assessments of the facts of holocaust research by a historian.
