Immediate mobilization of municipal actors

16The dispossession of Jewish property in Riga occurred very quickly. Jews who had not fled were evicted from their dwellings between early July and late October 1941, when the gates to the ghetto were closed. Initially combined with other categories of property to be reallocated, the possessions of “fled Jews” and “Jewish apartments” were quickly identified and labeled as such. Between July 1941 and February 1942, approximately three quarters of these apartments were reallocated to non-Jews. They represented the majority of rental apartments that changed hands (alongside the property of communists and all those who had fled). This process was structured around a local policy implemented on July 6, 1941. The sparse documents preserved in Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Riga do not allow us to clearly reconstitute the origin of this policy, especially the instructions given by the Germans. They do indicate, however, that Riga’s city council, in response to repeated prompting, played an essential role in its implementation. This policy was modified gradually as the Germans arrived (military followed by civilians beginning in September 1941) and as general directives were laid down by the Reichskommissariat Ostland concerning “Jewish property” (July 27 and October 13, 1941). [9]

17On the morning of Sunday, July 6, Colonel Nagel, head of the Wehrmarcht’s economic commando “Swinemünde,” arrived in Riga with the mission to “reform” the Ostland economy. There is little doubt that he provided the impetus for an organized and targeted dispossession policy. [10] At noon that same day, former Latvian officers, Colonel Kreišmanis and Lieutenant-colonel Līcis, sent orders to every police station in the city and to the head of the municipal housing department: they were to register the apartments of Jews, evict them in order to house German officers and civilian victims (the attack had destroyed 1,000 dwellings), with the latter group being rehoused in facilities that had not been taken by the army. [11] The experiences of these two men (respectively, the former head of a billeting department for the Latvian ministry of war, and a former officer of the supply corps of the Latvian army [12]) contributed to the authority granted them over these services. The program was implemented immediately.

18The decision confirmed on July 6 to target Jewish property was not motivated by the fact that these dwellings were vacant due to persecution, but rather it anticipated the persecution. After all, many other homes were vacant: 4,000 apartments empty due to the exodus were on file during that same period. [13] Neither shortage nor competing demand was the motivation for this move; other factors are still to be determined. We know that German occupation policies hardened in 1941, [14] however the orders given by the Wehrmacht in Riga in early July cannot be traced. Kreišmanis and Līcis’s zeal must therefore be questioned. Both had been demobilized by the Soviet regime at the end of 1940; collaborating enabled them to regain a position. Most importantly, this approach corresponded to a key political project prepared in Germany: create a satellite government of the Reich, the “Organizational Center of Liberated Latvia,” [15] led by Kreišmanis and in which Līcis ran the department to billet the German army. Helping the Germans find lodging gave credibility to the endeavor. This particular political dimension of collaboration is specific to the Baltic region. [16]

19However, the two men’s involvement as collaborators differed. Neither Kreišmanis nor Līcis were known to be members of the anti-Semitic organization Pērkonkrusts (banned since 1934) and, in the archives of July 1941, ideological motives are absent. But we do know that there were efforts by some student associations to spread anti-Semitic messages within the military in the 1930s. [17] Kreišmanis’s convictions were certainly clear. Beginning on July 1, he participated in organizing militias and ran the publication of the journal Tēvija, for which he hired members of Pērkonkrusts. On July 11, this journal published an anonymous article, “The apartments of Jews must be given to homeless Latvians.” The text claimed that Jews, as “Bolshevik agents,” had requisitioned the best apartments in 1940, occupied those of murdered Latvians, and destroyed Old Riga (1^st district, see document 4) during the German attack. In other words, Jews had obtained their apartments fraudulently and were responsible for victims’ situations. The text, without mentioning the decisions of July 6, invited the victims of the Soviet regime to take revenge against Jews by claiming their homes. The text presents a variant of the Judeo-Bolshevik plot, which German propaganda had introduced to the region before the invasion, [18] the social dimension of which echoed expressions of Soviet anti-Semitism from the late 1930s.

20Līcis’s ideological commitment is less certain, given that he withdrew from his functions after a few days and until the end of the war. His career hints at other personal and material motivations. He first had to distance himself from his Bolshevik past (he fought in the Red Army between 1919 and 1922). The military tribunal that tried him in 1945 (and sentenced him to the Gulag) was unable to retrace his specific trajectory during the first weeks of the occupation, but did provide evidence of his participation in arrests and the fact that he himself moved into the apartment of a Jewish family that managed to escape at the time of the invasion. [19]

21Another actor, the architect Dreijmanis, who was appointed provisional mayor in early July by the Organizational Center, appears to have played an important role in the relationship with the Germans, the management of dispossession, and the creation of the ghetto, especially after the Germans eliminated the Organizational Center in late July. The month of August is, however, very poorly documented.

22Over the summer, this local dispossession policy primarily concerned abandoned apartments as well as homes in wealthier neighborhoods, beginning with the garden city of Kaiserwald (northeast of central Riga), followed by the 1^st and 2^nd districts in August, reallocated for the most part with the possessions found inside. [20] The beneficiaries were primarily German officers as well as 1,000 non-Jewish families (of Latvian, and also Russian or Baltic German, origin) resettled by the housing department. The dispossession of apartments thus partially preceded the formation of the ghetto, strictly speaking. The German military was the main beneficiary, along with the local population (and not just the victims of the invasion).

23In September 1941, Riga came under the authority of the civil occupation administrations established there: the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the Generalkommissariat of Latvia, and the Gebietskommissariat of the city of Riga (document 2C). The latter was composed of only a district commissar and a handful of representatives (Beauftragte). Their mission was to monitor the activity of the municipal administration. As soon as he arrived, the district superintendent, Wittrock—who was a friend of Alfred Rosenberg—was also appointed mayor of the city and took over municipal services in which Germans were appointed to head up various services. Whereas the housing department was partially reorganized and placed under the management of Housing and Real Estate, Wittrock and his representatives were given full authority over housing and responsibility for managing requisitions by the Wehrmacht. [21] Representatives dealing with housing issues and the supply of furniture were located in the same building as the billeting service of the Kommandantur. [22] They in fact managed the work of the housing service and the creation of the ghetto, and therefore dispossession. These men were responsible for applying the Reichskommissariat’s movable property policies, which remained vague until October, and did not establish any specific measures for rental dwellings. They were also ideologically committed, as we will see later.

24According to a report by superintendent Wittrock, between October 1941 and January 1942, the representative for housing issues received 5,000 rehousing requests (of which I found no trace), inspected more than 3,000 vacant apartments, and reallocated 2,900. [23] Based on a sample studied, one can estimate that 70% of these reallocated apartments were occupied by Jews before the invasion. During this period, close to half of the beneficiaries of dispossession were Germans (Reichsdeutsche). The number of Germans present (7,000 recorded in 1942) clearly set Riga apart from other cities in Ostland. During this period, reallocated apartments had largely belonged to Jews who had been evicted and confined to the ghetto, which was established in a poor neighborhood where very few Jews had lived before the invasion. [24] In principle, the representative should have reallocated Jewish dwellings, homes seized by the Wehrmacht, and those claimed by German citizens—categories that are certainly far from cut and dried—while the housing department dealt with other apartments. But this distribution of tasks was not strict, which tends to confirm the analysis of Sven Jüngerkes: the mayor’s office and the superintendent’s office were separate physically but not in terms of operation (document 3). [25]

Document 3

Organizational chart of municipal housing services in July and September 1941

Organizational chart of municipal housing services in July and September 1941

Document 4

25Two essential elements characterize the two occupation regimes (military and civil) that succeeded each other in 1941. On the one hand, municipal action was framed by German policies and committed actors. On the other hand, institutional actors and their needs were perfectly coordinated, which calls into question the separation made by historians between military requisitions and administrative dispossession. Competing interests temporarily gave way to cooperation. The priority given to the Germans in principle was not incompatible with a redistribution policy—a “negative social policy” insofar as it emerged as a by-product of anti-Jewish policies. [26]

The modes of exhaustive dispossession

26Among the measures taken to dispossess Jews in Riga beginning in summer 1941, many were taken by the city council and the district superintendent. Their analysis reveals differences in timing depending on the type of property.

27To carry out dispossession operations, the municipal housing department had considerable human resources at its disposal: central services, administrative districts (document 4), caretakers of the public housing stock, and their managers (1,000 at the start, reduced to 300 during summer 1941). Thanks to its management and monitoring tools, this department had full knowledge of who was living in public and private housing, as demonstrated by a report it sent in late July to the Wehrmacht’s economics commando. [27] Its resources made it an essential player in the confiscation of housing.

28Beginning in July, caretakers of public housing identified Jewish renters for occupation authorities and recently formed collaboration militias, then sent these lists to the police. [28] To house Germans, the department collaborated with the Organizational Center, which placed a representative in several police headquarters. [29] District managers and services seized and reallocated vacant or evicted apartments. Beginning in late August 1941, the housing department refused to rehouse Jews evicted from central districts anywhere outside the ghetto. [30]

29The housing department serviced inhabitants looking for housing. In September, to manage the massive number of apartments to reallocate, it invited housing seekers (starting with victims of the war and large families) to fill out pre-printed forms and submit them to the department’s central service offices, where they could indicate a dwelling they had in mind. [31] This organized redistribution goes well beyond any sort of wild takeover by city residents of the apartments of their Jewish neighbors. The housing department was the primary agent of the citywide circulation of information about vacant Jewish apartments.

30At this point in the study, a few mechanisms of the confiscation of rental apartments emerge that fall outside this process. The Germans notwithstanding, some police officers, caretakers, and building managers settled their family or friends in apartments of their choosing. [32] Furthermore, according to several accounts as well as lists of inhabitants, in September-October 1941, many Jews from central Riga and non-Jews evicted from the ghetto exchanged dwellings. According to historian and survivor Marģers Vestermanis, these exchanges were in fact transactions, which the housing department merely authorized, and provided non-Jews from the ghetto opportunities to improve their housing conditions. [33] For example, in the building at 20 Bruņinieku Street in the 3^rd district, of the thirty apartments occupied by Jews, five were subject to this kind of exchange in the space of ten days in late September. [34]

31Compared to rental apartments, the dispossession of real estate property was very limited. Indeed, after the massive nationalization carried out by the Soviets, private housing was scarce. On August 23, 1941, following a request by the housing department and “in agreement with security services,” Mayor Dreijmanis ordered the department to seize houses owned by Jews as soon as they were abandoned. The director wrote that his agents were using onomastics to identify Jewish owners in property registries. In late 1941, the department consequently seized close to 300 houses situated within city limits, notably fifty in the 10^th district. [35]

32The modes of seizing furniture were different. As the Wehrmacht and security services were looting countless apartments, the decisions of July 6, 1941 (mentioned above), as well as directions given on the 23^rd of the same month signed by Mayor Dreijmanis and the police prefect, stipulated that furniture remaining in apartments was to be listed and made available to new renters. [36] Shortly thereafter, a housing department warehouse for storing looted property in the 3^rd district is mentioned. [37] The housing department, in collaboration with the police that evicted Jews, drew up lists of seized property. These were sometimes countersigned by the new renter, possibly, in certain cases, in the presence of the evicted Jewish renter. [38] The hundreds of examples preserved in the archives reveal an intense and planned operation, aspects not mentioned in personal accounts.

33Of course, many movable possessions were not subject to these procedures, given that the Germans, police, and militias took them directly from the hands of their owners, and that neighbors and caretakers looted sealed vacant apartments. These aspects have been highlighted in historiographical works. [39] In his memoirs, survivor Elmārs Rivošs describes the complex process of the dispossession of his home, which included looting, his own efforts to get rid of his property (to hide or sell it in order to avoid the violence of looters), and the help of his neighbors, motivated both by friendship and the lure of profit. [40]

34Also in September, a furniture supply representative was appointed to work under superintendent Wittrock. The housing department provided him with some of its staff and created multiple storage depots (document 4). Several sources indicate that Jews were forced to move furniture from apartments looted by the Germans beginning in July, and were then put to work in the offices shared by the representatives of the Gebietskommissariat and the Wehrmacht’s billeting service, and in depots for looted property. [41] The agents themselves profited from dispossession. In October 1941, the representative in charge of housing, Krah, received furniture seized from the apartment of the physician Zamuelis Abramsons, who had committed suicide on July 9. [42]

35In parallel with ghetto internments, Wittrock established procedures to strip Jews of their remaining possessions. In late 1941, the fiduciary services (Treuhand) of the Reichskommissariat Ostland and the Generalkommissariat of Latvia took over dispossession. They had to cooperate with Wittrock’s colleagues who oversaw the ghetto and had an agent representing their interests within the housing department. [43]

36In 1942, the possessions that had already been looted were largely put back into circulation. The part of the ghetto located in the 6^th district, emptied after the mass executions in late 1941, was made available to the city council and rented out again. [44] Some non-Jews evicted from the ghetto were forced to move back into their former homes. They had to relinquish the centrally located housing obtained in 1941 to the ever-growing number of Germans coming from the Reich. For the latter’s comfort, the furniture supply representative forcibly seized furniture from those who had been using them since 1941. [45]

37In June 1942, the city council lost its control over the majority of Riga’s housing units and was replaced by a subsidiary of the Latvian Real Estate Company (Grundstücksgesellschaft Lettland). This company was meant to return privately-owned property that had been nationalized by the Soviets to its former owners, except if it had belonged to Jews, Poles, or Baltic Germans. Note that this distinction of property rights on the basis of ethnic origin [46] goes beyond the one used for categorizing lease agreements (Reich German/native/Jew). At the same time, the financial services of the Reichskommissariat took back the task of registering and seizing movable property from the fiduciary services. [47] An assessment was made over the summer. Brümmer, who in fact continued to oversee that property until October, at the time estimated that in Riga, 95% of these possessions had already been redistributed. [48] Using this assessment, Rosenberg, minister of the occupied territories of the East, ordered that a list (exhaustive this time) be drawn up of Jewish possessions put into circulation that included their economic valuation (by sale or rental). The furniture storage depots, opened in 1941, were gradually closed.

38The stunning enumeration above does not come close to summarizing all of the mechanisms involved in the dispossession of the Jews of Riga. The role of the occupation authorities and various police services is still poorly understood. From this partial chronology, however, it is important to take note of the application and resources deployed by the municipal administration. This immediate deployment automatically raises the issue of the resources the administration had available at that time, which will be examined in the following section.

Flashback: Housing policies in Riga between 1939 and 1941

39I want to demonstrate here how the dispossession of Jews in 1941 was linked to institutional frameworks established since 1939 by other policies, mainly the reallocation of apartments abandoned by the German minority, which left for the Reich, and the nationalization of private housing.

40Between November 1939 and April 1941, more than three quarters of Riga’s Baltic Germans moved to the territory of the Reich. In November-December 1939, that regime organized a first wave of voluntary departures, in accordance with an agreement reached with the Latvian government. Around 25,000 inhabitants left Riga by boat. Their departure has been less studied than their arrival to the annexed areas of Poland (document 2A). [49] As far as we know, they brought, sold, or relinquished their furniture, in the latter case to the UTAG, the German agency responsible for selling it. In late 1939, the streets of Riga were filled with moving trucks—in a context in which the police recorded acts of violence against Germans. [50] Private estates were handed over to the UTAG, and then to the Credit Bank of Latvia. A compensation procedure was begun but never fully carried out. However, unlike other German populations being “repatriated” by the Reich at the same time (from southern Tirol in Italy and Volhynia, a Polish region annexed to the Soviet Union), Baltic Germans were mostly urban residents who were abandoning rental housing, whose fates were not regulated by bilateral treaties.

41Beginning in October, the Latvian government implemented a system in Riga to monitor the reallocation of these rental apartments. They had to be reported within 72 hours to police headquarters, whose “authorization” was essential for owners to rent out the unit. [51] Thanks to documents from the press, this new monitoring system can be situated within two viewpoints of action.

42First, the reporting requirement corresponded to a social view of redistribution maintained by the Riga city council. While the national housing policy had until then been limited to controlling the rents of private housing, Riga’s city council had, since the 1920s, been developing an active housing policy, inspired by the city council of Vienna, Austria, and various local German governments. In April 1939, it conducted a housing census to determine the living conditions of inhabitants, identify vacancies, and facilitate the disuse of basement apartments, which hygienists had been condemning for several decades. [52] During winter 1939–1940, articles in the press suggested that the departure of Baltic Germans, who enjoyed better housing, was an opportunity to improve the living conditions of the rest of the population. The idea of what today would be called housing rights spread thanks to ethnic cleansing.

43Emphasis is often given to the enthusiasm unleashed in 1939 by the departure of Baltic Germans. [53] The implementation of the reallocation monitoring system, however, stems from another factor. The Riga real estate owners’ association (Rīgas namsaimnieku biedrība), close to the Ulmanis corporatist government, came out in support of the measure. In a speech given in late October, its chairman, who also managed the real estate and construction section of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, requested that this monitoring of reallocations be established. Members of the association were worried about both falling rents due to abundant supply (as happened in 1914 during the advance of the German army), and a flood of modest-income families to central Riga. [54]

44In February 1940, a leftist writer described the visibility of this departure in the streets (innumerable rental ads posted in windows, lack of lights at night) and denounced the reluctance of private owners to rent out apartments. [55] In July 1940, during the Soviet annexation, the communist press was quick to point out that apartments had not been redistributed to workers. [56] After the annexation, the authorization system initially remained in the hands of the police and Internal Affairs (NKVD). [57]

45Until late 1940, the city council managed its own collection of housing, which only numbered a few hundred rental units. [58] In winter 1940–1941, the council, now the “provisional executive committee,” was given oversight of an immense collection of dwellings (around two thirds of the entire city’s housing) when it received, first, buildings that before 1939 had belonged to Baltic Germans (over 12,000 rental apartments) and been managed by the Credit Bank. Secondly, it took over then nationalized buildings larger than 720 square feet (over 50,000 apartments). To this end, the executive committee moved into the facilities of the Credit Bank and created a housing department using personnel from its technical services, supplemented with thousands of new hires: accountants, architects, caretakers, engineers, managers, workers, etc. An “allocation” system for apartments was set up. Tens of thousands of forms were printed for housing reports or requests. The rehousing of people living in basements was again promised. [59]

46A second massive wave of Baltic German departures took place between February and April 1941, following an agreement reached between the Reich and the Soviet Union. More than 5,000 people left Riga by train (the sea had frozen over and hindered the planned departure by boat). [60] Police and customs officers slowed shipments of furniture stored in port depots, and to a lesser degree, remaining in apartments. [61] When describing the task of inventorying the possessions of Baltic Germans in spring 1941, an employee of a local commission spoke of emptied apartments. [62] The reallocation of these apartments largely occurred within the city’s housing stock. In housing department files, they are mixed in with all other apartment allocations. However, these “German apartments” were subject to special categorization, and lists circulated between services. They were used notably to billet Soviet officers. [63]

47On the eve of the German invasion, another set of homes became vacant: those of the 5,000 Riga inhabitants who were deported to Siberian Gulag camps and special colonies in mid-June 1941. Their apartments were rented out, but the confiscation of their possessions by the finance administrations was not done in a uniform way: seizure commissions (which included managers and neighbors) confiscated property to keep or sell, or entrusted it to housemates or neighbors. According to historian Jānis Riekstiņš, in the Soviet Union, property seizure procedures for deported persons had not yet stabilized. In Riga, this dispossession displayed an experimental quality. In addition, in many cases, it was not completed before the German invasion. [64] Adding to this confusion was the arrest, prior to the German invasion, of hundreds of people suspected of espionage (most notably German Jewish refugees) and the rapid flight (between June 22 and 28) to the East of around 30,000 inhabitants (civilians) from Riga, who left all of their possessions behind. When the city was taken by the German army (between June 28 and July 1), the Soviet housing service remained in place. It had already begun to reallocate vacant dwellings.

Careers across regime changes

48The professional trajectories of municipal administration department heads demonstrate significant continuity between the various dispossession and redistribution policies established in 1939–1941 and the anti-Jewish policies of 1941–1942. An overall portrait emerges of a wide variety of skills, applied to the dispossession of Jewish property, and an accumulation of experience.

49I was able to reconstruct the careers of nine of the eleven city managers identified as leading the dispossession of Jews. [65] All had experience in real estate management, notably since 1939. They had reallocated the apartments of Baltic Germans, nationalized private homes, managed properties belonging to the city or banks, etc. They had successfully dealt with the successive changes in housing management since 1939. Most of these men were former heads of the city’s technical services. [66] Some were promoted when the housing department was created.

50In his career, Eduards Laimiņš (1882–1982) survived various political upheavals: a former officer of the Tsarist army, a geodesy professor in Riga, and minister in several Latvian governments, he became the head of the real estate department of Riga in the early 1930s and took over the housing department on July 19, 1941, before merging the two departments. Mārtiņš Birkens (1897–1976) served in the Red Army in the early 1920s (he was an elite sniper) then, once settled in Riga, worked in the real estate department managing the city’s small stock of housing units, participating most notably in billeting police officers and subsequently, beginning in 1939, reallocating Baltic German apartments. [67] Throughout 1941, he occupied key positions in the housing department.

51In 1942, several of these men were given leadership positions in the real estate company of Latvia. These careers were interrupted in fall 1944 when all of them, except for Birkens, fled Riga for the Reich.

52Several factors explain this professional continuity up to 1944. All the employee files indicate language skills (Latvian, German, and Russian), without which these careers would not have been possible. Here we see a dual historical heritage: the integration of Latvians into Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia (most notably by the army and during the exodus of World War I) and the fact that in the nineteenth century, Riga was a culturally German city inside Russia. Furthermore, these men had known each other for a long time. Laimiņš was even the neighbor of and partner in the private company owned by Mayor (then deputy mayor) Dreijmanis. This acquaintanceship and the fact that more than half of these individuals belonged to student societies of Riga suggest that mutual aid mechanisms may have benefited their careers. Their membership in fraternities also raises the issue of ideological convictions. Indeed, several historians have shown that Latvian fraternities played a role in the Holocaust: while in the 1930s, ideological anti-Semitism was disseminated within two of these fraternities (Lettonia, to which one of the agents studied belonged, and Selonija), the Lettonia network was used to form the Arājs commando in July 1941, and members of other fraternities individually joined militias. [68]

53Though noted in personnel files (which end in 1944) and obituaries published after the war, these links were nonetheless denied by the actors themselves. In the reports he sent to his superiors, as well as in his memoirs written after the war, Mayor Wittrock repeatedly criticizes the number of civil servants appointed by the Soviets to the housing department, emphasizes the firing of managers, but says nothing about the fact that department heads appointed by the Soviet administration kept their positions (or were promoted). [69] In late July 1941, in a report sent to the Wehrmacht’s economics commando, Birkens and Laimiņš proposed reforms that were gradually implemented: reduction in staff size and the “reprivatization” of property nationalized by “Soviet civil servants,” except for Jewish property. [70] By labeling the Soviets as responsible for nationalization, the two directors were maintaining that they themselves were not to the Wehrmacht. This discursive strategy can be clearly explained by a context in which Soviet “commissars” were being tracked down. It also brings up, once again, the question of ambition in personal motivations for collaborating.

54For the dispossession and extermination alike of Riga’s Jews, the Germans relied on pre-existing local structures, but in different contexts. The recruitment of killing militias depended notably on reactivating Latvian networks ostracized by the Soviet regime, such as the National Guard (Aizsargi) and student fraternities. [71] For dispossession, on the contrary, the agents of the administration, still in in office, were directly mobilized.

Enduring practices

55The relative stability of those in city management positions in 1940–1941 justifies an approach that explores the continuity of administrative practices. In addition to their social dimension, successive property dispossession and redistribution policies shared the same administrative tools: registers, map libraries, real estate inventories, nationalization files, and reporting and reallocation forms. Pre-existing tools were thus reused in the dispossession of the Jewish minority destined for extermination. More generally, the categories used by those involved to describe the property dispossession of Jews were borrowed from earlier policies: terms such as “made available,” “attribution,” “authorization,” and “order” come from the arena of real estate requisitions, troop billeting, and pre-existing local intervention policies used by public authorities for housing. No new terms were created after the German invasion. The conceptual frameworks of property dispossession can be largely found in earlier policies.

56This administrative and linguistic inertia is such that it is almost impossible to date the beginning of the dispossession of Jews. This gives an idea of the integration of successive housing policies and the re-appropriation of tools and practices due to Jewish dispossession. One could also argue that this situation reflects a form of improvisation linked to the fact that German dispossession policies were not specifically defined in summer 1941, and that it became entrenched when the civil occupation authority was established in the fall.

57Continuity also existed in terms of interactions between Riga’s administration and its residents. The nationalization of private housing in late 1940 and its management by the city rendered rehousing requests commonplace. In 1941, it became anodyne to ask to occupy an apartment that was vacant or expected to be soon freed up. In the spring, during the second wave of Baltic German departures, Riga inhabitants would contact the housing department to report the past or imminent departure of a Baltic German whose apartment they wanted to move into. The simple fact that an occupant was reputedly German sometimes justified the request, whether or not he or she was planning to emigrate. On Martas Street, a civil servant requested the housing unit of “persons emigrating,” but a handwritten note on his request specified that the occupants were not planning to leave. [72] Later reports can be deemed similar. On June 26–27, 1941, the Wehrmacht attacked the left (west) bank of the Daugava, from which the Red Army was withdrawing. During a two-day interregnum, the (Soviet) housing department district continued to operate. Its archives contain rehousing requests that, for the most part, were accepted: families who suffered damage or harm from bombings, or who were frightened, demanded apartments abandoned by the Red Army, inhabitants that had fled, deportees to the Gulag, or, a few months earlier, Baltic Germans. On June 27, Ganafeva Kuters, a caretaker on Daugavgrīvas Street in a destroyed area, asked to be rehoused in one of the rooms of an nearby apartment; [73] its previous tenants were Mozus Brīns, a Jew who had been deported to the Gulag on June 14, and a man named Demočkin, a Red Army soldier, who had left during the German attack. [74] There was a thin line between these actions and claiming a vacant (or presumably soon to be vacant) “Jewish apartment.” There is no doubt that Riga’s inhabitants crossed it quickly. In addition to the perpetuation of the administration, it is clear that the housing “market,” and its procedures and social practices, also continued.

58This conclusion is an extension of the one reached by Catherine Gousseff about the “legacy” represented, in the East, by the policies established as part of the German-Soviet pact. In her study on the exchanges of minority populations organized between the Soviet Union and Poland beginning in 1944, she demonstrates how the modalities of a policy conceived of earlier by the Reich were re-used, namely through the population exchanges organized with the Soviet Union in late 1939 within the same Polish borders. [75] She analyzes this legacy by examining the terms used in the agreements, the use of propaganda, institutional architecture, and even administrative forms. The Europe of the German-Soviet pact clearly favored the circulation of practices between the Nazi and Soviet regimes, even after the pact was broken. In Riga, the similarity of practices notwithstanding, the reutilization of persons, tools, and practices make it possible to go even further in emphasizing the important role pre-existing structures played in dispossessing Jews. This finding reinforces criticism of the books by Timothy Snyder, who establishes a link in northeast Europe between the “destruction of the state” and that of Jews: in this case, it is not the destruction but the (partial) continuity of the state that emerges as a factor in the rapidity and violence of the Holocaust. [76]

59From what we know about other European cities, such a phenomenon could not have been expected in Riga. The difference can be seen in comparison with the Reich or France, where most housing was privately owned, governments sought to undo or bypass pre-existing laws to carry out dispossession, and the administrations that reassigned Jewish apartments spent months trying to locate them. In Riga, the pre-existing housing market was a key factor in the immediacy of the property dispossession of Jews. And it was after dispossession that efforts were undertaken to restructure the market (by reprivatizing it).

60This characteristic reveals a distinctive connection between the reallocation of apartments in Riga and racial persecution. In German and annexed cities, various researchers have shown the significant intertwining of the reallocation of apartments and persecution. Beginning in 1939, Albert Speer participated in the removal of protections for Jewish renters in the Reich and took advantage of this measure to facilitate his efforts to redevelop central Berlin. In 1941, he sent lists of Jews to be deported to the Gestapo based on his needs to rehouse non-Jewish families he was evicting. [77] In 1939–1940, in Polish cities annexed to the Reich, such as Gotenhafen and Posen, Polish Jews and non-Jews were evicted and deported to rehouse German populations that were arriving from the East, especially Riga. [78] Beginning in 1941 in particular, German municipal governments and the Gestapo worked hand in hand to deport Jews in order to rehouse the victims of Allied bombings in the emptied dwellings. [79] In occupied but not annexed territories, this link was not as clear-cut. In Paris, the Seine prefecture conducted its operations to reallocate “Israelite premises” in the shadow of persecution: an ad hoc service created in 1943 only reallocated apartments whose furniture had been seized by occupation authorities, which was generally several months after Jewish residents had fled or been arrested. The prefecture took advantage of the consequences of persecution, justifying mention of a window of opportunity. [80] In Riga, the relationship appears to have been the inverse. No new service needed to be created. The city council incorporated the reallocation of Jewish homes into the ordinary circulation of the city’s nationalized apartment units, in parallel with the physical violence inflicted on Jews.

61In regard to movable property, however, one cannot say that there was continuity. Latvian and Soviet administrations did not systematize the seizure and redistribution of seized movable property for either Baltic Germans or those deported to the Gulag. In spite of the physical resemblance between the lists of furniture seized in the apartments of deportees to the Gulag in late June 1941 (on preprinted forms) and in the apartments of Jews beginning in July (on blank sheets of paper), the terms employed for dispossession differed. Furthermore, the administrations (of finance) responsible for the movable property of deportees to the Gulag were not the same as those in charge of Jewish property (housing service)—even though continuities in terms of the people involved may be found. This situation raises the question of the transfer of German experience in the dispossession of movable property, which can be observed in the staffing of civil occupation authorities.

Experience and commitment

62As of September 1941, the Germans who took over management of dispossession operations in the Gebietskommissariat of Riga came from the Reich, but most were of Baltic German origin. [81] They were part of the network of Hugo Wittrock (1873–1958), who is known more for accusations of nepotism than for his activities. Wittrock himself—originally from Estonia, he was a municipal counselor in Riga around 1910, an agent for German occupation troops in Riga during World War I, and then an insurance agent in Riga—was a close friend of Alfred Rosenberg, who was also of Baltic German origin. In 1936, Wittrock retired to Germany but maintained his contacts with the pro-Nazi party of the Baltic German elite in Riga. His efforts to recruit Baltic Germans and those men’s personnel files highlight how experiences acquired in annexed Polish cities were brought to Riga.

63Most of these men settled in Poland in 1939 where they not only personally profited from the dispossession of the Polish people, but also organized it. At this point, it is helpful to examine what recent research has revealed. [82] Beginning in 1939, German populations from the East began to settle in Polish territories annexed to the Reich, in cities in particular. Among them were many Baltic Germans (primarily from Riga). Until early 1941, around 3,000 and 20,000 settled in, respectively, Gotenhafen and Posen, where they were naturalized as German (document 2). The dispossession of Poles (Jews and non-Jews) was quickly undertaken in order to house in urgency the new arrivals. Poles were evicted en masse and many were deported to the General Government of Poland, where they were imprisoned in camps or the Lodz ghetto. In Posen, a German immigration service created by Heydrich (Einwandererzentralstelle), in cooperation with the police, militias, and the municipal housing department, was able to evict Poles within a few minutes. When rehousing Germans, the service targeted the more well off neighborhoods, while the eviction of non-Jewish workers was partially delayed. Possessions (property and movable goods) were seized by the municipality and the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (the Main Trustee Office for the East, henceforth HTO). Its various subsidiaries, founded by former employees from the banking sector and the Reich’s economy and finance ministries, were generally in charge of dispossession in Poland. For the most part, the Baltic Germans left Riga without their possessions: these arrived by boat at a later date, and were shipped to their owners by the Baltendeutsche Gepäckstelle, created for this purpose at the port of Gotenhafen. According to Małgorzata Stepko-Pape, this logistical gap created a need for movable property, which explains why seized property was immediately put into circulation. [83] This situation has several points in common with Riga after September 1941: a rush to seize property when the rehousing of Germans was involved, and the specific problem of furniture.

64In September 1941, Wittrock appointed two Baltic Germans originally from Riga to delegate positions responsible, respectively, for housing and furniture: Günther Krah (1906–1946) and Georg von Brümmer (1913-1962). In their applications, these men provided few details about their pre-war experience in Riga (Krah had been a lawyer and lecturer at the Herder Institute, and Brümmer a garage owner and small entrepreneur). But they described at length their experience since departing in late 1939, brief as it was. Krah worked for a few months in the housing department of the municipality of Posen—undoubtedly to rehouse settlers—, then at the Posen branch of the HTO. Brümmer worked at the Baltendeutsche Gepäckstelle in Gotenhafen, before creating a logistics company. [84] In April 1942, Wittrock also hired Hans-Harry Mehlbart (1907– ?), doctor of law, whose mother was one of his relatives and whose father (an engineer who spent his entire career working for Riga’s city council) was a friend. Mehlbart, in his application, wrote primarily about his experience in Posen where he worked for two years as director of land issues in various HTO subsidiaries. In Riga, he was supposed to take Brümmer’s position, but was ultimately appointed as an expert for the city council’s real estate department. [85]

65These three men had no experience with dispossession in Germany in the 1930s, unlike the directors of the fiduciary, financial, and political services of the Reichskommissariat and the Generalkommissariat, who were responsible for dispossession at the regional level, had been Nazi Party members for a long time, and had worked in institutions in charge of dispossession prior to 1939. [86] The observed transfer of men from Posen and Gotenhafen, cities that had been annexed to the Reich, to Riga, a city subjected to a civil occupation regime, completes the analytical trajectory begun by Martin Dean and Wolf Gruner on the circulation of experiences with and techniques for dispossession within the Reich and the conquered territories, and on the creation of the Nazi empire through both. [87] In their monograph on Riga, Angrick and Klein discuss the circulation of agents involved in creating the ghetto: Wittrock’s visit to Vilnius and the arrival of an expert from Lodz in Riga. [88]

66The recent experiences of Brümmer, Krah, and Mehlbart appear to have impacted their hiring. However, other factors also played a role. In his letter justifying their appointment, Wittrock does not highlight their experiences with dispossession but explains that they were appointed to positions that required good knowledge of the circumstances and local languages. Speaking Latvian was necessary to monitor the work done by local administrations and communicate with the population. He wrote that the city of Riga was too large to count solely on interpreters, adding, “even knowing Russian is necessary in order to understand documents from the Russian period.” [89] Krah’s personnel file even states that he was gifted in communicating with the “locals.” A type of continuity unique to Riga due to its German and Russian history thus affected the hiring of these men who were not career civil servants, unlike the previously mentioned municipal leaders, over whom they had authority.

67The other similarity between these professional trajectories, which is strongly emphasized in personnel files, is ideological commitment. In 1935, Brümmer and Krah joined Baltic German associations that were promoting Nazi movement ideas in Latvia. Once they became naturalized Germans, Brümmer, Krah, and Mehlbart applied to join the Nazi Party. During his time in Posen, Krah volunteered to go to the East. He was initially assigned to Velikiye Luki in Russia (document 2), but Wittrock was able to keep him in Riga, where he returned “enthusiastically.” In Posen, Mehlbart joined the SS. In Gotenhafen, Brümmer joined the SA. In 1941, he was sent to Ostland without having requested it and first received brief specialized training at the NS-Ordensburg in Krössinsee close to Danzig, a transit point for many German agents sent to the East. [90] While there, he no doubt saw Wittrock, who was undergoing training in the administration of large cities. Brümmer was a man who would do anything, an adventurer. [91] In September 1941, the appointment of Krah and Brümmer appears in their personnel files as a commando mission. Repeated emphasis was made on their tenacity and ability to adapt—not their experience, which should be considered in context.