Didrichson Ansis

Didrichson, Ansis Ansis Didrichson, a resident of Rīga, owned a carpentry shop at 11 Cēsu Street, which he also operated during the German occupation. One day in 1943, a group of Jewish workers brought some equipment to the carpentry shop. One of them was Leizer Rotbart, a 20-year-old acquaintance of Didrichson’s who worked in the shop before the occupation. Didrichson asked Rotbart about the conditions in the Kaiserwald concentration camp, where the Jewish workers were interned, and offered to help arrange his escape from there. Rotbart was forced to decline his offer because he knew that for every Jew who escaped from the camp about 100 other prisoners would pay with their lives. A few months later, Rotbart met Didrichson again, this time at a factory on Lāčplēša Street, where he was working as part of a group of six Jewish prisoners. Didrichson repeated his offer, but Rotbart felt he could not abandon his five friends, with whom he had been working for a long time. He asked Didrichson if he would be willing to help all six escape, and Didrichson replied in the affirmative. From that day on he began to plan the escape, and on February 13, 1944, around noon, Didrichsons parked his truck near the factory on Lāčplēša Street and waited for Rotbart and his friends. They arrived separately and hid in the truck, covered with cartons and planks of wood. Didrichson took the six Jews to his carpentry shop and hid them in the cellar. Together with Rotbart were Shlomo Koblenz and his brother Daniel, Aharon Troib, Zigfrid Weinberg and George Fridman. The basement was cold and full of rats, but the entrance to it was well camouflaged, and no one knew of its existence. There was a faucet with running water in the basement, and Didrichson brought them food. Despite the dreadful conditions, the six Jewish refugees hid there for eight months until the arrival of the Russians on October 13, 1944. After the war, the grateful survivors kept in touch with Didrichson until hisdeath in 1962. On October 23, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Ansis Didrichson as Righteous Among the Nations.