In March 1943, the Kaiserwald camp was established near Riga, Latvia, as a concentration and labor camp for Latvian Jews who had survived the murder campaigns of the Einsatzgruppen in 1941 and 1942. Later, Jews from Germany, Poland, and Hungary were sent to Kaiserwald when ghettos across eastern Europe were closed. In July 1943, when the Riga Ghetto was liquidated, Bert was sent to Kaiserwald, and later his father and sister joined him there. As in other labor camps, prisoners at Kaiserwald were brutally exploited and mistreated; thousands died from hunger, cold, and disease. In July 1944, as the Soviet Army approached, the SS transferred the surviving Kaiserwald inmates by ship and train to the Stutthof camp near Danzig.
