Following their stopover at the transit camp Killesberg in Stuttgart, they came to Riga on the first deportation train from Wurttemberg and Hohenzollern on December 1, 1941. The journey of the more than 1000 Jews took three days and nights. The daily life in the camp Jungfernhof in Riga was characterized by hunger, cold, hard labor and shootings.

The exact time of death of Leon and Mina Schmalzbach in the camp is not known.

The survivor Meta Jaschkowitz, neé Eppstein, wrote in 1945: “Our good teacher Schmalzbach starved and died in the Jungfernhof by Riga right away […].”