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GHETTOS

A JEWISH HIDEOUT

A JEWISH HIDEOUT, renovation of the ground floor of an art gallery in the town of Butrimonys, Lithuania has revealed the existence of an unusual cellar that was apparently a Jewish hideout during the Holocaust. Daina Nemeikštienė, the owner of the gallery, “Dainos galerija”, is moving forward with the renovation, which means that what remains of the cellar will be cemented over, at least for now. Could someday this hideout offer an opportunity for respecting, valuing, studying, preserving and highlighting Litvak and Lithuanian heritage? For now, it illustrates the challenges in honoring even the most heroic aspects of the Holocaust.

A young man and an elderly woman

A YOUNG MAN AND AN ELDERLY WOMAN stand in the doorway of a shop in the Warsaw ghetto. The sign reads: "We accept new coupons and buy old watches." Photo: Georg Willy (1911 - 2005) Poland under German Occupation - Warszawa (Warsaw), 1941 (WW2) Willy Georg was a German soldier and photographer who took pictures in the Warsaw ghetto. Born in Muenster, Germany, Georg served as a radio operator in the German army during World War II. In the summer of 1941 when his unit was stationed in Warsaw, Georg was issued a pass by one of his officers and instructed to enter the enclosed ghetto and bring back photos of what he saw. Georg shot four rolls of film and began to shoot a fifth when he was stopped by a detachment of German police. Failing to check his pockets for finished rolls of film, the police confiscated only the film in his camera before escorting him out of the ghetto. Georg developed the four rolls of film himself at a lab in Warsaw and sent them home to his wife in Muenster. He kept the existence of these photographs to himself for the next fifty years. In the late 1980s or early 90s, Georg met Rafael Scharf, a Polish Jew from London working in the field of Polish-Jewish studies, and gave him his Warsaw ghetto photographs. Scharf then published a selection of these photographs in his "In the Warsaw Ghetto: Summer 1941," Aperture, 1993

BIALA PODLASKA GHETTO

BIALA PODLASKA GHETTO, during the German occupation, crimes against prisoners of war and civilians were committed here. On 26 September 1942, the Gestapo liquidated the Biala Podlaska ghetto. On the eve of the ‘Aktion,’ the ghetto was surrounded, and the ghetto inhabitants were herded to the New Market Square. Except for some Jews who were sent as a forced labour detail to the Malzszewicze Duze airfield, all the Jews who were rounded up were deported to Miedzyrzec Podlaski, where they entered the ghetto there. The registration cards for 1,200 Jews transferred from Biala Podlaska to the Miedzyrzec Podlaski ghetto on 26 September 1942, can be found in the records of the International Tracing Service. Jews in Biala Podlaska who did not obey orders and were caught in hiding places were shot immediately. The Gestapo also shot all the patients and the two nurses in the Jewish hospital. In total, the Gestapo, assisted by the Gendarmerie and local collaborators, shot approximately 100 Jews in the town, burying the bodies in the Jewish cemetery. The Germans searched for those Jews in hiding for several days and on 28 September 1942, the mayor of Biala Podlaska prohibited the local population from entering the ‘former Jewish quarter,’ and threatened that looting would be punished with the death penalty. On the following day, another announcement by the mayor instructed local inhabitants to intercept Jews and hand them over to the Gendarmerie. The Jews deported from Biala Podlaska were held in the Miedzyrzec Podlaski ghetto for several days. On 6 October 1942, additional Jews from labor camps in the vicinity were assembled at the Biala Podlaska railway station. Their train made a stop at Miedzyrzec Podlaski and picked up the Jews who had been deported earlier from Biala Podlaska. In all some 4,800 Jews were deported to the Treblinka death camp, where they perished. Some of the Jewish labor camps in and around Biala Podlaska continued to function for several more months. One group of Jewish workers that had remained in Biala Podlaska was employed by the Gestapo to clear out property from the former ghetto area. They also had to demolish the synagogue and other Jewish religious buildings. The Wehrmacht camp was liquidated during mid-December 1942 and the Jews remaining were either sent to other camps or liquidated. On 26 July 1944, Soviet troops entered the town of Biala Podlaska, and out of the 7,000 Jews who lived in the town, in 1939, only about 300 managed to survive the German occupation.

BIALYSTOK GHETTO

BIALYSTOK GHETTO, deportation from BIALYSTOK. In August 1943, the Germans mounted an operation to destroy the Bialystok ghetto. German forces and local police auxiliaries surrounded the ghetto and began to round up Jews systematically for deportation to the Treblinka killing center. Approximately 7,600 Jews were held in a central transit camp View This Term in the Glossary in the city before deportation to Treblinka. Those deemed fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp. In Majdanek, after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the Poniatowa, Blizyn, or Auschwitz camps. Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek. More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed. During the August 1943 deportations, when all hope for survival within the ghetto was abandoned, the Bialystok ghetto underground staged an uprising against the Germans. In an unsuccessful attempt to break out of the ghetto and join partisans in the nearby forests, armed Jews attacked German forces near the ghetto fence along Smolna Street. The fighting in the northeastern section of the ghetto lasted for five days; hundreds of Jews died in this battle. Seventy-one Jewish fighters were killed after being discovered in a bunker and captured by the Germans. More than a hundred Jews managed to escape from the ghetto and join partisan groups in the Bialystok area. The Soviet army drove the Germans out of Bialystok in July 1944.

BRASLAV GHETTO

BRASLAV GHETTO, Market Day in prewar Łokacze. During Chanukah in December 1941 the Jews of Jod were the first in the Braslav area to be murdered as a community. They had been told that they were to be transferred to the ghetto in Szarkaiszcina. They packed and prepared food and on December 19 they were taken to the pre-prepared pits, ordered to undress and shot. Five hundred people died that day, though a few escaped and hid with farmers nearby. The killings were was conducted by Gendarmarie-Meister Brodtruck, SS soldiers, together with police from Braslav Police under Jashinski who returned to the town drunk and full of loot.

BRODY GHETTO

BRODY GHETTO, Jews in Brody detained by German Nazis and awaiting deportation, ca. 1942–1943. The Jewish community of Brody perished in the Holocaust. A great number of Brody Jews were murdered in the autumn of 1942. A group of 250 Brody Jewish intellectuals were shot near the Jewish cemetery in Brody (where the Holocaust monument stands now). Some of the surviving Brody Jews were imprisoned in the family camp of Pyanytsia (Pianica) in the forests near Lviv. All of the remaining Brody Jews were moved into the ghetto created in the town on January 1, 1943 (or December 1942). Another 3,000 Jews from neighboring areas of Zolochiv, Lopatyn and Busk were subsequently added to Brody's ghetto. Horrible work conditions induced some young people to run away and join the Soviet army. The ghetto's poor hygiene and hunger were intolerable. Disease and famine took hundreds of Jewish lives. All 9,000 Jews of Brody ghetto were subsequently murdered on May 1, 1943. On September 19, 1942, around 2,500 Jews of Brody were deported to the extermination camp of Bełżec (today a little town on the Polish-Ukrainian border). On November 2, 3,000 more Jews were sent from Brody to Bełżec extermination camp. Many Brody Jews were exterminated in Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin (a city in the south east corner of Poland). Several hundred Brody Jews returned to the city after the war, most having hidden with the partisans in the forest, some few survivors of concentration camps (as was Jacob Jakubovics) or those who may have fled or been deported to Soviet territory.

Chaim Rumkowski Speech

CHAIM RUMKOWSKI SPEECH - Give Me Your Children. Dawid Sierakowiak recorded in his diary that at 4 o'clock, on September 4, 1942, Chaim Rumkowski, the Chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders, and Warszawski, the head of many factories, spoke at 13 Lutomierska. They said: ' Sacrificing the children and the elderly is necessary, since nothing can be done to prevent it. What follows is the most infamous speech Chaim Rumkowski ever made: Give Me Your Children. A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They are asking us to give up the best we possess - the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I've lived and breathed with children. I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters, hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!
(Horrible, terrifying wailing among the assembled crowd) I had a suspicion something was about to befall us. I anticipated 'something' and was always like a watchman on guard to prevent it. But I was unsuccessful because I did not know what was threatening us. I did not know the nature of the danger, The taking of the sick from the hospitals caught me completely by surprise. And I give you the best proof there is of this: I had my own nearest and dearest among them, and I could do nothing for them. I thought that that would be the end of it, that after that they'd leave us in peace, the peace for which I long so much, for which I've always worked, which has been my goal. But something else, it turned out , was destined for us. Such is the fate of the Jews: always more suffering and always worse suffering, especially in times of war. Yesterday afternoon, they gave me the order to send more than 20,000 Jews out of the ghetto, and if not - 'We will do it!' So, the question became: 'Should we take it upon ourselves, do it ourselves, or leave it for others to do?' Well we - that is,l and my closest associates - thought first not about 'How many will perish?' but 'How many is it possible to save?' And we reached the conclusion that, however hard it would be for us, we should take the implementation of this order into our own hands. I must perform this difficult and bloody operation - I must cut off limbs in order to save the body itself! - I must take children because, if not, others may be taken as well, God forbid. (Horrible wailing) I have no thought of consoling you today. Nor do I wish to calm you. I must lay bare your full anguish and pain. I come to you like a bandit, to take from you what you treasure most in your hearts! i have tried using every possible means, to get the order revoked. I tried - when that proved to be impossible - to soften the order. Just yesterday I ordered a list of children aged nine - I wanted, at least, to save this one age group, the nine -to ten-year olds. But I was not granted this concession. On only one point did I succeed, in saving the ten-year olds and up. Let this be a consolation in our profound grief. There are, in the ghetto, many patients who can expect to live only a few days more, maybe a few weeks. I don't know if the idea is diabolical or not, but I must say it: 'Give me the sick. In their place, we can save the healthy.' I know how dear the sick are to any family, and particularly to Jews. However, when cruel demands are made, one has to weigh and measure: who shall, can and may be saved? And common sense dictates that the saved must be those who can be saved and those who have a chance of being rescued, not those who cannot be saved in any case. We live in the ghetto, mind you. We live with so much restriction that we do not have enough even for the healthy, let alone for the sick. Each of us feeds the sick at the expense of our own health: we give our bread to the sick. We give them our meagre ration of sugar, our little piece of meat. And what's the result? Not enough to cure the sick, and we ourselves become ill. Of course, such sacrifices are the most beautiful and noble. But there are times when one has to choose: sacrifice the sick, who haven't the slightest chance of recovery and who also may make others ill, or rescue the healthy.
I could not deliberate over this problem for long: I had to resolve it in favour of the healthy. In this spirit , I gave the appropriate instructions to the doctors, and they will be expected to deliver all incurable patients, so that the healthy, who want and are able to live, will be saved in their place. (Horrible weeping) I understand you, mothers; I see your tears, all right. I also feel what you feel in your hearts, you fathers who will have to go to work the morning after your children have been taken from you, when just yesterday you were playing with your dear little ones. All this I know and feel. Since four o'clock yesterday, when I first found out about the order, I have been utterly broken. I share your pain. I suffer because of your anguish, and I don't know how I'll survive this- where I'll find the strength to do so. I must tell you a secret: they requested 24,000 victims, 3,000 a day for eight days. I succeeded in reducing the number to 20,000, but only on the condition that these would be children below the age of ten. Children ten and older are safe. Since the children and the aged together equal only some 13,000 souls, the gap will have to be filled with the sick. I can barely speak. I am exhausted; I only want to tell you what I am asking of you: Help me carry out this action! I am trembling. I am afraid that others, God forbid, will do it themselves. A broken Jew stands before you. Do not envy me. This is the most difficult of all the orders I've ever had to carry out at any time. I reach out to you with my broken, trembling hands and I beg: Give into my hands the victims, and a population of a hundred thousand Jews can be preserved. So they promise me: if we deliver our victims by ourselves, there will be peace.... (Shouts: 'We all will go!' Mr Chairman, an only child should not be taken; children should be taken from families with several children!')
These are empty phrases! I don't have the strength to argue with you! If the authorities were to arrive, none of you would shout. I understand what it means to tear off a part of the body. Yesterday I begged on my knees, but it didn't work. From small villages with Jewish populations of seven to eight thousand, barely a thousand arrived here. So which is better? What do you want: that eighty to ninety thousand Jews remain, or God forbid, that the whole population be annihilated? You may judge as you please; my duty is to preserve the Jews who remain. I do not speak to hotheads. I speak to your reason and conscience. I have done and will continue doing everything possible to keep arms from appearing in the streets and blood from being shed. The order could not be undone; it could only be reduced. One needs the heart of a bandit to ask from you what I am asking. But put yourself in my place, think logically, and you'll reach the conclusion that I cannot proceed any other way. The part that can be saved is much larger than the part that must be given away.