On May 14 Elisheva reminisced that the situation in Stanislawów had suddenly changed at the end of March: “It started in March. All the handicapped on the Aryan side were killed. It was a signal that something ominous was coming. And it was a disaster. On March 31, they started searching for the handicapped and old people, and later several thousand young and healthy people were taken. We were hiding in the attic and through the window I saw the transports of Hungarian Jews [who had been expelled from Hungary to Galicia in the late summer of 1941] leaving Rudolfsmühle [an improvised German prison]. I saw children from the orphanage wrapped in bed sheets. The houses around the ghetto were on fire. I heard some shooting, children crying, mothers calling, and Germans breaking into the neighboring houses. We survived.”209
On June 9 Elisheva recognized that her own survival had been but a short reprieve: “Well, this whole scribbling does not make any sense. It is a fact we are not going to survive. The world will know about everything even without my wise notes. The members of the Jewish Council have been imprisoned. The hell with them, the thieves. But what does it mean to us? Rudolfsmühle has finally been liquidated. Eight hundred people have been taken to the cemetery [the killing site of Stanislawów]…. The situation is hopeless but some people say it is going to be better. Let us hope so! Is being alive after the war worth so much suffering and pain? I doubt it. But I don’t want to die like an animal.”210 Ten days later Elisheva’s diary ended. The circumstances of Elisheva’s death are not known. Her diary was discovered in a ditch along the road leading to the Stanislawów cemetery.211
In Lodz, Sierakowiak’s chronicling resumed in mid-March. In his saddler’s workshop, the food, it seems, was sufficient for “workshop workers” like him (category A). “The deportations are in progress, while the workshops are receiving huge orders, and there is enough work for several months,” he noted on March 26.212 The deportations were temporarily halted on April 3. On that day the diarist recorded: “The deportations have been halted again, but nobody knows for how long. Meanwhile winter has returned with thick snow. Rumkowski has posted an announcement that there will be a cleaning of the ghetto on Monday. From eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, all inhabitants from the ages of fifteen to fifty will have to clean apartments and courtyards. There won’t be any other work anywhere. All I care about, however, is that there is soup in my workshop.”213
By mid-May 1942 the number of deportees from Lodz had reached 55,000.214 The last wave, between May 4 and 15, included exclusively 10,600 “Western Jews” from a total of 17,000 of these Jews still alive in the ghetto at that time.215 It remains unclear why none of the “Western Jews” were included in the earlier deportations and why at the beginning of May they were the only deportees. After considering various possibilities, historian Avraham Barkai interpreted the earlier reprieve as the probable result of German orders: To secure the orderly pace of deportations from the Reich, it was imperative to avoid the spreading of any rumors about Lodz.216 As we saw, Hitler’s new judicial powers could also offer an explanation, as the German Jews deported to Chelmno from Lodz were still German subjects who were deported to an extermination site located within the borders of the Greater Reich. In any case, once the impediments were dealt with, it is probable that the Germans decided to dispose of Jews who were elderly, the majority of whom could not be integrated into the work force. Whether Rumkowski was involved in the decision is not known, although he did not hide his growing hostility to the “newcomers.”217
The forthcoming “resettlement” of the “Western Jews” had been announced during the last days of April. Immediately frantic attempts began to trade whatever remaining possessions could not be taken along, all the more so since luggage was forbidden. The deportees were a particularly pitiful crowd in the eyes of the chroniclers: “Schooled by the experience of recent days, some people have struck on the old idea of putting on a few suits, a few changes of underwear and, quite frequently, two overcoats. They tie the first coat with a belt from which they hang an extra pair of shoes and other small items. And so their faces, cadaverously white or waxy yellow, swollen, and despairing, sway disjointedly on top of disproportionately wide bodies that bend and droop under their own weight. They are possessed by a single thought: To save the little that remains of what they own, even at the expense of the last of their strength. Some people have been overcome by utter helplessness, whereas some still believe in something.”218
At the same time Jews from small towns in the Warthegau (mainly Pabianice and Breziny) moved into the ghetto. On May 21 one of the “official” chroniclers (Bernard Ostrowsky) visited and described a refugee asylum where more than a thousand women from Pabianice had been quartered. “In every room, in every corner, one sees mothers, sisters, grandmothers, shaken by sobs, quietly lamenting for their little children. All children up to the age of ten have been sent off to parts unknown [Chelmno]. Some have lost three, four, even six children.”219 Two days later Ostrowsky added: “The Jews from Pabianice who were recently settled in the ghetto saw that in the village of Dobrowa, located about three kilometers from Pabianice, in the direction of Lodz, warehouses for old clothes have recently been set up…. Every day trucks deliver mountains of packages, knapsacks, and parcels of every sort to Dobrowa…each day, thirty or so Jews from the Pabianice ghetto are sent to sort the goods. Among other things they have noticed that, among the waste papers, there were some of our Rumkis [money used in the Lodz ghetto, also called chaimki], which had fallen out of billfolds. The obvious conclusion is that some of the clothing belongs to people deported from this ghetto.”220 No comment was added.
The department of statistics of the ghetto indicated that during the month of May 1942, the total population (110,806 persons at the beginning of the month) had increased by 7,122, practically all of whom were new arrivals. During that same month there were fifty-eight births and 1,779 deaths; moreover, 10,914 persons were ‘resettled.’”221
On July 2 the Lodz Gestapo wrote its own monthly report. At the outset the report mentioned that the population had not given the Gestapo any reason for intervention, although “the evacuations have caused a certain measure of disquiet.” The total interruption of all postal links with the ghetto, “introduced in order to facilitate the evacuations,” ensured that the Jews “have no way to communicate with the outside world.”222
XII
During the first half of 1942, the rapidly expanding deportations to the extermination centers had yet to reach the Jews of Warsaw. In the largest ghetto, death remained ordinary: starving, freezing, disease. As before, the refugees from the provinces were the worst off: “The plight of the refugees is simply intolerable,” Ringelblum noted in January 1942. “They are freezing to death for lack of coal. During the month, 22 percent of over a thousand refugees died in the center at 9 Stawki Street…. The number of those who have frozen to death grows daily; it is literally a commonplace matter.” Ringelblum also noted: “There is no coal to be had for the refugee centers, but there is plenty for the coffee houses.”223 Kaplan recorded on January 18: “All along the sidewalks, on days of cold so fierce as to be unendurable, entire families bundled up in rags wander about, not begging but merely moaning with heartrending voices. A father and mother with their sick little children, crying and wailing, fill the street with the sound of their sobs. No one turns to them, no one offers them a penny, because the number of panhandlers has hardened our hearts.”224 In January 1942, 5,123 inhabitants died in the Warsaw ghetto.225
On February 20 Czerniaków noted a case of cannibalism: a mother had cut off a piece of the buttock of her twelve-year-old son who had died on the previous day.226 But there was also inventiveness in the ghetto in those early weeks of 1942: “contraceptives made of baby pacifiers, carbide lamps made from the metal ‘Mewa’ cigarette boxes.”227 On March 22 Czerniaków gave some indications about the situation in the Jewish prison: “Every day two detainees die in the Jewish prison. Corpses lie there for eight or more days
because of unsettled formalities. On March 10, 1942, there were 1,261 prisoners and 22 corpses in the detention facility. The capacity of these two buildings is 350 persons.”228 April 1: “(The Seder night) tomorrow Passover. News from Lublin. Ninety percent of the Jews are to leave Lublin within the next few days. The 16 Council members together with the chairman, Becker, were reportedly arrested. Relatives of the older councilors, aside from their wives and children, must also leave Lublin. The Kommissar [Auerswald] telephoned to say that a transport of 1,000–2,000 Jews from Berlin will arrive at 11:30 p.m…. In the morning hours about 1,000 expellees from Hannover, Gelsenkirchen, etc were sent over. They were put in the quarantine…at 10 a.m. I witnessed the distribution of food. The expellees had brought only small packages with them…Older people, many women, small children.”229 April 11: “The Kommissar sent me a letter yesterday suspending performances of the orchestra for two months for having played the works of Aryan composers. When I tried to explain, I was told that the Propaganda and Culture Department has a list of the Jewish composers.”230
Further information about the systematic extermination campaign was spreading in the ghetto, mainly among activists of the various clandestine political movements. In mid-March, Zuckerman as representative of Hechalutz and other members of left-wing Zionist parties invited leaders of the Bund to attend a meeting to discuss the setting up of a common defense organization. Previous attempts to contact the Bund had not been successful: The ideological differences were too extreme, mainly in the eyes of the Bundists. The Bund, let us remember, was socialist-internationalist and hence opposed to the Zionist kind of separatist nationalism. Historically allied to the Polish Socialist Party, the PPS, the Bund strove for a common struggle with Eastern European Socialist parties to establish a new social order, within which the Jewish people would have the right to an autonomous life and a cultural identity rooted in a secular Yiddish culture.
The clandestine meeting took place at the Workers’ Kitchen on Orla Street sometime in mid-March 1942 (none of the reports on the meeting gives an exact date).231 After summing up the available information about the expanding extermination, Zuckerman came up with his proposal for a common Jewish defense organization that would also act in common with the Polish military underground and reading the acquisition of weapons outside the ghetto.232 These suggestions were rejected by the two Bund representatives, dogmatically by one (Mauricy Orzech), more diplomatically by the other (Abrasza Blum). Orzech’s main argument seems to have been that the Bund was bound by its relations with the PPS and that, as far as the Polish Socialist Party was concerned, the time for rebellion had not yet come.233
Once the Bund had stated his position, the representative of the Poalei Zion left, Hersch Berlinski, defended Zuckerman’s position, but his party decided that given the situation (the Bund’s refusal), they would not participate either.234 The Zionists, although recognizing the sufferings of the Poles, were increasingly convinced that the Germans were planning a special fate for the Jews: total extermination. Even on the brink of annihilation, the traditional hostility between Bundists and Zionists exacerbated their contrary interpretations of the events.235
The importance of the Bund in the setting up of a common fighting underground derived of course from its relations with the PPS; in principle, the Polish Socialists could be willing to provide at least some weapons. Moreover, the Bund had better channels to the outside world than its Zionist counterparts. Cooperation would ultimately be established some seven months later—in radically changed circumstances.
Incidentally, the Bund’s contacts with the outside world came to play an important role in May 1942, when one of its leading members in Warsaw, Leon Feiner, sent a lengthy report to London. The information was precise; it mentioned the extermination of approximately 1,000 victims per day in the Chelmno gas vans and the estimate that some 700,000 Polish Jews had already been murdered. The Bund report was given significant publicity in the British press and on the BBC.236 In the United States, however, the echo of the horrendous details was relatively weak. The New York Times, generally considered the most reliable source about the international scene and the events in Europe in particular, published a brief story on page 5 of the June 27 issue, at the bottom of a column including several short items. The information was attributed to the Polish government in London; it reported the number of 700,000 Jewish victims.237 The attribution of the information and its modest display could in fact convey serious doubts about its reliability.
On April 17 Czerniaków recorded a sudden and bloody upheaval: “In the afternoon panic erupted in the ghetto. Stores are being closed. People are crowding in the streets in front of their apartment buildings. To calm the population I took a stroll through several streets. The Order Service detachment was to report at 9:30 p.m. in front of the Pawiak (prison). It is now 10:30 and I am waiting for a report from the Order Service headquarters on what has transpired. It arrived at 7 a.m. Fifty-one persons had been shot.”238 Fifty-one or fifty-two Jews, some members of the Bund, some of those working for the underground press, and some just Jews in the Gestapo’s path were pulled out of their apartments and shot in the back of the neck, on the streets.239
To this day the reasons for the massacre of April 17–18 are not entirely clear. The Germans were probably becoming aware of the first attempts to organize a Jewish underground in the Polish capital and mainly of the growing influence of the clandestine press (such as Yedies, launched by Zuckerman and his group). According to Zuckerman’s memoirs, the Gestapo had his name and usual address (he did not stay there on the night of April 17), but otherwise it did not have much precise information.240 The main aim of the executions was therefore, as Zuckerman surmised, “to instill terror.”241 An additional aim may have been to paralyze any underground plans ahead of the forthcoming Aktion. And indeed, as a result of the April massacres, the council attempted to convince the clandestine groups to put an end to their meetings. In fact the underground movements did not manage to establish any coordinated plan of action before the fateful days of July.242
With hindsight, the silencing of Rubinstein the ghetto jester, could be considered as an indication of the end: “Rubinstein is finished,” Wasser noted on May 10, 1942. “The most popular philosopher of ‘Oh boy, keep your head,’ renowned throughout the Warsaw ghetto is expiring. In rags and tatters, he wallows in the streets…taking the sun, almost naked. Thus expires an idea, a symbol that dazzled everyone with its truth and lie of ‘All Men Are Equal.’”243 In fact, the sentence was Alle Glaich, all equal before death. Within weeks, what had already been almost true in the ghetto was to become an absolute reality that no jester—or anybody else—could imagine. The new reality was about to obliterate the jest, the jester, and the population that, notwithstanding all misery—or because of it—needed a jester and loved his sayings and antics.244
On July 15, 1942, a week before the beginning of the deportations, Janusz Korczak invited the ghetto’s who’s who to a performance of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office staged and acted by the staff and the children of his orphanage. Korczak (Dr. Henryk Goldszmit) was a widely known educator and writer—mainly of highly prized children’s books; for three decades he had been the director of the most important Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. After the establishment of the ghetto, the “old doctor,” as he was affectionately nicknamed, had to move his two hundred small charges within the walls. As we saw, a few of these children addressed a petition to the curate of All Saints to be allowed a visit to the church’s gardens.
The play, the story of a sick boy confined to his dark room in a hut, expressed the same yearning as the children’s letter: to wander among trees and flowers, to hear the birds singing…. In the play a supernatural being enables Amal (the hero’s name) to walk an invisible path to the paradise he dreamed about.245 “Perhaps illusions would be a good subject for the Wednesday dormitory talk,” Korczak wrote in his diary on July 18. “Illusions, their role in the life of mankind.246<
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The Germans wanted to keep a “record” of it all—“for the education of future generations,” in Goebbels’s words. Film was the medium of choice. “The filming that the Germans have been carrying out in the ghetto continues,” Abraham Lewin noted in his diary on May 19, 1942. Lewin, both a deeply religious Jew and a fervent Zionist, was a teacher and administrator at the Yehudia School, a private high school for girls. He was a member of Oneg Shabbat, and his diary was probably linked to Ringelblum’s collective historical enterprise.247
“Today,” Lewin went on, “they set up a film session in Szulc’s restaurant…. They brought in Jews they had rounded up, ordinary Jews and well-dressed Jews, and also women who were respectably dressed, sat them down at the tables and ordered that they be served with all kinds of food and drinks at the expense of the Jewish community: meat, fish, liqueurs, white pastries and other delicacies. The Jews ate and the Germans filmed. It is not hard to imagine the motivation behind this. Let the world see the kind of paradise the Jews are living in. They stuff themselves with fish and goose and drink liqueur and wine.”
On the same day Lewin recorded another such scene. “The Germans set up an original film set at the corner of Nowolipie and Smocza Streets. It involved the finest funeral wagon in the possession of the Jewish community. Around it gathered all the cantors of Warsaw, ten in number…. It seems that they want to show that Jews not only live a cheerful decent existence, but that they also die with dignity and even get a luxury burial.248
Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination Page 51