Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  The Germans didn’t stop plundering inside the ghetto until the typhus epidemic began to gain strength. The disease had broken out in the first months after the Germans entered Warsaw, clearly due to the growing hunger and poverty. Food rations were incalculably small: other than dark bread, which was supplied irregularly, and vegetables, which were scarcely ever available, there was practically nothing to eat, especially no meat or fat of any kind. People were undernourished; their nerves were exhausted; they neglected their apartments, which became increasingly filthy. If they didn’t have money to buy their children a bit of bread, how were they going to pay for a bar of soap?

  I know this side of life in the Warsaw Ghetto very well because I spent a long time working with the building committee on Ogrodowa Street. Assigned to my building were about thirty families (approximately 150 people) who lived in a small wooden shack set off at right angles to the main building and who had no electricity, gas, or water. Among them were a carriage driver whose horses had been taken by the Germans, a seamstress with two children whose husband – a provincial schoolteacher – had been killed, a bakery worker with ten mouths to feed, and so on. Ten or twenty people were crammed into each room: old parents, small children, or young people who had been removed from their places of work and were trying to earn a few pennies for bread by trading on the streets. They struggled with the difficult conditions as well as they could, but it was an uphill battle. Prices kept rising, while their strength and resources kept dwindling. Shortages of shoes and clothing left a severe mark. Hunger and cold often kept people confined to bed for weeks on end. The building committee organized a kitchen to feed the children, distributed packages for the holidays, paid for medicine and medical treatments, offered whatever aid or loans it could, procured clothes, sought employment for those able to work, and maintained a heated and lit community room where people could sit during the day. More than a dozen building committees set up a public kitchen on Ogrodowa Street, which served soup daily to several hundred of the poorest people.

  Not only did the building committees fill an important role by bringing aid to the impoverished populace, they frequently also helped awaken their political consciousness. The committees were headed by people with ties to the working masses and were generally opposed by the Judenrat, which disapproved of independent programmes. The Judenrat wanted to transform the committees into agencies that would implement its own agenda by pressuring the residents in their charge. To this end the Judenrat imposed a variety of payments and taxes on the committees, clearly designed to reduce the committees’ available funds.

  Whereas some committees continued operating several months into the liquidation actions, the one on Ogrodowa ceased operations when a new shift in the ghetto’s boundaries relocated the streets to the Aryan side. This was in 1941. The soup kitchen was closed at the same time, depriving many people in the neighbourhood of a hot bowl of soup and needed nutrition. Hunger grew increasingly severe. More and more patients complained to their doctors of swelling due to hunger, and more and more corpses lay on the ghetto streets. Pale, emaciated children with huge, horribly hungry eyes sobbed and moaned and asked for bread. Living skeletons covered in rags became an increasingly common sight. There was scarcely a night when you didn’t hear the groans of people dying on the street. The typhus spread. Doctors made superhuman efforts to control the disease: daily rounds of assigned buildings, lectures maintaining hygiene, attempts to obtain soap rations and disinfectants, and long hard hours in the hospital. But the epidemic grew, owing to the conditions inside the ghetto. Hundreds of dirty, starving Jews who had been declared unfit for work in the labour camps were relocated in Warsaw, and even more people were resettled from the provinces. Typhus decimated the population – in private homes, public shelters, children’s boarding houses, and in the punkty.

  These last, shelters for homeless refugees, had their own desperate, tragic story. They housed masses of people who had been deprived of their homes and shipped in from outside the city without any possessions or means of support. The agency responsible for their welfare put these people up wherever it could and struggled to keep them alive. But what kind of life was it, with over a dozen – or even several dozen – people to a room, lacking even the most primitive cots for sleeping, and, worst of all, with no food, no hope for tomorrow, no energy to go on living? A few lucky ones managed to break out and move in with some distant relative, miraculously discovered, where they would add to the poverty already reigning in that household. Some stayed put for as long as it took for a merciful death to bring an end to their suffering.

  The mortality rate rose. On average, some 4,000 people died each month. As the poverty and hunger worsened, tuberculosis also became epidemic and wrought horrible devastation up to the very end of the ghetto’s existence. It was impossible to fight. Thousands of adults and children died because they were getting no fat, no milk, no sugar. The hospitals were overflowing and the doctors despaired at their powerlessness.

  Life in the ghetto never flowed smoothly. News of every event, regardless of its significance, was passed from mouth to mouth. One day a small Jewish boy was killed on Biala Street as he attempted to pull a carrot lying in the gutter on the Aryan side through a hole in the fence. A German spotted him, inserted his gun in the hole, and killed the boy with one well-aimed shot. Was it so strange that this incident should have moved thousands of people? Another case involved a notorious gendarme known as Frankenstein, who had vowed he would personally kill a thousand Jews. From a window of the building at Elektoralna 6, I once saw this murderer at work in the courtyard, killing the concierge, who refused to say where another Jew had run off, supposedly a smuggler who had caught Frankenstein’s eye.

  During the winter of 1942, people were going barefoot on the streets. But that no longer made much impression; by then the ghetto residents had grown indifferent even to the dry shrivelled faces and dull stares of children who were alive but unable to walk, whose mouths could no longer form words, and whose speech was reduced to a terrifying gibberish. Their eyes showed neither tears nor hunger, but only death, painting its features inside their faces. For the most part these children sat near the courthouse; people learned to pass by these living human horrors calmly, just as they passed corpses.

  The Germans started filming inside the ghetto. One day they drove to the Judenrat and ordered a lavish banquet to be staged in the home of the council president, with a number of elegantly dressed guests. That was filmed along with several other banquets staged in various other apartments. They also filmed in restaurants and cafés. They even took the camera to the Jewish bath house, or mikvah, but that day no dirty, starving Jews were allowed inside; the Germans rounded up well-dressed people from off the street. They filmed a Jewish funeral as well. Inside the ghetto, especially in 1942, all funerals followed the same pattern. A collective hearse – a large box divided into two floors, each of which held three or four litters – arrived for the corpse; it could be pulled by a single person if there was only one deceased. The German film crew staged a different kind of funeral. The hearse was decorated with flowers and pulled by two beautifully festooned horses, while a sumptuously dressed rabbi led the procession. Of course no funerals like that ever happened in the ghetto. It was obvious that the films were designed as propaganda.

  Life Inside the Warsaw Ghetto II, 1941–2

  NATAN ZELICHOWER

  The people of the ghetto street formed one huge mass of castaways doomed to extinction, subsisting on a daily diet of anguished news and heart-wrenching notices. With its relentless reports of dead and dying friends and acquaintances, the street served as a constant memento mori, a terrible whip in the hands of a merciless executioner, flogging into sobriety any drunken hopes for a better tomorrow. But the street was also a true life-giving artery. Shadowy figures emerged from the depths of the blackened city to feed off the street like leeches, and these in turn fed others, even to the point of nourishing delusions of a bright future
built on easy living and abundant earnings.

  Raw nerves cried out at the slightest touch. The most trivial matter would set women crowded around a kitchen stove to quarrelling. Every pot became the subject of a spat, every spoon sparked anger, every child’s cry triggered a mother’s sharp reaction. The ghetto lived in a constant tense clamour that grew worse with every piece of bad news and rarely if ever was silenced. Even the seemingly quiet nights only muffled but did not still this unbroken lament.

  Everyone stayed alert. No one left home without asking, ‘What’s it like out today?’ Once outside, people focused trained eyes on their surroundings, searching for danger. Pedestrians traded words of warning that could suddenly shift the direction of traffic. Mere mention of a threat, the slightest gesture, could send a crowd of several thousand back inside, leaving the street empty and bare.

  Danger could swoop down like a hawk. A black limousine would pull up at a street corner; a Gestapo officer would step out and casually survey the crowd. He would choose his victims, summon them with his finger, shove them into the car, and speed off towards the destroyed buildings on Dzielna Street, just opposite the Pawiak prison. There they would be subjected to a meticulous search and then shot in the head, while the car would return to the ghetto in search of new prey. This private hunting became a favourite sport among dignitaries of the new regime in need of immediate financial relief. If they appeared on a street the traffic would slow down, although it never stopped altogether. After the limousine left, people would diligently enquire who had been taken away – then return to business, trading, shouting, haggling, consoling ... and waiting for the next black limousine.

  During the night, soldiers would make the rounds of certain buildings accompanied by members of the SP; they would pound on doors using their rifle-butts and nightsticks. Dozens of men whose names had been listed in advance would be dragged from their homes. These dazed, terrified victims would be led to some side street, lined up against a wall, and gunned down on the spot. Then the perpetrators would briskly ring the doorbells of the buildings nearest the corpses and order the concierges to stack the bodies in the entranceways and wash the blood off the pavement. A few hours later, crowds of people would step over the same spot completely unaware of what had taken place there. The only news of these incidents travelled through word of mouth, as people passed along the victims’ names – at least for a day or two, until the next execution.

  The Jews did not believe in their own extinction. At the very centre of the ‘spiritual refuge’ sat God, who, having led them through the Red Sea, would surely knock down the walls of the ghetto. While the executions filled people with terror and wrenched their hearts with fear, there was always some space left for reasoning: methods such as this might enable the Germans to eliminate a few thousand, or let’s say, even tens of thousands, but surely not half a million people! Logically speaking then, since not everyone inside the ghetto was doomed, each person had a chance of escaping alive. And the best defence against execution was faith – an unwavering faith in divine protection, along with vigilance and cleverness to avoid getting caught in a round up. In time, though, none of these defences could withstand the cunning techniques devised by the Germans.

  The SP (Sluzba Porzadkowa) was the Jewish police force in the ghetto. Zelichower survived the Holocaust, and was liberated from Buchenwald in April 1943. His wife and daughter both perished.

  Smuggling in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941

  PERETZ OPOCZYNSKI

  In every ghetto the smuggling of food became a way of life. Opoczynski was a Polish journalist.

  Kożla Alley

  The ghetto wall cuts across Franciszkańska Street right at Kożla Alley. From the distance you don’t see it; only when you stand at the corner of the alley does it become visible, and then in its entirety, as it is. It is an alley, narrow and small, with odd old-fashioned[?]* and antiquated buildings, courtyards[?], twisting entryways, and tumbledown stairways. Here and there, a narrow many-windowed five-storey house shoots up between two antiquated buildings, a sign that small flats had been here, working people, artisans, and street-vendors.

  These forlorn, uprearing buildings, squeezed in between the antiquated little houses, destroy the symmetry of the alley and give an impression of something chaotic, untrammelled[?], neglected and disregarded even before the war ...

  In front of every house is a dense mass of fruit and vegetable carts and food stands. The food stands are small. On a chair or a small table a woman sets out a few small sacks of two or three kilograms of rye, coarse, and ‘ration’ flour; or groats, millet, and barley. Other types of food, like beans and white flour, are not usually seen[?] on these stands, but can be had in the stores. The prices here are of course a little cheaper than in other streets; after all, it is Kożla Alley. Still, they are dear enough for a great part of Warsaw Jews, whom the ghetto has robbed of their livelihood and left with idle, useless hands and whose only possibility for sustaining a bare existence is by selling, little by little, their clothes and household effects at the poor man’s flea market.

  The booths, stands, and carts block the street. Every booth is besieged not so much by customers as by those who want to buy, but don’t have the wherewithal. The volume of business is large, but negligible in weight. Rare the housewife who buys a whole kilo of potatoes, beets, or carrots. People buy ten decagrams or less. People buy a single apple, and anyone who buys a quarter kilogram is a super housekeeper.[?] People come to find out how high the market stands today, if prices have fallen. They swallow their mortification and leave with a searing pain of shame that they are penniless ...

  The traffic of the rickshaws, the distinctive means of locomotion of the Warsaw Ghetto, which ... [?] was taken from as far away as the Japanese and Chinese. The rickshaw is a big help in Kożla Alley, not so much because now there are no droshkies and wagons, since the Germans confiscated the Jewish drivers’ horses – that would still not be intolerable. The Warsaw Jewish porter, you may be sure, can carry a fine load of flour on his back. But what’s the use if you don’t dare do it in the open? For the Gestapo agent’s eye is on the lookout. With the rickshaw, it’s another story. The Jews have perfected the rickshaw in ways the Chinese never dreamed of. Under the seat is a space where you can stow a few bundles of flour, and sit up there on the plush seat as innocent as you please: I’m just taking a little ride.

  But not everyone who carries food from Kożla Alley uses a rickshaw. Most go on foot, and indeed these are the mainstay of Kożla, the receivers and their helpers, the ‘strollers’. They can’t afford rickshaws; their rickshaws are their own backs on to which they often load three or four bags of flour, groats, and other sorts of food at one time. A bag may weigh fifteen kilograms, yet off they go. The market at the corner of Kożla Alley, the congestion among the vegetable buyers, and the rickshaws block the way for the ‘stroller’ and other buyers at Kożla. Each stride brings curses from the crowd. [The ‘stroller’ who hears these curses] hurries. He sweats and pants and tries [to get rid] of his bundles as soon as possible, because a Gestapo agent [is around] and has terrified him.

  The movement and the danger [are] not so great all through the day, for the smuggler doesn’t want to and can’t keep the goods in storage; he must get the goods off his hands as quickly as possible. Just as feverishly and hurriedly as it is smuggled into his house, so quickly must he get it out. Only then can he relax, with no evidence to incriminate him.

  Night-time Smuggling

  Night-time smuggling supplies the smugglers’ shops with plenty of everything: vegetables and fruit, groceries, meat and poultry[?], honey, and whatever one’s heart desires. Even good drink, too. The city needs to eat in the morning, the ‘strollers’ need a whole day for their work. At five o’clock summer mornings you can see them hauling bags of food, sacks of potatoes, cans of milk. Their faces fresh, washed by the morning, these people have the spirit of working people who eat their fill, and the feeling of assurance and of st
rength – amid the swarm of swollen feet.

  Night-time smuggling is only a part of all the [smuggling], and cannot supply the ghetto with everything it requires in the few night hours, especially in summer, when the smuggler never gets the goods he ordered at the specified time. When you ask the smuggler if he will have such and such provision later, he will always answer: ‘I don’t know. If they get it over to me, I’ll have it. Everything depends on when they can pass it over from there.’

  Night-time the smuggling goes by way of the rooftops, through tight openings, through cellars, and even over the ghetto wall itself. In short: wherever possible. Daytime, in contrast, it goes much more simply, although not without dodges and very often with inventiveness, a Jewish head. As the Mishna has it: ‘He who sees a place where miracles happened to Israel …’

  Kożla Alley has several even-numbered houses in which non-Jews live, but whose entrances and gates have been walled up. Their entrances are on the other side, on Freta Street, that is, outside the ghetto. Only the windows of some apartments look out on Kożla. This is indeed a blessing not only for the few non-Jews who occupy these apartments, but also for the Jews. And, let’s be honest, not only for the Jews of Kożla Alley, for the smugglers, but for all the Jews in Warsaw. Smuggling, to be sure, is basically a dirty business, a noose on the neck of the hunger-swollen consumer, but, nevertheless, under the terrible conditions of the great prison into which Warsaw Jews have been corralled, the ghetto walls, it is the only salvation for the surviving remnants. Who knows? Some day perhaps we ought to erect a monument to the smuggler for [the] risks [he took] because consequently he thereby saved a good part of Jewish Warsaw from starving to death.

  Grated Windows

  The windows of the non-Jewish apartments were secured from top to bottom with wire grating, supposedly to fence the building off from the Jewish street. Actually the gratings are a good way to bring off the smuggling. Inside, right at the grates, the Gentile inserts a wooden trough, the kind you see in the mills. The trough reaches[?] through the grating, and when the Gentile pours a sack of rye into it, the rye drains through the grating right into the sack in the hands of the Jewish smuggler of Kożla Alley. In a wink the sack is full, and Meyer Bomke, the tall porter, with shoulders like a Russian peasant, whisks it on his back like a feather and vanishes, as he must.