Holocaust Period
The outbreak of the war (Sept. 1, 1939) and the invasion of Poland by German
troops were marked by immediate heavy loss of civilian (especially Jewish) life
and material damage. Military operations caused the death of 20,000 Jews, while
bombing destroyed some 50,000 Jewish-owned houses, factories, workshops, and
stores in about 120 Jewish communities, in some of which 90-95% of the houses
went up in flames. In Warsaw alone, in the first month of the war, 30% of the
Jewish buildings were destroyed when entire Jewish neighborhoods burned down.
A tremendous stream of refugees sought shelter in the large cities,
particularly
in Warsaw. Subsequently, tens of thousands of Jewish enterprises not destroyed
in the bombing were now lost in liquidation measures, bringing the total amount
of Jewish property and business concerns lost or destroyed to an estimated
100,000.
Jewish losses on the battlefield totaled 32,216 dead (officers and enlisted
men) and another 61,000 taken prisoner, the majority of whom died in captivity.
Military operations were still going on when the German army and
SD
Einsatzkommandos
undertook a campaign of bloody repression. They
usually arrested a group of Jews or Poles, who were kept as hostages and
eventually
shot. Sometimes mock executions were staged, in which the victims stood for
hours in suspense anticipating execution. Pious Jews had their beards removed
by blunt instruments, which tore their skin, or had their beards burned off.
Swastikas were branded on the scalps of some victims; others were subjected
to "gymnastics," such as "riding" on other victims' backs,
crawling on all fours, singing and dancing, or staging fights with one another.
The Nazis took a special sadistic pleasure in violating religious feelings,
deliberately choosing Jewish religious holidays on which to carry out their
assaults.
They instituted a special campaign of burning down synagogues, or, after
destroying their interiors, turned them into stables, warehouses, bathhouses,
or even public latrines. At
Będzin the synagogue at the old market place was set on fire on Sept. 9, 1939.
The flames spread to the neighboring Jewish houses, and as the area was
cordoned
off by soldiers and SS-men who did not permit anyone to escape or to fight the
fire, 56 houses were burned down, and several hundred persons were burned to
death. In some places, e.g., Wloclawek and Brzeziny, the president or rabbi
of the community was forced to sign a "confession" that the Jews
themselves
started the fire and to pay heavy fines as punishment for the
"arson."
The tenants of the houses burned down were brought before a military court.
Any Jew who tried to enter a burning synagogue in order to save the Torah
scrolls
was either shot or thrown into the flames. In many places the military staged
autos-da-fé of Torah scrolls, Hebrew books, and other religious articles, and
forced the Jews to sing and dance around the flames and shout that the Jews
were to blame for the war. The Jewish communities were also compelled to bear
the cost of tearing down the remaining walls of the houses and clearing the
rubble. It is estimated that several hundred synagogues were destroyed in the
first two months of the occupation.
At the same time, mass arrests of Jews were carried out in which thousands
of men, women, and children were interned in "civilian prison camps"
set up in synagogues, churches, movie houses, and the like, or put behind
barbed-wire
fences on open lots and exposed to the soldiers' cruelty and torture. Afterward
the prisoners were sent on foot to larger centers (such as Wegrow, Lomza,
Sieradz,
Tomaszow Mazowiecki), where some were set free and others put on forced labor
or deported to Germany. In the latter instance their transport to Germany was
used for propaganda purposes, as in the case of groups of Jews from Kalisz and
Wieruszow who were borne around German towns in trucks bearing the inscription:
"These are the Jewish swine who shot at German soldiers."
Precise instructions issued by the High Command of the Wehrmacht on July
24, 1939, for the internment of civilian prisoners provided for the arrest of
Jews and Poles of military age at the outset of the invasion. In practice,
however,
a wild huntdown of Jews was made, without regard to age. In the campaign of
terror that followed, hundreds of civilians, Poles, and Jews (in Czestochowa,
Przemysl, Bydgoszcz, and Dynow) were slaughtered outright or imprisoned in
buildings
which were sealed and then set on fire or blown up, the imprisoned dying a
horrible
death (in Dynow, Lipsk-Kielecki, Mszczonow). No precise figures are available
on the number of victims in this period of terror. In the rampage of
persecution
throughout Poland, people were taken off the streets or dragged from their
homes
and put on forced labor. They were tortured and beaten, and deprived of their
human dignity when forced to perform such acts as cleaning latrines with their
bare hands or, in the case of women, washing the floor with their own
underwear.
Normal life was paralyzed by the arbitrary arrests for forced labor even at
a later stage, when forced labor was "regulated" and the
still-existing
communities or the Judenräte had to provide labor contingents
on the basis of an understanding reached with the various German offices or
commands.
The systematic robbery of Jewish property involved the closing of all the
Jewish shops in many towns, or enforced sale of the wares at nominal prices
or against worthless receipts. To facilitate the identification of Jewish
property,
the chief of the civilian administration attached to the army,
Hans Frank,
issued
an order (Sept, 8, 1939) for all Jewish stores to display a Star of David or
other appropriate inscriptions on their stores by the following day.
Practically
all Jewish communities were also forced to make large "contributions"
of money, gold, silver, and jewelry. In many towns compulsory contributions
were paid several times over. Large sums were extorted from wealthy individuals
under threat of imprisonment. Whenever a Nazi "visit" to the offices
of the communities took place, all the money in their safes was confiscated,
e.g., in Warsaw on Oct. 5, 1939, when 100,000 zlotys ($20,000) were taken in
this manner. "Legal" forms of robbery were also instituted. The
civilian
administrators attached to the occupation forces issued orders restricting the
sums Jews could hold in their bank accounts, while the accounts themselves were
blocked. Restrictions were also placed on the amount of cash a Jew could keep
in his home. Jewish-owned property was frozen, Jews were prohibited from
engaging
in the textile and leather business, and their inventories were registered with
the Nazi authorities. Any infringement entailed heavy punishment, including
death.
Two decrees by Hitler (Oct. 8 and 12, 1939) provided for the division of
the occupied areas of Poland into the following administrative units:
-
Reichsgau Wartheland, which included the entire Poznan province, most of
the Lodz province, five Pomeranian districts, and one county of the
Warsaw province;
-
the remaining area of Pomerania, which was
incorporated into the Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen;
-
Regierungsbezirk Zichenau (administrative district of Ciechanow) consisting
of the five northern counties of Warsaw province (Plock, Plonsk, Sterpe,
Ciechanow,
Mlawa), which became a part of East Prussia;
-
Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz (administrative district of Katowice) – or
unofficially
Ost-Oberschlesien (East Upper Silesia) – which included Sosnowiec, Bę,
Chryzanow,
and Zawiercie counties and parts of Olkusz and Zywiec counties:
the General Government of Poland, which
included the central Polish provinces and was subdivided into four districts,
Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Cracow.
The areas listed under 1. – 4. were incorporated into the Reich. After the
outbreak of the Soviet-German War, the Polish territories previously occupied
by the Russians were organized as follows:
-
Bezirk Bialystok (district of Bialystok), which included the Bialystok,
Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Lomza, Sokolka, Volkovysk, and Grodno counties and
was "attached" (not incorporated) to East Prussia;
-
Bezirke Litauen und Weissrussland – the Polish
part of White Russia (today western Belorussia), including the Vilna province,
which was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland;
-
Bezirk Wolhynien-Podolien – the Polish province
of Volhynia, which was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine; and
-
East Galicia, which was incorporated into
the General-Government and became its fifth district.
The Jewish population of this entire area was 3,351,000, of whom 2,042,000
came under Nazi rule and 1,309,000 under Soviet occupation in September 1939.
The ultimate fate of the Jewish population under Nazi rule was the same in all
the areas, though the various administrative areas differed in the degree and
pace of persecution, depending on local leadership (a Nazi principle of
administration).
Reichsgau Wartheland
The area was subdivided into three Regierungsbezirke ("administrative
districts") – Poznan, Inowroclaw, and Lodz. On Sept. 1, 1939, it had
390,000
Jews (including 4,500 in Poznan, 54,090 in Inowroclaw, and 326,000 in the Lodz
district – 233,000 in the city of Lodz). Like all Polish areas
incorporated into
the Reich, Wartheland was from the beginning designated to become
"judenrein" (Heydrich's
"Schnellbrief" of Sept. 21, 1939). In a secret order to
the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office) and the
high
SS and police officials, issued on Oct. 30, 1939, Himmler
fixed the period of
November 1939-February 1940 for clearing the incorporated areas of their entire
Jewish population and the majority of their Polish population as well. A
similar
decree was issued on Nov. 4, 1939, by Wartheland's Gauleiter Arthur Greiser.
Arrangements were made for the transfer of 100,000 Jews from its territory
during this period. In fact, more than 50 Jewish communities were deported
wholly
or in part to the Lublin district between the fall of 1939 and May 1940; the
larger communities among those deported were Poznan, Kalisz, Ciechocinek,
Gniezno,
Inowroclaw, Nieszawa, and Konin. In some towns the deportation was carried out
in stages, with a small number of Jews remaining, engaged in work for the Nazi
authorities. In some instances, the regime of terror drove the Jews to
desperation,
so that they chose "voluntary" exile. This happened in Lipno and in
Kalisz, where many Jews, unable to withstand the persecution, fled from the
city in October and November 1939. In Lodz, over ten thousand Jews, including
most of the Jewish intelligentsia, were deported in December 1939. For weeks
the deportees were kept at assembly points, and had to supply their own means
of subsistence, though they had been deprived of all their valuables. Large
assembly points were located at Kalisz, Sieradz, and Lodz. There, the Selektion
("selection") took place in which able-bodied men, aged 14 and over,
were sent to labor camps which had been established in the meantime, while
women,
children, and old men were deported in sealed freight cars to the Lublin and
Kielce areas. This occurred in the severe winter of 1939-1940, and upon arrival
at their destination, some of the deportees were dead, others nearly frozen,
or otherwise seriously ill. The survivors were bereft of clothing, food, and
money. A few found refuge with relatives or friends, but most of them had to
find places in the crowded synagogues and poorhouses. For the Jewish
communities
of the Lublin and Radom districts, the influx of deportees was a very heavy
burden. Most of the deportees perished before mass deportation began.
Ghettoization
At this time, a second campaign was launched to concentrate the Jewish
population
in ghettos. The first ghetto in Wartheland was established at Lodz, on orders
given by Polizeipräsident (Chief of Police) Johannes Schäfer (Feb. 8, 1940).
By the latter half of 1940, all the Jewish communities that had survived the
mass deportations were sealed off in ghettos. Lodz ghetto had a population of
162,000 on the day of its establishment (May 1, 1940). The large ghettos in
Wartheland included Pabianice (with about 8,500 persons), Kutno (7,000),
Belchatow
(5,500), Ozorkow (4,700), Zelow (4,500), Zdunska Wola (10,000), Wloclawek
(where
4,000 were left after the deportations), and Wielun (4,000). Lodz became a
central
ghetto (Gaughetto) for the entire province, absorbing Jews sent from ghettos
that were liquidated or reduced in size, as well as from the Reich, Vienna,
and Prague. Between Sept. 26 and Oct. 9, 1941, 3,082 Jews from Wloclawek and
the vicinity arrived at Lodz Ghetto, and between Oct. 17 and Nov. 4, 1941,
approximately
20,000 arrived from Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Frankfort, Hamburg, Cologne, Emden,
Düsseldorf, and Luxembourg. From May to August 1942, 14,440
"selected"
Jews from liquidated ghettos arrived at Lodz.
From the end of 1942 until its liquidation in August 1944, Lodz was the only
remaining ghetto in Wartheland. Its comparatively long existence was due to
the fact that it became one of the largest industrial plants working for the
Wehrmacht or private contractors. In August 1943, some 76,000 workers (about
85% of the entire ghetto population) were employed in 117 warehouses. According
to the Nazi Ghettoverwaltung ("ghetto administration"), the total
wages
and production in 1942 reached a value of 27,862,200 RM ($5,572,440). Large
tailor shops also existed at Pabianice, Belchatow, Ozorkow, and other ghettos
in the Lodz district. Lodz Ghetto bore the imprint of its Judenältester
("Jewish
elder") Mordechai Rumkowski, who at an early stage imposed his rule over
the ghetto. The ghetto was administered by division of the population into
various
socio-economic groups, each with a different status, in accordance with their
status in the ghetto hierarchy or their usefulness for the war industry. In
those areas of ghetto life in which the Nazis allowed the Jews autonomy,
Rumkowski
held absolute power.
Physical Annihilation
Partial liquidation actions affecting certain categories of Jews, such as
the sick and the old, began in Wartheland as early as the fall of 1940 (in
Kalisz).
In September or October 1941, experiments in the murder of Jews were carried
out in Konin county, where Jews were forced into ditches and covered over with
wet quicklime. On Dec. 8, 1941, the murder camp at Chelmno began operation.
On Jan. 2, 1942, Greiser's Erlass, die Entjudung des Warthelands betreffend
("Decree on Clearing all Jews from the Wartheland") was issued. In
December 1941, the remaining Jews from Kolo and Dabie were deported to Chelmno,
followed in January 1942 by the inmates of the ghettos of Izbica Kujawska and
other places. From Jan. 16 until mid-May 1942, numerous transports of Jews were
dispatched from Lodz Ghetto to Chelmno. By May some 55,000 were murdered there.
Between March and September 1942, all the remaining ghettos, with the exception
of Lodz, were evacuated. Lodz ghetto was the scene of a bloody
"action"
against children under ten years of age, the old, and the sick, resulting in
the murder of 16,500 persons.
In mid-1943, Himmler and Albert Speer (Reich Minister for Armament and War
Production) entered a long-drawn-out contest over the disposition of Lodz
Ghetto.
Himmler sought to incorporate the ghetto industries into the SS camp combine
in the Lublin district, while Speer tried to retain a monopoly over this
important
industrial center. Their rivalry prolonged the existence of Lodz Ghetto until
the summer of 1944, by which time Germany's strategic situation had
deteriorated
to such an extent that the evacuation of Poland was imminent. In August 1944,
Lodz, the only ghetto still left in Europe, was liquidated and all its inmates,
some 68,500 Jews, were deported to Auschwitz.
Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen
This area, with a total Jewish population of 23,000, had few and small Jewish
communities; e.g., Danzig, Torun, and Bydgoszcz. The province became
"judenrein"
at a comparatively early stage. The Jews and Poles were exposed to a campaign
of terror from the very beginning, which resulted in the massacre of part of
the Jewish inhabitants. Others fled from the area, and the rest were deported
to the General Government. The last transport of Jews (some 2,000 persons) from
Danzig and Bydogszcz, including the surviving Jews of Königsberg, arrived at
the Warsaw Ghetto on March 10, 1941.
Regierungsbezirk Zichenau (Ciechanow)
According to the 1931 census, there was a Jewish population of 80,000 in
the area of this newly-created administrative district. In the first weeks of
the occupation, a large number of Jews from the towns near the German-Soviet
demarcation line, e.g., Ostrow Mazowiecka, Przasnysz, Ostroleka, and Pultusk,
were forced to cross over to the Soviet zone. Their expulsion was accompanied
by acts of terror, such as forcing the Jews to cross the Bug or the Narew
rivers
and opening fire on them, so that some people drowned or were shot to death.
This group shared the fate of all the other Polish refugees in the Soviet
Union.
At the end of February 1941, about 10,000 Jews from Plock and Plock county were
driven out, first passing through the Dzialdowo transit camp, where they were
tortured and robbed, and from there to various towns in the Radom district,
where within a year most of them died of starvation and disease. In Ciechanow,
Mlawa, Plonsk, Strzegowo, and Sierpc, the Jews were segregated into ghettos,
along with the few Jews left in towns whose Jewish populations had largely been
expelled to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1939. These ghettos situated in
the administrative area of East Prussia, ruled by the notorious Erich Koch,
endured particularly harsh and bloodthirsty treatment, and the murder of
members
of the Judenrat and ghetto police was a frequent occurrence. In the fall of
1942 the ghettos were liquidated and the Jews dispatched to
Treblinka.
Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz (East Upper Silesia)
According to statistics published by the "Central Office of the Councils
of Elders of the Jewish Communities in East Upper Silesia," comprising
32 communities, a Jewish population of 93,628 existed in these communities in
March 1941. The largest among these were Bę (25,171), Sosnowiec (24,149),
Chrzanow (8,229), Zawiercie (5,472), Dąbrowa Górnicza (5,564), and Oswiecim
(6,454). Jews played an important role in the life of this highly
industrialized
region (in mining, metallurgy, and textiles), and were heavily hit by the
early-instituted
"Aryanization" process.
A special office, the Dienststelle des Sonderbeauftragten der R. R. S. S. und
Chefs der deutschen Polizei für fremdvölkischen Einsatz in Oberschlesien,
headed by Gen. Albrecht Schmelt (and commonly referred to as the Schmelt
Organization),
was in charge of sending the comparatively large number of skilled Jewish
workers
to German firms in Silesia and the Reich. No German firm was permitted to
employ
Jewish workers without the consent of the Schmelt Organization, and the latter
maintained complete control over the Jewish "work effort." The German
firms paid the Jewish workers at the normal rate (in this the Katowice
(Kattowitz)
area differed from the other occupied areas), but the workers received only
a part of their wages and the firms had to submit the remainder to the
Dienststelle.
In 1942 the Schmelt Organization controlled 50,570 Jewish workers. When the
evacuation of Jews from East Upper Silesia took place (starting May-June 1942),
the Jewish workers were deported to Auschwitz, which was the major
concentration
camp as well as the largest industrial combine in Silesia.
The chairman of the Central Office of the Councils of Elders in Sosnowiec,
Moshe Merin, exercised a decisive influence on the internal affairs of the
Jewish
communities and had considerable authority over the Judenräte (the Jewish
councils).
The formal ghettoization of East Upper Silesia did not take place until a
comparatively
late date. In Bę and Sosnowiec, for example, a closed ghetto was not
established
until May 1943, but it was liquidated by August 1943. These ghettos also
absorbed
the Jews left over from previous Aussiedlungen ("evacuation
actions").
Merin was a consistent protagonist of the strategy of "rescuing" Jews
by voluntarily providing the Nazi Moloch with contingents of victims to give
others the chance of survival. He carried out this policy to its extreme,
lending
his own active cooperation, as well as that of the ghetto police, to the Aussiedlungsaktionen.
General Government
Originally, the General Government consisted of four districts, Warsaw, Lublin,
Radom, and Cracow. When the district of Galicia was added, the Jewish
population
reached 2,110,000. The transfer of the administration from military to civilian
authorities, which took place at the end of October 1939, did not alleviate
the harsh conditions, for the uncontrolled terror of the first period was then
replaced by "legally" imposed restrictions and persecution. The first
proclamation, issued by General Governor Hans Frank on Oct. 26, 1939, stated
that "there will be no room in the General Government for Jewish
exploiters,"
and from the very first day of his rule, Frank inundated the Jewish population
with a flood of anti-Jewish measures. The personal rights of Jews were severely
curtailed in all spheres of private and social life. Jews were deprived of
freedom
of movement, the right to dispose of their property, exercise their
professions,
and benefit from their labor. They were denied social and medical insurance
benefits (which the anti-Semitic regime in Poland had granted them), religious
observance (ritual slaughter and public worship), and a normal school education
for their children. Finally, they lost the right to dispose of their own
persons.
Jews could no longer associate freely and Jewish societies, institutions, and
organizations were disbanded and their property confiscated. The Judenrat a
quasi-representative body of the Jews, was established in their place by the
Nazi authorities.
Warsaw District
This district was divided into ten counties, Warsaw, Garwolin, Grojec, Lowicz,
Skierniewice, Sochaczew, Blonie, Ostrow Mazowiecki, Minsk Mazowiecki, Siedlce,
and Sokolow Podlaski. In the first half of 1940 the total Jewish population
of this district was 600,000, of whom 400,000 lived in Warsaw. Its Jews were
concentrated into ghettos in the western counties in 1940, and in the eastern
counties in the fall of 1941. The Warsaw Ghetto was established on Nov. 15,
1940. The ghettos in the western part were of short duration. From the end of
January to the beginning of April 1942, 72,000 Jews from this area were brought
into the Warsaw Ghetto, where they lacked even the most rudimentary means for
existence. With their arrival, the total number of refugees in the ghetto rose
to 150,000, but the population was being constantly decimated by starvation
and disease.
In the fall of 1941, the Jews in each of the eastern counties were concentrated
into between five and seven ghettos. This step was in fact in preparation for
Aussiedlungsaktionen which began with the Warsaw Ghetto on July 22, 1942, and
continued until Oct. 4-6, 1942. In the General Government these actions, under
the code name of "Einsatz Reinhard," were always carried out by
special
commando units, headed
by the SS and police chief of the Lublin district, Odilo
Globocnik. A decree
issued by Frank on June 3, 1942, transferred the civilian authority's
jurisdiction
over the Jewish population in the General Government to Wilhelm Krüger, its
chief of SS and police.
On the eve of its destruction, the Warsaw Ghetto contained 450,000 Jews,
of whom approximately 300,000 were deported to Treblinka by Sept. 21, 1942.
Officially, 35,639 Jews remained in Warsaw as workers in German factories,
employees
of the Judenrat, or policemen. In fact, some 60,000 were left, including those
in hiding. It is to be noted that Himmler's order to Krüger of July 19, 1942,
formally fixed the date of Dec. 31, 1942, as the final date for
"cleansing"
the General Government of the Jews. Between July 19 and 24, 1942, the Jews of
Otwock, Minsk Mazowiecki, and Siedlce were deported. Between September 22 and
27, most of the ghettos in the Sokolow Podlaski, Wegrow, and Minsk Mazowiecki
counties were liquidated, followed, in the last days of October, by the
remaining
ghettos in the Warsaw district. Small groups of Jews tried to hide out on the
"Aryan" side or in the countryside. In order to lull the intended
victims into a false sense of security, Krüger issued a decree (Oct. 28,
1942)
when the annihilation of the Jewish population in the district had been almost
completed, providing for "residential quarters" in Warsaw and
Siedlce.
His aim was to influence the Jews in hiding to believe that these "newly
established ghettos" which had already passed through a partial
liquidation
would now be a safe haven for the survivors. In this he was largely successful.
The intolerable conditions in which the Jews found themselves, hiding out in
the forests amid a hostile population, induced them to seek out and settle in
the new "residential quarters." Only a short while later they were
deported. The "new" Siedlce Ghetto, for example, did not last a
month,
and by November 25, Siedlce was judenrein. In November, too, the liquidation
of most of the Jewish labor camps was begun and after "selections"
the workers were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. In the course of the Aktion
on Jan. 18-19. 1943, the SS men met with armed resistance from the Jewish
Fighting
Organization and were forced to cease action for the time being. The Warsaw
Ghetto, according to Himmler's decree (Feb. 16, 1943), was to be liquidated
at the earliest possible date, and the workers and machinery were to be
transferred
to the Lublin SS camps.
Lublin District
The ten counties in the Lublin district – Lublin, Biala Podlaska,
Bilgoraj,
Chelm, Hrubieszow, Janow Lubelski, Krasnystaw, Pulawy, Radzyn, and Zamosc
– had
a Jewish population of 250,000 in March-April 1941, including 55,000 refugees
and deportees. In the beginning, the eastern part of the Lublin district was
regarded as a "Jewish reservation" and Jews from parts of Poland that
had been incorporated into the Reich, as well as from the Reich itself, from
the Czech Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, and from Austria were deported there
on a systematic basis. Jozefow, lzbica Lubelska, Krasnystaw, and Zamosc were
some of the towns which served as concentration points for these deportees.
The local population was also displaced, generally in order to make room for
the new arrivals. Even after this plan for the "Jewish reservation"
had been given up, tens of thousands of Jews deported from Germany,
Czechoslovakia,
and Austria continued to stream into the district, to be "evacuated"
to the Belzec death camp, whose murder installations began functioning in March
1942.
The Nazi ideologists also regarded Lublin as a reservoir of "World
Jewry,"
which presumably maintained secret links with Jewish communities everywhere. As
a result, the Lublin district was turned into an experimental
station for various Nazi schemes for the annihilation of Polish Jewry. It was
the headquarters of "Einsatz Reinhard" from where its "action
groups" began their destructive march through the General Government. The
first ghetto in the district was set up in the city of Lublin in April 1941.
Since the area designated for the ghetto was too small to hold the
approximately
45,000 Jews who were in Lublin at the time, the Nazi authorities forced over
10,000 to leave the city "voluntarily" and move to other towns in
the district. The restricted area of the ghetto and its dense population caused
epidemics and a high rate of mortality. In November and December 1941 there
were 1,227 cases of typhus and the mortality rate that year was three times
that of a year before the war (40.8 per 1,000).
In the second half of 1940, about 50 forced labor camps for Jews were
established
in the Lublin district for local Jews and Jews from other districts. In the
winter of 1940-41, there were over 12,000 Jews in these camps. Many succumbed
to the intolerable living and working conditions – starvation; wretched
accommodation
(usually in decrepit old barracks, stables, and barns); lack of hygiene;
strenuous
work (regulating rivers, draining swamps, and digging canals); and inhuman
treatment
by the camp commanders. In Osowa camp, 47 inmates were shot in July 1941 after
two or three of them had contracted typhus. The Judenräte in ghettos from
which
the workers had come organized aid for them. The Warsaw Judenrat, for example,
spent 520,000 zlotys ($104,000) in aid to the camps in 1940, and the Lublin
Judenrat, 150,000 zlotys ($30,000). The "evacuation" campaign in this
district preceded those in other parts of the General Government. In the period
from March 17 to April 20, 1942, 30,000 Jews from Lublin Ghetto were deported
to Belzec and murdered there, while 4,000 others were deported to the Majdan
Tatarski Ghetto close to Lublin, which existed until Nov. 9, 1942. In the same
period, 3,400 Jews from Piaski and 2,200 from Izbica were dispatched to Belzec,
preceded by about 17,000 Jews from Pulawy county (May 6-12). The ghettos which
had thus been made judenrein became temporary collection points for Jews
deported
from the Reich, the Protectorate, and Vienna, and after a short stay there they
were sent on to Belzec to be murdered.
Krüger's decree of Oct. 28, 1942, set up eight ghettos in the Lublin
district,
and like the ghettos in the Warsaw district, their existence was of short
duration.
By Dec. 1, 1942, five ghettos were left (Piaski, Wlodawa, Izbica, Lukow
Lubelski,
and Miedzyrzec Podlaski) and the last of these was liquidated in July 1943.
The Jewish workers remained in the concentration and labor camps until November
1943. On Nov. 3-7, 1943, 18,000 Jews were murdered in Maidanek concentration
camp, over 13,000 in the Poniatowa camp and approximately 10,000 in the
Trawniki
camp, to which several thousands of Jews had been deported from Warsaw after
the ghetto revolt in April 1943.
Cracow District
The Cracow district, consisting of 12 counties (Cracow, Debica, Jaroslaw,
Jaslo, Krosno, Miechow, Nowy Sacz, Nowy Targ, Przemysl, Sanok, and Tarnow),
had a prewar Jewish population of over 250,000. By May 1941 this number
dwindled
to 200,000, in spite of the additional influx of 20,000 refugees and deportees
from the incorporated areas, including Silesia, Lodz, and Kalisz, in the fall
of 1939 and spring of 1940. The expulsion of Jews from the Cracow district,
where the General Government capital was situated, was accelerated. In the
first
few months, Jews living in the border towns along the San River were expelled
to the Soviet zone. From the spring of 1940 to November 1941, Jews living in
the spas and summer resorts in Nowy Sacz and Nowy Targ counties were expelled,
and from May 1940 to April 1941, 55,000 Jews left Cracow voluntarily or were
driven out. The Jewish population thus became concentrated in an
ever-decreasing
number of places – in Cracow county, in seven townships and ten villages,
in Nowy
Sacz in five places, and in the Nowy Targ county in seven.
The first ghetto was established in March 1941 in the Podgorze quarter of
Cracow. A wall sealed it off from the rest of the city and the gates of the
wall had the form of tombstones. The first "evacuations" took place
in Cracow Ghetto, which underwent three such actions, on May 30-31, October
28, 1942, and March 13-14, 1943. In the final evacuation, 2,000 Jews were
murdered
on the spot, about 2,000 were deported to Auschwitz, and approximately 6,000
were sent to the nearby camp in Plaszow, located on the site of two Jewish
cemeteries.
The first Aktion in Tarnow took place on June 11-13, 1942, involving 11,000
Jews. The Jews of Przemysl county were murdered on July 27-August 3 (after
10,000
Jews from the county had been concentrated in the city). At the beginning of
August, the Jews from Jaroslaw were deported to Belzec, followed at the end
of that month by deportation of the Jews from Cracow county, where at an
earlier
date the Jews from the ghettos in Bochnia, Wieliczka, and Skawina had been
concentrated.
In September 1942 approximately 11,000 Jews from Sanok county (earlier
concentrated
at a camp at Izyaslav (Zaslav) were deported to Belzec or shot in the
surrounding
forests. That month the ghettos in Tarnow county were finally liquidated.
Krüger's decree of Oct. 28, 1942, setting up six ghettos in the Cracow
district
(Cracow, Bochnia, Tarnow, Rzeszow, Debica, and Przemysl), was immediately
followed
by murder "actions" there. From June to November 1942, a total of
over 100,000 Jews were murdered, and by Jan. 1, 1943, according to official
figures, 37,000 destitute Jews were left in "residual ghettos" and
a number of camps. There were over 20 labor camps in the Cracow district, the
largest at Mielec (with 3,000 Jewish inmates on the day of its liquidation,
Aug. 24, 1944) – and others in Pustkow (1,500), Rozwadow (1,200), Szebnie
(2,000-2,500),
and in Plaszow with two branches in Prokocim and Biezanow. Plaszow, a
collection
point for the Jews who survived the liquidation of ghettos and camps in the
entire district, had 20,000 imprisoned there in the fall of 1943. In March
1944,
large transports were sent from Plaszow to Auschwitz, Stutthof, Flossenburg,
and Mauthausen, while the 567 Jews left were liquidated in January 1945
together
with the rest of the Jewish survivors from the Cracow district.
Radom District
The newly created Radom district, comprising the larger part of the Kielce
province and parts of the Lodz and Warsaw provinces, had a Jewish population
of about 360,000 on Sept. 1, 1939. In this district too the evacuation of the
Jews proceeded at a rapid pace. First of all, the district had been heavily
bombarded, and there were cities and towns in which up to 80% of the Jewish
population had lost their homes and sought refuge elsewhere. Secondly, the
deportations
from the incorporated areas, the Protectorate (an undetermined number from
Prague),
and Vienna brought into the district large numbers of homeless Jews –
4,000 from
Wartheland, about 10,000 from the Plock county, and 4,000 from Vienna. In 1941,
the total number of refugees and deportees reached 70-75,000 (over 20% of the
local Jewish population). In 1940-41, a kind of internal expulsion process went
on in the district, e.g., in December 1940, when 2,000 Jews were expelled from
Radom, and in October 1941, when several thousand were driven out from Tomaszow
Mazowiecki.
The ghettos in this district were created at an earlier stage than in other
parts of the General Government – in Piotrkow at the end of October 1939,
and
in Radomsko at the end of December that year. Ghettos were set up in
March-April
1941 in the three large cities of the Radom district – in Radom (which in
January
1941 had 28,000 Jews), Czestochowa (36,000), and Kielce (20,000). At the end
of 1940 the ghetto of Tomaszow Mazowiecki was established (this town had 16,500
Jews in June 1940), divided into three different sections (the Radom Ghetto
also consisted of two sections in two different quarters of the city). Many
places were in ruins, causing severe overcrowding in the ghettos, and in some
of the smaller ghettos there were as many as 12-30 persons to a room. In order
to prepare for the Aussiedlungen the Nazis concentrated the Jews in a few
ghettos.
In the first stage, the Jews who were still living in villages were expelled
to the neighboring towns. In the second stage, the Jewish population from the
smaller towns was concentrated in the large ghettos, and each of the ten
counties
had several concentration points assigned to it. At the end of this stage, over
20,000 Jews were living in a few large, heavily guarded ghettos.
The first deportation, to Treblinka, took place on Aug. 5, 1942, in Radom.
The Kielce Ghetto inhabitants were deported on August 20-24, and the
Czestochowa
Ghetto inhabitants, between Sept. 2 and Oct. 5, 1942. By Nov. 7, 1942, most
of the Jews had been deported to Treblinka. On Jan. 1, 1943, according to a
German source, there were only 29,400 Jews left in the four ghettos
("residential
districts") in Radomsko, Sandomierz, Szydlowiec, and Ujazd, provided for
in Krüger's second decree (Nov. 10, 1942). These ghettos came to an end in
January 1943. Only the Jewish slave laborers in the labor camps were left,
mainly
near the industrial concerns of Radom, Kielce, Czestochowa,
Ostrowiec-Swietokrzyski,
Skarzysko-Kamienna, Blizyn, Piotrkow, Tomaszow Mazowiecki, and other towns.
These were in fact concentration camps run by the district SS and police
chiefs,
to whom the German factory owners directly paid the fees for exploitation of
Jewish manpower (as was the case in the other districts also). Some of these
camps went through a series of transfers and "selections," but
continued
to exist until the second half of 1944. The German Hasag factories in
Czestochowa
were still functioning as late as January 1945.
| Einsatzkommando |
|
Einsatzgruppe: Battalion-sized, mobile killing units of the Security Police and SS
Security Service that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union
in June 1941. These units were supported by units of the uniformed
German Order Police and auxiliaries of volunteers (Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, and Ukrainian). Their victims, primarily Jews, were executed by
shooting and were buried in mass graves from which they were later exhumed and
burned. At least a million Jews were killed in this manner. There were four
Einsatzgruppen (A, B, C, D) which were
subdivided into company-sized Einsatzkommandos. Return |
| |
|
|
| Hans Michael Frank |
|
Nazi politician and lawyer responsible for the mass murder
of Polish Jewry. Return |
| |
|
|
| Inowroclaw |
|
(Ger. Hohensalza). City in Bydgoszcz province, central Poland. The first documents
concerning Jews there date from 1447. Return |
| |
|
|
| judenrein |
|
"Cleansed of Jews," denoting areas where all Jews had been either murdered or
deported. Return |
| |
|
|
| Reinhard Tristan Heydrich |
|
(1904–1942), Nazi S. S. leader who played a prominent part in the design
and execution of the "Final Solution" [Ger. "Endlösung" in Nazi
terminology;
the Nazi planned mass murder and total annihilation of the Jews]. Return |
| |
|
|
| RSHA |
|
One of the 12 main offices of the S. S. established on Sept. 27, 1930,
as the roof authority over the different Nazi secret police and intelligence
organizations, with the exception of military intelligence (Abwehr). Return |
| |
|
|
| Heinrich Himmler |
|
(1900–1945), Nazi leader and one of Hitler's principal lieutenants. After World War I,
he joined a nationalist "free corps" and participated in the 1923 Munich putsch.
In 1929, appreciating Himmler's devotion and organizational talents, Hitler
appointed him chief of the S. S., the elite guard of the Nazi leadership,
which, under his rule, increased from 280 members to a vast army. Return |
| |
|
|
| Selektion |
|
(Ger.): 1) In ghettos and other Jewish settlements, the drawing up by Nazis
of lists of deportees. 2) Separation of incoming victims to concentration
camps into two categories – those destined for immediate killing and
those to be sent to forced labor. Return |
| |
|
|
| Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski |
|
(1877–1944), "Elder of the Jews" in Lodz ghetto. Born in Ilino, Russia, Rumkowski
settled in Lodz at the turn of the century. In the period between the two world
wars he was engaged in social and welfare activities, running several Jewish
orphanages. He was a member of the General Zionist Party and represented it
on the council, and later on the committee, of the Jewish community in Lodz. Return |
| |
|
|
| Chelmno |
|
(Ger. Kulmhof), Nazi extermination camp on the Ner River 37 mi. (60 km.) from Lodz,
for the mass murder of the Jews in the western Polish provinces annexed to the Reich.
Between the beginning of December 1941 and spring 1943, the Jews from Warthegau district
were dispatched there for extermination. Return |
| |
|
|
| General Government |
|
Territory in Poland administered by a German civilian governor-general with
headquarters in Cracow after the German occupation in World War II. Return |
| |
|
|
| Judenrat |
|
(Ger. "Jewish council"). Council set up in Jewish communities and
ghettos under the Nazis to execute their instructions. Return |
| |
|
|
| Treblinka |
|
One of the main Nazi extermination centers during World War II. Known until
then as a small railroad station between Siedlce and Malkinia, located approximately
62 miles (100 km.) northeast of Warsaw, Treblinka became the final destination for
transports that brought Jews from the ghettos of the General Government and about
ten European countries to their death. Return
|
| |
|
|
| Odilo Globocnik |
|
(1904–1945), Nazi executioner of Polish Jewry. Born in Trieste, Italy, Globocnik
joined the Nazi Party in Austria in 1922 and was nominated Gauleiter of Vienna in
reward for his part in the preparation of Austria's annexation in 1938, but was
later dismissed for embezzlement. Return |
| |
|
|
| Belzec |
|
(Pol. Bełżec), small Polish town in the Lvov district; site of German labor
camps and an extermination camp during World War II. Return |
| |
|
|
| Maidanek |
|
(Majdanek), concentration and extermination camp on the southeastern outskirts of Lublin,
Poland. Originally set up on July 21, 1941 for prisoners of war, it was soon turned into
a camp for Jews and Poles with a maximum capacity for 35,000 inmates. Return |
| |
|
|
| Plaszow |
|
(Pol. Płaszow), Nazi forced-labor camp on the outskirts of Cracow, functioning
from June 1942 until January 1945. Plaszow became an assembly point for all the
able-bodied Jews who survived the deportations from the various ghettos in the
Cracow district. Return |
| |
|
|
| Mielec |
|
Town in Rzeszow province, S. E. Poland. The Jewish community of Mielec was
first organized in the middle of the 17th century. Return |
| |
|
|
| Mauthausen |
|
Nazi concentration camp in Austria 12 1/2 mi. (20 km.) S. E. of Linz, established in
April 1938 shortly after the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany. Return |
| |
|
|
| Radomsko |
|
(Radomsk), town in Lodz province, S. central Poland. Return |