In Enemy Land: The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939-1946 9781618118721

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IN ENEMY LAND The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939–1946

The Holocaust: History and Literature, Ethics and Philosophy

Series Editor: MICHAEL BERENBAUM (American Jewish University)

IN ENEMY LAND The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939–1946 SARA BENDER

BOSTON 2018

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bender, Sara, author. Title: In enemy land: the Jews of Kielce and the region, 1939-1946 / Sara Bender. Description: Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018. Series: The Holocaust: history and literature, ethics and philosophy. Identifiers: LCCN 2018023269 | ISBN 9781618118714 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Persecutions—Poland—Kielce. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Poland—Kielce. | Jews—Poland—Kielce—History—20th century. | Kielce (Poland)—Ethnic relations. Classification: LCC DS134.66.K54 B46 2018 | DDC 940.53/180943845— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023269

Copyright © 2018 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-61811-871-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-61811-872-1 (electronic) Book design by Kryon Publishing Services (P) Ltd. www.kryonpublishing.com Cover design by Ivan Grave. On the cover: Photograph of a street in Kielce, 1930-s. Courtesy of Yaacov Kotlicki. Published by Academic Studies Press. 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

To Yisrael My close and dear friend

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 

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Prefacex Introductionxiii Chapter 1.  The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars

1

Chapter 2. From Occupation to Ghettoization (September 1939–April 1941)

50

Chapter 3.  The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)

94

Chapter 4. Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas (August 1942–January 1943)

158

Chapter 5. The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps (September 1942–August 1944)

193

Chapter 6. Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict during the German Occupation

237

Epilogue

273

Bibliography299 Index314

Acknowledgments

This book was originally published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem (2012) as part of my academic work as a historian of the Holocaust and Polish Jewry. My first book, on the Jews of Białystok, was published in 2008 by Brandeis University Press. Due to the contribution of this book on the Jews of Kielce to Holocaust research, I made sure that it, too, would be published in English. The translation was subsidized at the recommendation of my colleague, Dr. Marcus Silber of the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, via The Wolfson Academic Chair, and was supported by the Association of Kielce Jews in New York, headed by Manny Bekier. In addition, Yaacov Kotlicki offered a great deal of support to this project: he played a large role in publishing the book as well as acquiring photographs. Both Manny Bekier and Yaacov Kotlicki are second-generation Holocaust survivors. In regard to the English edition of the book, I also wish to thank Jacek Młynarczyk, a Polish historian of repute and a loyal friend, for his generous assistance in collecting the material from the archive in Ludwigsburg, Germany. I owe profound and special gratitude to the late Yitzhak Bauer, my dear friend, a Holocaust survivor and an excellent scholar from the town of Buczacz, Galicia, who with boundless devotion helped me to translate manuscripts in various languages, without which the study would have been deficient. Among those whom I interviewed in the course of my research, I shall always remember Rafael Blumenfeld, a prodigious educator, who before passing away devoted unlimited time to me and equipped me with important material on contemporary events. I am especially grateful to Dr. Daniel Uziel, director of the photo archives at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and I sincerely thank all members of the archive staff at this institution.

Acknowledgments

My friend of many years, Michael Berenbaum, who recommend that the book be p­ ublished in English, deserves special gratitude. Special thanks I owe to the American judge Thomas Buergenthal, whom I was able to interview in the summer of 2004. When the Kielce Ghetto was established, Buergenthal was seven years old and ten years old when he arrived with the last Jews of Kielce to Auschwitz. The value of the information he gave me and the details he remembered are a precious treasure that I will always take with me. This book is dedicated to my close friend the late Yisrael Gutman, in whose company I built much of my academic career and development. The ­knowledge that I derived from being in proximity to him cannot be weighed in gold. Sara Bender Tel Aviv, October 2018

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T

he Jewish community of Kielce, Poland, began to develop, albeit very slowly, in the 1860s. However, it was the massive pogrom which erupted there in July 1946 that etched the city’s name into everlasting infamy. The idea of writing a study about the Jews of Kielce—one of the three most important Jewish communities in Radom District during World War II, along with those of Radom city and Częstochowa—germinated in my research on Jewish slave labor in the camps of this district. In the course of that ­investigation, I found that no comprehensive studies about the fate of the Jews in these cities had been written.1 Furthermore, in contrast to Radom and Częstochowa, on which hefty post-war yizkor (memorial) books document the Holocaust era in copious detail, the companion volume for Kielce tells the story of this community only up to the beginning of World War II.2 It was the absence of attention to the post-war pogrom—a constitutive event that raises, among other things, the question of why it happened there, of all places—that spurred me to produce the book that you hold. This book, focusing on the German occupation period in Kielce and ­several nearby towns, drew its nourishment from numerous and diverse sources. I made extensive use of a thesis about the Jews of Kielce by the ­German-Polish historian Jacek Młynarczyk, who combed the archives in Germany and Poland and also produced a detailed book about the German

1 Notably, Wila Orbach wrote about the Jews of Częstochowa. Her study, however, focuses on the pre-war history of that community. See Orbach, A History of the Jews of Częstochowa [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Society of Jews from Częstochowa and the Vicinity in Israel, 2000). 2 See Pinchas Cytron, Kielce Book: History of the Kielce [Jewish] Community from Founding to Destruction [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Society of Kielce Jews in Israel, 1957); and Sara Kerbel, ‘Al beyteynu she-harav, Fun der kharuver hayyim (in Yiddish) (Tel Aviv: Society of Kielce Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, 1981).

Preface

occupation era in Radom District.3 Another important study about the Jews of Radom District during the war, by Robert Seidel, recounts (among other things) the history of the Jews in a large number of small ­communities in the district.4 The Polish historian Krzysztof Urbański, born in Kielce and residing there to this day, wrote about the Jews of Kielce and Radom District during the Holocaust. He based his studies on material that he harvested from various archives in Poland and research literature published largely in Polish, most concerning the history of the Jews in Kielce up to World War II.5 Urbański also collaborated with Rafael Blumenfeld to produce a c­ omprehensive lexicon that I used mainly in regard to the pre-war era—a rich trove for anyone probing the history of the Jews of Kielce until World War II.6 Important sources for researchers who wish to delve into the minutiae of Jewish life during the relevant time are testimonies, memorial books, letters, and diaries. Despite the difficulty in authenticating and cross-referencing the information that these artifacts yield, the many accounts that appear in them—particularly testimonies written or given in the initial post-war years—­ constitute a cache of information of inestimable research value. I found voluminous documentary material that helped me to produce a detailed picture of Jewish life in Kielce during the Holocaust in the main archives of several institutions including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung von NS-Verbrechen) in Ludwigsburg, Germany; the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH) in Warsaw; the State Archive in Kielce (Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. In the last mentioned archive, I ­discovered two manuscripts—unpublished memoirs—that were eye-opening documents for 3

Jacek Młynarczyk, “Der Holocaust in Kielce/Distrikt Radom” (M. A. thesis, Essen University, 2000); idem, Judenmord in Zentralpolen: Der Distrikt Radom im Generalgouvernement 1939– 1945 (Veröffentlichungen der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universität Stuttgart 9 (Darmstadt: Deutsches Historisches Institut, Warschau, und der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universität Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007). 4 Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen: Der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006). 5 Krzysztof Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach (Kielce: Muzeum Narodowe, 1989); idem, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945 (Kielce: Kielecki Towarzstwo Naukowe, 1994); idem, Kieleccy Żydzi (Kraków: Małopolska Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992). 6 Krzysztof Urbański and Rafał Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydów (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1995).

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any Holocaust scholar. Finally, I was able to interview several survivors from Kielce, including Thomas Buergenthal, a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Kielce who later became a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The book begins by telling the history of the Jews of Kielce up to the beginning of World War II, a relatively brief span of time that captures Jewish life in this city. Following are three chapters on the three years of Nazi occupation in Kielce that began in September 1939, focusing on the pre-ghettoization period, the way of life in the ghetto, and the obliteration of the surrounding Jewish communities between the summer of 1942 and the winter of 1943. The next two chapters recount the fate of the last Jews in Kielce, most of whom were taken to three slave-labor camps in that city; the question of rescue; and the attitude of the Poles. The book concludes with a chapter on the tragic pogrom that Poles perpetrated on July 4, 1946, against a group of Jewish survivors who had gathered in the city ahead of emigration to pre-independence Israel. It was in the aftermath of this event that tens of thousands of Jewish survivors in the new Poland rushed to escape from the country where they had hoped until then to rekindle their lives.

Introduction

K

ielce is a city in south-central Poland, above the Silnica River, 260 meters above sea level. Its earliest mention in writing dates to 1084, from which until the end of the eighteenth century it was the property of the bishops of Kraków. In 1171, the incumbent bishop initiated construction of a church there, making Kielce a permanent settlement. In the mid-thirteenth century, the Tatars who invaded Poland destroyed the church and the homes around it; the settlement did not recover until early in the next century. In 1364, Kielce, still the property of the Kraków bishops, received municipal privileges and autonomy by force of the Magdeburg Laws that had been introduced in 1118. The town had 950 ­inhabitants that year. In the fifteenth century, Kielce became an important glassmaking center; stone quarries were established there as well. In 1535, King Zygmunt I of Poland officially ordered the bishops of Kraków to enjoin Jews from settling in Kielce; the edict was renewed in 1561. It was at this time that lead, silver, and copper mining and processing industries evolved in the Kielce area. Kielce was thoroughly sacked in 1660–1665, during Poland’s first war with the Swedes, but it rebounded swiftly thanks to aid from the bishops. Not long afterward, however—during the second war with the Swedes (1706–1707)— the town fell again. Only after the war ended and a peace treaty was concluded did it recover and its revitalization ensue. Kielce then expanded steadily; with the encouragement of ecclesiastical leaders in Kraków a new town center was built, as were new houses and even additional churches. In 1789, when the Polish royal treasury nationalized all of the bishops’ properties, the king authorized the holding of a weekly market day and an annual trade fair in town. The local economy developed; glassmaking shops were built and, after a training seminar for the priesthood was established, the town became one of Poland’s most important ecclesiastical centers.1 1

Wielka Encyklopedia Powczechna, vol. 5 (Warsaw, 1963), 586; Słownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego, vol. IV (Warsaw, 1883), 21–22. See also Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce

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In 1795, with the third partitioning of Poland, Kielce was annexed to the Austrian Empire and became a subdistrict capital. From 1809 on, the city was considered part of the Warsaw principality; in 1815, after the Congress of Vienna, it became part of Congress Poland, under the sovereign rule of the Russian Empire. From 1816 on, Kielce served as an administrative center in its district (gubernia) and in 1837 it became the district capital, maintaining this status until 1844.2 Local development had halted after the great fire of May 1800 and due to the wars and the political changes that they engendered. From the mid-nineteenth century on, however, Kielce again saw vigorous population growth. Stone buildings were constructed in lieu of wooden ones, a school was established to train quarry workers, and mining activity steadily expanded. The building boom was accompanied by numerous infrastructure projects such as cobblestone paving of streets and leveling of terrain. It was a time of accelerated development for the entire area, and in addition to the industrial and quarry workers in and around Kielce, various skilled tradesmen in coal mining and marketing, as well as laborers, settled there and helped establish foundries. The mineral deposits in the area, however, were underutilized due to deficiencies in the rail and river transport system. In the late nineteenth century; thus, local commerce was confined to basic parochial needs. Most commercial activity that did take place was handled by Jews, who had been permitted to settle in town shortly beforehand. Only in 1833 was the town linked to the WarsawKraków railroad and it took until 1885 for a spur to be built to the mining area near Dąbrowa Górnicza.

The Dawn of Jewish Settlement As early as 1819, a few Jews had settled in Kielce as individuals even though the ban on Jewish residency, dating back to the sixteenth century, remained in force. Following the Polish rising in 1831, Russia revoked the ban, and in 1841 it had a Jewish council established in Kielce, albeit to handle religious affairs only. Formally, the Jews in town were considered part of the Jewish community of nearby Chęciny, where dozens of Jews had been living since the mid-seventeenth century. Members of that community were allowed to visit (Encyclopaedia of Jewish communities, Poland, volume VII—Lublin-Kielce District), ed. by Abraham Vein (in Hebrew: Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999), 490–194; and Krzysztof Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 5. 2 In 1837, Poland was divided into gubernias. Poland had five gubernias in 1844 and ten in 1866. In 1917, the division of Poland into gubernias was revoked.

Introduction

Kielce on market days and for the annual fairs. Since Kielce remained a poor and s­truggling locality in the early nineteenth century, the Russian authorities sought to attract settlers who would help it develop. Three Jews answered the call, opening shops and buying houses near the market (rynek) square. The local populace objected to this fiercely. In 1833 twenty Polish merchants appealed to the district authorities, demanding that Jewish residency in town be prohibited in accordance with the Polish royalty’s original directive to this effect. Since the settlement of Jews had produced positive changes in the town’s economy, however, the poorer classes sided with continued Jewish residency in town. After conducting a survey of commerce in Kielce, the municipal ­authority reviewed the findings and recommended that Jews be encouraged to settle in the city and to buy shops and homes. The few Jews who lived in Kielce in those days had to fight unceasingly against the Polish merchants, who enjoyed the support of the Church, for their right to reside and do business there. In 1835, this struggle gave rise to ­legislation prohibiting Jews from living within a radius of three kilometers from the town center. In 1838, the nine Jews who lived in Kielce were required by the municipal authority to translate every business document of theirs into Polish. By 1841, the Jewish population of Kielce had grown to thirty-two ­individuals in seven families, fewer than 1 percent of the total. That year, apart from suffering periodic attacks by riffraff on their shops, the Polish merchants’ association urged the Russian authorities to banish all Jews from Kielce—and the authorities assented. Jewish settlement in Kielce came to a halt; those who were expelled resettled in nearby communities and launched a persistent struggle for their right to return.3 As soon as the Jewish merchants left Kielce and stopped investing in the town, the local building boom faltered and economic development again ground to a halt. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jewish settlement in Kielce was again permitted. By 1852, there were 101 Jews there out of a total population of 3,639.4 The year 1860 saw thirty-one Jewish ­families in Kielce, including seven that lacked formal permission to live there, although the mayor himself had leased some of his lands to them. In 1862, the Tsar granted full emancipation to the Jews of Congress Poland. From then on, there was no further impediment to Jewish settlement in Kielce: Jews were p­ ermitted Wielka Encyklopedia Powczechna (Warsaw, 1963), vol. 5, 586; Pinkas Hakehillot LublinKielce, 491; Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 6. 4 Cytron, Kielce Book, 11. 3

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to purchase lands and open commercial and artisan shops in town. Few Jews, however, exercised this entitlement at the time due to the aftermath of the Polish rising in January 1863 and the consequent restrictions imposed on the populace. As the rising ebbed and normal life in Poland resumed, the number of Jews who settled in Kielce gradually increased and a Jewish c­ ommunity began to organize. By 1882, Jews from nearby villages started to move into town. Another wave of Jewish migration to Kielce took place in 1893, when lands of Jews in nearby villages were expropriated. Some of the new settlers stayed for good; others headed elsewhere within a few months. By 1868, the municipal birth registry recorded the births of Jewish children. In 1870, Jews purchased a plot of land in the Pakosz suburb and opened their own cemetery. The table that follows charts the development of the Jewish community in Kielce:5 Year 1872 1873 1874 1876 1880 1887 1896 1897 1908 1910 1915 1921 1931

Total Population Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown 20,468 30,810 31,171 Unknown 41,346 58,236

Jewish Population 505 974 1,046 1,121 2,640 2,649 2,946 6,173 11,151 11,351 14,794 15,530 18,6835

Poor Jews who came to Kielce settled in outlaying neighborhoods such as Targowa, Pocieszke, and Bodzentyńska; wealthier ones bought or rented apartments in the town center. The first houses built by Jews were in the 5 Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 7; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 490; Cytron, Kielce Book, 11–19; Adam Penkalla, Żydowskie ślady w województwie kieleckim i radomskim (Radom: Tramp, 1992), 43. The last-mentioned source indicates that the share of Jews in the general population climbed from 30.2 percent in 1897 to 37.6 percent in 1921 and receded to 31.2 percent in 1931.

Introduction

northwestern area, along the Silnica River. Here, over time, the Nowy Świat neighborhood, populated largely by affluent or middle-class Jews, took shape. The Jewish population included a small stratum of wealthy merchants who developed local industries such as lime, marble, gravel, and lumber for ­construction. Jehuda Ehrlich was the first to build a lime factory in Kielce. Abraham Zagajski’s family owned several sawmills and shops that turned out furniture and lumber for construction.

Consolidation of the Kielce Jewish Community: Contribution to Local Economic Development For almost forty years, between 1863 and 1900, Jews who had settled in Kielce sought entrée to local commercial life and turned to domains in which Polish enterprises had little interest. In fields such as food and beverages, they encountered stiff competition from local non-Jewish merchants; the book trade, however, was theirs alone. Over time, Jews managed to penetrate all local fields of commerce and many of their establishments enjoyed excellent reputations. When it became apparent, for example, that Jewish bakeries produced higher quality bread than the Poles offered, the local newspaper wrote that there was nothing left to do but to invite Jews from Chęciny, Chmielnik, and other nearby towns to teach the Poles how to bake bread.6 In 1867, five of the twenty butchers in Kielce were Jewish, as were two of its seven bakers. The various markets, in which dozens of Jewish peddlers sold clothes, haberdashery, and so on, gave Jews an excellent opportunity to fit into local commercial life. In 1871, Yehezkel Landau of Chęciny won a contract to build a commercial center in Kielce; within two years, a structure with fifty-six shops and warehouses went up in town. In 1898, Jewish artisans won contracts to pave the city’s streets and perform carpentry and construction work. This irked the non-Jews in town, who felt that the Jews were stealing their livelihood. By the end of the nineteenth century, some streets in Kielce were lined with nothing but Jewish-owned stores and workshops. Wealthy Jews who reached Kielce in the 1880s sensed the great c­ ommercial potential of the region’s natural resources. The first to take advantage of the limestone in the Kielce region was Jehuda Ehrlich of Działuszyce, who acquired a parcel of land from an estate-holder in southern Kielce and built 6 Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 8–9. Notably, Jewish professionals were invited to Kielce for short stays at this time. An optician, a furrier, and a dentist from Warsaw made regular visits.

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a lime-extraction kiln there. His facility evolved into the famous Kadzielnia quarry, from which many Jewish townspeople would earn their living. Extraction of limestone from the Wietrznia quarry began in 1874 and accelerated when Abraham Zagajski acquired the property in 1885. The quarry quickly expanded and eventually came to employ 600 workers. Additional Jewish families developed local stone, lime, brick, and tile industries. In 1897, the Hajman brothers opened the Leonów glass works, which utilized the large deposits of sand in the region.7 Lumber was another industry that developed well in Kielce, thanks to the dense forests in the surrounding countryside. Jewish merchants bought afforested parcels from estate owners, built sawmills, and processed the lumber into boards, sills, and posts. As hundreds of workers were employed in the lumberyards and the modern sawmills, the industry developed commercially. Exporting of unprocessed lumber was a wholly Jewish activity. By the end of the nineteenth century, the town also had a brewery, a factory for soap, and ­candles, and tanneries—all under Jewish ownership. The footwear industry developed with particular vigor, eventually gaining a reputation throughout Poland. With the completion in 1885 of the Kielce–Dąbrowa Górnicza railroad and the construction of a train station in town, affluent investors were drawn to the city. Newly arrived Jews purchased plots in the western part of town, between the tracks and the Silnica River. In time they became the town’s wealthiest families. Henryk Nowak of Łódź bought a vast plot of land and built homes, shops, and factories on it. An industrial savings-and-loan fund was set up and in 1904 Jehuda Ehrlich opened a bank. The Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia began to participate actively in local non-Jewish economic and social life. Several Jews joined a committee that had been established to set district and regional tax rates and others sat on the board of the district’s mortgage company.8 Recognition of the Jews’ contribution to local commercial life found expression in the late nineteenth century when Michal (Michael) Goldhar, who along with being a bookseller owned a small bank (Dom Bankowy), received a citation of honor for his part in the growth of commercial life in Kielce. 7 Cytron, Kielce Book, 21–22. Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 10. In the 1880s, the Wietrznia quarries produced thirty tons of lime per week. Between 1909 and 1911, new kilns were built at the quarry that permitted 17,000 tons of lime to be produced annually. Headcount at the quarry grew from 129 in 1926 to 190 in 1930 and 300 in 1939. The quarry had branches in Białystok, Częstochowa and Katowice. See also Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 133. 8 Cytron, Kielce Book, 23–25; Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 10.

Introduction

Jewish Institutions, Organizations, and Political and Ideological Awakening As the local Jewish population grew in the second half of the nineteenth ­century, so did its array of communal institutions. Despite the objections of the rabbi of Chęciny—where there had been a relatively large Jewish population before such a collective developed in Kielce—on September 1, 1868, a district community committee was formed in Kielce, chaired by a landowner named Mosze Pfeffer. The panel established synagogues in dwellings that were remodeled for this purpose and budgeted them with the help of Jews who lived on streets near the prayer houses and visited them regularly. The oldest synagogue in town was that on 39 Starowarszawska Street, which had space for fifty congregants. In 1878, a synagogue with space for 100 congregants began to operate in Joel Dawid Mayerson’s house at 26 Starowarszawska Street. In 1890, Mosze Rakoszinski began to run a synagogue in Mosze Kasztan’s home at 5 Kozia Street. The year 1903 saw the inauguration of Kielce’s 400-seat Great Synagogue on Nowowarszawska Street, a 20,000ruble prayer house financed by the businessman Mosze Pfeffer and his wife. The architect, Stanisław Szpakowski, designed it as a single-story brick structure in the Arab-Romanesque style. Its façade and windows had delicate floral ornamentation, its interior walls were covered with a rich variety of decorations, and whole the structure was reminiscent of the synagogues of Vienna and Breslau. Symbols of the Twelve Tribes were embedded in the walls of the main sanctuary against the background of blue skies. On the wall to the right of the entrance there was a large painting of the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem, the wall to the left was adorned with a painting of Rachel’s Tomb. Set into the eastern wall was a Holy Ark decorated with a golden Torah crown, and at the edge of the sanctuary stood a balcony for a choir. Stairs led to an exquisitely crafted bima (Torah reader’s rostrum) at the center of the sanctuary. The windows were of stained glass and stretched from the floor to the rafters. The women’s gallery rested atop marble-covered pillars. The choir, which had sixty to one hundred singers, was led by the cantor Jisrael Weiner. During World War I, the well-known cantor Gerszon Sirota regularly performed there.9 Outside, the synagogue yard was surrounded by a fence. Schools evolved concurrently. From 1886 on, Kielce had a cheder (school for young boys’ initial religious instruction), run for many years by the melamed 9

Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 34, 38, 122; see also Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 491, and Cytron, Kielce Book, 17.

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(traditional teacher) Mordecai Herrendorf. By 1890, the town had seven such schools; by 1898, it had fourteen, and in 1901–1902 it had thirty-one, attended by some 650 pupils.10 Jewish schools were established between 1880 and 1890. The first was situated at the study hall on Nowowiejska Street and doubled as a Talmud Torah (religious school for older boys) that a group of local Jewish merchants funded in the sum of 2,000 rubles per year. The revolutionary events that swept Tsarist Russia in 1904–1906 stirred unrest among Jewish youth in town, including cheder boys. Thus, Jewish students took part in school strikes and young people joined local underground groups. The melamed Dawid Kaszański, who had eighty boys studying in his cheder, applied to the authorities in 1906 for permission to teach the Polish language. Mosze Pfeffer, the philanthropist who had funded the construction of the synagogue, became a public activist who in the early twentieth century established in Kielce the Achiezer society, which maintained a Talmud Torah for children of poor ­families and cared for orphans. Pfeffer headed the society until 1914 and willed 40,000 rubles to organizations that engaged in aiding the ill and the needy. In 1899, the first Jewish vocational school was established as an adjunct to the Talmud Torah. After a group of assimilated businessmen insisted that modern educational institutions be built in town, the first modern Jewish school in Kielce opened in 1904, with H. Schreiber as its principal. It closed two years later due to opposition from Orthodox circles. The teacher Jisroel Joskowicz set up the first Hebrew-language school at around the same time; it survived for just one year. The percentage of Jewish youth who attended government schools was quite low: in 1898, only thirteen Jewish students attended Kielce’s gymnasium (high school) for boys, out of a total enrollment of 463. Two years later, the same institution had twenty-one Jews out of 543 students (5.5 percent). The school for girls had similar ratios.11 On September 1, 1900, Stefania Wolman and Władysław Żimnowoda established a Jewish private school for girls. It was named for its co-founder, Wolman, an assimilated woman who patterned her institution after Polish schools. When established, it taught grades one through four. After her husband’s death, Wolman was joined by the educator Salomon Paradystal, 10 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 33. In 1914, the city had twenty-four cheders. By 1928 the number dropped to eleven due to depletion of the Jewish population on account of above-average mortality, the emigration that followed World War I, and secularization, from which the Jews of Kielce were not spared. 11 Jadwiga Karolczak, “Kielce 4 lipca 1946 r.,” Słowo Ludu 155 ( July 6–7, 1996); see also Cytron, Kielce Book, 72, and Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 11.

Introduction

after which the institution developed into a girls’ high school where wellto-do Jews enrolled their daughters and pressed Wolman, eventually with success, to add Hebrew to the curriculum. In 1915, Wolman’s gymnasium taught grades one to five; by 1920, it had a full gymnasium complement of eight grades. In her last days, Wolman developed concern for the wider Jewish masses and became active in the Jewish orphanage that was established in Kielce after World War I.12 Secularization among the Jews of Kielce, like those of other cities in Poland, began in the late nineteenth century. Jewish families, mainly from the mercantile and intelligentsia classes, preferred to enroll their children in Polish schools. Likewise, there were Jews who began joining Polish organizations and institutions and a few who even converted to Christianity. In 1904-1907 and 1916–1922, many Jews supported Polish nationalist movements. Although quite a few Jews turned to assimilation, they never exceeded 1 percent of all the Jews in town. Despite their assimilation, some maintained ties with the local Jewish community and even continued to pay community dues. On November 1, 1906, a scientific library opened in the home of Jósef Nowak Its brief, according to its statutes, included organizing lectures and cultural events. Its board was chaired by the physician Dr. Jan Daszewski, and two assimilated Jews, Zygmunt Zandowski and Salomon Padarystal, were among those who donated their private collections. In 1909, the entire ­collection was moved to the municipal public library.13 From October 1906 to December 1907, a Polish-language weekly called Echa Kielcekie (“Kielce echoes”)—a liberal-democratic magazine that dealt with political, economic, and literary matters—was published in Kielce. Its chief editor was Leon Rygier, husband of the famous Polish woman of letters Zofia Nałkowska. The magazine devoted much space to Jewish issues, addressed the phenomenon of assimilation, and represented the town’s p­ rogressive forces. It published articles on these themes by the Jewish engineer and high-school teacher Adolf Wolman, an assimilationist and a candidate for the Second Duma, the lower chamber of the Imperial Russian parliament.14 Back in 1869, a group of affluent Jews established a voluntary organization to raise funds for the establishment of Jewish public institutions. The organization was granted permission to establish a Jewish hospital in town and 12 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 53; Cytron, Kielce Book, 74–76. 13 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 35. 14 Ibid., 41.

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c­ ommissioned Szpakowski, the architect who had drafted the plans for the Great Synagogue, to design it. The Jewish hospital was built next to the municipal hospital and its construction was completed in 1897, at a cost of 22,000 rubles. In 1889, Rabbi Mosze Twersky, Jehuda Ehrlich, and Michael Goldhar established Bikur Holim, an institution whose purpose was to supply the municipal Jewish hospital kosher food, medicines, and bedding. In 1902, at the initiative of Bikur Holim, construction of an additional wing to the Jewish hospital commenced; it was officially inaugurated in 1908 and was run by Dr. Yosef Lewinson. The hospital staff mainly treated the town’s poor population; people of means preferred to seek private healthcare. Bikur Holim aided many casualties of the great epidemics that Kielce experienced in 1905–1907. After World War I, it steadily lost power and influence.15 Local Jewish institutions availed themselves of individual Jewish philanthropists, foremost Zwi Herszel Zagajski, one of the most generous benefactors in town, who funded the construction of an old-age home, an orphanage, and synagogues, and also donated to help pave the road to the Jewish cemetery.16 The Jewish population occasionally dabbled in broader local cultural life. In 1897, Jews in Kielce took part in a countrywide fundraiser for the construction of a monument in Warsaw to the Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz. Jews attended the theater, opera, and concerts, eagerly took part in raffles, ­participated mass picnics on Sundays in the municipal park, and went on ­organized tours. In the early twentieth century, political and ideological breezes began to stir in the Kielce Jewish street. Mass mobilization for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) sapped the local economy. On May 1, 1904, red flags were put up and anti-Tsar graffiti festooned the walls. In October of that year, after conscription notices for the Russian army were promulgated, masses of Kielce residents—Poles and Jews together—stopped a convoy and enabled dozens of conscripts to escape. Such cooperation did not keep a gang of Polish marauders from destroying, on December 28, 1904, Jews’ stalls in the municipal market. In July 1905, a three-day strike was organized in Kielce in sympathy with the Łódź proletariat; soldiers opened fire on the protesters and two Poles and two Jews were injured. In October 1905, Poles and Jews removed ­posters with Tsarist symbols from building walls in an operation engineered by the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS), 30 percent of whose ­members in 15 Ibid., 21, 26, 35, 123. 16 Ibid., 46.

Introduction

Kielce in 1906 were Jewish. The PPS, together with the Bund movement in Kielce, whose activities in town were exposed during the revolution years of 1904–1906, began to organize self-defense squads in the first decade of the twentieth century. The Jewish intelligentsia was also drawn to the ideas of progress and democracy. Thus, Jewish youths took part in many of the clashes against the Russian regime, such as confrontations with agents of the Tsarist police and confiscation of government funds.17 In 1900, a group of young Jewish intellectuals, led by Dr. Perlman,18 established a Zionist union in Kielce that made inroads among yeshiva students, artisans, and other young people schooled in the spirit of the Haskala. They worked to promote the Zionist shekel (dues earmarked for development of pre-Israel Palestine), set up a small public library, mostly of books about the Land of Israel, and sponsored lectures and cultural activities. In 1902, the first movie theater in Kielce (Kino Fenomen) was opened by Mendel Max Elencweig in partnership with a Polish engineer. German, Austrian, and ­sometimes American films were shown there. That year, at an assembly held in the movie house, the first local Zionist circle was formed under the direction of the attorney Henryk Hauser.19 By 1903, posters in Hebrew appeared in several Jewish shops and in 1906 a branch of the Ivriah society, pledged to instruction in the Hebrew language, opened in Kielce under prominent activists from the Po’alei Tsiyyon party.20 The Jews of Kielce also awakened to art culture at this time. A local branch of Ha-Zamir, a movement established in Poland at the initiative of the author I. L. Peretz, was formed in 1909. Its activities included musical and t­ heatrical soirées and discussions of literature and painting. An orchestra and choir formed in Kielce, as did a drama group that put on two productions.21 The first rabbi of the Kielce community was Rabbi Tuwia Gutman Hacohen Rappaport, a Kotsker Hasid, who held this office in the late nineteenth century and passed away in 1902. He was succeeded by Rabbi Mosze Nahum Yerozalimsky, author of Responsa Menahem Mosze and Leshad 17 Urbański, Społeczność żydowska w Kielcach, 12–13. 18 Many names mentioned in this book are given only as surnames because first names are lacking in the sources. 19 Cytron, Kielce Book, 59–62. 20 Ivriah was established in Poland in 1898 as a society for Hebrew culture. Eventually, it opened branches in many Jewish communities countrywide and created an infrastructure for the construction of libraries where people who wished to read “forbidden texts” could do so. 21 Ibid., 62–69.

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ha-Shamen, a commentary on Maimonides. Rabbi Yerozalimsky (d. 1916) was a central figure in Polish Jewry and a member of the Hovevei Tsiyyon movement in Kielce. Kielce was also known as a Hasidic center. The first of the Hasidic rabbis to settle there was R. Hayim Shmuel Horowitz of Chęciny, scion of the “Seer of Lublin.” His sons carried on the rabbinic lineage, although not for long. Additional Hasidic rebbes who resided in Kielce were R. Mordechai Twersky, also known as the Admor (Hasidic grand rabbi) of Kuzmir (Kazimierz Dolny), succeeded upon his death in 1917 by his relative R. Yehuda Leib Twersky, who came to Kielce in 1921; Grand Rabbis R. Hayim Meir Finkler of Pińczów, of the Radoszyce Hasidim, and his two sons, one of whom was partial to Agudat Yisrael (Agudas Yisroel) and the other, a Zionist functionary, favored the Zionist-Orthodox Mizrachi movement; and R. Dawid Goldman, the Chmielniker rebbe, heir to the grand rabbis of Prague and Warka (d. 1924), succeeded by his son R. Yeshayahu (the Busker Rebbe). There was also R. Yakov Yitzhak Rabinowicz of Suchedniów (d. 1925), a member of the dynasty established by an eponymous ancestor who was also known as “the Yid Hakodosh” (the holy Jew).22 The courts of these grand rabbis, which attracted adherents from far and wide in the customary Hasidic manner, lent Kielce, and its inhabitants a patina of sanctity.23 In 1870, Mosze Michael Goldhar founded the daily newspaper Gazeta Kielecka in partnership with the governor of Kielce Subdistrict. The paper represented the views of the local intelligentsia; Goldhar himself used it to promote his bookstore, bank, and flourmill. Gradually other merchants began to advertise in the newspaper until it was sold in 1875. The new owners, Stanisław, and Stefan Siennicki, who were not Jewish, changed the paper’s profile and spurned its promotional aspect in favor of broader news reportage about Kielce and its people. The publication also shifted politically and became more conservative. In 1904–1906, it came out against Russia’s 1905 revolution, and in 1910–1913 antisemitic groups, supporters of the right-wing, antisemitic Endecja (Demokracja Narodowa, the National Democratic Party, also known as ND or the Endeks), which called for less Jewish influence on the town’s commercial life, began printing in it the names of Polish merchants who bought goods from Jewish wholesalers. The Endecja, whose founder and ideologue was Roman Dmowski, a Polish nationalist who preached a stridently antisemitic line, was a powerful force in Kielce. Between 1912 and 1914, it 22 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 492. 23 Cytron, Kielce Book, 167–178.

Introduction

led an intensive campaign in the city under the slogan “I buy from our people only” (in Polish: Swój do swego) and the Gazeta Kielecka began to preach the ­boycotting of Jewish shops and goods. The Fourth Duma elections were followed by another escalation of anti-Jewish propaganda. From 1917 on, however, the Gazeta Kielecka took a more moderate tone; it remains an inexhaustible source on the history of the town’s Jews until the outbreak of World War II.24 In the autumn of 1912, ahead of the Fourth Duma elections, Poles and Jews in Warsaw and the peripheral towns waged a pitched battle. In articles published in the Jewish newspaper Haynt, which appeared in Warsaw and produced local papers countrywide, the Jews of Kielce inveighed furiously against the local candidate, Wiktor Jaroński, because in the Third Duma Jaroński had supported restrictions on the rights of Poland’s Jews. The Jews cast their ballots for the Socialist candidate, Eugeniusz Jagiełło, who eventually won. Jagiełło’s victory as the sole delegate in Warsaw for the Duma, with Jewish s­upport, angered Poles, who retaliated by launching a broad campaign to boycott Jewish merchandise, forcibly expel Polish customers from Jewish stores, and post vigils at Jewish shops to keep Polish shoppers out.25 In November 1912, amid this turgid atmosphere, a twelve-year-old Polish boy spread a rumor: When he had entered a Jewish shop to buy writing implements, the owner had harassed him and tried to swindle him. Word spread quickly and a group of thugs gathered in front of Szymon Keizer’s shop, ­threatening to break in and beat him. They scattered only when the police arrived. A month later, on December 8, the editorial board of the Gazeta Kielecka ­published a call to safeguard Kielce’s Polish character. Those who signed this urging warned Poles not to sell houses and land to Jews, noting that 269 of the 1,140 houses in town were under Jewish ownership.26 A month later, in January 1913, the same newspaper published the following “Ten Commandments”: 1. Buy only from your own people. 2. Buy only Polish products. 3. Do not allow others to unjustly malign Polish products. 4. Protect not only your spouse and relatives but also your extended family, your friends, and your acquaintances. 24 Karolczak, “Kielce 4 lipca 1946 r.”; see also Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 50. 25 J. Dawidson, “Der Haynt un Jagiello,” Haynt Yubili (1928): 12–13. 26 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 20.

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5. A Pole should buy Polish products from a Pole—this slogan is binding for the Polish merchant. 6. When you pay with your own money, bear in mind that this money is part of the national wealth. 7. Remember to make no exception even for something small. 8. Before you eat with your acquaintances—check where they did their shopping. 9. Even if others do not act as you do, do not give up. 10.  Do not look at others. Fulfill your national obligations ­yourself.27 Until World War I, however, the Polish peasantry ignored the call for a total boycott of Jews’ wares in Kielce and other Polish cities. The Polish middle class was too weak to compete with the Jewish petty merchant. On the eve of the Great War, Jews in Kielce owned eighty-five grocery stores, fortytwo textile shops, thirty-three leather and footwear establishments, fifteen haberdasheries, eleven butcher shops, and eleven metal goods stores. Fifty other enterprises were general stores, carrying anything that could be sold. Jews had a de facto monopoly in the peddling industry. Jewish commerce in Kielce, as in other Polish cities, was diverse. Large wholesale outlets and ten luxury shops were Jewish-owned. The other businesses were small affairs that had inventories smaller than several hundred rubles in value; most were ­situated in their owners’ homes.28 Notwithstanding the boycott calls, no harm was done to Jewish wholesale trade, in which import-export relations were maintained. The atmosphere that came about in the city, however, triggered manifestations of animosity toward Jews and widened the already-extant divide between the Polish and Jewish ­societies. On the eve of World War I, the Kielce Jewish community was ­the ­epitomy of a countrywide phenomenon: wherever Jews’ feet touched the ground, ­economic, industrial, commercial, and artisan life developed in tandem with vibrant and diverse Jewish culture.

27 Ibid., 41. 28 Ibid., 58.

CHAPTER 1

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars World War I

B

etween August and November 1914, after World War I began, control over Kielce passed from Russia to the Austrians, then to Prussia, and finally back to Russia. As the Russians entered town, the Gazeta Kielecka wrote the following: The market square is noisy with turmoil. The Jews have set up tables and stands along the sidewalks with refreshments for the Russians [...]. The Israelite Jewboys have no shame. [...] They ran toward the Cossacks with refreshments and blessings. [...] But these successors to the Haidamaks [Cossack paramilitary bands in the eighteenth century in PolishLithuanian Commonwealth], who were used to pogroms, rejected the refreshments and cursed the Jews. The Russians even hanged two Jews in the municipal park on charges of espionage. A third Jew they executed by gunfire outside of town.1

The Jews who had massed in the combat zones were in dire straits. Hunger and epidemics drove many out of Kielce; others fled in fear of pogroms that anti-Jewish incitement had fomented. Upon their reentry, the Russians looted the town’s industrial machinery. Their command imposed a fine of 100,000 rubles on the municipal populace and charged half of it to the Jews. A local branch of a national Jewish organization that had aided the Polish Army and had supplied Jewish soldiers with kosher food and Passover matzos organized in the town. It obtained some of its resources from donations; the organized 1 Lewartowski and Krzysztof, “Nad Brzegami Silnicy,” Polish-language newspaper article in installments, Nowiny Kurier, June 28, 2002.

2

In Enemy Land

Jewish community provided the rest from its annual budget. On May 2, 1915, the Prussian and Austrian armies broke through the Russian lines near Gorlice and the Tsarist forces retreated. As they did so, they blew up the Kielce rail lines and station, set coal stocks ablaze, and took some one hundred Jews into Tsarist Russia and imprisoned them for having supported the Austrians.2 The Prussian forces that captured the town ruled it for about three months, after which they handed it to the Austrians. The latter, seeking to revive the war-battered local economy, allowed the municipality to distribute market stalls in competitive bidding in which several Jews won operators’ licenses. This marked the revival of what had been a very vigorous Jewish commercial presence in the town. On October 20, 1915, the Jews of Kielce set up an advisory panel, chaired by Rabbi Mosze Nachum Jerosalimski and attended by Jakub Nowak, Adolph Wilner, and Yosef Skoretsky, that functioned together with town rabbinate as a Jewish community council. This body distributed aid to Jewish soldiers, lodged the wounded in private homes, and collected donations on behalf of needy Jews. Rabbi Jerosalimski passed away in 1916, a year in which the town’s Jewish community cringed under grave hardships, epidemics, and an influx of seventy-five refugee families from Wolhynia, all desperately poor, and suffering from epidemics. Under his successor, Rabbi Avraham Abeli Hacohen Rappaport, the community council established five departments: social services, education, food, religious supervision, and burial society. It also opened a soup kitchen next to the synagogue to succor the town’s poor with free hot meals.3 Life under Austrian occupation was difficult in the extreme. On June 5, 1916, the Austrians imposed rationing for sugar, bread, and oil, and prohibited free trade in meat and white-flour products. Textiles and leather, fuel, coal, and wood were declared goods of strategic importance and seized for military purposes. Prices had been skyrocketing and poverty spreading from the beginning of that year, and by January 1917 the city faced severe shortages in basic goods. Commodities dwindled to a minimum and the number of merchants coming to town for its trade fairs dropped off markedly. The local rabbinate joined the fight against the black market and threatened unfair traders with excommunication. Because of the conditions, a mass movement demanding tax cuts arose in town and some Jewish merchants tried to open their stores on Sundays. Here the Polish police intervened: any Jew caught trying to conduct 2 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii Kieleckich Zydow, 44. 3 Urbański, Spoleczność w Kielcach, 16–17; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 492.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

business on Sundays was heavily fined. In the final year of the war the Austrians confiscated all goods from the warehouses of Jewish merchants. In addition, the forests around Kielce were felled and the lumber carried off to Austria. Housing rent soared; Hermann Lewi, a member of the town council, published a list of apartment owners who hiked their rent by 200 percent.4 Despite the hardships, some Jews in Kielce considered trade a secure way of making a living specifically in wartime and carried on their business activity. Between 1915 and 1918, Jews formed seventy-eight new companies in Kielce, including Herszel Młynarsky’s large bakery, Mosze Kaminer’s tannery, Esther Schechter’s spacious restaurant, and Shlomo Grynszpan’s Hotel Angielski. In 1916, Salomon Paradystal and Hermann Lewi organized training courses for youth, and in 1918 efforts to organize an association of Jewish merchants began. A census of the Jewish population in Kielce and the surrounding villages, conducted by the Austrian authorities in October 1916, found some 18,500 Jews in the region and some 3,000 Jewish families—6,000 people—in Kielce proper. The taxes imposed on the Kielce Jewish community were calculated on the basis of this official census. Fifty-eight Jewish families were defined as very wealthy, 169 as merely affluent, and 370 as having a good income. Symbolic taxes (five to nine Austrian crowns) were charged to 444 Jewish families, and 2,400 families, found to be especially poor, were exempt from taxes altogether. In the town council elections held on August 18, 1916, thirteen Jews were elected as councilmen and six others as deputies. The large number of Jewish representatives on the council displeased the Polish residents, even though most spoke in favor of Kielce’s economic development.5 The council held its inaugural meeting at the end of Election Day, January 24, 1917. Concurrently, Kielce’s Great Synagogue hosted a ceremonial prayer service for the success of the council and its Jewish members. The Jewish faction had a strong position on the council and, at the urging of the Jewish intelligentsia, took on itself the task of addressing the education of Jewish youth and organizing cultural activities. Aid to the needy continued; grants were given to orphans and the ill. Even from Vienna aid began to arrive: in January 1918, General Stanisław Szeptycki, on behalf of the Austrian authorities, donated 1,000 crowns to the orphanage and 500 to the soup kitchen. Ample aid was also extended by three Jewish organizations: Linat Hatzedek

4 Lewartowski and Urbański, “Nad Brzegami Silnicy,” Nowiny Kurier, July 12, 2002. 5 Urbański, Spoleczność, 18.

3

4

In Enemy Land

(“Righteous Rest”), Tomkhei ‘Aniyim (“Supporters of the Poor”) and the Society for Birth-Giving Mothers of the Mosaic Faith.6 Between 1916 and 1918, a spirit of patriotism awakened across Poland and its Jewish inhabitants were swept up in it. In the festivities of May 3, 1917, in c­ elebration of the Polish constitution, the Gazeta Kielecka wrote: “We are moved by the declaration of the Jewish community in Kielce, which held a festive prayer service in the synagogue to honor the 126th anniversary of the ­passage of the law that promised the Jews full freedom as a religious community.” The Orthodox circles in Kielce, joining the Poles, unanimously condemned the incarceration of Józef Piłsudski in Magdeburg Prison and ­participated in sending him birthday greetings during his stint there.7

The 1918 Pogrom The Bolshevik Revolution stirred many emotions among the Jews of Poland, particularly because it abolished the restrictions that had been their lot. Poles, in turn, began to spread the idea that the Revolution had been the Jews’ handiwork. After all, had not Leon Trotsky been originally named Bornstein, Leszczyński—Singer, Radek—Sobelson, and Martov—Zederbaum. The Bund, which until then had operated clandestinely, began to organize mass gatherings in the open. In January 1918, the Gazeta Kielecka ran an article headlined “Mass Gathering of Jewish Socialists.” Its author reported, “Orators who came to the assembly demanded national autonomy for the Jews in their speeches, capturing this goal in the slogan, ‘Independence for the Jews.’ The first step toward said autonomy will be the establishment of a Jewish public school.” That year, an organization led by Leon Finkelstein began to raise funds in Kielce for those who wished to emigrate to Eretz Israel (Palestine) and Jewish Scouts organizations arose under Zionist influence. Concurrently, the Bund and the PPS waged a propaganda campaign to integrate Jews into Polish Socialist organizations and to raise workers’ wages, especially at the quarries of the Zagajski and Ehrlich families. A strike, called to raise wages by 20 percent, was successful. On November 1, 1918, units of the Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Army Organization) began to disarm the Austrian military forces and, on November 11, Poland declared its independence.8 6 Lewartowski and Urbański, “Nad Brzegami Silnicy,” Nowiny Kurier, July 12, 2002. 7 Ibid., July19, 2002. 8 Ibid.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

The end of World War I, augured in October 1918 by the defeat of the Central Powers, animated the spontaneous organization of local entities in central Poland. Even before the territory and borders of the newly freed country had been defined, these organizations considered themselves quasi-independent local governmental units. Jewish affairs in the state-to-be were handled by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Education; a special staff prepared material pertaining especially to Jewish communities and to the Supreme Jewish Council—a national body that was designated to represent all Jewish communities in the country. Izaak Greenbaum, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Zionist Organization in Poland, returned from Petrograd to Warsaw in October 1918 and immediately set to work on the construction of a unified representative body for the Jews of Poland.9 On November 11, 1918, pursuant to a proposal by Greenbaum and other Zionist leaders, the Jews of Kielce held an assembly in the Hotel Polski theatre hall on Sienkiewicza Street, with the participation of delegations from all Jewish parties and factions in town. The general sentiment was that given the many threats to Jewish existence in independent Poland, a Jewish force of some sort had to be organized to stand vigilant and deflect assaults on Jewish rights. The Endecja Party (the Endeks, named for the party’s initials: ND, National Democrats) held sway in Kielce and its leader, Roman Dmowski, periodically visited the town. When the Jewish assembly had been planned, no one knew it would take place the very day on which Poland would declare its independence. That evening, a rumor spread through Kielce that Jewish guards protecting the participants in the assembly had injured a Polish soldier. Soon, masses of Poles including armed soldiers on leave gathered outside the theatre hall where the assembly was taking place. The Jews inside knew nothing about this until the mob burst in and began beating people in their seats. Polish police who came on the scene seized the members of the assembly presidium, who were seated on the stage, and dragged them off to jail. The riots then spread to the streets near the theatre and the railway station and lasted three hours, until 8:00 p.m. Jewish-owned stores were broken into, Jewish property was looted and destroyed, Jews were pummeled in the streets, and peasants from villages in the area who had heard of the goings-on began flooding into town. The Polish police hurriedly restored order, stopped the 9

Shlomo Netzer, The Struggle of Polish Jewry for Civil and National Minority Rights 1918–1922 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, 1980), 47–50.

5

6

In Enemy Land

peasants from reaching the town center, and issued a call to keep the peace. By the time the pogrom ended, two Jews—Szmul Opsziane and young Hayim Jeger—had been beaten to death and hundreds had been injured, including students from the Jewish school of commerce. Given the events, the Jewish members of the town council demanded that the council discuss them but were turned down on the pretext of lack of time. It later emerged that the local police indeed seemed to have acted to restore order. Nathan Hasenbein, a prominent Jewish community activist at the time, said, “Most Jews are of the opinion that they must cooperate with Polish society.”10 The day after the pogrom, November 12, 1918, the Gazeta Kielecka reported the following under the headline “A Jewish Assembly”: “Yesterday afternoon, a Jewish assembly was held at the theatre house. A lineup of speakers declaimed the Jews’ familiar demands on the subject of gaining the rights of a national minority, such as the assurance of autonomy etc. [...].” The author of another article in the same edition, headlined “The Event Associated with the Jewish Assembly,” stated: [...] Some of the orators expressed themselves in a manner hostile to Polish society. In the tone of their speech one could hear the need for uncompromising struggle. A rumor to this effect spread through town and agitated young speakers began to gather in front of the theatre [...]. When the Jewish “scouts” left the hall [...] rumors spread among the mass that the Jews were armed [...]. Concurrently, two or three gunshots were heard in town. No one knew who had fired them. A Pole was wounded and bled from his face. The event enflamed the crowd, which attacked the Jews [...].11

On the day of the pogrom, November 11, 1918—Poland’s independence day—Piłsudski was named marshal (supreme commander) of the armed forces and was expected soon to assume powers over the government in the new Polish state. Over the three next days, he held consultations with representatives of the country’s political parties and, among other things, 10 Słowo ludu, a Polish-language newspaper, July 7, 1996, no. 155. See also Kielce Book, ed.: Cytron, 49–53; Urbański, Spoleczność w Kielcach, 20; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Zydow, 105; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 492. Cytron states that four Jews perished in the pogrom and four hundred were wounded. Blumenfeld and Urbański count two Jews dead and eleven injured. Słowo Ludu reported two Jews killed. 11 Lewartowski and Urbański, “Nad Brzegami Silnicy,” Nowiny Kurier, July 26, 2002.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

agreed to meet a delegation from the central committee of the Zionist Organization. Realizing that the reins of government were in his hands, however, Piłsudski rescinded his willingness to meet with the Jews and referred them to other state agencies. Piłsudski had met Jews from Kielce back in 1914 and wrote in his book My First Battles12 (in Polish: Moje Pierwsze Boje) that the population of Kielce comprised two nations, Jews and Poles, who painstakingly disregarded anything redolent of war.13 By saying this, Piłsudski alluded to the townspeople’s reluctance to take part in Poland’s struggle for independence. In World War I, however, when he urged the inhabitants of Kielce to join precisely this battle, the Jewish workshops had pitched in and manufactured essentials for the army’s needs. Apart from Kielce, November 1918 saw pogroms elsewhere in Poland.14 On November 24, some two weeks after the pogrom in Kielce, a delegation of Jewish townspeople did meet with Piłsudski. The participants in the meeting were Dr. Brown, representative of the Jewish community of Kielce; Izaak Greenbaum, and R. Szarszewski, subsequently a member of the Jewish Defense Committee in Poland. The three presented Piłsudski with a memorandum listing the facts connected with the pogrom in Kielce, which showed clearly that the mob violence against the Jews had been preplanned and that it was the harsh anti-Jewish climate in Kielce that had brought on the troubles. On the eve of the pogrom, the authors of the memorandum continued, Poles had threatened the Jewish townspeople with imminent bloodshed and the municipal authorities were helpless and indifferent to the goings-on— even though they knew that the mob had been equipped with clubs and sticks. The day after the pogrom, the authors went on to state, representatives of Kielce’s Jewish community turned to Mayor Mieczysław Łukasziewicz, who informed them that this had been merely the beginning of the flare-up and that he was not in a position to do anything. In his reply, Piłsudski explained to the members of the delegation that his hands were tied on issues belonging to the remit of civilian authorities and urged the Jews to act with moderation, maintain good citizenship, and do nothing that might worsen a relationship that was taut to begin with. Although adding that he personally had instructed 12 Józef Piłsudski, Moje pierwsze boje: Wspomnienia spisane w twierdzy magdeburskiej (Warsaw: Bibljoteka Polska, 1925). 13 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 102. 14 Y. Lifshitz, “The Pogroms in Poland in 1918–1919, the Morgenthau Committee and the American State Department,” Zion 23–24 (a–b) (1958–1959), 66–97; (c–d) (1958–1959), 194–211 [both in Hebrew].

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the army to refrain from harming Jews, Piłsudski stressed that the army was just getting organized and the government still lacked the power to control the situation as warranted. The Jewish delegation also visited Jędrez Moraczewski, who had just taken office as the first premier of the Second Polish Republic. The main reason for the outburst of fury against the Jews of Kielce, Moraczewski maintained, was the large number of Jewish merchants in town, who were hiking prices and profiteering on food. He also claimed that the assaults on the town’s Jews were more social than anti-Jewish in nature, citing as evidence the assaults on the shops of Christians in the Zagłębie region. To thwart future pogroms, Moraczewski suggested, the members of the delegation should prevail upon the Jewish townspeople to lower their prices. The members of the mission rejected Moraczewski’s reasoning, insisting that the pogrom had a clear political basis; after all, they stressed, it had begun with an attack on a Zionist Jewish assembly. To the members’ further disappointment, Moraczewski refused to issue a manifesto against the pogrom on the grounds that it had occurred prior to his taking office.15 The events in Kielce yielded a variety of reactions among the Polish public. In a semi-official memorandum issued by the Polish telegraphic service (Polska Agencja Telegraficzna), it was stated that on the eve of the troubles in Kielce, as the Poles were being granted the reins of government in town, the Jews had spoken out against the Polish Army, among which several soldiers had been injured, and against the state, and issued denigrating and mocking epithets against the eagle, Poland’s national symbol. The Jews had also sounded calls in support of the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the author of the memo continued, and Poland was being endangered by Bolshevism-disseminating Jewish agents. Roman Dmowski also weighed in about the pogrom in Kielce, tracing its origins to young Jews who had taunted Poles with insults and overt provocations.16 The antisemitic violence in Poland at this time crested on November 22, 1918, with a pogrom in Lwów, Eastern Galicia, ten days after the pogrom in Kielce. Further appeals by Jews to Piłsudski went unanswered, and when there was yet another pogrom against the Jews of Jędziejow, near Kielce, the Polish public chose to respond with total silence in an attempt to hide the facts and blame the events on the Jews themselves. Even so, as reports about 15 Netzer, Struggle of Polish Jewry, 111–112. 16 Ibid., 113–114.

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the pogroms trickled out of Poland, Poles began to worry about their public image at the very time an independent Poland was being established. Indeed, as these reports circled the globe, Diaspora Jews launched an energetic c­ ampaign. Their main pressure was brought against the U.S. State Department and the greatest influence was on American public opinion. In the U.S. Senate, a proposal was advanced to place the issue of the pogroms on the agenda of the Paris peace talks, as part of the negotiations with the relevant countries. Pursuant to this motion, in June 1919, President Woodrow Wilson set up a commission of inquiry under Henry Morgenthau, an assimilated Jew who opposed the Polish Jews’ quest for national minority rights. The Morgenthau Commission investigated the pogrom in Kielce and its precipitants, among other things, and the longer it remained in Poland the more aware Morgenthau became that hatred of and contempt for Jews were deeply rooted in Poland. Morgenthau left Poland on September 13, 1919, and presented his report to the American peace commission in Paris on October 3. Although of the opinion that relations between Jews and non-Jews would surely improve in a strong democratic Poland, Morgenthau stressed in his report that the Polish Government was extremely antisemitic and the Polish people was consumed by hatred and animosity toward the Jews.17 On June 22, 1922, four years after the Kielce pogrom, several Poles who had taken an active part in the mayhem were brought to trial and a court in Kielce sentenced six of them to short terms in prison.18

Jewish Economic Life in Interwar Kielce The main sources of livelihood among the Jews of Kielce in the interwar period were trade and crafts. These were substantial: In 1919, 45.5 percent of commercial establishments in town were Jewish-owned. By then, the city had become an important center in various branches of trade: limestone, gravel, stone, wood, leather, horses, and domestic fowl. A partial survey conducted by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC) in Poland in 1921 found that Kielce had 633 workshops in 1919, 422 of which in the clothing industry, that together employed 1,198 people, 568 of them Jews. Additional industries with a prominent Jewish presence were carpentry, manufacturing of

17 Lifshitz, “Pogroms in Poland,” 199–201. 18 Urbański, Spoleczność w Kielcach, 20; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 493.

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soap and chemical products, marble, and sanitary plumbing.19 Jews also traded in gold, furs, wax, dairy products, clothing, shoes, used furniture, and other items. In 1918, an association of artisans in Kielce was established by Jewish members of the Polish Socialist Party who wished to broaden their influence among the Jews at large; Zionists, who wished to win over artisans and ­craftsmen to their cause of national revival; Orthodox Jews of the Shlomei Emunei Yisrael (“Union of Faithful Jewry”) Party (synonymous with Agudat Yisrael—see below), and assimilationist circles. The association amassed some 1,500 members by early 1920 and divided them into occupationally differentiated sections. Nearly all members were Jews even though non-Jews were also welcome to join. In July 1921, the association gave legal advice to Poles and Jews, offered vocational training, and involved itself in culture and ­education projects. In 1922, a collective union that organized all Jewish merchants took shape; it, along with the Association of Artisans, began to coordinate ­commercial life in town and saw itself as a center to which the Jewish merchant could turn for advice. The goals of the merchants’ union were to represent merchants in dealings with the government, protect them in their interaction with state treasury officials, and create a merchants’ bank that would issue small-business loans.20 To promote broad-based vocational training and aware that Jewish ­trainees had to demonstrate fluency in Polish, the associations also undertook to offer special language classes in Jewish schools. By 1930, trade unions had been established for shoemakers, tanners, tailors, milliners, furriers, bakers, butchers, meat-product makers, goldsmiths, and others. They charged induction and membership dues and central in each were meisters—craftsmen ­carrying the designation of “expert.” Although union membership was not obligatory, in the 1920s Kielce had between thirty and two-hundred fifty members listed in each union, plus 1,185 Jewish artisans. The unions fought for Jewish workers’ rights vis-à-vis their Jewish employers and turned the right to strike into a r­ ealistic 19 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Zydow, 22. 20 Cytron, Kielce Book, 139–149. The most prominent assimilationists in the association of artisans were Paradistal and Rawnicki, who felt increasingly isolated over time and did not last there despite intensive efforts to keep them. Later, a Socialist-minded opposition group formed within the association, led by the Strawczynski brothers; their influence was minimal and short-lived. The guiding spirit in the association was Hermann Lewi, an affluent manufacturer; other activists included the merchants Binyamin Lev, Asher Kozlowski, and Meir Eisenberg.

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threat as manifested in general strikes that broke out in town. In September 1923, Jewish laborers in a shoe workshop struck for four days; a month later, 250 Jewish and Polish laborers in a needle workshop walked out. The economic crisis that gripped Poland in 1923 and lasted two years affected the fortunes of Kielce’s petty merchants and induced an outflux of Jews from the city.21 Kielce had several Jewish-owned banks in the interwar period. One such institution (est. 1923) was Bank Ludowe, a project of JDC-Warsaw. Its directors were Yitzhak Reizman, Beer Blumenfeld, and Dawid Rozenberg. In the 1930s it had 420 shareholders, mainly tradesmen, artisans, and petty merchants. The bank attracted hundreds of members and faithfully served the town’s lower- and middle-class Jews for ten years. In late 1936, the bank underwent a financial crisis and verged on insolvency. In April 1937, the Jewish community administration gave it a large loan to forestall its collapse, noting the damage that Jewish merchants and shopkeepers would sustain in the event of bankruptcy. In 1926, some 60 percent of commercial establishments in Kielce were owned by Jews. That year, a group of middle-class artisans and merchants established the Volksbank (“People’s Bank”), which mainly served to ­distribute aid from JDC and encourage Jewish artisans to deposit their savings in its coffers. In 1928, the bank’s capital came to 8,000 złoty; it made annual contributions of 250 złoty to Keren Hayesod (the Zionist development fund) and smaller sums to welfare institutions that operated in town. In 1922, Aharon Moszkowicz established Handlowe Bank—a cooperative bank for commerce. This institution amassed nearly 50,000 złoty by 1928 and remained operational until 1932. In 1923, Hersch Cerchz and Hayim Weinreb established Discount Bank and in 1930 the General Cooperative Bank was formed by Hayim Lichtenstein, Eliezer Glatt, and Berek Rosenzweig, among others. Jewish investors could follow the latest trends in banking from the Polishlanguage newspaper Przegląd Spoldzieczy, which had a Yiddish insert titled Der Kooperator.22 The great financial crisis of 1928–1933 mainly hurt small businesses, although some large businesses too were not left unscathed. It slowed the pace of industrial production, and in late 1931 the town listed some 8,000 unemployed of a total population of 58,236.23 The crisis brought on a cascade 21 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 22–23. 22 Cytron, Kielce Book, 150–153. 23 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 58; Urbański, Spoleczność, 21–22, Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 493.

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of bank failures. In 1935, a leading executive at the JDC European office visited Poland and met with representatives of the Volksbank in Kielce; a year later, JDC gave the bank a special 6,000-złoty bailout. Several years before World War II, merchants and industrialists in Kielce established a credit cooperative; it maintained operations up to 1939. From the second half of the 1930s, however, in Kielce as in Poland at large, the Polish Right’s propaganda campaign for a boycott of Jewish goods met with growing success, to the detriment of the trade and crafts cooperatives. In 1927, the Government of Poland ordered Jewish tobacconists to open their stores on Saturdays; the district authorities revoked the stricture only in 1933, and after a protracted battle at that. In the 1930s, Kielce had one hundred eighty-nine grocery stores, thirty-six bakeries, forty-two haberdasheries, twenty-four stores that carried metal products, twenty-two coal vendors, thirteen apparel shops, seventeen butchers, thirteen stores for meat products, nine poultry outlets, and five fish shops—all under Jewish ownership. In addition, Jews owned thirty-two teashops, nineteen taverns, eight eateries, and two restaurants. Some two hundred Jewish families in Kielce earned their living between the world wars by letting apartments and entire buildings. Jews who owned property organized under a Jewish Real Estate Owners Union that provided members with legal aid, financial aid, and mediation services in realestate transactions. Some 250 Jews practiced liberal professions such as medicine and teaching or held white-collar jobs in offices and institutions. In the late 1930s, some Jews in Kielce found employment in the automobile trade buy selling car radios and other accessories. To maximize their earnings, Jewish merchants advertised their wares, arranged training for their workers, sold on the ­installment plan, and held special sales. Of the twelve factories in Kielce that were considered to be of district-wide importance, six were under Jewish ownership in 1938, including the Kadzielnia quarries, owned by the Ehrlich family; the Wietrznia quarries and lime works, owned by the Weiner and Zagajski families; the Henrików lumber factory, owned by the Novak, Bruner and Levy families; the Polplum feather-processing plant, owned by the Fried family; the Kłos automated flourmill, owned by the Graus, Zilbering, and Grünberg families; and the Machtinger brothers’ barrel works. Between the wars, Kielce had a branch of the Sosnowiec-based Chamber of Industry and Commerce that coordinated industrial and commercial a­ ctivity in Kielce District; it was represented by the industrialist Hermann Levy. Electoral rights in the Bureau of Craftsmen, formed in

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Kielce in 1929, were reserved to artisans over thirty years of age who held certification, possessed a professional license, and owned a crafts workshop that had been operating for at least three years. The bureau had twenty members, including six Jewish artisans, and sixteen deputies, six of whom were Jewish. In 1933, the bureau was restructured; from then on, 40 percent of members were appointed by the Minister of Trade and Industry. Between 1934 and 1939, the tailor Szmul Leichter and the butcher Szmul Nisanowicz were among the bureau’s members. The bureau was active in various realms, such as cooperation with the authorities in matters related to crafts, assuring supplies of raw materials, setting guidelines for the employment of trainees, setting up examination committees, fighting illegal crafts, and coordination in the establishment of credit institutions.24 The harsh conditions faced by the Jews of Poland worsened further in the second half of the 1930s, after Piłsudski’s death. Even so, most commerce in Kielce remained in Jewish hands until the outbreak of World War II. In 1939, as a case in point, 61.4 percent of the town’s commercial establishments were owned by Jews.25

Parties and Youth Movements As World War I wound down, Zionist activity in Kielce resumed and branches of various Zionist movements and parties were established in the town.

Mizrachi In 1917, a branch of the Religious Zionist Mizrachi (an abbreviation of Merkaz Ruhani, “spiritual center”) movement opened in town, its founders including Eliasz Rozenblum, Wolf Kluska, and other disciples of rabbis who took a favorable attitude toward the Land of Israel—such as the Hasidim of Radomsko, Piaseczno, and Chęciny, and some members of the Alexander court. In the early 1920s, the Mizrachi was the most active Zionist movement in town. In June 1921, its members established a group for the study of the principles of religious Zionism. By early 1924, the Mizrachi had some 300 registered members and an equal number of fellow travelers, drawn 24 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 64–65, 107. 25 Urbański, Spoleczność, 23–24; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 493; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 58.

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mainly from the local petty bourgeoisie. Eleven members led the movement and the Kielce branch had chapters in Bodzentyn, Chęciny, and other small ­communities in the region. In 1927, the Mizrachi delegated one representative on the city council; by the late 1920s, it also had several representatives in the Jewish community administration, who centered their efforts on the struggle to establish a Jewish high school in Kielce. In October 1928, the Mizrachi chose Kielce as the site of its national conference; in 1929, a district convention of the movement, at which the group’s agenda was settled upon, was held there too. In 1930, members of the Mizrachi established branches of the Hashomer Hadati (“Religious Guard”) and Hehaluts Hadati (“Religious Pioneer”) youth movements in Kielce; together they had sixty-five members. In 1932–1933, the Mizrachi, by now a political party, received permission to hold several fundraisers for Jews who had “made aliya” (emigrated to the Land of Israel) and, when the Nazis rose to power in Germany, it was among several entities in Kielce that organized protest rallies over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. In April 1935, the party opened a center in Kielce where Hebrew was taught and members could receive party newspapers. In January 1937, the Mizrachi elected a local committee, with David Mazal named chair. Also active in Kielce was the Mizrachi youth organization, pledged to deepening religious knowledge and spreading Hebrew culture among the young. It focused especially on physical labor, mainly for those planning to make aliya. The Kielce chapter had 150 members and its activities included lectures, literary evenings, and meetings on various topics. Members studied agriculture on a farm in the Czarnów neighborhood and were trained at Jewish factories in occupations that could be used to secure aliya visas. On several occasions, the authorities allowed the Mizrachi Youth to hold fundraisers for halutsim (Zionist pioneers) who were awaiting aliya visas. The merchant Yitzhak Kirszenbojm—treasurer of the Great Synagogue for many years, the Mizrachi representative on the community committee, and a member of the Jewish National Assembly—had much influence on the Mizrachi Youth. He maintained a Zionist and Hebrew household and was among the first promoters of Hebrew in Kielce. On the door to his house was posted the sign: “Jew—Speak Hebrew!”26

26 Cytron, Kielce Book, 120–121; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 31, 91–92; Urbański, Spoleczność, 27.

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General Zionists The General Zionist Party was launched in Kielce in late 1921 under the baton of Yitzhak Reizman. Its offices sponsored information activities in which lectures, meetings, training sessions, and discussions were held. The Kielce branch, like party branches throughout Poland, was riven by factions. This became manifest during the party’s regional conference, held in 1930, when it emerged that the town had two such factions: Et Livnot (“Time to Build”), headed by Eliasz Goldberg, and Al Hamishmar (“On Guard”), captained by Nechemia Keizer.27 The Kielce branch had chapters in Suchedniów, Kazimierza Wielka, Olkusz, and other nearby localities. In 1932, a delegation from the branch ­participated in the General Zionist national conference, where the d­ iscussions centered on the ongoing economic crisis. From 1933 onward, the party stepped up its campaigning for aliya and support of the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod, and it amassed much influence in the merchants’ associations and various charitable organizations in town. Its district conference in April 1935, held in Kielce, drew representatives from thirty-two communities in the area. The participants passed resolutions in support of the Zionist funds and the Scouts movement, decried the factionalism of the movement, rued the secession of the Revisionists (see below), and urged the development of cultural and educational activities for Jewish youth. In 1936, to implement the last-mentioned call, Aron Rozenblat of Łódź gave a series of lectures in Kielce on conditions in the Land of Israel. Between 1927 and 1939, Hanoar Hazioni—the General Zionist youth movement—offered training to young people who were preparing their emigration.28

Po’alei Tsiyyon The Po’alei Tsiyyon (Zionist Workers) party commenced its activities in Kielce even before the Russian Revolution of 1905, using the underground 27 Keizer and his eldest brother Szymon began to promote the Zionist idea in Kielce in the early twentieth century and their names became synonymous with Zionism and its concepts. Szymon Keizer, owner of a book and stationery store, made his home and business a center for the town’s Zionists back in the Tsarist era and in his last days visited pre-independence Israel as a tourist. Nechemia Keizer held central positions in the Zionist Movement, representing the Zionist Organization in Kielce and handling the affairs of the Foundation Fund (Keren Hayesod), the Jewish National Fund, and Jewish immigration. See Cytron, Kielce Book, 104–105. 28 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 58, 97–98; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 493–494.

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name of “Felix.” After the movement—still illegal—split in 1920, its left flank (Po’alei Tsiyyon Left) operated clandestinely in Kielce, chiefly in economic struggles. In 1922, the party organized four anti-unemployment demonstrations in town and campaigned against Poland’s war with Russia. When legalized by district authorities in 1926, police estimated its population of supporters at 400 and 300 in the respective wings. Prominent activists at the time of legalization included Avraham Weincweig, Szmul Balicki, and Uri Goldlust. In both parties (Right and Left), the members were laborers and artisans, with small numbers of white-collar workers thrown in. In the 1927 municipal council elections, Po’alei Tsiyyon Right won one mandate. Once legalized, both factions set up clubs in town and organized lectures, classes, vocational training, and discussion groups. On May 1, 1928, they took an active part in a parade in town and on May 24, 1930, Po’alei Tsiyyon Left organized a demonstration that called for faster aliya. The same year, Po’alei Tsiyyon Right also initiated a series of lectures about the Land of Israel, arranged ceremonies, and distributed its own newspapers. The activities of both parties slumped in 1930–1931, presumably because of ideological tussles within the Zionist Movement. They rebounded in 1932; that year, Po’alei Tsiyyon Right brought Yehuda Koplewicz from the Land of Israel to give a series of lectures. In March 1935, the party held a district conference to discuss the state of the movement and elect delegates to the national conference. Concurrently, Po’alei Tsiyyon Left held a municipal conference at which it elected a new leadership that tightened its relations with local professional and social associations. 29

Beitar and the Revisionists The Zionist Revisionist Party made its debut in Kielce in 1929 with the establishment of a chapter of the Massada student youth organization, which brought together young people who were drawn to the idea of a Hebrew state, a Hebrew army, national discipline, and grand displays and festive ­ceremonies. Massada in Kielce set up Revisionist intellectual cadres that eventually represented the movement wherever young Jews pursued higher ­education. At its founding convention, Massada in Kielce stressed the d­ evelopment of Scouts groups. Avraham Rozenblum, the head of the organization, was empowered to negotiate on this subject with the district authorities. When the authorities refused to authorize Jewish Scouting activity, Massada went 29 Cytron, Kielce Book, 123–125; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 31, 104; Urbański, Spoleczność, 27.

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ahead anyway, providing its members with military training in anticipation of an armed struggle for Jewish statehood. In October 1932, Massada held a conference in Kielce for its members in the subdistrict; the next year, it took part in protests against Germany’s persecution of Jews and the British restrictions on the issue of immigration visas to Palestine. Massada’s prominent members included Jehuda Zloto, Szmul Menge, Dawid Renkosinski, and Leib Kopel. The Kielce chapter of the Beitar youth movement, a branch of the Revisionist Party, was founded by Jakob Seifman, Paula Kuperberg, and Chaya Eizenberg, among others. On December 28, 1935, the movement in Kielce District established its own organization, boasting twenty-eight chapters. The district administration, headed by Mosze Klingbeil, taught not only Hebrew but also the topography and history of the Land of Israel. In 1933, a violent conflict broke out in Kielce between members of the Hehaluts m ­ ovement and several members of Beitar; Polish police intervened by making nine arrests and four detentions. In 1939, brawls erupted between Beitar youngsters and members of Hashomer Hatza’ir; Polish police stepped in again, arresting one member from each movement.30 A branch of Brit ha-Tsohar (“Revisionist Zionists’ Union”) was formed in Kielce in March 1935 under the organization’s June 30, 1932, national bylaws. It attracted many supporters and enthusiasts, as evidenced in the 300 people who attended its convention on June 1, 1935, with the participation of Yosef Klarman, general secretary of Brit ha-Tsohar. The Revisionists easily obtained permission from the Kielce authorities to raise funds and hold a series of lectures that aimed to spread the party’s ideas. On June 18, 1935, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, founder and unchallenged leader of the Revisionist Movement, visited Kielce and was received at the train station with flowers and an orchestra. His visit sparked much curiosity about the movement’s ideas and aims and led to the formation of a chapter of Brit ha-Tsohar in nearby Suchedniów. The Kielce branch of the Ze’ev Jabotinsky Soldiers’ Alliance was established in Kielce on December 3, 1933. Its members, influenced by Jabotinsky’s doctrine of power, worked at developing their physical fitness, learning trades, using weapons, studying topography, and the like. Its t­ raining exercises took place in the forests near Kielce and at sports facilities in the Stadion neighborhood. Its primary activists were Salomon Zelinger, Adolph Lewi (manager of the American Auto company), Hirsz Leszec, and Adolf 30 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494.

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Renkoshinski. Since some members of the organization lived in surrounding localities, a subdistrict was formed for them, serving Busko-Zdrój, Chmielnik, Jędrzejów, Końskie, Ostroweic, Opatów, Sandomierz, Radoszyce, Szydłowiec, Staszów, Suchedniów, and Włoszczowa. In the inaugural elections of the Kielce branch, Adolf Lewi was chosen as subdistrict commander and Salomon Zelinger as head of the organization department. The Kielce branch of the New Zionist Organization, which Jabotinsky founded after the 17th Zionist Congress, was established in 1936 by Adolf Lewi and the banker Leon Rodel. Its fifty or so members, like those of Beitar, wore brown shirts, stressed military and sports exercises in their ­programs, and took weapons training.31

Hashomer Hatza’ir Hashomer Hatza’ir was one of the first Zionist youth movements to arise in Kielce. Several Jewish upperclassmen at Szenicki High School formed a Hashomer Hatza’ir cell in 1916 under the influence of the movement in Galicia; the cell eventually grew in size to three battalion-sized units. Several of its leaders sustained injuries in the November 1918 pogrom, bringing movement activities in Kielce to a halt. Kalman Mordkowicz reactivated the cell in January 1924; the first of its members to make aliya did so the next year. According to statistics gathered at a district-level conference on October 8, 1933, the Kielce branch at that time had 80–100 child and adolescent members and twenty-five counselors who guided them. On April 25, 1935, the Kielce branch was awarded the movement’s pennant and augmented its activities with a series of lectures on the literature and history of the Land of Israel. The Hashomer Hatza’ir movement in Kielce, headquartered on Starowarszawska Street, focused its activities on physical exercise, outings, and camping and had a substantial library devoted to scouting. By 1939, its membership climbed to 300. Leading activists included Avraham Kleinman and Jehiel Halpert.32

Hehaluts The Kielce branch of the Hehaluts movement was founded by Avraham Piwko and Aron Cytron, among others. Its inaugural meeting, held in the attic of 31 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 24, 28, 90, 94; Cytron, Kielce Book, 126–130; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494. 32 Cytron, Kielce Book, 121–123; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 60; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494.

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Piwko’s house, attracted young people from across the Jewish social, political and religious spectrum—Orthodox and Socialists under one roof—who were impassioned with the Zionist idea. The branch management was divided into departments such as Culture, Vocational Training, Physical Development, etc. In 1925, after the departure of Piwko and his close friends, a new leadership was elected—the banker Dawid Rozenberg as director and Hayim Weinreb, Mosze Kirszenbojm, Sara Reizman, and others as members. The board received ­permission from the municipal authorities to hold several fundraisers and dance parties in which the revenues were pledged to the aliya project. Activists at the Kielce branch, which included subchapters in Białogon and Bodzentyn, organized outings and advanced training activities for youth. In 1928, Hehaluts member Pola Bruker, an elementary school teacher, set up classes for the teaching of Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish and Land of Israel history. In 1929, a Hehaluts training kibbutz (commune) was established in town as part of a network of such collectives named for the Zionist leader Dov Ber Borochov. At first, the kibbutz had twenty-nine members who worked in carpentry, needlework, metalwork, and haulage. By October 1933, its membership had grown to 138, forty-eight of whom were girls. The Jewish community administration in Kielce helped fund the commune’s activities for some time, albeit in small sums. Accordingly, a municipal public commission was set up to support the Hehaluts movement. Budget constraints prevented Hehaluts from maintaining a permanent facility of its own, so members met and official conferences and classes took place in rented facilities. In 1935, in coordination with the municipal authorities and representatives of political parties, the Kielce Hehaluts branch organized a large-scale vocational-training operation for movement members at local Jewish-owned sawmills. Youth from surrounding localities attended the sessions, working together with local peers and investing the proceeds in the movement’s needs and the Zionist development funds. One of those who joined the Kielce kibbutz that year was twenty-one-year-old Zivia Lubetkin, later of Warsaw ghetto fame; she organized the labors of the Freiheit (Dror) movement in the district. To accommodate the growing membership, the kibbutz facilities expanded to three buildings—one housing offices, a kitchen, dining hall, and bakery, and the other two as members’ living quarters. In the second half of the 1930s, as Hehaluts members found employment harder and harder to come by, the kibbutz tumbled into crisis and its leadership struggled to pay rent for its lodgings. In 1936, membership in Hehaluts fell to fifty-four, only half of whom were able to find work. Kielce also had a cell of Akiva, a general Zionist youth organization affiliated with Hehaluts, with several dozen members. It was set

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up locally by Mosze Goldberg, son of a rabbi from Bodzentyn; one of its main activists was Michal (Michael) Eichler.33

Hitahdut Hitahdut (“Union”), the Jewish Socialist-Zionist labor party in Poland, was established in Kielce in 1920. Its founders and important activists included Szyja Hausler (who for many years directed its activity in Kielce), Jehiel Rozenkranc, Kalman Kluska, and Esther Zilbersztein. Most members were young artisans and laborers, for whom the administrators organized courses on Hebrew and Land of Israel and Zionist history. In the mid-1920s, the party set up a Borochov kibbutz in town. Its members apprenticed in local factories and workshops, attended lectures and literary soirées, and marked the ­anniversaries of the death of Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl and Dov Ber Borochov, to which lecturers from Warsaw, Łódź, Częstochowa, and Lwów were brought in. The number of kibbutz members in town, including members of Gordonia, came to several dozen.34

Agudat Yisrael The Agudat Yisrael (Agudas Yisroel) branch in Kielce came into being in the mid-1920s under the title “Shlomei Emunai Yisrael” (“Union of Faithful Jewry”), a branch of the central Orthodox organization that had been founded in the early twentieth century. Initially, the Kielce branch had 180 members; its leadership included Hanoch Kaminer, Pinchas Finkler, Yakov Passirman and Mordechai Fishel Kaminer, who chaired the board. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Agudat Yisrael had roughly 1,000 members and another 2,000 ­supporters. Members participated in elections for the Polish Sejm (parliament), the Senate, and the municipal council, and marked the anniversary of the Polish constitution with festive prayer rallies. Relations between Agudat Yisrael and the municipal council were good and the party had representatives on the ­council until the mid-1930s. For many years, Agudat Yisrael also enjoyed a powerful position within the Jewish community and created a set of ­organizations to expand its influence among all segments of the Jewish public— Batya for girls aged six to seventeen, Pirchei Agudat Yisrael for young boys from 33 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 17, 60–61; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494. 34 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 62, 72.

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Orthodox families, Bnos Agudat Yisrael for girls over seventeen, and Po’alei Agudat Yisrael (see below) for Orthodox workers and artisans. Tzeirei Agudat Yisrael, which began operations in Kielce in 1929, enrolled 150–200 boys from families that supported Agudat Yisrael. Its operations focused on social services and religious education. Rabbis and party activists, including Alter Minc, Idel Kaminer, Baruch Rappaport, Shlomo Charmac, Alter Eizenberg, and others, gave lectures to the youngsters. The programs of Agudat Yisrael in Kielce had the support of the town’s Chief Rabbi, Avraham Abeli Hacohen Rappaport. In 1929–1930, the party held several protest demonstrations in Kielce against Britain’s Palestine policy; in 1933 it condemned the Nazis’ policies in Germany. At its Third Conference (1929), Agudat Yisrael established the Horev society for the support of religious schools, through which party ­sponsorship of the Orthodox education system could be provided. The Kielce branch of Horev was established in 1934, thirteen members of the party attending its first meeting. Heading the board of Horev in Kielce were the manufacturer Simha Goldman, the Jewish-studies teacher Shlomo Zelcer, the businessman Szmul Goldberg, and the shoemaker Shlomo Feigenblat. In 1937, the branch was disbanded due to lack of sufficient activity and the party’s overall strength in Kielce declined. By then, some members had switched to Zionist parties and other important activists had made aliya. Still, when restrictions on kosher slaughtering practices in Poland were imposed that year, Agudat Yisrael in Kielce joined a nationwide protest, and in 1939 its members took part in the collection of funds and valuables for the National Defense Fund (Fundusz Obrony Narodewej, FON), established in Poland on the eve of World War II.35

Po’alei Agudat Yisrael The Kielce branch of Po’alei Agudat Yisrael, the labor subsidiary of the parent movement was established in 1924 and soon had 200 members. Its activities were confined to support for Agudat Yisrael and, during the great economic 35 Ibid., 16, 30, 34; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494. The Kaminer family, among the founders of Agudat Yisrael in Kielce, was famous in Poland due to its marital ties to the Gerrer Rebbe, author of Sfat Emet. One of the leading activists in Agudat Yisrael in Kielce was Benjamin Lew, a Gerrer (Gur) Hasid, who was also a member of the Jewish community council. Lew made aliya with his family in the 1930s. Another famous operative was Mosze Dawid Eizenberg, known in Kielce as Mosze Eli Naftolis. Eizenberg, also Gerrer Hasid, was quite active in the community and even preceding the Agudat Yisrael presence in Kielce he had served for years as the treasurer of the Hevra Kadisha (volunteer burial service) and a member of the Jewish community council. His sons made aliya. See Cytron, Kielce Book, 131–137.

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crisis, support for Polish trade unions that sought to improve their members’ wages. The movement had a youth organization of which prominent members included Michal (Michael) Gertler, Baruch Rappaport, and Y. Staszewski (who later switched the Bund). The activities of Po’alei Agudat Yisrael ­diminished somewhat between 1935 and 1939, mainly because its most important operatives made aliya.36

The Bund “The Bund”—the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland—initiated its presence in Kielce in 1900, when the city was under Tsarist rule and the Jewish organization was illegal. Its existence only became known to the public during the Russian revolution of 1904–1906. At this time, the Kielce Bund was in close contact with the party’s cells in Radom and Częstochowa, whence came its lecturers, newspapers, and finances. The party’s second wave of activity took place in 1917–1922, at which time it supported the formation of workers’ councils in Poland and its activists took part in assemblies of trade organizations and related groups. The offices of the Bund cell in Kielce also housed the party’s club organization—the Kultur Lige—and its library and reading room.37 In 1920, the Kielce cell sent relief funds to party members who had been transferred from the prison in Chelm-Lubelski to the lockup in Kielce. In the mid-1920s, as many members of the Bund t­ ransferred their allegiance to the Polish Communist Party (Komunistyczna Partia Robotnicza Polski—KPRP), Bund’s activities in town dwindled. Bund operations in Kielce were reinvigorated in late 1927 and early 1928 at the initiative of Jehiel Waldman, who built close ties with the Bund headquarters in Warsaw. As a result, finances, propaganda materials, and party newspapers were sent from Warsaw to Kielce. At this time, the Bund began to hold evening activities in town, set up a public reading room, and ­sponsored a drama group called “Muse.” In addition, the party began to offer night classes in various trades and supported the Stern and Bar Kochva sports clubs. In 1928–1930, the Bund gained strength among Jewish trade unions and the local ­association of Jewish artisans and maintained good ties with the PPS (the Polish Socialist Party). Its film, Under the Banner of the Bund, shown in 1930 at the Kielce branch offices, made a strong impression on viewers. 36 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 103; Cytron, Kielce Book, 137. 37 For more about the Kultur Lige, see p. 37.

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In 1937, the Kielce Bund joined the battle against “ghetto benches”38 and the Polish Right, which had been advocating a boycott of Jewish goods. That year, after the Polish Communist Party was outlawed, police stepped up their surveillance of the Bund, suspecting that Polish Communists might be switching to it. On May 1, 1938, demonstrating workers clashed with police in Kielce, sustaining dozens of casualties. Two months later, twelve Polish members of the PPS and seven Bundists were brought to trial on charges of disturbing the peace during the demonstration. The second half of the 1930s saw an efflorescence of the Bund in Kielce, as in all important Polish cities, thanks to its active struggle against the antisemitic manifestations and pogroms that swept Poland after the death of Marshal Piłsudski. The last great effort of the Kielce branch of the party was its campaign on the eve of World War II to place its activists on the municipal council. The Bund’s most prominent operatives in Kielce in the interwar years were Jehiel Waldman, Mosze Treiser, Yitzhak Szmulewicz, and Zysman Zysmanowicz.39 Notably, Jewish political party activity in Kielce paralleled that in other urban Jewish communities in Poland. There as elsewhere, Zionist parties attracted more support than others did, but in the second half of the 1930s the Bund grew in prominence, its share of support among Jews climbing to around 30 percent of the total.

Community Leadership and Institutions The Jewish Community Council and Administration The institutions of the Jewish community—the kehillah—in Kielce began to take shape between 1862 and 1870, with the beginnings of Jewish settlement in town. By World War I, this kehillah was one of six in Kielce Subdistrict 38 The expression “ghetto benches” pertains to an outcome of the numerus clausus method, the maintenance of a quota based on the share of a religious group or a minority in the population at large. Poland attempted to introduce this practice in 1923 but was opposed by the League of Nations. The restriction was introduced unofficially; the quota of Jewish students was set at 10 percent, commensurate with their share of the population. From 1937 onward, as antisemitism in Poland gained traction, the Jewish quota in the universities and other institutes of higher study fell to zero. Jews already enrolled were forced to sit on benches along the sides of classrooms and sometimes even to stand—hence the expression “ghetto benches.” 39 Urbański, Spoleczność, 28; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 29–30.

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and its accommodated members who lived in the surrounding s­ htetlakh. In 1916, some 3,000 Jewish families—around 15,000 individuals—resided in Kielce and in 1921, even though World War I had taken a toll on the population, 15,530 Jews lived in Kielce, 37 percent of the total of 41,346.40 In the 1920s, the Jewish community was led by a twenty-member council and a twelve-member administration, both organs elected on a quadrennial cycle that was usually adhered to. The administration was subordinate to the council, which wielded authority in matters such as determining the budget and making fiscal policy. The right to vote in for candidates in council and administration elections was reserved for men over the age of twenty-five; candidacy itself was restricted to those over thirty. In the 1920s, the Jewish community leadership in Kielce was dominated by the Gur (Gerrer) Hasidim. Local pundits noted, mockingly, that public opinion in Kielce was locked up by two camps: the Endeks (National Democrats) for the Christians and the Gerrer Hasidim for the Jews.41 Still, severe disputes and infighting, usually between supporters of Agudat Yisrael and activists from the Mizrachi and the Zionist parties, hindered the smooth functioning of the Kielce community council and administration. The Zionist groups in the local administration, as in Poland’s other Jewish communities, wished to deal with general national issues in addition to religious affairs and sought to expand the organized c­ ommunity’s powers and activities. In June 1930, the administration plunged into discord over a budget deficit that had ballooned to 70,000 złoty due to irregularities in the ­collection of general and kosher slaughtering taxes, aggravated by overspending. The ­opposition members of the council—representatives of the Zionist bloc and the Association of Artisans—responded to this in an unusual way: asking the Polish authorities to appoint a supervisor for the community. In the council elections of May 1931, the Zionists and the parties associated with them came away with a majority. That is, the Zionists and Mizrachi won three seats together; two blocs of Hasidim won five seats jointly; the petty crafts and artisans lists, both affiliated with the Zionists, received three seats; and the combined candidacies of Agudat Yisrael and Po’alei Agudat Yisrael won only two. The community chair went to Zwi Herszel Zagajski—a well-known public figure, a leading local manufacturer, and a member of the Municipal Council. His deputy was Binyomin Lewin of Agudat Yisrael. 40 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 490. 41 Cytron, Kielce Book, 203.

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In the next council elections (September 1936), the local Zionists lost a­ ltitude, as did their peers in other cities in Poland. The main reason was that by then the Zionists had no response to offer for the economic distress of Polish Jewry and the antisemitic manifestations that swept the country after Piłsudski’s death in May 1935. Of 4,400 eligible electors in Kielce, 2,572 cast ballots for the community council. No party won a decisive majority, the results being as follows: United Zionist List—two seats; Artisans List— two; Revisionists—two; Po’alei Tsiyyon—one; Petty Artisans—one; Agudat Yisrael—two; the two Hasidic lists—four. Until World War II began, Rabbi Simha Bunem Goldman of Agudat Yisrael chaired the community; his deputy was Yosef Elhanan Ehrlich of the United Zionist List.42 In the 1930s, the community administration was headed by the manufacturers Hermann Lewi, Yitzhak Reizman, and Wolf Kluska. The administration, headquartered at 1 Leonardo Street, maintained a population register, a record of ongoing correspondence, and a ledger for medical advice. Correspondence with state institutions was conducted in Polish; that with local Jews went on in Yiddish or Hebrew. The community had some real-estate holdings, such as the building at 22 Seminarska Street, gifted to the community by Zwi Herszel Zagajski; a square near Prosta Street, gifted by H. Freizinger; a square near Cicha Street, gifted by L. Goldfarb, and a building on 2 Czarnowska Street and the square next to it, a gift of H. Preis. In 1934, the council and administration were given the further ­responsibilities of supervising the Jewish cemetery, the Great Synagogue, and the ritual bath, all of which had been privately owned till then. The a­ ctivities of both institutions were funded from community taxes remitted by Jewish townspeople, dues remitted by synagogue-goers for regular seats, the proceeds of various events held by synagogues, donations and bequests, and fees for kosher slaughter, marriage registration, and burial services. The number of families that kept up their tax payments fell from year to year; only those of means paid them faithfully. Of 3,200 Jewish families in Kielce in 1925, only 1,953 paid their taxes. From 1928 on, many families challenged the steep rates and received discounts. That year, 1,888 families paid community taxes; in 1930, despite an increase in the town’s Jewish population, only 1,551 did so. By 1939, this figure had dropped to just 1,135. These figures give clear 42 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494–495; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 53. Simha Bunem Goldman was the last head of Kielce’s Jewish community organization, holding this post until the Germans entered the town in September 1939. His father was the son of the Hasidic leader R. Dudel of Chmielnik. See Cytron, Kielce Book, 203–207.

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evidence of the harsh effects of Poland’s economic crisis (1928–1930) on the Jewish ­population and, in turn, on the financial state of the communal institutions. In the second half of the 1930s, the Jews of Kielce were pushed into an economic cul-de-sac as the growing strength of the Polish Right fueled the boycotting of their businesses.

Community Institutions The community administration provided permanent funding for three rabbis, five secretaries, two cantors, seven burial-society workers, seven ritual slaughterers, one religious supervisor, and the synagogue choir, which had an annual budget of 200–400 złoty. The burial society had two horse-drawn hearses at its disposal. It rented the horse from Poles on an as-needed basis; the ­community paid the fees of the gravedigger and his helpers. In the 1930s, Mordechai Frydman managed the synagogue choir. The choir—forty singers strong—usually performed at religious ceremonies but was invited to secular institutions’ events as well. The cantors, as stated, were on the community’s regular payroll. One-third of the administration budget went toward maintaining the slaughterhouse, the Great Synagogue, the cemetery in Pakosz, the hospital, the old-age home and the orphanage. In 1928 when the administration of the cemetery was found to have run out of room, the community purchased some land from the Kielce municipality and a Jew named Berger and annexed it to the graveyard. In 1934, the community administration took over the supervision of the cemetery; from then on, men and women were buried separately. The cemetery in Pakosz had ten or so Ohalei tsaddikim (large tombs that held the remains of famous rabbis), including those of six Hasidic grand rabbis: of Chęciny, Kuzmir (Kazimierz), Pińczów, Chmielnik, Suchedniów, and Raków.43 On the ­anniversaries of these rabbis’ deaths, hundreds of Jews flocked to the cemetery to pray over their graves. The community’s budget records show that one-third of expenses went to institutions for charity and support of the needy, sometimes permanent and in other cases on a special-needs basis. Permanent aid was awarded to the widows of rabbis and Hasidic leaders and to Jewish schools: the Talmud Torah, Yesodei Hatorah, Torat Hesed, Yavne, and the Jewish high school. Two hundred złoty were budgeted annually toward the remuneration of the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army. Miscellaneous sums went to societies that aided the ill, the 43 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 55; see also Cytron, Kielce Book, 210.

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h­ andicapped, and the homeless, such as Linat Hatzedek, Rambam, Tomchei Ani’im, and the Jewish public health organization TOZ. The c­ommunity ­subsidized children’s summer camps, purchased medicine, coal, and Passover matzos for Jewish prisoners and conscripts in the Polish Army, and donated ­significant amounts to the Red Cross, the Jewish library in Warsaw, the Chachmei Lublin yeshiva, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During the financial crisis of the early 1930s, the community occasionally assisted the workshops of artisans who had fallen on hard times. Wealthy families in Kielce produced great philanthropists who repeatedly donated to charitable organizations and community projects for the needy. The best known of them was Mosze Pfeffer, a quintessential representative of the first generation of Jewish settlers in Kielce, who underwrote the construction of the town’s Great Synagogue and donated extensively to Jewish philanthropic societies for the ill and for indigent brides in Kielce until he moved to Warsaw shortly before World War I.44 The district authorities had great respect for him and appointed him to the District Council. The Zagajskis supported the old-age home, construction of the orphanage and the public beit midrash (religious study center), and other enterprises. Other family names that often recur in the community philanthropy records include Ehrlich, Gryngras, Elencweig, Goldhar, Machtinger, Lewi, Tauman, and Freizinger. The interwar years found ten Jewish charitable institutions operating in Kielce on behalf of the poor and the needy: the Society for Assistance to the Poor of the Mosaic Faith, Linat Hatzedek, Tomchei Ani’im, Achiezer, the Society for the Support of Poor Childbearers, the Society for Aid to the Jewish Orphanage, the Society for the Old-Age Home (founded by the Zagajski brothers), the Rambam Charity Society, Gemilut Hasadim, and Hakhnasat Kalla. Linat Hatzedek was a countrywide Jewish relief organization that provided health and medical services to the poor. Its Kielce branch was established in 1914; the Polish authorities officially granted it permission to operate in 1922. From the mid-1930s on, it maintained offices on Duża Street; its principal activists were Hayim Kuflewicz and Dr. Mosze Pelc. Its women’s 44 Cytron, Kielce Book, 188–195. Pfeffer left Kielce after the chair of the organized community sued him for having built the synagogue, which he owned privately, on a publicly owned parcel. Pfeffer was asked either to clear the plot or to transfer ownership of the synagogue to the community. The resulting dispute caused much agitation among the Jewish townspeople, and Pfeffer left town after reaching an agreement in which some of the income from the synagogue would accrue to Pfeffer’s poor relations and ownership of the synagogue would pass to the community.

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group had a great deal of independence. In 1917, it did much to control the typhoid epidemic that broke out in town, and from 1924 on it organized an annual summer camp for youth and families of limited means. In the mid-1920s, Linat Hatzedek opened three clinics—neonatal services, women’s health, and dental care—at the initiative of Dr. Pelc; the doctors who staffed them did so gratis. In 1927, Linat Hatzedek had 1,351 members and annual membership revenues in the range of 16,000–20,000 złoty. It augmented its finances with fundraisers, raffles, and balls with prizes. Its activities also included scientific research related to its clients’ condition. From this activity, we know that in the late 1920s, 48 percent of Kielce’s Jews lived in moldy apartments, 20.5 percent suffered from tuberculosis, 17.2 percent had laryngeal tuberculosis, and 22.3 percent lived with scoliosis. Especially prominent among the active members of Linat Hatzedek were Mendel Lifszyc, Leibel Goldberg, Yosef Gertler, and Asher Kozlowski. Szmuel Leichter, a social activist and artisan, found the time to volunteer for Linat Hatzedek notwithstanding the demands of his large family; with his rousing speeches, he inspired audiences to mobilize in support of his charitable institution.45 The Gemilut Hasadim society was established in May 1927 at the initiative of the Kielce Jewish community administration, on the basis of l­ egislation that allowed the community to conduct philanthropic activities on its own. Its offices were at 19 Sheinkevicha Street; its founders and board included Dr. Jehuda Fleszler, the manufacturer Hermann Lewi, the merchant Mosze Kofman, the goldsmith Yosef Szteiman, the dentist Binyomin Serwetnik, and the chair, Shlomo Kupferminc. The society granted interest-free loans up to 3,000 złoty, generally to merchants and artisans of limited means. The community gave the society an annual 300-złoty subvention. When the board met in February 1935 and discovered that many borrowers were unable to repay their loans when they came due, the society applied to the JDC for ­assistance. JDC, which had begun to operate in Kielce in 1919 under the management of Jehuda Gutman as the Jewish Distribution Committee (Zydowski Komitet Rozdzielczy)—leaving the “American Jewish” part out—ran a soup kitchen, supported schools and the orphanage, and distributed to the needy clothing and foodstuffs sent from the United States. Its activities in Kielce were suspended in 1924 by order of the authorities. Allowed to reinstate its 45 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 86; Urbański, Spoleczność, 31; Cytron, Kielce Book, 92–93.

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o­ perations in 1928, it budgeted US $1,000 that year toward the establishment of an institution for poor children. The Kielce branch of TOZ (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej—“Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population”) was officially recognized by district authorities in May 1923. The branch had 150 members and Dr. Yosef Lewinson chaired its board then and for many years afterward. TOZ derived its operating revenues from membership dues, donations, fundraisers, and small subventions from the community administration. From the mid-1930s on, the Kielce branch maintained relations with convalescent centers in Płock where severe tuberculosis cases were sent. In October 1927, the Warsaw headquarters of CENTOS, the main healthcare organization for Jewish children,46 asked the Kielce District ­ ­authorities for permission to open a branch in Kielce. Permission was granted in December 1927, and Yitzhak Herszkowicz, Szmul Strawczynski, Jochewed Ginzburg, Szmul Aron Bursztein, and Avraham Kirszenbojm were appointed to its board. On the basis of its program of operations, CENTOS conducted a survey to locate the poorest people, orphans or half-orphans, who needed immediate assistance, and reached agreements with Jewish doctors who were willing to give them periodic checkups. In the winter, CENTOS distributed fish oil to the children; in the summer, it arranged summer camps for them in convalescent sites and spas in Morawice and Busko-Zdrój.47 In November 1928, the Zagajskis presented the Kielce community ­organization with a plot of land and a $5,000 donation for the construction of an old-age home. The residence was able to accommodate thirty clients and accepted Jews over age sixty who had been living in Kielce for at least one year. A maintenance fund for the home was established concurrently. It opened officially only in July 1931 and was never large enough to serve its purpose; responsibility for operating the facility thus fell to the community administration48 The organized community operated a rabbinical court with three dayanim (judges) who ruled on matters such as kosher food, divorces, and civil disputes between Jews. Between the world wars, the court was presided over by Rabbi 46 Centralna Towarzystwo Opieki nad Sierotami i Dziećmi Opuszczonymi (Institute for the care of needy Jewish orphans and children). In the 1930s, as the fortunes of Polish Jewry declined, CENTOS stepped up its activity with the help of growing support from American Jewish philanthropists. 47 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 31, 37, 126. 48 Ibid., 37–38, 50, 64, 126.; Cytron, Kielce Book, 96; Urbański, Spoleczność, 31.

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Avraham Abeli Hacohen Rappaport (Chief Rabbi of Kielce and offspring of a renowned rabbinical family)49 and attended by his second-in-command, Alter Hochberg, and the assistant rabbi Zwi Hirsz Grynszpan. Rabbi Rappaport (b. 1882) spent his early adulthood in Slonim (northeastern Poland), completing higher Talmudic studies there and gaining a reputation for himself. His father, Rabbi Tuwia Gutman Hacohen, Kielce’s first rabbi, was considered one of the most distinguished Hasidim in the Kotsker court. He visited the Kotsker Rebbe often and admired his ways, yet never rejected other streams of Hasidism and honored the leaders of all courts. R. Gutman’s son, R. Avraham Abeli, followed in his father’s footsteps and easily adapted to the Hasidic atmosphere in Slonim, which had been unfamiliar to the Hasidim of Poland in general and to those of Kotsk in particular. After several years in Slonim, Rabbi Avraham Abeli returned to his father’s home in Kielce as a young Torah scholar. In 1902, he refused to succeed his father as Chief Rabbi of Kielce in the belief that he was too young to accept so responsible a position. In his stead, the community elected Rabbi Mosze Nahum Yerozalimsky—a Zionist pioneer from the Hovevei Tsiyyon movement and an enthusiastic follower of Herzl’s political Zionism. R. Avraham Abeli was named head of the rabbinical court and toiled to publish the numerous manuscripts his father had left behind in all branches of Torah ­scholarship, adding comments of his own. When Rabbi Yerozalimsky passed

49 Rabbi Rappaport was born in 1882 to a famous rabbinical family. Due to his exalted lineage, his father arranged an engagement for him at an early age to the daughter of the Slonim Rebbe, head of the Hasidic court in the eponymous town in northeastern Poland. In 1902, the Chief Rabbi of Kielce passed away and many members of the community sought the youthful R. Avraham Abeli as successor; the latter, while refusing this appointment, deigned to become head of the Kielce rabbinical court. R. Avraham Abeli was highly accepted among the Jews of Kielce, foremost among the Hasidic courts. Although an extremist who applied countless strictures in his personal conduct, he treated others with kindness and warmth, earning the townspeople’s limitless affection. In the early 1920s, he did accede to the post of Chief Rabbi of Kielce. It was one of very few cases in which elections to a rabbinical p­ osition took place in independent Poland because after World War I, when the Jewish political ­parties took over the community organizations, many communities endured infighting and deep schisms that left their marks for many years. Although the Jewish community in Kielce also suffered from differences among the political currents, all factions—from the Assimilationists to the most extreme members of Agudat Yisrael—applauded R. Avraham Abeli’s candidacy as Chief Rabbi of Kielce. For more about R. Avraham Abeli Hacohen Rapoport, see Yitzhak Lewin, ed., These Will I Remember: Collected Histories of Martyrs of 1939–1945 [in Hebrew] (New York: Institute for the Study of the Problems of Orthodox Jewry, 1959, 17, 18–20.

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away in the early 1920s, it was only natural that R. Avraham Abeli would succeed him. R. Avraham Abeli Rappaport served as Kielce’s rabbi for some twenty years—until the community was liquidated in the summer of 1942—and was considered one of Poland’s greatest rabbis. Although identified with Agudat Yisrael in his methods and actions, due to his position in the community he chose not to appear officially as a party man and extended his spiritual authority to the entire community, irrespective party affiliation or perspective. His sermons in the great beit midrash, attesting to his keen Torah scholarship and erudition, were delivered with great simplicity and spoke to the hearts of all— Torah scholars and common folk alike—and always to a packed house. As a gifted speaker, R. Rappaport had to appear as Kielce’s rabbi in all community public ceremonies and Polish national observances. Orating before Jewish audiences, the rabbi presented the beauty that resides in Judaism and the Jewish faith as the sole remedy for all the ills of humanity. When appearing before representatives of the Polish regime, he did not hesitate to stress the spiritual superiority of the Jewish people but never aroused antagonism among his listeners.50 In the interwar era, many Hasidic leaders relocated to Kielce in recognition of its being a rapidly growing community that drew well-known rabbis from its surroundings. The first to settle there was R. Hayim Shmuel Halevi Horowitz of Chęciny, the town on which the Jews of Kielce had relied for years owing to its proximity. Following him came R. Mordechai (Motele) Twersky of Kuzmir, R. Hayim Meir Finkler of Pińczów; R. Dawid Goldman of Chmielnik, and R. Rabinowicz of Suchedniów.51 These Hasidic courts, which lured acolytes from near and far, lent a spiritual aura to the town of Kielce and to its inhabitants.

Zionist Activity In October 1918, on the eve of the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, devotees of the Zionist idea in the district gathered in Kielce to reinstate activity on behalf of the Land of Israel. Two years later, twenty-five ­representatives of various Zionist streams in fifteen towns in the area convened in Kielce. Also in 1920, aided by the British Mandate Government, an organization for immigration affairs was established in Kielce to handle 50 Ibid., 18–20. 51 Cytron, Kielce Book, 167–178.

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preliminaries for aliya. Pro-aliya propaganda gathered momentum, and the Zionist Organization instructed the author Aleksander Finkelstein, a Kielce native, to open an emigration office in the city.52 In 1922, the Kielce police estimated the number of active Zionists in town at around 1,000. The local offices of the Zionist Organization were used for r­ allies, lectures, and training activities in Zionism-related fields. Ahead of the 13th Zionist Congress (1923) Zionist sheqalim—tokens symbolizing ­donations to the Zionist development funds—were sold in Kielce for large sums. In 1924, the Palestine Land Development Company, which collected donations for Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel, opened a local branch. In 1929–1930, 7,572 złoty were collected in Kielce for Keren Hayesod (the Foundation Fund). During the 1920s, the population of Zionist-minded Jews in Kielce increased; in 1927, 490 residents held voting rights in the upcoming 15th Zionist Congress. By the eve of the 17th Zionist Congress (1931), this number had risen to 789 and by the elections to the 18th Zionist Congress (1933) there were 2,077, of whom only 1,732 voted. In the ­elections to the 21st Zionist Congress (1939), 2,953 inhabitants of Kielce were eligible to vote and 2,117 cast ballots. The table below summarizes the results of the Zionist Congress elections in Kielce: Candidate list Al Hamishmar Et Livnot Mizrachi Po’alei Tsiyyon (Right) Revisionists State Party Land of Israel Workers Po’alei Tsiyyon Left

(1927) 40 15 234 12 — — — —

(1931) (1933) 38 155 16 5 219 332 138 — 130 —

398 2 770 —

(1937) 398 32 555

(1939) 307 5 695

4 1,089 —

977 12853

As for aliya, several dozen Zionist pioneers from Kielce made this move in the early 1920s. In the early 1930s, around thirty graduates of the town’s 52 Later in life, Finkelstein became a Zionist activist and moved to Warsaw, where he became a pillar of the Jewish community. His articles were published in the Polish-Jewish Nasz Pszegląd and the Yiddish monthly Literarishe Bleter; ibid., 216–217. 53 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 494; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 121–122.

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high schools emigrated to pre-independence Israel after receiving visas to study in institutions of higher education there, mainly the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion in Haifa. They included Sinai Leichter, Mosze Machtinger, Yohanan (Yanusz) Pelc, Edia Lewartowska, and Yulia Hanoch. Young Jews in Kielce who prepared for aliya studied agricultural work at a farm that the General Zionists had purchased in Czarnów, a suburb of the city. At Użarów, youth were trained in construction skills, and at Jewish-owned workshops fifty to sixty pioneers acquired skills in occupations needed in the Land of Israel. In the late 1930s, activists from various parties and ­organizations who made aliya included Binyomin Lew of Agudat Yisrael, Ze’ev (Wolf) Zalman Kluska of Mizrachi, and Pinchas Cytron (principal of Tushia School in Kielce), among others. Every December, the Zionists in Kielce organized a “Palestine Market,” a bazaar where donations for the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod were solicited. Directing the Jewish National Fund, which kept its offices on 10 Rynek Street, were Alter Ehrlich, owner of a tannery; Morris Zilinski, an engineer and teacher at the Jewish high school; and Hayim Zeloni. The Keren Hayesod office next door was run by Yitzhak Finkler, Yitzhak Reizman, and Alter Ehrlich; The municipality contributed sums of 300–500 złoty annually to both funds. The Palestine Market, held at the Orpheus hall, displayed ­various crafts made by Jewish schoolchildren, amateur artists, and craftsmen and provided a good opportunity to advertise them. In addition, the bazaar held raffles and hosted artistic performances.54 One of the most prominent Zionist activists in Kielce was Dawid Rozenberg. A city councilor and the holder of permit from the Polish Government to open a bank in town, he appeared at every Zionist convention and rally. Preaching Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism, he defended the interests and honor of the Jewish public before the municipal council and was admired by the young and revered by everyone else.55

Education, Culture, and Sports Schools of (Nearly) Every Kind After World War I, independent Poland began to develop a network of state public schools and to introduce compulsory general education. Thus, Jewish 54 Ibid., 19, 23, 49. 55 Cytron, Kielce Book, 206.

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children in Kielce, as throughout Poland, began to attend tuition-free public schools even as independent Jewish education continued to exist. In the 1920s, thirteen to fifteen chadarim (the plural of “cheder,” ­religious schools for young boys) were registered with the municipality of Kielce, including three run by the Herendorf family. This state of affairs would last, with only minor changes, until the outbreak of World War II. The number of students who attended each cheder varied from five to fifty. In smaller chadarim, instruction was provided by melamdim (traditional religious instructors); the larger ones employed teachers in a more modern sense. Most chadarim were situated in wretched apartments, usually in crowded areas in the poorer parts of town along Bodzentyńska and Starowarszawska Streets. Kielce also had a Beth Jacob Orthodox girls’ school that received support from Agudat Yisrael. Situated on 3 Saint Alexander Street, it also held evening classes for religious workers.56 In the mid-1920s, a Jewish public school that offered grades 1–7 opened in Kielce but closed within a short time. Several chadarim received public-school status after introducing the requisite curriculum. In Mosze Weinsztok’s cheder, for example, grades 1 and 2 received six hours of instruction in Polish per week, five hours of mathematics, and seventeen hours of other secular subjects (taught by students from the University of Warsaw) such as drawing and ­calligraphy. In 1924, a Talmud Torah (boys’ religious school after cheder), funded by the community organization, was opened in the Great Synagogue. Charging no tuition fees and catering to the most impoverished families, it offered grades 1–3 and taught its seventy to eighty pupils both religious and secular subjects. In 1926, Agudat Yisrael opened a school that offered religious and secular studies in grades 1–7. Established in the middle of the low-income Kozia ­neighborhood, it attracted “alumni” of three of the town’s chadarim; its 150 pupils paid no tuition fees. Another large school that taught both religious and secular subjects to an enrollment of around 150 was Yavne,57 established in 1931 as an extension of a cheder that had been functioning in town since 1926. This institution, founded by Yitzhak Finkler, Hayim Lewi, Dawid Goldfarb and others, belonged to an eponymous network that the Mizrachi movement 56 Marta Pawlina Meducka, Kultura Zydow, wojewodztwa kieleckiego 1918–1939 (Kielce: Kieleckie Tow. Nauk, 1993, 45; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 24. 57 The school was part of an eponymous Jewish school system established under the auspices of the Mizrachi (Religious Zionist) movement. In 1919–1921, the system set up modern chadarim that approximated in their character Agudat Yisrael’s “reformed cheder” and were less influenced by modern educational approaches.

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had created and subventioned. Thus, its budget deficits were covered by the nationwide Yavne system in Poland. From the mid-1930s onward, the town had a private religious school called Tushia, also affiliated with Mizrachi. Its first principal, Pinchas Cytron, was succeeded by Yitzhak Micenmacher after the former’s aliya.58 Salomea (Sara) Reizman ran a girls’ school that taught an entirely secular curriculum for grades 1–7. In 1927, its enrollment exceeded 300 and it had a ten-person faculty, most of them graduated the Stefania Wolman Jewish High School for Girls. The school, located on Mickiewicza Street in a good neighborhood at the center of town, functioned until World War II. In the mid-1920s, the various schools fought over the enrollment of the Jewish girls of Kielce. In 1925, the sisters Maria and Rosa Minc, both graduates of Wolman’s school for girls, opened a school that competed with Reizman. The new institution, known merely as “Minc,” also taught grades 1–7 but set up shop on Silnica Street, which had the town’s largest concentration of Jews. It attracted some 250 girls. Mosze Kozlowski opened his own Hebrew school for boys and girls; it endured until the outbreak of World War II. Mosze Kozlowski launched a school that gave two years of instruction in accounting, shorthand, and correspondence. All of these schools used Polish as their language of instruction but several also taught Hebrew and history of the Land of Israel. A Jewish gymnasium (high school) for boys opened in Kielce in 1918 and continued to function until the start of World War II, enrolling 150–200 religious and secular students each year. For years, it was run by Dr. Yitzhak Zilinski, Noach Braun, the engineer Antony Rusak, and Dr. Solomon Foyer, who served as principal until the war. History, geography, mathematics and nature were taught in Polish. Other compulsory subjects were Hebrew, German, and Latin; students also learned drawing, singing, physical e­ ducation (including hikes and bike rides), and handicrafts. The gymnasium also established a choir. Its founders aspired to educate the children in a national spirit, for which reason it came under attack from both the Orthodox and the Assimilationists. Once the Mizrachi movement gave the institution its seal of approval, it grew in reputation and even received a subvention from the community administration. In 1927, a special council was set up under Hermann Ziskin, Hayim Weinreb, and Alter Ehrlich in an attempt to raise funds for the school and build a dormitory next door. In January 1929, the 58 Cytron, Kielce Book, 87–88.

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gymnasium’s tenth anniversary was celebrated with a literary soirée and the recitation of a special prayer at the Great Synagogue.59 The aforementioned Stefania Wolman Girls’ High School received public-school status in 1920. Some 250 Jewish girls attended, including talented offspring of families of lesser means, who received assistance from a special agency that was set up for this purpose. Studies aside, it offered an amateur theatre group and an array of art programs. Until World War II, it maintained especially high educational standards, more than 30 percent of alumnae going on to university.60 In 1931, Agudat Yisrael in Kielce opened Keter Torah (“Crown of the Torah”), a yeshiva for adults that was an extension of the Yesodei Hatorah (“Fundamentals of the Torah”) school in town. The yeshiva was established with the support of Hasidim from Radom, the chief rabbi of which was named its principal.61

Cultural Activities The Jewish political movements in Kielce developed an array of cultural activities. In 1920, the Herzliya society, pledged to imparting the Hebrew language, opened a Kielce branch that attracted members of Zionist youth groups. The seeds of Kielce’s first Jewish libraries were planted in local synagogues and religious study centers, where the Bible, the Talmud, prayerbooks, and other sacred texts were available for use by worshippers and bibliophile boys’ groups that called themselves Shomrei ha-Sefer (“Keepers of the Book”), which among other things raised funds to acquire new books and rebind old ones. The Tarbut (“Culture”) system had established a library in Kielce back in 1908, in a house on Wesoła Street. By 1922, when the library, now called Beit Eked, received legal sanction from the Polish government, its public collection came to some 300 books in Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish. Seven years 59 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 139; Cytron, Kielce Book, 84–87. Szymon Datner, later a professor of history at the Polish Academy of Sciences, taught physical education at the Kielce gymnasium in 1923–1924. Datner conducted anthropological research on Jewish boys in Kielce District and earned a diploma on music from a private institution. In the 1930s, Datner moved to Białystok, where again he taught physical education at that city’s Hebrew gymnasium. 60 Meducka, Kultura Zydow, 46–59; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 36, 53, 66, 123 and 128. Urbański, Spoleczność, 31–32. 61 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 495.

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later, it owned some 7,000 volumes, of which it lent out around 300 annually, and a reading room financed mainly by donations and gifts. On its Board of Directors were Jehuda Ehrlich, Mosze Lewensztein, Noach Laks, Alter Ehrlich, and Israel Micenmacher. In 1912, the I. L. Peretz Library opened at 12 Leonardo Street with a collection of books in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish. Its administrators held lectures and literary meetings to raise funds for the purchase of books and newspapers. In 1929, it sponsored a theatrical performance by a Jewish troupe from Vilna. The community administration allocated 200–500 złoty annually to the library, which in 1932 had forty-five registered dues-paying subscribers plus 172 readers who enjoyed its services. 62 The library enterprise in Kielce, born in the aftermath of the events of 1904–1906, eventually evolved into an important cultural activity that even assimilated families found attractive. Libraries with valuable collections were run by Agudat Yisrael, Mizrachi, the Zionist Organization, the Association of Artisans’ Jewish club, and high schools. The Kultur Lige had a library of its own. The Kielce branch of this Bund-affiliated society opened in 1930 and was headed for years by Yitzhak Szmulewicz. Its fifty members attended lectures, participated in dance soirées, and enjoyed access to daily issues of Polish newspapers. The Lige also organized vocational courses and Polish and Yiddish classes. Several famous Yiddish authors made Kielce their home. One was the dramatist and playwright Fishel Bimko, whose many plays were performed in Jewish theatres worldwide and translated into Polish and other languages. Another was the author Shlomo Berlinski, whose stories skillfully depicted the impoverished lives of the Jews of Kielce. Berlinski grew famous from his writings, which reverberated widely and were translated into Hebrew.63 Jews in Kielce dominated the bookselling trade for years. In this respect, the most important personality from the 1860s until his death in 1900 was Michal (Michael) Goldhar, who also published books and calendars. His daughter Mina and her husband, Dr. Perlman, continued to run the shop until 1913. Leon Grostal’s bookstore opened in 1883 and soon became the town’s high-society salon. For many years it also sold textbooks, musical scores, and writing implements and, over time, it began to host encounters 62 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 25, 124. 63 “Letters Reveal,” Scoop 481 [in Hebrew], July 10, 1997, 71; Cytron, Kielce Book, 214–217. Bimko, son-in-law of a horse merchant, was intimately familiar with the lifestyles of various types of horse rustlers. It was by infiltrating their circles and studying their parlance that he wrote his famous play The Thieves.

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with writers and literary and musical soirées. After Grostal’s death, his heirs ran the store. Jews were also preponderant in the local printing trade. Until 1918, most printshops in Kielce were associated with vendors of books or stationery. The printing enterprises of that era were run by Salomon Zandowski, Yitzhak Kaminer, Mina Perlman, Avraham Goldman, and Gustav Goldwasser. In 1905, much in the early going, the Zandowski brothers operated an illegal printshop on the grounds of their quarry, allowing the Kielce cell of the PPS to print its newspaper, Kielczanin (“The Kielcer”). Between the world wars, independent printshops were established, the largest of which belonged to Baruch Weinreb and of Yosef Muszberg.64 In 1919, the subdistrict authorities attempted to take over the Phenomen Cinema, owned by Max Elencweig. Only after Elencweig appealed to the central authorities in Warsaw did the Kielce municipality issue him with a permit to continue running the cinema. Elencweig had the benefit of political connections in obtaining this outcome; he was immersed in Polish affairs and contributed financially to the Silesian rebels. In 1926, Elencweig opened the modern (501-seat) Palace Cinema; four years later, he made his establishment the finest in town by equipping it with a sound system. Elencweig, a Zionist activist, participated in the 3rd Zionist Congress and was a founding member of the Ivria organization in Kielce. Starting in 1916, Ivria in Kielce was run out of Mosze Hoffman’s house and served as a club for the Jewish intelligentsia. It subscribed to a wide variety of newspapers, organized literary parties and billiard and bridge games, and arranged organized tours for its members. Yosef Kopel served as its chair and Mosze Bugayer, Mendel Kopel, and Władysław Zhimdonowa sat on its board.65 Kielce, unlike other sizable Polish cities with Jewish communities, did not have a well-established Jewish press. Most Jewish newspapers published in town were in Yiddish and were short-lived. The Keltser Vokhenblat, a literary weekly magazine, debuted in August 1926 and endured for a brief time. Its editors were Hirsz Niebelski and Shlomo Feigenblat; its publisher was Idel Kaminer. In June 1929, Kaminer founded a new weekly, the Keltser-Radomer Vokhenblat, a Zionist-oriented cultural-social weekly. It was sold in Radom as well as Kielce but did not last long. The Keltser Undzer Express first came out

64 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 39, 81. 65 Ibid., 43, 75.

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in Kielce in November; in December 1931, it became a local edition of the Warsaw Unzer Express that had a Kielce column edited by Hirsz Niebelski. In April 1932, the first edition of the Keltser Tsaytung appeared, a paper devoted to the economic and political life of the town’s Jews. Although its editors (Mosze Trager and Hirsz Niebelski) described it as non-partisan, it displayed Zionist leanings. This newspaper, the most important in Kielce, appeared until the end of 1934 with a 600-copy press run. From 1935 on, under the editorship of Yosef Landau, it became a Zionist-Revisionist weekly that appeared in 500–700 copies. Hirsz Niebelski and Szmul Aron Bursztein, chair of Po’alei Tsiyyon Right in Kielce, edited the weekly Naye Keltser Tsaytung at its offices on 13 Planty Street; from mid-1934 until the outbreak of World War II, it had print runs of 500–600 copies. Jewish youth in Kielce put out two newspapers: Olameinu and Massada. Olameinu was produced and financed by students at the Jewish boys’ ­gymnasium. Its chief editor was Baruch Graubard, who taught Polish and English at the same school. In 1921, five issues were produced; in 1927 the newspaper was reissued as a biweekly with a 1,000-copy print run. Just the same, it soon shut down due to budget difficulties. Massada was published from 1932 on, at 500 copies in Hebrew and Polish. Edited by Jisroel Dzialowski and Aron Rozenblum, it enjoyed the support of the town’s Revisionists and aimed to amalgamate everyone in Kielce who favored the establishment of Jewish statehood on both banks of the river Jordan.66 There was also a small Jewish theatre in Kielce. From the mid-1920s onward, the actors Ida Kaminska and Zigmund Turkow came to town from Warsaw to give the local troupe advanced training. Over the years, itinerant Jewish theatres arrived as well, for example, Ararat from Łódź, the chamber theatre from Warsaw, and the folk theatre from Vilna. In the 1930s, groups of Jewish musicians from Radom, Częstochowa, and Łódź came to town. Jewish musicians performed in several of Kielce’s orchestras; the most famous of them were the violinists Ansel Szpilman and Willy Kristau, the latter a Kielce native. Yosef Reizler, a famous comedian known throughout Poland by his nickname “Yossele Badhan” (badhan—comedian in Hebrew and Yiddish), was a member in the local branch of Ha-Zamir (a Jewish national organization for Jewish art) and recited works by Scholem Aleichem to audiences at the Ha-Zamir hall.67 66 Urbański, Spoleczność, 32–33; Meducka, Kultura Zydow, 114; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 73, 77, 90–91; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 495. 67 Ibid.; Urbański, Spoleczność, 32; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 92.

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Sports The Jewish sports clubs that formed in Kielce, like the cultural organs, were linked to political parties. In May 1925 the Bund-sponsored Bar Kochva sports club opened, offering programs in soccer, table tennis, and outings around the country. In 1926, twenty activists from the Bund and Po’alei Tsiyyon Left established Stern, a workers’ association for physical education. Headquartered at 7 Wonska Street, it was headed by Jerachmiel Rubinowicz and amassed a ­membership of around eighty by 1930. It offered programs in soccer, table tennis, and calisthenics, and in the mid-1930s its team took second place in the Kielce Subdistrict games that were part of the Polish national championships. The Polish Government took a keen interest in the club at that time, suspecting it of ties with Communist youth movements. The Kielce branch of the Hapoel sports organization was formed in 1932, after the Polish authorities recognized Hapoel as an independent national entity. The club, funded by Po’alei Tsiyyon Right, was lodged at 5 Rinek Street and attracted most of its organizers and athletes from commercial and ­proletarian circles. The club worked to promote the importance of physical activity. It arranged sports competitions and outings, set up soccer teams and offered track and field and table tennis activities. The Maccabi branch in Kielce was established in 1922 at the initiative of Stanisław Zilberszlag, a colonel in the Polish Army, under the sponsorship of the General Zionists. The purpose of the club, which received official ­recognition in March 1923, was to instill consciousness of the vital necessity of physical fitness among the town’s Jewish population. The Maccabi gym was at 14 Mickiewicz Street and the club’s soccer team scored many victories in the District’s Second League. In April 1925, the club held a pennant awarding ceremony; at that time it had a boxing team as well. In 1935, the club opened modern tennis courts on Stankiewicz Street and marked the occasion by holding a sports festival that included a parade of gymnasts and tennis players from the club. Maccabi Kielce’s main activists were Dawid Fryszman and Asher Zilberblat. In August 1936, a delegation from the club took part in a ­convention in Częstochowa where the future of Jewish sports in Poland was discussed. By 1938, Maccabi Kielce had set up separate sections for track and field, volleyball, basketball, soccer, tennis, and boxing. It also distributed ­publications from the sporting press, giving Kielce access to sports news from Nasz Przegląd Sportowy, Glos Makabi, and the Yiddish-language Sport Tsaytung. By the late 1930s, the Maccabi and Stern teams held up well in competition with non-Jewish clubs in town.

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At various times, a sports club called Kraft, sponsored by the butchers, and another called Odzież, affiliated with the tailors, were active in town. The clubs funded themselves by holding dance soirées, offering field trips for pay, distributing newspapers, and so on.68

Jewish–Polish Relations in Interwar Kielce In the 1930s—particularly after the death of Józef Piłsudski—antisemitic sentiments and hostility to Jews escalated throughout Poland Nowhere in the country, however, did Jews face stronger hate, suspicion, assaults, p­ rejudice, and antisemitism than in Kielce District and the Łomża and Szczuczyn Subdistricts of Białystok District. The reason for this may have been the ­powerful bond that existed in these areas in the interwar years between the Catholic Church, clerics and all, and two secular forces: the National Democratic Party (Narodowa Demokracja, ND) and the antisemitic nationalist Right, both of which assailed the Jews intensively. The ND movement, the core of modern Polish nationalism, was founded by the biologist Roman Dmowski on April 1, 1897; it later came to be called the Endecja, and its adherents the Endeks, after its initials. As one of several Polish political movements that attained much influence, the Endecja regarded the Jew as the mythological enemy of the Polish nation and people and drove this point home at every opportunity. Given the importance of this concept of the Jew in the movement’s ideology, Endek politicians, activists, and supporters built aggressive and explicit narratives around it. In the realities of post-1864 Poland, the representation of the Jew as the bearer of anti-Polish values such as freedom of thought, anti-Christian beliefs, Western liberalism, Socialism, and Communism, was already widespread. The Endecja broadened the view of Jews as the incarnation of these evils and integrated it into their doctrine. Exploiting anti-Jewish stereotypes, it promoted a model of a Jew-free Polish national ­culture and invoked the elements mentioned above to specify what this model must not include. Polish social and political groups that the Endecja defined as tainted by Judeophilia—love of Jews—were perceived by those in this movement as acting in the Jews’ service and thus, in effect, as antiPolish. Notably, the Endecja was not alone in this approach: the peasant parties that cropped up in the 1890s, such as the Peasants Unification Party (Związek Stronnictwa Cłopskiego, ZSCH, established in Galicia in 1893) and the 68 Ibid., 23, 56, 89, 118.

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Christian Peasants Party (Stronnictwo Chrescijansko-Ludowe, established in Galicia in 1896) also invoked, in an extreme manner, the image of the Jew as a national threat. In Dmowski’s eyes, given that Judaism represented a culture and civilization far older than those of the Polish nation, it posed a threat so grave as to potentially arrest or impede the development and advancement of Polish culture. From 1918 on, as the era of the Second Polish Republic got under way, the image of the Jew as the perennial subverter of Polish national aims gathered strength as secular Jewish movements, both Zionist and Socialist, sought to equip Polish Jewry with national minority rights. The Endecja construed the Zionist demands as an immediate threat to the nascent Polish state and advocated one response only: the mobilization of Poles, as a national group, against the Zionists and, while they were at it, against the Orthodox as well. 69 In the late nineteenth century, when Poland’s dream of recovering its independence seemed on the verge of realization, the Endecja again raised the specter of the Jew, Poland’s internal foe, as the address for all issues related to Poland’s social, political, and economic problems. Themes such as “JudeoCommunism” and Żydokomuna (the Jewish-Communist c­onspiracy) were rife in the Polish social discourse following the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the formation of Soviet Russia. The stereotype of the perfidious fifth-column Jew continued to reverberate between the world wars as well. The intense fear of Communism in Poland was accompanied by the identification of Communism with Jews—a phenomenon greatly abetted by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—affecting Polish–Jewish relations in the 69 Joanna Beata Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 59–63. To discuss the role of the Endecja in disseminating the image of the Jew as a dangerous enemy, one must examine Dmowski’s legacy as reflected in his writings. In “Thoughts of a Modern Pole,” his first and popular essay (1902), which became a “bible” of modern Polish nationalism, Dmowski discusses at length the Jew as the cause of Polish nation’s prior and current misfortune and backwardness, including the non-existence of a Polish middle class. It was because of the Jews, Dmowski argues, that Poland remained a feudal state until the middle of the nineteenth century if not later. Were it not for the presence of Jews in Poland, some of the Polish nation would have organized by itself to fill the functions occupied by Jews. Thus Poles would have emerged as a rival to the aristocracy, would have played an important part in the development of European society, and ultimately would have become the dominant force in modern social life. By the very fact of occupying Poland’s middle class, the Jews interfered with the Poles and thwarted their development. Ibid., 65. See also Israel Gutman, “Jews–Poles-Antisemitism,” in Israel Bartal and Israel Gutman, eds., The Broken Chain: Polish Jewry through the Ages [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997, vol. 2), 606–611; Mosze Landau, The Jews as a National Minority in Poland 1918–1928 [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1986), 43–58.

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newly independent state. After 1918, the Endeks trained their hostile sights on Piłsudski as well, party publications depicting him as the political pet of Poland’s enemies—the Jews, Ukrainians, and Germans—and as a traitor to the Polish nation for having won the support of the ethnic Poles’ enemies.70 One of the most popular explanations of antisemitism in interwar Poland is the size and special structure of Poland’s Jewish population. This ­reasoning recurred in every intellectual and political discussion during the interwar period and has arisen once again in the post-1945 Polish historiography that deals with that era. In his article “Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?” Ezra Mendelsohn considers it undeniable that the large number of Polish Jews, their distinct economic structure, and their role in Polish society influenced the attitude toward them, just as any attempt to understand the policy of the Polish state toward the Jews must take the Poles’ economic backwardness into account. Yet it would be a mistake, Mendelsohn argues, to suppose that the condition of Polish Jewry and the backwardness of the Polish state created the animosity toward the Jews, because Polish antisemitism has much deeper emotional roots.71 On October 20, 1921, Piłsudski visited Kielce and found time for a private conversation with Dr. Mosze Pelc, later to serve as the first chairman of the Kielce Judenrat. Pelc, who had been a doctor in the imperial Austrian army in World War I, also held the grade of captain in the Polish Army and had the good fortune of having treated Piłsudski while working in a military hospital. Piłsudski considered Pelc a friend from the war days, and in 1926, on another visit to Kielce, he agreed to meet with representatives of the Jewish community. In May of that year, after Piłsudski seized power in a nonviolent coup, the Jews of Kielce participated in the efforts of a committee that was set up ahead of St. Jozef ’s Day, a festival declared in Piłsudski’s honor every March. The Jews of Kielce, like most Jews in Poland, took a favorable view of Piłsudski, mainly because during his nine years in power he was able to restrain the Endecja, which strove to disrupt Jewish life in Poland, and to a great extent contained the antisemitic violence.72 They considered him a shield against the venomous 70 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 89, 96. See also Klaus Peter Friedrich, “Joint Work and Cooperation in Poland, 1939–1945,” in Sara Bender, Iris Milner, eds., Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 21 [in Hebrew], 221. 71 Ezra Mendelsohn, “Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?” in Abramsky, Jachimczyk, and Polonsky, eds, The Jews in Poland (Oxford and New York: B. Blackwell, 1986), 37. 72 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Slownic, 103. In May 1935, after the Marshal’s death, the town’s Jewish community organized special mourning prayers and sent condolence telegrams to the President of Poland and the secretary of the Sejm. They also undertook to share in the

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antisemitism of Dmowski and the Endecja, for which reason they viewed him with esteem and admiration. Even during his rule, however, antisemitism did not vanish; from the early 1930s onward, in view of the country’s economic situation, it escalated steadily and attained new heights after his death. In the 1927 Kielce municipal elections, Jewish lists won ten seats: the National Jewish Bloc five, the Orthodox groups four, and the artisans one. Additionally, two Jews were elected to the municipal administration. Of the twenty-three seats allocated to Poles, eleven went to the Endeks, four to the PPS, and four to the Sanacja (the ruling party). As the Endecja councilors waged a constant and open battle against their Jewish peers and defeated every motion by the latter to subsidize local Jewish schools, the two Jewish delegates to the administration withdrew their membership—a move that aggravated antisemitism and caused further damage to Polish–Jewish relations in Kielce. The 1918 pogrom in Kielce left its mark on relations between Poles and Jews for many years afterward. The mutual estrangement afflicted not only common folk but also the intelligentsia, both Polish and Jewish, which despite efforts at rapprochement never found a way to transform their proximity into an accepted social norm. The Jewish community invested great efforts in appeasing the Polish regime in order to preserve a minimally tolerable modus vivendi with the municipal authorities. Chief Rabbi Rappaport outdid himself in his exertions on behalf of the Polish state, using his formidable abilities to forge relations with local representatives of the Catholic Church and with the Municipal Council and its administration. Rabbi Rappaport’s initiatives were frequently noted in the local Polish press and reverberated favorably in Polish society. Due to the political realities in Poland of the late 1920s, the Jews’ ­representatives found themselves politically isolated. The steady erosion of the prerogatives of the Sejm at the hands of Pilsudski’s Sanacja party, the arrests of opposition leaders, and the global financial crisis—which reached Poland in the late 1920s and early 1930s—did not leave unscathed the Jewish ­population, which was in dire economic straits to begin with. These factors were c­ ompounded by a new flare-up of antisemitism, initially manifested in anti-­Jewish violence in institutions of higher learning and soon spreading to other domains of Polish life.73 cost of establishing a Piłsudski Immigrants House in Tel Aviv and furnishing a room in the building. 73 Shlomo Netzer, “Polish-Jewish Relations in the First Decade of the Second Polish Republic, 1918–1928” Massuah 17, 1989 [in Hebrew], 36. See also Immanuel Melzer, “On the Problem of Racism in Polish Society (1933–1939),” Galed 14, 1995 [in Hebrew], 127.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

Kielce’s Jewish population was specially exposed to these developments. More than many locations in Poland, Kielce harbored and was surrounded by Endecja strongholds which spurred on extremist anti-Jewish activity and violence against the Jewish residents. In August, 1932, police arrested sixteen Endek activists in villages near Kielce who were in possession of handguns and had planned to come to town for antisemitic agitation. Since 1931, police had been ordered to repress all antisemitic manifestations firmly; indeed, in March 1932 six Poles were tried in town for having thrown malodorous rags at Jews’ shops. When the Nazis acceded to power in Germany and introduced systematic depredations against the Jews in that country, the Endeks in Kielce demonstrated for the restriction of Jews’ rights in Poland, too. Such demonstrations, however, occurred in few Polish localities. Local police arrested demonstrators and an attempt to ­establish a local branch of the Antisemitic League—the “Green Band”—failed as well. In October 1933, four Polish high school students in Kielce were arrested for vandalizing Jewish shops. Four antisemitic agitators went on trial that year for anti-Jewish violence and received six-month prison terms. In November 1934, Yitzhak Kaplan, a sixty-year-old Jewish merchant, was murdered near town along with his elderly mother and Binyomin Zyskind, who was with them. The murderer, a young Pole, was caught and convicted. In 1935, after Germany publicized its Nuremburg laws, Endeks members on the Kielce Municipal Council passed a motion in support of the anti-Jewish statutes. Kielce’s Great Synagogue also sustained vandalism, and the custodians had to install screens and grilles on the windows. Bands of Polish thugs hurled stones at the synagogue during services, smashing its windows despite the protective devices, and congregants often went home bruised and battered.74 Just the same, influential elements among the Polish social and ­political elites opposed the anti-Jewish violence and decried the view of Jews as ­enemies of the state and the Poles. These were the PPS, the Alliance of Democrats (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne, SD), and a small group on the left flank of the Sanacja, formed in the late 1930s in response to its party’s rapprochement with the Endecja after the death of Piłsudski in May 1935.75 In the years preceding the outbreak of World War II, Polish domestic politics roiled over the Jewish question. Most Jews believed that as long as Piłsudski headed the Polish state, he would be able to protect their status 74 Cytron, Kielce Book, 212. 75 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 68, 75, 77.

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and quell both the extreme antisemitic incitement of the ND camp and the ­antisemitic crescendo that had been evident in Piłsudski’s own Sanacja party since the early 1930s. After the marshal’s death in May 1935, however, the Jews realized that Piłsudski’s camp not only lacked the strength to combat antisemitism but had effectively adopted an official antisemitic policy and was transitioning from relative tolerance to hostility toward the Jews.76 On June 4, 1936, in his first speech in the Polish parliament, the new Prime Minister, Sławoj Składkowski, declared that his Government thought it impermissible to attack anyone in Poland, but as to waging economic warfare—“On the contrary!” (in Polish: owszem). Thus licensed, the Endeks launched a major push to advance the anti-Jewish boycott, posting vigils next to Jewish-owned shops and assaulting Poles who entered them.77 The Church in Poland was definitive in its influence on the Polish ­population’s attitude toward the Jews. The fact that Kielce was a Catholicmajority city since it was founded, dominated by the Church and its bishops, affected relations with the Jewish townspeople. Recent studies on antisemitism in interwar Poland show how broadly the Church assimilated and disseminated the idea of portraying the Jew as a dangerous alien. The anti-Jewish stance was manifested in various ways in all ecclesiastic newspapers, including those meant for the lower classes and the clergy.78 The historian Joanna Michlic, drawing on the work of the Polish scholars Michael Jagiełło and Dariusz Libionka, shows that the two most important newspapers of the Odrodzenie (“Rebirth,” Young Catholic Academics movement), published in Lublin between the wars— Prąd (“Trend”) and Odrodzenie—portrayed Jews as a socially, culturally, and economically nefarious element, an enemy of Christianity and the Christian ethos. Therefore, to this movement’s way of thinking, there was no place for Jews in the Polish nationality and state.79 In newspapers such as Glos Narodu, Przegląd Katolicki, Kultura, and, after 1935, Tęcza, the “Jewish problem” was said to encompass all Jews and persons of Jewish extraction without distinction. These publications agreed that collective identity was determined both by ethnic origin and by religion. Yet the point of origin in the dominant view of the Jewish problem was the rejection of 76 Immanuel Melzer, “The Political System in View of the Intensification of Antisemitism in 1930–1939,” Bartal and Gutman, The Broken Chain, vol. 1, 428–433. 77 Dariusz Libionka, “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura rządu RP wobec eksterminacji żydów polskich,” in Polacy i Żydzi 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Studia i materiały, 2006), 16–18. 78 For sources on this topic, see Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 108n64. 79 Ibid., 82–85.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

the possibility of assimilation, owing to the historical fact that the Jews had not undergone Polonization. It should be recalled that the Church and Catholic groups had always been among the opponents and critics of the emancipation in Poland and the assimilation of Jews. Writing about Jews and the “Jewish problem” in the press of the 1930s Polish Catholic intelligentsia, Libionka notes that the Catholic press depicted the matter as an international issue that absolutely had to be solved. The Catholic press had been decrying the “Jewish menace” for years, Libionka alleges, but in the 1930s the dogmatic dichotomy that it had professed of “Jewish ethics” versus “Christian ethics” took on a sharper tone. This belief came to be expressed in opposites such as “Aryan” versus “Semite,” the “Polish spirit” versus the “structure of the Jewish soul,” and “good” versus “evil.” The Catholic intelligentsia shared Dmowski’s views in every particular; this explains its repeated warnings against the “structure of the Jewish soul,” “poisoning,” “moral degeneracy,” “assimilation,” and “evil and pernicious influences.” These perspectives were absorbed by the young generation of Catholic intellectuals, who were also influenced by a Catholic press that dwelled on the immediate peril that Poles faced through the merest contact with Jews. A 1937 editorial in Glos Narodu railed against the poisoning of the very air that world humanity breathed by the Jewish mentality and ethics. The same year, Przegląd Pubsceni editorialized about the threat emanating not only from the Polish-speaking Jewish intelligentsia but also from those who seemed to have assimilated.80 This “menace” was a perennial motif in the Catholic intelligentsia press, as was the claim that the Polish and Jewish souls were separated by an unbridgeable abyss, making the Jews a dangerous and undesirable element.81 80 Dariusz Libionka, “Aliens, Hostile, Dangerous: The Image of the Jews and the ‘Jewish Question’ in the Polish-Catholic Press in the 1930s,” in Yad Vashem Studies 32 [in Hebrew], ed. David Zilberklang ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004). 81 Jan J. Milewski, “Polacy i Żydzi w Jedwabnem I okolicy przed 22 czerwa 1941 roku,” in Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, eds., Wokól Jedwabnego (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowe, 2002), vol. 1: Studia, 65–71. Bishop Stanisław Łukomski, the highest-ranking Catholic cleric in Łomża Subdistrict in 1934–1935, spearheaded a politico-religious campaign by the leading bishops of Łomża, Kolno, and Grajewo, for the removal of Jewish teachers from high schools and a ban on intermingling between young Polish children and peers of other nationality. After Piłsudski’s death, Łukomski ordered Church leaders in the area to warn their followers—not just from their pulpits—not to buy from Jews and demanded that they set a personal example. In Łukomski’s eyes, Jewish peddlers were worse than unfair competitors; they might be harboring spies as well. He also publicized his opinions about the Jews’ communist leanings. Ibid. On the pogroms of the 1930s, see Melzer, Political Strife in a Blind Alley, 78–81, 90–96, and Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 110.

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Jewish–Polish relations in the interwar years were also affected by the p­ erception of the Jew–Communism nexus, which gathered strength in the 1930s among rightist, nationalist, and Catholic circles amid the escalating antiCommunist discourse. This discourse defined Communism as an i­deology wholly alien to the Christian-European ethos, Polish nationalism, and the Polish state. The KPP (the Polish Communist Party), established in Poland in December 1918, was a pro-Soviet entity, and due to its ideological pronouncements and criticism of the new Poland, Poles considered it an anti-Polish party and an organ of Jews backed by Jews. In the Polish discourse on the link between Communism and the Jews, right-wing and Catholic groups coined the slogan, “Not every Communist is a Jew, but every Jew is a Communist.”82 The Catholic intelligentsia’s press abounded with analyses of Communism through the lens of far-reaching Jewish influences of the Bolshevik Revolution as a creation of the Żydokomuna, the Communist-Jewish conspiracy. Writers rushed to stress that even if a Jew had fully absorbed Polish culture, he still remained estranged and remote from the Polish ideal and could not belong to the Polish nation as long as he remained a Jew.83 In the second half of the 1930s, amid this incessant antisemitic agitation and the evolution of anti-Jewish boycott behavior within a institutionalized national framework, violent attacks against Jews broke out across Poland. The various Endek factions, competing with each other for the “title” of the most antisemitic, acted overtly to sanction the violence, and the government leadership’s passive response to the phenomenon of violent antisemitism merely thickened the atmosphere of anti-Jewish terror.84 The hostilities included attacks on Jewish-owned shops, homes, institutions, and synagogues; libels; physical threats and aggression; and the murder of individuals and groups. The myth of the Jew as a national threat became a basis for the legitimization of assaults against Jews as a tactic of national defense. Manifestations of hostility against the Jews included damage to property—shops, private homes, ­institutions, and synagogues—slander, physical threats, and assaults and murder of individuals and groups. The myth of the Jew as a menace to the nation became ­legitimate grounds for anti-Jewish violence as a tactic of national defense. One day in May 1936, a Polish boy complained to Kielce police that he had been attacked by a group of Jews. In the ensuing police investigation, it 82 Ibid., 90–91; see also Melzer, Political Strife in a Blind Alley, 63–64. 83 Libionka, “Aliens, Hostile, Dangerous,” 203–204. 84 Melzer, Political Strife in a Blind Alley, 78–81, 90–96; Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 110.

The Jews of Kielce between the World Wars   Chapter 1

was found that the boy had provoked Jews who were standing in front of a ­Jewish-owned shop, in response to which they had pounced on him and wounded him with a knife. The police arrested thirty Jews, two of whom were eventually sentenced to prison terms. In October 1936, the Jewish cemetery in Kielce was desecrated and some 100 tombstones were vandalized. In 1937, amid a torrent of right-wing propaganda urging the boycotting of Jewish businesses, Endeks held vigils at Jewish-owned shops and photographed Poles who entered them. On August 12, 1937, the Naye Folk Tsaytung published a report about a group of Polish teens who had attempted to organize demonstrations outside Jewish stores, which Polish laborers had been forced to disperse. In September 1937, a group of Poles waylaid Jews who were out for a walk in a municipal park, pummeling them with wooden rods and crowbars. In the aftermath of the incident, a fight broke out between Bundists, together with comrades from the PPS friends, and antisemitic thugs. That night, unknown perpetrators avenged the severe wounding of one of the latter by setting the home of a Jewish family ablaze. The fire spread to nearby houses and left fifty Jewish families homeless. The violent manifestations against the Jews of Kielce crested in a pogrom instigated by Poles in October 1937, resulting in the murder of five Jews from the families of Mosze Szmulewicz and Jakob Rozengolc. Of the three Poles who were arrested and convicted for their roles in the mayhem, one was sentenced to death and the others received prison terms of thirteen to fifteen years.85 In 1939, ahead of municipal council elections, a dispute broke out among the Jewish candidates due to their inability to form a unified list. In the voting, the Sanacja (the ruling party) came away with seventeen seats, the PPS sixteen, and the Endecja six. Since no Jewish list appeared on the ballot, the Jews of Kielce, accounting for 32 percent of the town’s total population, were unrepresented. On the eve of World War II, the Jews of Kielce contributed generously to the National Defense Fund, which had just been formed in order to p­ urchase weapons for the Polish Army. Dr. Yosef Lewinson donated 1,000 złoty in April 1939 on behalf of the Jewish doctors in town, Rabbi Rappaport’s wife organized a jewelry collection and sale, the Zagajskis contributed 200 railroad cars of lime, and the Ehrlichs donated 100 tons of lime and gravel. Other Jews did their share as well.86 None of them imagined that the impending war, in which they had no part, would be their end. 85 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 495–496; Urbański, Spoleczność, 33. 86 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 48.

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CHAPTER 2

From Occupation to Ghettoization (September 1939–April 1941) Occupation and Military Administration (September–October 1939)

K

ielce first came under German aerial bombardment on September 4, 1939. The part of town most affected, in the vicinity of the railroad station, was ­thoroughly demolished, and the telephone system, water mains, and electricity lines sustained serious damage. The next day, units of Light Infantry Division II of the 15th Corps of the 10th Army, commanded by General Georg Stumme, conquered the city. Forty townspeople lost their lives and sixty were wounded that day. To terrorize the populace and discourage resistance and sabotage, the Wehrmacht (the German military) took ninety civilians hostage and divided them into six groups. Most of the abductees belonged to the Polish intelligentsia but Jews were nabbed as well, including several young men who had been staying in the quarters of the Borochov commune on Szeroka Street.1 Following their swift and total victory, the German soldiers were surprised by the spectacles they beheld in the city streets: At every step and corner, they encountered people with beards and sidelocks, dressed in caftans and black hats. It was their first encounter with the Jewish enemy, whom until then they had known only from cartoons in Nazi propaganda newspapers. Here they absorbed what had been explained to them and planted in their minds since Hitler had risen to power; now they saw with their very eyes the Jewish   1 State Archives, Kielce (Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach), Kielce Municipal Documents, 2652; Wlodzimier Borodziej, Terror i Polityka (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1985), 18; Krzysztof Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi (Kraków: Malopolska Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992), 147.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

foe who conspired to murder “Aryans,” especially Germans.2 The occupying forces placed the town under curfew. Their every engagement with Jews was ­accompanied with violence, abuse, and humiliation. The soldiers looted the Jews’ homes, led them out to work with beatings, and arranged entertaining spectacles for themselves. They threw Jews into anti-aircraft ditches, buried them up to their necks, and enjoyed their frightened looks […].3

With the German takeover, circulars were posted around town ordering ­residents to obey the occupation authorities’ orders on pain of death. Among those who directed the violence during the German entry into town and remained in Kielce for the first few days of the occupation were members of SS Einsatzgruppe II under the command of Dr. Emanuel Schäfer. The Wehrmacht, in turn, followed up on its conquest by seizing Polish national, state, and ­military institutions and setting up four prison camps in town. Adolf Hitler, accompanied by the Wehrmacht high command, passed through Kielce on September 10, 1939, on his way to Opole, where Einsatzgruppe II was assembling en route to Częstochowa. Arrests continued in the ensuing days, sweeping up Polish and Jewish public figures. Among the Jews were community leaders, business owners, Bund activists, and Communists; they included the manufacturers Henryk Bruner and Jósef Demski, the cinema owner Max Elencweig, the attorney Henryk Fruks, the doctors Oskar Sztrum and Oskar Servetnik, the healer Szlama Rothman, the brothers Hirszkowicz, owners of coal warehouses, and others. The Poles who were arrested included the mayor, Stefan Artwiński of the PPS (Polish Socialist Party). Several days later, his corpse was found in the forest near a quarry. Concurrently, the Germans seized several large artisan workshops, emptied warehouses of their contents, and posted guards at the Henryków and Granat plants. Jews were compelled to furnish the occupation forces with large quantities of suits, bedding, underwear, food, radio sets, electric appliances, furs, money, and jewelry. As the confiscation proceeded, some   2 Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verl., 2006), 188–200; Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jochen Böhler, and Jürgen Matthäus, Einsatzgruppen in Polen: Darstellung und Dokumentation (Veröffentlichungen der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universtät Stuttgart 12) (Darmstadt: Deutsches Historisches Institute Warschau und der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universität Stuttgart; Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,2008), 56–79.   3 YVA [Yad Vashem Archive] M-49E/1705, testimony Zalcberg, 1.

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Jews managed to hide synagogue appurtenances such as prayer books, Torah scrolls, and silver ornaments. The Great Synagogue on Nowowarszawska Street soon became a Wehrmacht warehouse and detention facility.4 On September 4–5, 1939, the Wehrmacht extended its occupation to all towns and villages in the Kielce area. Chmielnik, some 30 kilometers south of Kielce, had a Jewish population of some 7,000 before the war, more than 80 percent of the total. The very day the German forces captured the shtetl (September 5), dozens of Jews were abducted and imprisoned in the study hall on Szenkewica Street. At 1:00 a.m., the Germans set the building ablaze and gunned down those attempting to escape. Some seventy Jews perished.5 Chęciny, seven kilometers south of Kielce and 50 percent Jewish, also fell on September 5. A week later, some forty of its 2,500 Jews—including Rabbi Yeshaya Pinchos Horowitz—were seized in the street, led to the synagogue, and all shot dead.6 Jędrzejów, 35 kilometers southwest of Kielce, had some 4,500 Jews on the eve of the war, out of a total population of 14,000 (about 30 percent). Wehrmacht forces occupied the town on September 4, 1939, and quickly took ten community dignitaries hostage, releasing them only when a ransom of a quarter of a million złoty was paid from the Jewish ­community’s coffers.7 In mid-September 1939, the Germans thought it time to clear Kielce of the ravages of the air raids. Jews were abducted in the street or forcibly removed from their homes to scrub public buildings, remove debris, fill in ditches, clean public latrines, and repair streets. Orthodox Jews, whose traditional garb, beards, and hats immediately gave away their Jewish identity, suffered the most. Included in a group of twenty-four Jewish captives was the Chief Rabbi of Kielce, Avraham Abeli Hacohen Rappaport; he was made to clean public latrines and his beard was set afire. Several days later, when the synagogues  4 Krzysztof Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945 (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994), 39–40, 76; Adam Massalski and Stanisław Meducki, Kielce w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej 1939–1945 (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1986), 22–27.   5 They included Joel Unger, Shmuel Eliahu Weil, Berl Trembacki (the local shoemaker), three rabbis from Chęciny, and a tailor. See Pinkas Chmielnik, Yizkor-Buch Noch Der CharuvGevorener Yiddischer Kehilla (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Chmielnik in Israel, 1960), 742. See also Mosze Monzash, ibid., 727, and Suzan E. Hagstrom, Sara’s Children, The Destruction of Chmielnik (Fredericksburg, VA: Sergeant Kirkland’s Press, 2001), 56. As for the number of Jewish townspeople who perished, see YVA TR/83, 31.  6 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 233–234; YVA TR/83, 31.   7 Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 22; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc, 39. See also Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 261.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

were full of worshippers due to the High Holidays, Germans broke into the prayer houses, dragged men out in their prayer shawls, beat them b­ rutally, tore off beards, slashed sidelocks, looted Jewish property, and forced them to carry out humiliating jobs. The wounded who made their way to the Jewish hospital were brutally beaten and the risk of abduction hovered over everyone who dared venture outside.8 Pinchos Eizenberg, testifying about the events, related that several days after the city fell, as he visited his friend Szlama Perl at his home on Bodzentyńska Street, German police burst into the house and ordered the two, along with a third elderly Jew who was staying in the house, to undress. The Germans emptied the men’s pockets and brought the three to Gestapo headquarters on Seminarska Street. Eizenberg and Perl were dumped in the lockup after a severe beating with fists and whips. Eizenberg, who lost consciousness as a result of the blows, was kept there for a month and released only after his sister gave one of the Germans a hefty bribe.9 The first shops to be looted sold radio sets and eyeglasses. Poles helped the Germans to single out houses and stores owned by Jews. After the holding of cash was prohibited, shopkeepers had to shut their businesses. The military authorities that controlled the city persuaded several Jewish townspeople to head eastward to the Soviet-annexed territories. Those who chose this route usually had a Communist past. A group of citizens who fit this description, held in the Kielce prison since 1937 on suspicion of Communist activity,10 left town and made its way to Lwów. In late September and early October, some of them returned to Kielce in order to gather up their families and lead them to the east. On October 25, the military rule in Kielce ended and life began to stabilize.11  8 YVA M-49E/66, testimony Mosze Bahn (pages unnumbered). Zwi Garfinkel attests that the Germans attacked his father when he left the synagogue in the morning, and that his father returned home dripping blood after half his beard was torn off and with it also a substantial amount of facial skin. See YVA, O.3/9147, testimony Zwi Garfinkel, 7–8; YVA, O.3/6782, testimony Szmul Joskowicz, 7–9; YVA, O.3/12285, testimony Yosef Yitzhak Goldblum, 13; YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Issachar Reis, 9; YVA, O.3/7799, testimony Avraham Baron, 5.  9 YVA 04/405, testimony Pinchos Eizenberg, 1-2; YVA, O.3/7799, testimony Avraham Baron, YVA, O.3/7799, 5–6; testimony Mosze Meir Bahn, in Eugeniusz Fąfara, Gehenna ludności Żydowskiej (Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1983), 32. 10 Among them were Noach Treister, Israel Mayer Gottfried, Mordechai Leib Godzinski, Jakob Jakobowicz, Yitzhak Mayer Kantor, Lejzer Maszerberg, and Mayer Opatowski. 11 Testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 1; Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 8–10, 14; Daniel Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 23; author interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001

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Civil Administration in Kielce (October 26, 1939–April 5, 1941) The first part of the plan for Poland conceived by Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Main Office for Reich Security (RSHA—Reichssicherheitshauptamt),12 comprised two stages. The first was the eviction of Jews (and large numbers of Poles) from the western Polish territories that the Reich had annexed. The exiles were to move to central Poland, the part that had been transferred neither to the Soviet Union in the east nor to the Reich in the West but placed under full German control. On October 12, 1939, this area was renamed the Generalgouvernement. The purpose of Stage 1 was to clear a region for the resettlement of the ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) who had flooded the Reich from the Baltic states and other countries in the east that the Soviets had seized under the Ribbentrop-Molotov accord. The Generalgouvernement was divided into four districts: Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Kraków. Each district was apportioned into subdistricts (Kreise); Kielce was one of the ten subdistricts in Radom District. Kielce Subdistrict was divided into three administrative units: Kielce, Busko-Zdrój, and Jędzejów. In January 1941, the city of Kielce was defined as an autonomous corpus separatum within the Kielce administrative unit. The German general administrator of the Generalgouvernement (the Generalgouverneur), was Hans Frank, who ruled the area from his seat in Kraków. The governor of Radom District, his subordinate, was Karl Lasch in 1939–1941, succeeded by Ernst Kundt. The ­districting of the Generalgouvernement reflected an additional dimension of Nazi Germany’s economic policy: It was guided by a view of future economic and demographic developments, one that considered the advantages and ­distinct economic structure of each district: its natural resources, geopolitical s­ ituation, and topography.13 By order of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler on October 30, 1939, and of Wilhelm Koppe (SS and Police Commander in the Warthegau, part of the Reich-annexed area) on November 12, 1939, some 300,000 Jews and Poles in the Warthegau were to be transferred to the Generalgouvernement by February 1940. From November 15, 1939, onward, the Generalgouvernement (author’s private collection); Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc, 41–43, 49; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 31–36. 12 See Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), 173–178. 13 Cesław Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1970), 561. See also YVA TR-10/673, 39.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

rail system was at the service of this operation.14 In addition to Jews and Poles who lived in the Reich-annexed territories of western Poland, it was decided to transfer to the Generalgouvernement also Jews and Gypsies from other areas that the Reich had annexed—Vienna, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia—and from Germany itself, the aim being to evict all Jews and Gypsies from the Reich. Transports to the Generalgouvernement began to flow on December 1, 1939, train after train arriving with neither prior notice to nor c­ oordination with Generalgouverneur Frank and with no preparation of the Generalgouvernement for the new arrivals’ orderly absorption. Thousands of Jews were shipped eastward, to the area between the rivers Wisła and Bug, and Frank agreed to receive them on the assumption that their stay in his area of jurisdiction would be temporary. As Jewish refugees continued to flow into the Generalgouvernement incessantly, however, Frank realized that the “Madagascar Plan” would never be ­implemented and the refugees would remain in his fief indefinitely. By then, the Generalgouvernement regime was hard-pressed to deal with what had become a problem that had been foisted on it.15 Some 368,000 Jews lived in Radom District as of September 1939. During the first few months of the occupation, tens of thousands fled eastward, ­lowering this population to 282,380 by March 1940, according to a German census.16 The winter of 1939–1940 was especially cold and stormy, with heavy snows and temperatures sometimes dropping to –40o Celsius. The transports from Reich territory eastward, sent out under especially difficult conditions, exacted such a cost in human life that even the attention of the foreign press was drawn to them. In a discussion at Heydrich’s office on January 30, 1940, about the forced ­eviction of the Jewish population from the Warthegau to the Generalgouvernement, the participants noted the way the transports were being sent to their destination and the need to feed the tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who were supposed to detrain there.17 Frank voiced his c­ riticism on February 12, 1940, in a discussion in which Hermann Göring and Himmler took part. On March 23, 14 Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, 173ff. 15 Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, the Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE, and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2004). 16 Adam Rutkowski, “Martyrologia, Walka i zagłada ludności żydowskiej w dystrykcie radomskim podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej,” Biuletyn ŻIH 15–16 ( July–December 1955), 76–77, 88–93. 17 Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, 183–185. See also Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

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1940, the transports from Reich territory eastward were temporarily halted. The moratorium, however, was brief; the transfer of Jewish refugees to Radom District continued throughout 1940 and into the first few months of 1941. Thousands of Jews were evicted to Radom District from Włoclawek, Poznań, Łódź, and Gniezno; additional thousands came from other districts within the Generalgouvernement. Thus, in 1941 the area filled with Jewish refugees from Silesia and the west, including 4,000 from Vienna, causing the Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement to balloon by the end of that year to 370,000 according to German sources and to 395,000 according to Jewish ones.18 On October 26, 1939, when administration in the Generalgouvernement shifted from military to civilian, Frank issued an order instituting compulsory slave labor for all Jews in his territory. The task of drafting the regulations by which the order would be implemented was given to Wilhelm Krüger, High Commander of SS and Police (HSSPF) in the Generalgouvernement. The new laws restricted Jews’ freedom of movement and mandated the ­registration of all Jewish males aged 14–60. Another regulation promulgated by Krüger, effective December 11, 1939, set the term of slave labor for Jewish men at two years, with the possibility of an extension.19

The German Administration At the start of the civil administration period, Richard Wendler was named Kommissar (commander) of the city of Kielce. In early 1940, he was briefly replaced by Hubert Rotter, who in turn was succeeded by Hans Drechsel. Concurrently, Stanisław Pasteczko was appointed mayor of the Polish city, replacing the murdered Artwiński. Subordinate to the town’s German ­commander, he was tasked with administrative issues relating to the Polish population of Kielce. In early 1943, Pasteczko was replaced by Kazimierz Machalski, who also gave way to a replacement before long. Kielce began the period of German occupation as a subdistrict of Radom District, but in January 1941 it became an autonomous governmental unit with a mayor and city council that answered to the German municipal administration. The governing authorities set up various municipal departments: economic affairs, labor (Arbeitsamt), police, health, and agriculture. The newly formed municipal 18 YVA JM/3535, no. K44, 29–30; Rotkowski, “Martyrologia,” 76. 19 T. Berenstein, A. Eisenbach, A. Rutkowski, eds., Eksterminacja Żydow na ziemiach polskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowkiej, Zbior dokumentow (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 1957), 202–204.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

court of law was a division of the special court (Sondergericht) in Radom, which was responsible for all criminal proceedings relating to the public at large—Polish and Jewish—in Kielce and elsewhere in the subdistrict. This tribunal invoked lightening proceedings that allowed defendants no possibility of defense against the charges, most of which related to violations of official decrees. In most cases, the accused were given lengthy prison sentences and left in the municipal lockup. The civil administration in Kielce had a relatively small administrative staff; Generalgouvernement statistics show that in February 1943 there were 240 German bureaucrats in all of Radom District. Apart from the municipal administration, there were subdistrict offices in Kielce for the judiciary, the police, the military, the German railroad company, the post, a healthcare institution, and the local treasury.20 Shortly before the war began, the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo) and the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) were merged into one massive institution, the RSHA, under Reinhard Heydrich, who coordinated all SS political activity. The RSHA combined a number of agencies: the aforementioned Security Police and SD (the latter incorporating the Nazi Party intelligence service and the SS), and the criminal police (Kriminalpolizei, Kripo, which included the Gestapo). One official served as chief of SS and Police in Radom District. The holders of this office were: Fritz Katzmann until 1941, Karl Oberg until 1942, and Dr. Herbert Böttcher from April 15, 1942, to January 1945. From November 1939 until October 15, 1943, the Chief of Security Police [RSHA] and SD (KdS) in the District was Fritz Wilhelm Liphardt. Afterward, due to a dispute with Böttcher, Liphardt was transferred to a similar position in Szczucin; his post was filled by Ernst Illmer until the end of the occupation. Sipo (which included the Gestapo), SD, Kripo, and the Order Police (Ordnungspolizei, Orpo) were all subordinate to the SS. The most important of these agencies was the Gestapo, which employed a staff of 150; the others made do with fifty each on average. Orpo included the “protection police” (Schutzpolizei, Schupo) and a gendarmerie. The former operated mainly in urban localities and the latter did so in the countryside, its duties including combat against partisan units and the Polish resistance and arrests and purges in the villages. The commander of the gendarmerie in Kielce Subdistrict was Gerulf Mayer; gendarmerie units in neighboring ­subdistricts were subordinate to him. Sipo in Radom District developed 20 Longin Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci na Kieleccyźnie (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1984, 7–8; see also YVA TR-10/911, 18–19.

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during the occupation in accordance with the emplacements of Einsatzgruppe II and Einsatzkommandos II and III, which accompanied it. Liphardt, who had commanded Einsatzkommando 2/III before his appointment as district KdS, placed men who had served in Einsatzgruppen II and III in Gestapo and Orpo positions. The chief of Gestapo in the district was Emil Eggers until early 1941, Ernst Thomas until 1943, and Karl Essig from 1943 to January 1945. Some forty men, including several Volksdeutsche, served in the various Gestapo branches in the district.21 The Wehrmacht forces that occupied Kielce set up a local ­headquarters with a parking lot for military vehicles (on the grounds of the Ludwików foundry), a warehouse, and a backup field hospital. From January 1941 onward, Schupo used the parking lot for its vehicles and several Jews worked in its garage. Various Orpo units were stationed in town; they were militarized as time passed. They were quartered in a former school building and had their own supply of vehicles. At the beginning of the occupation, Police Group II operated in Kielce Subdistrict under Wilhelm Röttig, a policeman; once governance in the district was civilianized, the police groups became regiments (Truppenpolizei). During the occupation, Police Battalion (Polizei-Bataillon) 101 operated in Kielce until December 1939, Police Battalion 111 up to October 5, 1940, and Police Battalion 305 until February 1942. New inductees from police battalions in Saxony also circulated in Kielce; in February 1943, they became Section 7 of Battalion III of SS and Police Regiment 23. From the spring to the autumn of 1943, Battalion II of SS and Police Regiment 22 was stationed there. In January 1941, a Schupo division was set up in Kielce along with two Gestapo battalions and one branch of Sipo and SD. The Sipo and SD command headquarters was on the Breitestrasse, in a building previously used by the Polish treasury. Forty staffers worked there, including many Volksdeutsche. The Schupo station was in the town’s main square, the Rinek (a market square now renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz). Most of the policemen there—around fifty in number—were elderly Austrians.22 21 YVA, TR-10/673, 28–29. See also Jacek Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom (Master’s thesis, University of Essen), 27–30; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 31–42; YVA TR-10/911, 18–19. 22 Summation of the trial of Erich Vollschlaeger, July 14, 1967 (Bundesarchiv—Aussenstelle Ludwigsburg, Darmstadt 2 Js. 1752/64 u.a (StA.) II 206 AR-Z 157.60. In 1966–1969, in Darmstadt, West Germany, Vollschlaeger and other Germans were tried on charges of murder and deporation of Jews in Kielce in August 1942. In 1965–1967, German police investigators took dozens of testimonies from Jewish survivors in Israel, Argentina, the United States, Canada, Australia, and West Germany. All the material is kept in the

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

After July 1940, the chief of Schupo in Kielce was Hans Gaier, who was also in charge of the Polish police (Policia Granatowa—“blue police”), commanded by Major Janasiński. In 1942, there were also three women serving in the Schupo. One of them, Mötz, ran the registration office and issued laissez-passer. From November 17, 1941, onward, Erich Vollschläger served as Gaier’s deputy. Also serving at Schupo headquarters were Josef Schmidt, another deputy; Ricard Jührend, in charge of anti-aircraft defense; Roy, in charge of patrols and traffic police (aided by twelve Polish traffic police), Franz Brünner, in charge of relations with workshops, and Louis Bremer, commander of the Schupo station in the city center and the canine units. Gaier, chief of Schupo, carried out regular i­nspections of weapons and ammunition and oversaw the use of ammunition during executions. The chief executioner in Kielce was Matias Rumpel, who doubled as Gaier’s personal messenger. The Kielce Gestapo had a gendarmerie unit at its disposal; it operated mainly in the surrounding villages. From January 1942 onward, it also had an SS cavalry regiment that came to town for training and maneuvers. Schupo enforced order in the cities; the gendarmes did so in the towns and villages. All were subordinate to the Commander of SS and Police in Radom District. The district was subordinate to the Civil Administration, which could issue the police with operational orders but was not allowed to meddle in Police and SS activity in the district.23

Daily Life until Ghettoization (November 1939–April 1941) The onset of civilian administration in Kielce was characterized by several orders and restrictions pertaining to the town’s Jewish population (­18,000–20,000 at aforementioned Ludwigsburg archive (hereinafter: Ludwigsburg Archive, Darmstadt court of law). 23 YVA TR-10/673, 39; Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci na Kieleccyznie, 8; YVA TR-10/911, 17–22. See also Tuvia Friedman, ed., Die SS und Polizeiführer in Radom 1939–1945 (Haifa: Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, 1995), 45–47. In a meeting called by the Generalgouvernement administration in Kraków on May 30, 1940, to discuss the security situation, it was decided that some 400 intelligence operatives would deploy in the Generalgouvernement. In Kielce, as in Częstochowa and Chelm, there would be some forty-five intelligence operatives. See also Stanisław Płoski, Lucjan Dobroszycki, Jósef Garas, and Marek Getter, eds., Okupacja i ruch oporu w dzienniku Hansa Franka 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1970), vol. I, 204.

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the time),24 corresponding to those imposed throughout Radom District and the Generalgouvernement. Notably, despite Heydrich’s ghettoization order of September 21, 1939, expressed in an urgent letter (Schnellbrief) to all Einsatzgruppe commanders in the Occupied Territories, no ghetto was created in Kielce during the military administration period and in the first year and a half of civilian rule. Despite restrictions stemming from the occupation and the steadily worsening living conditions, most Jews in Kielce remained in their pre-war homes and were not segregated from Polish civilians. Things were different, however, for those living in the city center. In the first days of the occupation and into the early civil administration period, it became necessary to find lodgings for Germans and the casualties of this need were mainly Jews who lived in the downtown area, which the authorities had designated for Germans only. German troops evicted these Jews from several main streets, such as Sienkiewicza, Złota, Wspólna, Równa, and Żytnja, and seized their apartments, rendering them homeless overnight. Most of these Jewish inhabitants—among them the families Cymerman, Cytron, Kreizman, Rozengolc, Keizer, Frydman, and others—owned spacious houses. They were ordered to leave all furniture and bedding behind and to take only hand luggage. Daniel Wiener, in his memoirs, remarks on the short notice that the Jews received to vacate their homes and notes that Jews who lingered were thrown out the windows. Cyla Liberman lived with her parents and her elder brother on Sienkiewicza Street, a main thoroughfare. The Germans who entered her flat, she reports in her memoirs, ordered her parents to vacate immediately and moved the family to an apartment comprising one room and a kitchen in another neighborhood. Sienkiewicza Street, where most of the residents were Jews, was renamed Kolejowa (Railroad) Street and festooned with signs declaring it off-limits to Jews.25

Formation of the Judenrat When the war began, a provisional joint municipal leadership for both Poles and Jews was formed in Radom city, with a special wing to handle social services issues. The newspaper Gazeta Żydowska26 reported that by 24 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 496; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc, 53; Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 151; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 56. 25 Daniel Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 21–22; interview by the author with Cyla Liberman née Albirt, November 2001. See also YVA, O.3/2985, testimony Jehiel Alpert, 2, and Alice Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing (New York: Shengold, 1994), 160. 26 Gazeta Żydowska (est. 1940 and based in Kraków), was published for two years as the propaganda instrument of the German regime in the Generalgouvernement. Its editorial board was in Kraków but the Germans allowed the paper to maintain several branches, one of which was in Kielce and included local editors. At first it appeared twice per week; from 1941

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

September 26, 1939, a district Judenrat (Der Ober-Ältestenrat der jüdischen Bevölkerung des Distrikts Radom) was set up in the city of Radom.27 This entity was almost entirely identical in composition to the Judenrat that was established in Radom itself at roughly the same time, using the same staff and occupying the same offices. The person named to chair the district Judenrat was the bookkeeper Yosef Diamant, who before the occupation had not been recognized as an especially active public figure in town. Diamant was also placed at the head of the Radom city Judenrat and, with the introduction of civilian rule, was named advisor on public affairs to the governor of Radom (Beirat für die Sociale Fürsorge beim Chef des Distrikts Radom).28 While the district-level Judenrat established additional departments, most parallel to those in the Radom municipal Judenrat available sources show clearly that in all Jewish communities in the district, independent Judenräte were set up over time and these acted on their own, with no relations or affiliations with the district-level council. The idea of forming a district Judenrat was initiated, presumably, by heads of the military administration in Radom pursuant to Heydrich’s order of September 21, 1939, concerning the establishment of Judenräte. The order preceded the formation of the Generalgouvernement and the transfer of control over the territory to it. It stands to reason that the idea of having a district Judenrat in Radom eventually proved untenable due to the limitations imposed by the civil administration on the Jews of the Generalgouvernement and a new order from Generalgouverneur Frank on November 18, 1939, to establish local Judenräte. The second paragraph of Frank’s order reads: “[…] The Judenräte are to be elected by the members of the community. In the onward its frequency increased to thrice weekly. The paper cost 30 groshen (100 groshen = one złoty), and it offered subscriptions. Articles included news from the front, reports on the condition of Jews in the German-occupied lands, and information on conditions in the ghettos. Its articles might plant hope in readers’ hearts but between the lines one could understand it was pure propaganda. It ran news items and editorials pertaining to Kielce and the condition of its Jews. Although subject to the review of German censors, it is an important source of information on Jewish life in German-occupied Kielce. See also YVA, O.33/3496, testimony David Guterman, 6. 27 Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 27, 4. 28 Michael Weichert headed the Jewish self-help organization known as Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna (ŻZS) in Polish and Yidisher Sotsiale Alaynhilf in Yiddish (also known also as “Jewish Social Aid” and the “Jewish Committee for Aid”) in the Generalgouvernement, which from 1940 onward operated with German legal sanction. In his memoirs, Weichert writes that shortly after the occupation began a general Judenrat was formed in Radom, meant to represent all Judenräte in the district vis-à-vis the Germans. See Michael Weichert, Yidisher Alaynhilf 1939–1945 (Tel Aviv: 1962), 25, 28, 31–32. See also Sebastian Piątkowski, “Judenraty w Dystrykcie Radomskim,” Biuletyn Kwartalny (Radomskiego: Towarzystwa Naukowego, 1998), vol. XXXIII, notebook 1, 57.

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event that a Judenrat member leaves this framework, another is to be immediately chosen to replace him.”29 It is not clear how Frank related to the district Judenrat in Radom and research has not determined what this Judenrat managed to accomplish. A reasonable conjecture is that with the establishment of the Civil Administration this body ceased to function as a district-level council and remained in existence as the Judenrat of Radom alone. The appointment of Judenräte in the small communities of Radom District generally, and in Kielce Subdistrict particularly, was characterized by disorganization and inconsistency. This may be accounted for by the transition from military to civilian rule or the expectation that the district Judenrat in Radom would be responsible for communities in the rest of the district as well. The available sources indicate that the appointment of Judenräte in the vicinity of Kielce began immediately after the occupation set in and lasted several months. The Judenrat in Chmielnik, for example, was appointed by the town’s German commander in the very first week of the occupation. Avraham Langwald, ordered to create an Ältestenrat (council of elders), approached public figures who had been active in the community before the war, most of whom evaded him and refused to take part in this institution. Ultimately, Langwald came to an agreement with several public figures and affluent townspeople and invited them to a compulsory meeting with the German commander. The group, assembled in Langwald’s home, displeased the German, who s­ ummoned three other Jews and ordered them to deliver all the pre-war leaders of the Jewish community within a quarter of an hour. The German commander then informed the eighteen Jews who arrived at Langwald’s house that henceforth they were the town’s Judenrat. Langwald was named chairman of the new council, the offices of which were in his home.30 The Judenrat in Chęciny, conversely, was established by the Volksdeutsche who headed that town’s German administration. On December 11, 1939, he rounded up twenty Jews, brought them to the town square, and selected twelve of their number. The chair of the Chęciny Judenrat was Lejbel Borchowicz, 29 In regard to Frank’s order, see Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland— Postures and Attitudes: The Third International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem Publications 1975–1977, Yad Vashem Studies 12. 30 The members of the Chmielnik Judenrat included Yosef Kleinert, Dawid Zalcman, Ephraim Zalcberg, Mosze Lewinsztein, Jehiel Staszewski, Simha Yedwabne, Mordechai Markowicki, Lejbush Szulsinger, Yosef Pfeffer, Mosze Weisgold (a refugee from Łódź), Anshel Szezarik, Jehiel Domb and others. See Mosze Montsash, “In di yorn fun der Hitler-okupatsie,” Pinkas Chmielnik, 728.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

a former town councilor who doubled as the Judenrat secretary; the Judenrat itself began to function in January 1940. In Jędrzejów, a Judenrat was appointed only in February 1940 and one Teitelbojm was appointed to head it. In Suchedniów, a Judenrat was established in November 1939 under Zelig Warszawski, a community lay leader. In Pińczów, Rabbi Rappaport was ordered to present a list of twelve candidates. A representative of the authorities summoned the candidates, looked them over, and appointed one of them as Judenrat chairman and another as secretary.31

The First Judenrat in Kielce Notwithstanding Heydrich’s instructions, the Judenrat in Kielce was established relatively late: in early November 1939, by which time the town had already come under civilian rule.32 The individual chosen to head it was Dr. Mosze Pelc. The circumstances behind Pelc’s appointment are not known. Presumably, his connections in Polish circles and his fluency in German prompted important municipal officials to recommend him for the job. There is no evidence that the local Jewish community and its lay leaders were involved in making the choice. Mosze Pelc was born on May 6, 1888, in Radomyśl Wielki, near Tarnów, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1906, he completed high-school studies in Tarnów with distinction and was accepted to medical school in Gratz, Austria. Later, he completed his studies in Vienna and in 1912 received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, specializing in surgery. Shortly afterward, Pelc began to work in Szczucin, on the Wisła, and a year later he was drafted into the Kaiser’s army, in which he served as a doctor in an Austrian unit at Dąmbrowa Tarnowska. In 1914, when World War I broke out, Pelc served among other things as a barracks physician in Galicia. Subsequently, he was transferred to the Italian front, where he received the German Iron Cross and a decoration from the Austrian army for his service. In October 1917, he married Paula née Zavic in Kraków. Transferred to the Russian front, he commanded a mobile hospital installed on a train. In late 1918, at the grade of captain, Pelc

31 Piątkowski, “Judenraty w Dystrykcie Radomskim,” 56; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 261, 326, 353. 32 Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 188ff. The occupation authorities defined the Judenrat in Kielce as an Ältestenrat, a council of elders; hereinafter for convenience, the more common term Judenrat will be used.

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enlisted in the Polish Army and took part in fighting against the Bolsheviks on the eastern front. In 1919, Pelc settled with his family in Kielce. Promoted to major, he continued to serve as a military physician. Discharged in 1921, he joined the civilian healthcare services in town and switched to internal medicine, and specialized in pediatrics. He published several articles on diabetes and children’s illnesses. Soon he acquired a reputation in town of being a first-rate doctor and an active public figure. In 1926, Pelc expressed his support for Marshal Piłsudski and was promoted to the grade of lieutenant colonel. From 1933 onward, he was a member of the Kielce town council. His was a Polish household: his two children received Polish names and attended Polish schools and he and his wife consorted with the local Polish intelligentsia. Still, Pelc was the doctor of the municipal Jewish high school and a member of its administration. Until the German conquest in September 1939, he directed the Jewish community’s old-age home and orphanage without remuneration. To deal with the Jewish population’s poverty and dire difficult conditions, Pelc founded Linat Hatzedek in Kielce, an institution that provided free medical care to needy patients, and he insisted that Jewish doctors contribute several hours a week to care for the indigent. His son Janusz (Yohanan), who emigrated to Eretz Israel in the mid1930s by obtaining a visa for studies at the Technion, describes his father as a strict and principled man, whose stubbornness led him into quarrels with both Jews and Poles. He was rejected above all by the Orthodox in the Jewish community, whom he criticized; they never supported him and opposed his membership on the town council.33 When Germany invaded Poland, Pelc sent his wife and his second son, Jerzy, to the east. His wife eventually returned to Kielce; his son disappeared into the vastness of the Soviet Union.34 We do not know how Pelc selected the members of the Judenrat. According to Heydrich’s order of September 21, 1939, in a city such as Kielce, which on the eve of the occupation had over 10,000 Jews, the Judenrat chairman was required to convene a twenty-four-member council. The Kielce Judenrat, as said, was established relatively late—in November 1939, after the onset of civilian rule and some two months after the occupation began. The minutes of a Judenrat meeting on December 10, 1939, indicate that even then the count 33 Yohanan Pelc, Memoirs, 1990 (author’s private collection). 34 Kerbel, Al beytenu she-harav, Fun der kharuver hayyim (Tel Aviv: 1981), 76–78. See also Jan Sikorski, “Dr. Mojżesz Pelc,” in Przegląd Lekarski 1988: 45:1, 180–181, and Alice Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 6–11.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

of Judenrat members was smaller than the standard. Presumably this had to do with Frank’s November 28, 1939, order concerning the establishment of Judenräte in the Generalgouvernement, which did not explicitly specify the number of members required.35 The minutes of another Judenrat meeting divulge the names of the Judenrat members in Kielce, mostly by surname: S. Tauman, Sokolowski, Treiger, Wilner, Koslowski, Yehezkel Gutman, Kaner, Moszenberg, Keizer, Rothman, Herszkowicz, Sladkowski, Aron Gotlib, A. Kleinman, Judke Gutman, Cytron, Mincberg and Rabbi Rappaport.36 It is not clear if Pelc summoned all the people whose names are listed or if all of them agreed to take a position on the Judenrat. It may be assumed that Pelc had a hard time assembling a list of familiar and accepted public figures, among other reasons because he himself was known as a man who was hard to work with. Either way, most of those listed were familiar to the Jews of Kielce as lay leaders. The Judenrat established a large bureaucracy; hundreds of officials working in the various Judenrat departments participated in internal elections in the summer of 1940. This was unusual in that it implies the existence at an early stage of criticism of the Judenrat, both internal and external, due to its ineffectiveness and due to Pelc’s inability to control his associates. The new members who joined the Judenrat after these elections included Noach Laks, Fiszel Cohen, Herszel Eizenberg, Fridman, and Meir Złoto.37 The identities of those defeated in elections, and whether they left voluntarily or not, are unknown. From the perspective of the occupation regime, the Judenrat was the sole representative and authority of the Jewish population and the only channel and mediator between it and the local Jews. The Germans had no dialogue or contact with individual Jews, but only with the Judenrat and mainly with the person who led it. Under these circumstances, the Jewish public saw the Judenrat as a necessity, foremost because its roles under the conditions of the occupation were so radically different from those of the pre-war Jewish community leadership. Indeed, immediately after it was chosen and t­ hroughout the entire occupation, the Judenrat had to take responsibility for new matters such as food, work, housing, health, and sanitation—to name only a few—and to deal in realms that had been foreign to Jewish tradition in the diaspora, such 35 Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, 191. 36 Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D. C., .RG15.031/12752. 37 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 8.

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as prisons and police ( Jewish police, of course), in addition to the standard Jewish community purviews of religion, burial, education, and welfare. This gargantuan responsibility, entailing the delivery of essential services under conditions of scarcity and diminishing resources, was imposed on the Judenrat in one go, without organizational or professional preparations. The ability to deal with these issues at once presented the Judenrat with a test of its leadership and did much to determine the nature of Jewish community life under German occupation.

The First Decrees On November 18, 1939, the Civil Administration forbade Jewish doctors to treat Polish patients. For a while, at least during the Civil Administration period, some physicians broke this rule for the sake of their livelihood. Formal enforcement began in April 1941, when the Jewish townspeople were separated from the rest of the population and confined to the ghetto. On November 20, 1939, the Civil Administration issued an order permitting Jews to depart for the Soviet-annexed areas if they so wished. Another order promulgated that day restricted Jews’ rights in using the banks. Specifically, those who in the course of business had to make a payment via a bank needed to bring proof in order to complete the transaction. Jews were forbidden to hold cash; those in the possession of more than 2,000 złoty had to deposit it in a bank and anyone who owed a Jew over 500 złoty had to deposit the liability with the bank. Commerce in cash was forbidden, and German policemen were given permission to search Jews’ homes for cash and valuables at any time. These orders weighed on daily life and immediately harmed the town’s Jewish-owned businesses as well as anyone reliant on Jewish commerce—in effect, the entire city of Kielce.38 On November 23, 1939, a directive concerning the marking of Jews in the Generalgouvernement saw the light of day. Its first section required all Jews in the Generalgouvernement aged ten or older, from December 1, 1939, onward, to wear a blue Star of David imprinted atop a white armband at least ten c­ entimeters wide. According to Section 2, Jews were to obtain this band at their own expense and obey the provisions of the edict on pain of arrest. The same day, yet another order mandated the marking of Jewish-owned shops with a clearly visible Star of David. Decree followed decree: On December 9, Jews’ pension entitlements 38 On the series of edicts in the Generalgouvernement that aimed to isolate, humiliate, starve, and impoverish the Jews, see Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland,” 250–251.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

were rescinded. On December 20, the pensions of Jewish army veterans were revoked. On December 11–12, Krüger issued a series of orders that forbade Jews to change their place of residence without written authorization, travel on main roads, and sell their work implements. Among other strictures, Jewish refugees had to register with city hall within twenty-four hours of their arrival in town and Jews of whatever kind had to observe a curfew between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. Additional orders restricting the Jews of Kielce were issued by the head of Radom District and the Kommisar of the city of Kielce. Among other things, they prohibited Jews from employing Poles in any capacity, either in such businesses as they still owned or privately in their homes. In January 1940, for economic reasons related to the setting aside of wheat for the use of German forces in the Generalgouvernement, the head of Radom District forbade Jewish bakers and bakery owners to use white flour; only black bread could be baked. Violators risked a fine of up to 10,000 złoty or an optional term in prison.39 Concurrently, German abuse of Jews continued, as Issachar Reis later testified: Terror and fear gripped the Jewish street. It was enough to see a German at the end of the road for everyone to go hide in their houses. At night, groups of SS and army broke into houses on the pretext of searching for weapons and looted anything of value. […] They took people out of their beds according to lists they had and shot them or just beat up Jews for no reason and killed them in the end. […] One Friday in December 1939, the SS broke into the mikve [ritual bath], which was full of Jews as it was on every eve of the Sabbath; they led out all the bathers naked […] into the winter frost … [and] made them lie down in the snow and run about the yard. Meanwhile, another group of SS practiced throwing snowballs at old people who were naked and shaking from cold and fear. […] An SS man stood with a camera and recorded the event for posterity. […]40 39 Die Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete, State Archives, Kielce, September 1939, 42; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 46–48; Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 150; Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland,” 251. See also Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 162; YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Issachar Reis, 10. 40 YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Issachar Reis, 9–10; YVA, O.3/6782, testimony Szmul Joskowicz, 10. Sam Lieberman testified that in the winter of 1940/41, he and his friends were brought after work to the bathhouse, where they were ordered to strip and wash in the snow as Gestapo police stood around them and beat them. Suddenly Wollschläger appeared, summoned Mosze Zilberberg, shouted at him “Your body’s too athletic” (Du bist zu athletisch), and shot him. See testimony Sam Lieberman, Darmstadt court of law.

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From January 1940 onward, Jews in Kielce were enjoined against observing religious rituals. The Great Synagogue, plundered early in the occupation and used as a jail, was converted into a warehouse for looted Jewish property. Defying the closure of all synagogues and the prohibition against public worship, Jews gathered for collective worship in private homes, where they set up cabinets with Torah scrolls and appointed prayer leaders. Many Jews also slipped into the town’s first study hall, located on Piotrkowska Street (subsequently Nowowarszawska Street), where a shtibl (a small and somewhat impromptu synagogue) of the Gur and Alexander Hasidim also remained in use for much time. Those caught praying in public were beaten and arrested. Even as fear settled in, Jews did not forgo their Sabbath and festival prayers.41 Ritual slaughter was forbidden a month after the occupation began, but Jewish slaughterers were able to circumvent this edict until ghettoization. Only when conditions worsened were the rabbis forced to declare a suspension of the dietary laws.42 At the outset of the occupation, Jewish children were permitted to continue attending Polish high schools for a brief time; afterward, only private instruction was allowed. Accordingly, five teachers from the boys’ high school who had worked for the Jewish community before the war asked the authorities for a dispensation to open Jewish schools and run study groups of seven to sixteen students each, for ages thirteen to sixteen. By December 1939, three of the applicants—Mosze Manela, Leora Wytlin, and Rosalia Żimnowoda—were granted such permission, provided only children up to age thirteen would be taught, presumably because those fourteen and older had to work. In April 1940, the instruction of adolescents aged thirteen and older was banned by decree. Offspring of affluent families continued to study in clandestine groups in private homes, helped by tutors for whom their parents paid.43

41 Interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001. Notably, 127 Jewish weddings registered with the Kielce Municipality in 1940. See Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 73. Mania Feferman writes that she got married on December 31,1940, and with Rabbi Rappaport himself officiating. See Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 16. Between April 1 and May 15, 1941, after ghettoization, twenty-nine additional Jewish weddings were recorded at town hall. 42 Interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001. 43 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 60, 76; Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 149; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 195.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

“Aryanization” In mid-December 1939, the Germans in Kielce launched a massive “Aryanization” campaign, i.e., the seizure of Jewish property and its transfer to German hands. Initially, all confiscated property was to be handled by the Main Trustee Office for the East (Haupttreuhandstelle-Ost), an outfit established by Hermann Göring in November 1939. This step, however, met with the opposition of General Governor Frank, who on November 15 declared the nationalization of former Polish state property for the Generalgouvernement and announced the establishment of a separate trustee office for the Generalgouvernement (Treuhandstelle für das GG) to deal with the confiscated assets. To implement this initiative, branches of the office were set up in all major towns in the Generalgouvernement. The office in Kielce, on 17 Sandomierz Street, set out to identify Jewish-owned factories, warehouses, and large companies, and to transfer their ownership to Germans from the Reich or local Volksdeutsche. The number of Jewishowned companies in Kielce that employed over 200 people on the eve of the occupation and had annual sales of more than a million złoty was relatively small. By December 1939, some Jewish-owned factories and workshops in Kielce had already been transferred to German trusteeship. They included the Kadzielnia quarries, owned by the Ehrlich family—transferred to the German kommissars Anton Klotz and H. Peters; the Wijetrznia quarries, owned by the Zagajskis, and the Zagórze quarries—expropriated. The quarries in Piekoszów, Ślichowice, Górno and other places near Kielce were reassigned to a German company headed by Frantz Kny. The Kłos flourmill went to a German named Bilsky; the Machtinger brothers’ cooperage was seized by Bolesław Petuch; the Rozencholcs’ brick factory and the Urbeitels’ marble works were handed over to Fritz Zimmerman. The Polplum feather processing plant, owned by the Fryd and Orbach families, was nationalized. Henryk Nowak and Hermann Lewi were forced to relinquish their Henryków lumber works, located in the suburb of Głęboczka, under a tenyear lease. The trustee was the same Paul Steiner who served in this capacity at the Ludwików foundry; management of Henryków was assigned to a Volksdeutsche named Franciszek Śliwa. In 1940, this enterprise merged with the Ludwików steel factory; the combined plant, renamed Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH Werke Ludwigshütte, turned out wooden parts for Pleskau and Fuhrman carriages. The Germans also nationalized the Orion paper mill, owned by the Grynglas family; the Sława glass works, and

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the town’s marble industries.44 Several owners of Aryanized factories and workshops were exiled to various localities in the Generalgouvernement; others remained in Kielce and were allowed to continue working in their quondam businesses.45 Some 61 percent of shops and small businesses in Kielce had been owned by Jews on the eve of the war. From early 1940 on, all were subject to Aryanization. Large warehouses and wholesale shops came first, their owners forced to sign transfer-of-ownership contracts with German trustees or lease their properties to these usurpers, in both cases for symbolic sums that were rarely remitted. Small commercial establishments were placed in “Aryan” hands and, in a minority of instances, in those of Polish merchants who also were given some of the merchandise that the Jews had owned.46 Daniel Wiener’s bicycle shop was handed over to a Polish-born Volksdeutsche who demanded that Wiener pay the bills that he received.47 All haberdashery shops were transferred to Kommissar Ulrich Graze. Leather goods shops, photography shops, bookstores, and the like were turned over to trustees appointed by the authorities or shut down after their contents were looted. The Zionist youth movements’ land and farm holdings were transferred to a German trustee. By late 1940, some 120 Jewish-owned buildings had been passed on to German trusteeship. Only a few months into the occupation, just 32.3 percent of shops in Kielce remained under Jewish ownership.48 Given that most Jews in Kielce 44 Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme des Vermögens des früheren polnischen Staates innerhalb des GG, APK, 15/11/1939, VBIGG (1939), P.37; Verordnung Über die Errichtung einer Treuhandsttele für das GG, vom 15/11/1939, APK, VBIGG I, (1939), 36. See also Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 150–151; Dzikowski W., Prszymsł maszynowy Kielc. Szkice z historii zakładów (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1972), 16–21; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydow, 61. 45 See Jacek Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, Master’s thesis, University of Essen, 44–45. The Granat factory in Kielce, a manufacturer of grenades, was owned by the Polish government before the war. In January 1940, it was purchased by the HASAG concern and renamed Hugo Schneider AG Werke in Kielce (“HASAG Granat”). See Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow, Skarżysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996), 26. 46 Israel Lemberg testified that his family, which had owned a clothing shop, was forced to hand over all merchandise and transfer ownership of the enterprise to a trustee. Testimony Alter Israel Lemberg, Darmstadt court of law. 47 Daniel Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 22. 48 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 50; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydow, 49; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 100; FefermanWasoff, The Processed, 8.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

had engaged in commerce and petty trade, “Aryanization” promptly devastated the local economy, strangling business and creating a shortage of basic goods.

“Contributions” The Judenrat faced budget problems from its very first days.49 Among the first payments that it had to make were two “contributions” (ransoms) that the Germans demanded of the Jews of Kielce in a manner that they replicated vis-à-vis most Jewish communities in the occupied areas, large and small. The size of the payment varied from community to community as a function of the number of Jews in each. In Białobrzegi ( Jewish population 1,800), for example, the tally was 40,000 złoty. The German subdistrict plenipotentiary, writing to the Judenrat of this community, warned that all members of the council would summarily be sent to a concentration camp unless the entire sum were deposited in a specified bank account by a certain date. In Suchedniów, the compulsory “contribution” was 500,000 złoty, and to guarantee payment the Germans arrested fifteen public figures including several members of the Judenrat. In Chmielnik, the demand started out at 50,000 złoty in cash plus jewelry and silver utensils; several months later, a supplemental “contribution” of 100,000 złoty was demanded.50 In Kielce, too, the Germans solicited two “contributions,” in the sums of 100,000 and 500,000 złoty. The available sources indicate that these ransoms were also meant to cover Jews in nearby Chęciny. On November 10, 1939, Gestapo agents and several members of the Kielce Judenrat visited Chęciny and advised the Jews there that they were to raise a 20,000 złoty “contribution” in addition to the sum imposed on the Judenrat in Kielce.51 Dr. Pelc covered the entire sum from the Jewish community’s exchequer, emptying it totally. 49 At a meeting on December 10, 1939, a month or so after the formation of the Judenrat, Pelc announced that 840 złoty had been paid on his order to several people whom the Judenrat had hired, such as a Polish cleaning worker, who received 30 złoty per month, and two clerks at 100 złoty per month. Pelc reported that the Judenrat also transferred funds to the local authorities and, on December 1, had remitted 1,000 złoty in cash to social insurance. See archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D. C., RG-15.031/12752. 50 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 261, 326, 353, 442–443, 538; Pinkas Chmielnik, 728. 51 Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 150; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 235; Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 11; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 50. Mosze Bahn attests that the second contribution was in the amount of one million złoty. See YVA M-49E/66, testimony Mosze Bahn. According to most sources, the Germans demanded 500,000 złoty.

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Matters proceeded differently in Radom and Częstochowa, two important cities in Radom District. When the Judenrat in Radom was ordered in early October 1939 to “contribute” 300,000 złoty and 10,000 Reichsmarks, it and its chairman, Yosef Diamant, raised 200,000 złoty from Jews who owed money to the community. After much lobbying the Germans settled for this sum. At the end of that month, when another “contribution” was sought from Radom’s Jews, Diamant knew that the Germans could be bargained with. The district governor, Karl Lasch, agreed to exchange this ransom for 1,000 men’s suits and bedding that Jewish tailors had been instructed to make for SS men, who had set up house in the city and the district.52 In Częstochowa, where the Judenrat in the second half of November 1939 was ordered to remit one million złoty as a contribution and after some of its members were taken hostage to ensure payment, the Judenrat leadership, headed by Leib (Leon) Kopiński, managed to persuade the Germans to settle for just 400,000 złoty.53

Labor It was over the supply of Jews as labor for the Germans that the Kielce Judenrat first clashed with the town’s Jewish population. Nazi Germany valued the Jews as a manpower reserve that could be exploited for the war effort. In November 1939, General Governor Frank issued an order requiring all Jews aged 15–65 to mobilize for labor.54 By the end of that year, Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger (Police and SS Commander in the Generalgouvernement) and Frank were vying for authority over the employment of Jews and the organization of their labor, Frank opposing the transfer of so profitable a realm to Krüger’s sole jurisdiction. Their clash crested in May 1940, when Frank announced unequivocally that he alone would be responsible for Jewish labor in his territory. Krüger had no choice but to accept the new arrangement, particularly when over the summer Himmler authorized Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Commander in Lublin District, to establish a network of labor camps for Jews (Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden) in the Lublin District that would also tap Jews from other districts in the Generalgouvernement.55 52 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 538. 53 Piątkowski, “Judenraty w Dystrykcie Radomskim,” 62; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 442–443, 538. 54 Aharon Weiss, “Jewish Leadership in Occupied Poland,” 251. 55 Janina Kięłboń, “Przemieszczenia Żydow między Dystryktami Radomskim i Lubelskim (1940–1944),” Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego, vol. XXXIII 1998,

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If so, German exploitation of Jews for slave labor began as soon as the occupation did. To bring it about, women and men were pulled off the street in impromptu kidnappings. Initially, Jews in Kielce were captured indiscriminately, at all hours of the day, for tasks in German soldiers’ barracks, clearing of rubble, haulage, unloading railroad cars, and so forth. These labors were imposed in humiliating ways and accompanied by abuse and beatings, causing the workers to return home at day’s end exhausted and battered. In some cases, laborers’ documents were seized so that they would have to return to the same workplace; in others, people were abducted to faraway locations and housed in camps. The harsh discipline, rudimentary conditions, and poor hygiene that typified the workplaces sapped the workers’ strength and health. Some slave laborers died within a few months; others reached the point of complete exhaustion and fell ill. Some spared no effort to evade the labor. Szaja Zalcberg testified that there were Jews who did not report for work on the day leading into Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year, September 13, 1939) due to the sanctity of the occasion. That evening, Germans broke into Jews’ homes led their occupants to a prison yard, where their names were checked against a list of persons who had shown up for work that day. Those who had gone to work were released; the others were incarcerated then and there.56 Rafael Blumenfeld, for example, was abducted by soldiers and police and was marched with a group of Jewish men to Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel Polski on Sienkiewicza Street. The abductees were examined and registered one by one in one of the hotel rooms. The Germans kicked and beat them severely; those waiting outside heard their comrades screaming in pain. Those found fit for labor were led out through a back door and placed aboard a truck destined for the Kadzielnia quarries, some forty-five minutes’ travel distance from town. Anyone beaten so badly as to be unable to stand was taken to hospital in an ambulance supplied by the Judenrat.57 book 1, 36; T. Bernstein, “O podłożo gospodarczym sporów między wladzami administracyjnymi a policyjnymi w Generalnej Gubernej 1939–1944,” Biuletyn ŻIH 53 (1965): 50; Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, vol. 6, 10. 56 YVA, M-49E/1705, testimony Zalcberg, 2. Zalcberg had been sent to work in the quarries of Wiśniówka, some fourteen kilometers from Kielce. Garfinkel related that his older brother, who was caught and sent to work unloading coal cars, returned from work bleeding, beaten, and with a head wound, and told his parents he had decided to flee to the Soviet Union. Several days later, the brother escaped with some of his friends to the east. See YVA, O.3/9147, testimony Garfinkel, 9. 57 Interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001. The quarry was in a pine forest on Mount Karczoswka. There was a convent there, and before the war, in the summer, especially on

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The Judenrat in Kielce, like its counterparts in most communities, was aware of the devastating effects of these abductions on daily life for the local Jewish population. To end the street abductions and ease the anxiety that had taken hold of the Jewish public, the Judenrat approached the German police at its own initiative, offering to supply a daily quota of workers as needed. Notably, this was neither an original nor an unusual idea on the Kielce Judenrat’s part; other Judenräte throughout the Generalgouvernement did the same. To implement the proposal and maintain a steady supply of workers, the Judenrat labor department, headed by Treiger, began to recruit Jews for daily work in town or elsewhere. Divided into crews, the slaves filled ditches, cleared debris, removed snow in winter, maintained gardens, repaired railroad tracks, and cleaned the homes of Gestapo and SS personnel. From November 1939 on, some 600 Jewish males aged 18–36 reported to the labor department each morning and were taken to the quarries, which were thought to be the most arduous workplaces, especially for those unaccustomed to physical labor. Workers in quarries close to town usually set off on foot and on rare occasions were transported in German vehicles; those assigned to more distant quarries made the trip by train. The escorts also changed over time: Germans at first, ­operatives of the Judenrat labor department later.58 The workday in the quarries began at around 7:00 a.m. In Wiszniówka, as a case in point, workers were divided into two groups, one quarrying stone and the other smashing the rocks while wearing special protective glasses that the Germans supplied. In some cases, Jews were ordered to shift heavy rocks from one place to another and those not up to the task were pummeled. The Kadzielnia quarries belonged to a massive complex of plants, one turning out marble and another producing bricks in an enormous kiln. Lime produced in this location was loaded into railroad cars and sent throughout Poland, especially to areas where Germans engaged in construction projects. The hammer used in the Kadzielnia quarries was especially heavy; a Polish foreman (Vorarbeiter) taught the workers how to use it to smash the stones. A German named Bishopf, a friend of Anton Klotz, the German kommissar for quarries, would don special mittens and assault Jews who did not perform up to standard. The quarry work began in the early hours of the day and lasted until 4:00 p.m. In the brief lunch break—the only respite allowed—each worker Saturdays, it was a spot held dear by lovers. Jewish youth treasured it due to clean air and Communist youth used it as a venue for activities prohibited by the authorities. See also testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 32. 58 Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 149.

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received a bowl of soup and 150 grams of bread. By the time the slaves returned to Kielce, it was evening. In view of the grim physical conditions, the brutality, and the terror, only 10–20 people reported for quarry labor each morning. To meet the quotas and replace slaves who had been worked to utter exhaustion, the Judenrat had to round up hundreds of additional workers.59 The accounts of grueling labor and foremen’s brutal treatment in most workplaces, however, deterred most Jewish men from reporting for work and saddled the Judenrat with a Sisyphean task. Many men who promised to turn up obtained releases on various grounds; others hired replacements who agreed to toil in their stead for pay. Under the circumstances, the Judenrat in Kielce, like Judenräte elsewhere in the Generalgouvernement, revised the system and established permanent work crews called “brigades.” These teams were generally composed of the poor of the community, whose sources of income had vanished under the conditions of the occupation, and refugees who reached Kielce destitute and had to accept any job offered.60 The money that wealthy Jews paid to absolve themselves of the work obligation was deposited in the Judenrat treasury to cover the wages of all workers whom the council oversaw. In 1940, the daily rate for slave labor in most cities of Radom District was 5 złoty per day. As Judenrat revenues declined steadily under the occupation conditions, wages were lowered in various ways.61 59 “Every Jew from the age of 17 and a half had to present himself each morning for work for the Germans. […] The rich could pay their way out and go on with their businesses. Each day, the middle class and working class would fall farther into starvation. […] Overnight the rich forgot about their poor friends and relatives and refused to help them. […]” See YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 10. In regard to labor at the Kadzielnia quarries, see YVA, O.3/7433, testimony Zwi Abramowicz, 18–19; interview Rafael Blumenfeld; YVA M-49E/1705, testimony Zalcberg, 2; testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 32. 60 In regard to slave labor in the Generalgouvernement, see Tatiana Berenstein, Adam Rutkowski, “Przesladowania ludności żydowskiej w okresie hitlerowkiej administracji wojskowej w Polsce,” Biuletyn ŻIH 39 (1961): 78–87. See also Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 17. About Jewish labor in the occupied territories, see Israel Gutman, “Slave Labor of Jews in Service of the Germans in Eastern Europe during World War II,” Struggles in Darkness: Studies in Holocaust and Resistance ( Jerusalem: Sifriat Poalim, 1985), 99. This article appears in two additional versions, both in Hebrew: Israel Gutman, “Jewish Labor in the Service of Germans in Eastern Europe in World War Two,” Zion, 43: A–B, 1978, and idem, “The Concept of Labor as Perceived by the Judenrat and Its Actual Meaning,” Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945 ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1979). 61 Adam Rutkowski, ‘Hitlerowskie obozy pracy dla Żydow w dystrycie Radomskim,” Biuletyn ŻIH 17–18, 122; Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 17; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 55–56.

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In Kielce, as shown in the minutes of a Judenrat meeting on December 10, 1939, the pay of Jewish workers was already then cut from 3 złoty per day to 2.2, except for professionals, who continued to earn 3 złoty, and artisans, who were remunerated on a piecework basis.62 The quota of laborers required by the Judenrat varied by the type of work at issue. Many Jews worked outside of Kielce and stayed in labor camps, where sanitary conditions and nutrition were especially bad. These workers managed to survive only thanks to support from families back home or the wage paid by the Judenrat. In the spring of 1940, the authorities in Kielce launched several construction projects after deciding to effect structural changes in the main square and other downtown streets in order, among other reasons, to make the town more similar in character to other towns of the Reich. Some Jews who needed an income saw this as an employment opportunity. The work was carried out under guard of local policemen accompanied by dogs.63 The efficient and inexpensive Jewish labor force was exploited by the Wehrmacht, the police, and the SS. As demand for Jewish labor increased in the summer of 1940, Krüger and Frank settled their scores and announced the outcome of their reconciliation in a circular authored by the latter, dated July 4, 1940, and sent to the managers of labor bureaus throughout the Generalgouvernement. In this document, Frank stresses that in contrast to the Jews who live in Reich territory, some of those in the Generalgouvernement are skilled workers and good craftsmen and that any future employment would be the exclusive charge of the German labor bureaus. In the furtherance of this reform, it was decided to compel the Judenrat to provide these bureaus, via the German police, with lists of Jewish males and to issue each Jewish worker with a labor ID card (Ausweis or Kennkarte). The circular also dealt with wage-­related issues because the Judenräte, which initially had paid the workers’ wages, were insolvent by now and no longer could meet their financial obligations.64 Another job opportunity came to young Jews’ way in the summer of 1940, when Globocnik began to recruit workers from Radom District for the labor camps that he had set up in Lublin District. Consequently, twenty-nine transports carrying nearly 10,000 Jews rumbled from Radom District to Lublin District for this purpose. Most of the passengers were young members of poor families or males who were their families’ sole breadwinners. Their removal 62 USHMM Archives, RG-15.031/12752. 63 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 56–57. 64 Karay, Death Comes in Yellow, 41.

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was a tragedy for the families, for which the Judenrat now had to care. “The Judenrat published notices with promises of payment, clothing, help at home, etc. At the same time, they prepared a list of people who had to present ­themselves at a certain date to go off to the camp. […] The final list contained only the names of the poor. The rich paid their way out of it.”65 The Kielce Judenrat was ordered to come up with a list of 500 healthy young people for labor in Lublin District. By the deadline, only half the required people had reported. […] The SS immediately sent a company and spent three days searching for Jews. They seized 500 Jews indiscriminately […] including 100 rich people. […] [Their] wives went to the Judenrat and paid enormous sums to free their husbands. The chairman of the Judenrat obtained a promise from the SS that he could replace 100 Jews who had already been sent with another hundred for a substantial sum. […]66

The young people who made the trip from Kielce to Lublin District were put to work in the area of Bełżec (near the river Bug) and in Sszcanów, Hrubieszów, and other venues in the vicinity. They were assigned to digging trenches near the Soviet frontier, building fortifications, lumberjacking, rerouting rivers, draining swamps, road building, and so forth. They were lodged in camps guarded by the SS, and to prevent their escape harsh discipline was enforced and severe punishments inflicted. In many locations, guards abused Jewish prisoners for amusement. In several labor camps in the Bełżec area, prisoners had to line up in ranks of six at roll call, whereupon the camp commander set dogs on them and ordered them to march in straight columns while threatening to shoot. In one case, prisoners were forced at bayonet point to race after a guard on a bicycle, and when the latter stopped the prisoners tripped over each other. In another instance, prisoners were assembled in a spacious yard and told that the ill among them could ask to be released. Of the three who stepped forward, two were discharged and the third was mauled to death by a dog, then and there.67 65 YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 11. See also Piątkowski, “Judenraty w dystrykcie radomskim,” 62–63. 66 YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 11. 67 Testimony Bahn, in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 72. Goldblum was abducted off the street for labor and sent with other Jews to build a road near the river Bug, close to the Soviet frontier. During his three-month stint in this location, he reports, the living and working

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Letters from prisoners to their families speak of hard work and inhuman living conditions. The families held the Judenrat responsible for the p­ risoners’ awful treatment, accusing it of concealing knowledge of what was in store for them. In Kielce rumors spread that those sent to work in Lublin were suffering from hunger, inhuman accommodations, disease, brutality, punishments, and murderous beatings. This prompted additional Jews to evade the labor decree. Working-age men went into hiding and others refrained from circulating in the streets for fear of being seized. Under these circumstances, the Judenrat had to ask the Germans to step in and fill the quotas. Its threats against the evaders and the explicit order that it had received to take all necessary measures to meet the quotas were interpreted by the public as rank collaboration with the Germans. By the summer of 1940, a rift had grown between the Jewish public and the Judenrat; trust in the Judenrat was lost. Those selected that summer to head for Lublin in the second transport attempted to escape and sought hiding places in town. Even so, the Judenrat managed to recruit some 500 Jews. When the latter were about to board the train for Lublin, however, the Jewish masses launched a demonstration in front of town hall. The opposition to their departure was so great that the Germans had to seek help from the “blue” Polish police. Only by means of several months of brutal abductions was the labor quota for Lublin met.68 In early January 1941, responding to the recurrent reports about the starvation of prisoners and grinding, health-ruining labor, along with massive pressure from the Jewish community, the Judenrat implored the Germans to release the prisoners. Mothers and wives, who were often involved in the release efforts, sustained the pressure and when the promises to them went unfulfilled, they invoked various stratagems to rescue their loved ones from their places of internment.69 In fact, every Judenrat in Kielce Subdistrict that conditions were reasonable. The prisoners lived in haylofts of Poles and could buy food from them. See YVA, O.3/12285, testimony Goldblum 13–14. Reiss was sent to work in Szczanów. In his memoirs, he writes of “starvation, back-breaking work, and beatings and killings for entertainment. In eight weeks I managed to get sick with bronchitis and for a week lay with 40-degree fever in a sick room with a straw-covered floor. […] Many of us jumped over the barbed-wire fence of the Soviet frontier. [...]” See YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 11. See also Rutkowski, “Hitlerowskie obozy pracy dla Żydow,” 112. 68 YVA M-49E/66, testimony Bahn; YVA M-49E/1705, testimony Zalcberg, 2; YVA, O.3/12285, testimony Goldblum, 14; YVA, O.3/2985, testimony Alpert, 3. 69 Raquel Hodara, “The Polish Jewish Woman from the Beginning of the Occupation to the Deportation to the Ghettos,” Yad Vashem Studies 32. In this context, Hodara writes that Adam Czerniaków, head of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat, explicitly mentioned his fears of a women’s rebellion. Emmanuel Ringelblum was also amazed by women who were not afraid of the abductors. Ibid.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

sent Jews to work in Lublin District faced intense stress from the public. In their appeals to the authorities to free the captives, the Judenräte stressed the workers’ dire hardship and the need to support families that had been deprived of breadwinners. They even noted explicitly that the Jewish townspeople knew about the horrific conditions in the labor camps. Through the intervention of the Kielce Judenrat, some workers did return. On January 4, 1941, Hans Drechsel, the municipal kommissar, ordered the quarantining of these returnees in the house at 18 Radomska Street, fearing epidemics and contagious diseases. Some of them were exhausted, frail, and helpless; many soon died.70 June 1940 saw the onset of Plan Otto, a scheme involving the construction of highways, bridges, and essential railroad access routes ahead of the offensive against the Soviet Union.71 The plan entailed increase in labor quotas and all quarries in and around Kielce were placed at the disposal of Kommissar Kny, who supervised the workers who delivered stones with which to widen two highways: Warsaw–Kielce–Kraków and Radomsko–Końskie–Ostrowiec–Lublin. To survive, early in the war many Jews took all manner of auxiliary jobs, even with German companies or at Gestapo and SS offices, that could provide them with one meal a day. Leo Leib Feder, for instance, worked in a gasoline station outside the ghetto, Leon Cymrot in a factory that made beds for the Wehrmacht, Morris Grynszpan in a Wehrmacht parking lot, Helena Brykman in the Wehrmacht barracks as a janitor, Dawid Zelcer as a carpenter for the Gestapo, Bruno (Baruch) Plotni at the railroad repair shop, and so forth.72 The Judenrat did its best to sponsor projects of its own and took 70 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 62–63. See also Piątkowski, “Judenraty w dystrykcie radomskim,” 63–64; testimony Zalcberg in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 85. Goldblum attests that his mother visited the camp where he worked and ransomed him; the two returned to Kielce by train. See YVA, O.3/12285, testimony Goldblum, 14. Joskowicz relates that his father visited his camp, near Hrubieszów not far from the river Bug, and brought him back to Kielce. See YVA, O.3/6782, testimony Joskowicz, 11. Reiss wrote about his return to Kielce in his memoirs: “In October 1940, I returned home. I almost did not recognize my parents. My mother had turned thin and my father had aged as if years had passed since we had separated. […] I returned on the eve of the Sukkot festival. I stood by the window and looked inside through a crack of the shutter. I was afraid to enter all of a sudden, did not want to cause a shock. […]” See YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 11. 71 Wemer Röhr, Die Faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen (1939–1945) (Nacht über Europa) (Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1989), 28; S. Płoski; L. Dobroszycki, J. Garas, M. Getter, eds., Okupacja i ruch oporu w dzienniku Hansa Franka 1939–1945, vol. I, 243. 72 See testimonies in the Darmstadt court records: Feder (April 19, 1966), Cymrot (March 15, 1966), Grynszpan (March 22, 1966), Brykman (March 30, 1966), Zelcer ( January 13, 1966), and Plotni (April 19, 1966).

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special care to find employment for tannery workers, of whom there had been many in the interwar years. The outbreak of war left 600 shoemakers and cobblers jobless and the Judenrat presented the authorities with a plan to employ them. In the fall of 1940, with German consent, a cooperative that employed sixty experts in the manufacture of shoe uppers was established in Kielce; it operated from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. with a lunch break. Through the Judenrat, carpentry workshops were set up that paid male employees four złoty per day and women employees three. Their hours were from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and many of their employees were drawn from the liberal professions and the intelligentsia. The gardens at the farm in the Czarnów neighborhood, where until the war Zionist pioneers trained ahead of emigration to the Land of Israel, also provided jobs under Judenrat supervision for some fifty women and elderly. Many Jewish artisans and intellectuals in Kielce found jobs in lumber factories, where they worked from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with a lunch break. Conditions there were relatively comfortable and, as before, the daily wage was three złoty and four złoty for women and men, respectively. Given the feeling in town that labor protected its practitioners, many individuals launched business ventures.73 Baruch Ginzburg, who with his father moved from Łódź to Kielce in early 1940, testified how his father created a makeshift enterprise that supported both of them. Although shops that sold meat had been shut down and trade in meat had become clandestine and dangerous, there was a black market for meat in Kielce and some Jews were prepared to lay out huge sums for the commodity. Overlooking the danger, Ginzburg père bought meat from butchers and lugged it from house to house, selling it to the well-off. Thirteen-year-old Baruch did not attend school; he spent his days taking care of the household and cooking for himself and his father.74 All the same, relatively few Jews in Kielce found regular work. Some lived off their savings; others engineered sources of income that did not suffice: We would buy old clothes, fix them up or stitch them from the other side, and sell them to non-Jews. That was not enough to provide for nine people, and slowly our savings ran out. […] We got used to the troubles and waited for a miracle. […].75 73 Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, nos. 15, 19, and 24. See also Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: the Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 84; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 57–58 and 70; interview with Blumenfeld. 74 YVA, O.3/9224, testimony Baruch Ginzburg, 5. 75 YVA, O.33/6442, testimony Reis, 12.

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As fewer and fewer Jews went off to work, more and more fell into poverty and regular welfare support from the Judenrat. When thousands of refugees began to stream into town, the Jewish population burgeoned and things only got worse.

Jewish Refugees in Kielce It will be recalled that, by order of Himmler on October 30, 1939, and by Wilhelm Koppe on November 12, several hundred thousand Poles and Jews in the western Polish territories that the Reich had annexed were to be transferred to the Generalgouvernement. By late November, Jewish refugees were flowing into Kielce from various parts of Poland. The first to arrive had been evicted from the Warthegau, Pomerania and Upper Silesia; they were followed by a group from Łódź in which German and Czech Jews were present as well. The Warthegau exiles came in the harsh winter of 1939/40 after being transported in freight cars without food or water and under appalling hygienic conditions. By the time they reached Kielce, most had passed through transit camps, showed the ravages of cold and hunger, and lacked all medical treatment. They reached Kielce battered, injured, starving, and ragged. By March 12, 1940, three large groups of refugees had arrived at Kielce. Some of the newcomers remained in town; others were transferred to nearby localities such as Żarki, Busko-Zdrój, Nowa Słupia, Bodzentyn, Chmielnik, and Suchedniów. In early August 1940, another 3,000 exiles from Kraków arrived, causing a sudden swelling of the Jewish population of Kielce from 18,000 in September 1939 to some 25,400.76 Each incoming group refugees foisted an additional heavy burden on the Kielce Judenrat. The Jewish communities in Kielce Subdistrict, where poverty had been common even before the war, now had to care for thousands, mostly women, children, and elderly, who had arrived totally disposed and exhausted from the torments of their journey. Newly arrived refugees were lodged provisionally in the Jewish gymnasium (high school) and various public buildings and received immediate aid that literally saved their lives. In February 1941, about 1,000 persons in this class arrived in Kielce from Vienna and were housed in a three-story public school building on 26 Saint Alexander Street. A month later, the arrival of three additional transports brought the total number of refugees from Austria to around 3,000. Those who appeared on March 3, 1941, were transferred to Suchedniów, Daleszyce, and Bodzentyn by 76 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 51n175.

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order of the commander of Kielce Subdistrict; those aboard the two transports that arrived on March 6 and March 12, 1941, were distributed among SkarżyskoKamienna, Nowa Słupia, and other communities in the area. Suchedniów, for instance, absorbed 100 Jewish families from Łódź, Sosnowiec, and Dombrowa along with 200 from Płock; Chmielnik took in thousands of refugees from Łódź, Glinica, and elsewhere.77 The Austrian Jews came in well-appointed railroad cars and brought large quantities of food, clothing, and medicines. Most of those from Vienna belonged to the affluent bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia; some were manufacturers, wealthy merchants, doctors, and musicians. Fluent in German or Czech, they spent months struggling to communicate with local Jews. The Austrian Jews who remained in Kielce did not work and encountered adjustment difficulties, particularly in respect of the town’s wretched living conditions. When the ghetto was established two months later, in April 1941, their money served them well in renting relatively good apartments. They sustained themselves on hopes of returning to Austria. After all, they had been told back in Vienna that they would be leaving for a limited time only; they had even been required to buy return tickets.78 Gertrude Zeisler, one of the refugees from Vienna, corresponded from Kielce with her family, which had settled in Switzerland. In her very first letter, Zeisler refers to the possibility of returning 77 On February 1, 1941, the Jewish community in Vienna was informed of a plan to exile 10,000 Jews from the city by May. Between February 15 and March 12, 1941, 5,000 Jews were sent to Poland in five trains. See Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, the Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 11. On February 27–28, 1941, Emmanuel Ringelblum wrote, “[…] 8,000 Jews have arrived from Vienna. 2,000 [out of them were sent] to Opole, to Kielce and other towns.” Three weeks later, on March 18, Ringelblum noted, “Recently four transports of Jews reached Kielce from Vienna, carrying 6,500 people all told. They came with fancy suitcases and in special railroad cars.” See Emmanuel Ringelblum, Diary and Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: September 1939–December 1942 [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and Ghetto Fighters House, 1992), 240, 251. Presumably in both cases Ringelblum was referring to the total number of Jews who had reached Kielce Subdistrict. On the refugees who reached Suchedniów, see Der Kielcer, Bulletin fun Der Gezelschaft Freint fun Kielc un Umgegent in Paris. On the refugees who reached Chmielnik, see Sefer Hazikaron, A NerTomid Unzer Shtetl Chmielnik (no publication date or location noted), 17–18, and Michael Weichert, Idishe Alaynhilf, 232. 78 YVA, O.3.2184, Avigdor Elbaum; Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 151, 154; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydow, 52; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 496–497. On the topic of relations with the refugees from Austria, Alice Birnhak writes in her memoirs: “We have no ties with them. They don’t speak Polish and they are preoccupied with themselves.” Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 160.

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to Vienna: “It is impossible to get out of here even for those who have a visa. This will become possible only if the entire transport is allowed to go home. Rumors to this effect keep going around, but I’ll want to see what I hear.”79 The last wave of refugees reached Kielce on the eve of ghettoization and raised the town’s Jewish population to 27,000 or, according to some s­ urvivors, even more. Although their care burdened the Judenrat immensely, the ­council—unaware that the ghettoization order would be handed down within days—spared no effort to help them.

Food, Welfare, and Healthcare Mosze Pelc, the Judenrat chairman who had pursued social welfare projects for years before the war, swiftly set up a soup kitchen in one of the town’s poor neighborhoods. In due course, it distributed 600–1,200 meals per day at 20 ­groshen per meal, including soup, boiled potatoes, and bread. The kitchen was run by Bella (Balbina) Kolatach, and Pelc personally made sure to supply her with provisions and workers.80 In the first months of the occupation, before the Jews of Kielce were segregated from the population at large, Pelc used the opportunity to establish cooperation with local Poles in matters relating to the Jewish townspeople’s health. As a physician and the former manager of an orphanage and an old-age home, Pelc favored the establishment of a quarantine unit at the Jewish h­ ospital on St. Alexander Street. Pelc ran the hospital after its director, Dr. Sztabholc, moved to Warsaw. To prevent contagion, Pelc made it his goal to assure the maintenance of the highest possible level of public hygiene, especially for the 79 Gertrude Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, Letters from the Kielce Ghetto ( Jerusalem /California: Gefen, 1981), 4. Zeisler, widow of the jurist Max Zeisler, was thirty-seven years old when she arrived in Kielce. Educated in Switzerland, she was a perceptive eyewitness to the goings-on in the occupation period. In Kielce, she shared a flat with four other Jews from Austria. Shortly after reaching Kielce, she made contact with family members in Prague and received money and parcels from them. On August 13, 1942, she sent her last letter from Kielce to Switzerland; less than two weeks later, she was murdered in the Treblinka death camp. In October 1942, a letter sent to her in Kielce was returned to Switzerland stamped, “Left the District.” See Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 2–3. In January 1941, Ringelblum wrote: “From some of the towns of the countryside packages arrive by mail. They say only from around Kielce. […].” See Ringelblum, Diary and Notes, 231. Presumably these were letters and parcels sent by Austrian refugees to relatives who had been scattered in various locations in the Generalgouvernement. 80 Interview with Bella Kolatach, 2002; see also YVA, O.33/3496, and testimony Guterman, 5.

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poor, whose living conditions had been worsening since the first winter of the occupation. To bring this about, the Judenrat sought clothing and donations for the indigent and the suddenly impoverished and provided them with medicines at half-price in the sole functioning clinic. The old-age home took in only those who were penniless, lacking families, and over sixty years old. The orphanage, which received children up to the age of fourteen, served regular meals and offered social and educational activities. In January 1940, when Kielce experienced its first typhus epidemic—which did not spare the homes of the wealthy—Pelc mobilized all Jewish doctors, lay caregivers, and nurses in town and used his contacts with local Poles to obtain enough medicine and vaccines to cure ninety patients and bring the epidemic under control. In February 1940, the Germans ordered Pelc to evacuate the hospital and shift it to two buildings across from the Great Synagogue, at 18 and 20 Radomska Street. Within a month, the relocated hospital was up and running with departments for internal medicine, gynecology, surgery, and special cases. The Judenrat raised funds for the facility from JDC and TOZ.81 The hospital functioned efficiently; even the poorest were allowed to shower and disinfect their clothing there twice a week at no charge and on other days for a fee. The Judenrat set up sanitation committees that sent doctors and nurses to Jews’ apartments to check on sanitary conditions and residents’ health. The Judenrat sanitation department had two motor vehicles available for use in disinfecting clothes and bedding. Seeking to expand the staff of the health department, Pelc organized several courses for nurses in conjunction with TOZ.82 Sara Leichter, in her testimony, describes having replied to a Judenrat advertisement about the opening of one such course. Fifty young women enrolled and the instructors, Drs. Lewinzon, Pittel, and Kleinberg, taught them theory and practice. At its end, the students received diplomas and were hired by the hospital on Radomska Street, which provided some of them with room and board.83 81 Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 37. TOZ was a healthcare organization for Jewish children in Poland. The Kielce branch, established in the early 1930s, was headed by Yitzhak Herszkowicz, Szmul Strawciński, Jochewed Gincburg, Szmul Aron Bursztein, and Avraham Kirszenbaum. After the formation of the Kielce branch, a list was made of the town’s orphans and poorest children, who were in need of immediate help, and doctors who agreed to conduct periodic checks of these children were found. See Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydow, 31. One of the Jews who survived typhus in the ghetto was Rafael Blumenfeld, who was ill for two months. See Blumenfeld interview. 82 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 51. 83 Interview with Sara Leichter, February 2002. In his testimony, Bernard Zelinger notes that there was also a course on sanitation practices for those who would be working as c­ aregivers

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

In the nineteen months between the beginning of the occupation and ghettoization, Kielce had acute difficulties in assuring regular deliveries of essential foodstuffs—an endemic problem in major cities where food supplies and local manufacturing plants had been confiscated or nationalized for German needs. As long as they could travel out of town, Jews in Kielce could procure food in nearby towns and villages. Most such trade took the form of barter, Poles swapping a kilogram of wheat or two kilos of potatoes for clothing, utensils, kitchen implements, tablecloths, curtains, and so forth. Most Jewish traders were women. “The trade is in women’s hands,” Emmanuel Ringelblum remarked, “Men do not dare venture into the street [for fear of abduction].”84 From January 1940 onward, however, Jews were forbidden to leave town except for work purposes, bringing the trade with out-of-town Poles to a halt. This caused food prices in Kielce to skyrocket and created a black market that aggravated the economic disparities—wide to begin with—that beset the local Jewish population. Behind these developments were Poles who viewed the situation in pure business terms, hiking the prices of their goods and lowering those that they paid the Jews for their wares. Once it became clear, however, that the ban on Jews’ leaving town was not being officially enforced, many Jews elected to take the risk and slipped out of the city once again in search of food. There was no real alternative. Zwi Garfinkel, in his testimony, reports that Kielce was experiencing outright starvation by the winter of 1940 and that, in response, he himself became a trader at the age of thirteen, exploiting his proficiency in German to barter with the Germans—swapping picture postcards or bread and chocolate that the Germans would toss at him. His elder brother worked in a factory in town that gave him enough bread to suffice for the whole family. Rafael Blumenfeld’s brother “saved the day” at home by doing smithing jobs for the Germans. His five sisters sat at home and sewed tablecloths, sheets, and covers; his mother would slip out of town and sell them to Poles. Poles in the surrounding communities, aware of the food shortages in Kielce, came to town laden with victuals that they exchanged for commodities of particular value in wartime, such as leather and chemical products, which Jews had cached at the beginning of the occupation as the Germans seized all they could find.85 All of this, however, made only a dent in the food shortage at the Jewish hospital. See Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court, testimony Bernard Zelinger (May 16, 1966). 84 Emmanuel Ringelblum, Writings, vol. B., 196. 85 YVA, O.3/9147, testimony Garfinkel, 10–13; Blumenfeld interview, January 2001 (author’s private archives); YVA, O.3/6782, testimony Joskowicz, 9; Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 160.

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problem because the Poles also lacked foodstuffs in large quantities and what they had could be trafficked only to affluent Jews who could pay for it in cash. The authorities took advantage of the illegality of this trade between Poles and Jews and punished those whom they caught, mainly Poles whom they suspected of violating the ban. To make getting by even harder, local ­authorities established a department to oversee commerce and harass those engaging in it, even though the Jews were mainly trading in used goods. In February 1940, to discourage this mode of business activity, the Germans published an information booklet produced by the Radom District Department of Industry and Trade to show the Poles how diligently they were working to eliminate the “superfluous Jewish element” from the Generalgouvernement economy. In 1940–1941, they published a series of article that, they thought, would foment friction between Poles and Jews and disrupt their commercial relations.86 In the spring of 1940, the Judenrat welfare department increased the number of meals it gave out at the soup kitchen on 4 Szeroka Street to 3,000 lunches daily, apart from the 500 food parcels that the kitchen distributed each week. After queuing at length in the street, the needy, pots in hand, received soup and 200 grams of bread for 20 groshen. At this time, Jews who still owned parcels of land began to raise rabbits, goats, and pigeons for barter and some planted vegetables on plots around their homes.87 The onset of the occupation had done nothing to increase the sources of food in the Generalgouvernement. Therefore, to feed the huge numbers of uniformed Germans in the area, not to mention the Polish and Jewish civilian population, Hans Frank’s administration set out to regulate the supply of food on a permanent basis. As supplies dwindled, the authorities took the obvious step of imposing rationing on the basis of cards distributed by the Judenrat. From September 1, 1940, on, supplies for Jews were limited to bread, ersatz coffee, and sugar, while Poles could buy other commodities in unlimited ­quantities. Jews stood in long lines for sugar that was sometimes replaced by small portions of margarine and vegetables that were unfit even for the preparation of soup.88

86 The publication was called Mitteilungsblatt der Industrie-u Handelskammer für den Distrikt Radom mit den amtlichen Bekanntmachungen der Abteilungen Wirtschaft und Preisebewachung im Amt des Distrikt-Chefs Radom. See also Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 27. 87 YVA, O.3/9147, testimony Garfinkel, 13. 88 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 54, 89.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

To keep the population fed, the Judenrat periodically availed itself of the Idishe Sotsialer Alaynhilf (“Jewish Social Self-Help”), a central social relief organization headquartered in Kraków that had been established in Warsaw in the autumn of 1940. The association, created under pressure from the American Red Cross and the Commission for Polish Relief, acted autonomously and operated with German permission. It obtained most of its funding from JDC in Warsaw and its director, Michael Weichert, was granted a permit by the authorities to move about in the Generalgouvernement and aid the various communities.89 The Alaynhilf sporadically sent the Kielce Judenrat funds to help refugees and run the soup kitchen, as well as shipments of groats, marmalade, flour, margarine, sugar, and ersatz honey.90 Notably, food prices in Kielce rose tenfold in the course of one year, giving this city the third-highest cost of living in Radom District.91 Exploitation and price-gouging continued after ghettoization (from April 1941 on) and whenever the ghetto was open. As the food warehouses emptied in late 1940, Jews began to sell off furniture and other valuables, always for less than full value. On December 13, 1940, the Judenrat reorganized the soup kitchen so that those in line for soup would also receive parcels of dry foodstuffs. It was an especially frigid day, masses of Jews dressed in rags queuing at length and languishing in the freezing cold. The sight of these misérables stirred the empathy of those at the Judenrat social services department, who immediately launched a clothing distribution campaign. First, small children in tattered attire were taken out of the line and gathered nearby in a separate queue so that they would not lose their place. A short time later, they were led to a Judenrat warehouse, where they were given clothes that JDC had sent. By the end of the two-day operation, the destitute Jews of Kielce, children and adults, were equipped with warm clothing, coats, and underwear. Observing the great demand, the social services department began a new campaign, this time for the collection of used clothes, and that month the sanitation department, using money from the Idishe Sotsialer Alaynhilf, purchased a special disinfection machine to stanch epidemics.92 89 Michael Weichert, Idishe Alaynhilf, 1939–1945, 186; Yisrael Gutman and Ina Friedman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 59–60. 90 Weichert, Idishe Alaynhilf, 186. 91 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 53–54, 63, 70; Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 15. 92 Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 46; interview with Blumenfeld.

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Pelc’s Resignation and the Formation of the Second Judenrat In the summer of 1940, nine months after being appointed head of the Judenrat, Dr. Pelc decided to leave his post. The plight of the Jewish public had worsened as never before in the occupation period and Pelc, presumably realizing that he had no response to offer, judged himself unfit for the job. Generally speaking, appointments of Judenrat chairmen were not negotiable with the authorities; appointees did not have permission to resign or decline at their own initiative. Pelc, however, was resolved to step down come what may. Since he had honored the Germans’ every demand, he reasoned that if he could persuade them that he had fallen ill and proposed a suitable successor, he would be freed of the position. Alice Birnhak, Pelc’s niece, reported in her memoirs how Pelc explained the situation to his wife: I can no longer continue at this post with a clear conscience. The Germans are exploiting the Judenrat to rob and hunt down Jews and who knows what else. They call me the “proud Jew” (stoltze Jude) but if I continue at this job I will lose my self-respect. I am a doctor and will content myself with running the hospital, the orphanage and the old age home.93

It is no coincidence that Pelc decided to step down just then, in the summer of 1940. At this time, the families of young slave laborers who had been sent to Lublin District held the Judenrat responsible for the grim living conditions of their offspring and for the situation at large. The Judenrat’s compliance with the order to do everything necessary to fill the labor quota was interpreted by the Jewish public in Kielce as submissive collaboration with the Germans. Consequently, the public lost confidence in the Judenrat and a schism developed between the two. Pelc, it seems, never grasped the essence of the job that had been foisted on him. This man, who had never been suspected of the slightest malfeasance and was appreciated by all of Kielce Jewry as a noted physician and a true humanist, adhered to his previous occupational preferences even in his new capacity, investing most of his time in helping the indigent. Pelc lacked the personality and thinking of a leader and the qualities of a charismatic and experienced steward who could, at the crucial moment, display the rigorous capacity of governance that was needed to steer his community. Pelc was 93 Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 173.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

unsuited to his post not only because he was not aggressive or insightful enough but because he grew steadily weaker by the day and lost his way until he lost all interest. He failed to comprehend that without permanent sources of funding the Judenrat could not surmount the problems created by the occupation regime, and he did not have the fortitude to seek advice and enlist the help of the town’s prosperous members. Too proud to bargain with the Germans, he refused to debase himself even for the sake of the Jewish public. He had nothing to offer the Jews over whom he presided, let alone those who sought his assistance.94 Częstochowa offers a contrasting example. There, the Judenrat funded its activities by borrowing from the rich with the intent of repaying after the war via direct and indirect taxes on the entire Jewish public without exception, collecting a percentage of the salaries that the Germans paid the Jewish slave laborers; and charging fees for various Judenrat services.95 In Kielce, departments for taxation and revenues were set up only after the second Judenrat was elected, in August 1940. By then it was too late; most of the potential sources of funding had been squandered. Kielce had a broad infrastructure of Jewish-owned workshops and a large pool of Jews in essential occupations who could have served both the Wehrmacht and the local civilian authorities. Pelc, however, did not offer the Germans the possibility of exploiting them in town and did not take enough of an initiative to have at least some of the out-of-town labor exchanged for work in it. All these facts yield a portrait of Pelc as a man who had given up, who did not adjust himself to life under occupation, and who could not fight battles. He knew that he had been outmatched, and it is for this reason that he asked to resign after so short a term in office. The Germans assented to Pelc’s request. Practically speaking, Pelc quit in July 1940, although he stayed on as provisional chairman until December 1940, when he took over the management of the Jewish hospital, the orphanage and the old-age home, devoting most of his time to the hospital. His successor at the helm of the Judenrat was Hermann Lewi, a well-known figure in Kielce’s Jewish community. Shortly after assuming the post, Lewi contracted typhus and had to be hospitalized. Several Jews sought to exploit the situation to bring

94 Jehiel Alpert attests: “Pelc was a hard man. When Jews came to him seeking help, he answered frankly that he was there for the Germans and on that account could not help them. […] When he resigned, he said he thanked God for freeing him of this trouble.” YVA, O.3/2985, Alpert testimony, 5–6. 95 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 443–445.

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Pelc back, even approaching the commander of Schupo for this purpose. Pelc, however, refused, saying: “Thank God for freeing me of this trouble.”96 In June 1941, Pelc was arrested by the Gestapo along with the Polish mayor of Kielce, Stanisław Pasteczko, and several other Jews and Poles on suspicion of underground activity. The detainees were imprisoned in Kielce for three weeks and then transferred to Radom. On July 30, 1941, they were placed aboard a transport from Radom to Auschwitz. Dr. Pelc, considered a political prisoner of Jewish extraction, was consigned to Block 13 and placed in a penal brigade as Prisoner 19066. As he worked on the grounds of the camp one day, an SS man stepped on his throat and strangled him to death.97 Hermann Lewi (b. 1880), Pelc’s successor, was well known among the Jews of Kielce. He was a wealthy manufacturer and who had real-estate holdings in town and elsewhere, an economist by profession who specialized in the lumber industry. For years, he had managed production in the Borków factories, and in World War I, along with his wife and other partners, he founded the Henryków furniture works in Kielce. Lewi represented the manufacturers of Kielce in the Sosnowiec Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Shortly before the war, he had been a member of the board of directors of Kielce’s Great Synagogue, a city councilor, a donor to Jewish charitable institutions, the head of an organization of lumber merchants, and a supporter of close cooperation with Poles.98 Most Jews in Kielce recognized him as a manufacturer who had connections and influence, and the Germans had no objections to his appointment. Stepping into Pelc’ shoes in July 1940, Lewi decided to make changes in the structure of the council and set a date in August for elections for the ­twenty-four posts of which the body was composed. The Germans did not meddle with the elections, leaving every sector of Jewish society free to ­nominate its own delegate. Indeed, the representation of all sectors was strongly emphasized in the campaign that ensued. Elected were five white-collar workers and members of the liberal professions, five merchants, four laborers, four artisans, four manufacturers, and two refugees.99 The idea of having the 96 Alpert testimony, YVA, O.3/2985, 5; interview with Sara Leichter, February 2002. 97 For more on Pelc’s stay in Auschwitz, see Sikorski, “Dr. Mojżesz Pelc.” Servetnik testified that two days before Pelc was removed from Kielce, she had seen him bleeding and escorted by an SS man. See testimony Liliana Servetnik, YVA, O.2/516, 1, and Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 180–185. 98 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydow, 83; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 64. 99 Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat, 43; Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 32; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 497; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 63.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

Judenrat include representatives of the refugees who had reached town was essential and important as the refugees had become an integral part of Kielce’s Jewish society. After the reorganization, the Judenrat had the following ten d­ epartments: 1. Presidium. Tasked with representation, correspondence, and apportioning tasks among the other departments. 2. Finance. This department had two subdivisions: Budget, which drew up the Judenrat budget and oversaw spending; and Taxation, which kept taxpayer records and set tax rates. 3.  Legal and Administrative. This department supervised payments, received requests that Jews addressed to the authorities, and referred Jews to the authorities when necessary. 4. Collection. Handled tax collection, assorted payments, and fines. 5. Labor. Routed Jews to workplaces and obeyed the orders of the town’s German labor department. 6. Social services. Welfare, refugee assistance, distribution of clothing, and supervision of public kitchens, the old-age home, the orphanage, and the clinic. 7. Health. Responsibility for the hospital and the isolation ward, medical and nursing staff, and prevention of disease. 8. Supplies. In charge of food supply, distribution of ration cards for food and other essentials such as soap and detergents. 9. Housing. Maintained a registry and arranged lodging for refugees and those evicted. 10. Education. Enrolled school-age children.100 Within the framework of Lewi’s reorganization, the newly elected Judenrat’s social services department moved the orphanage and the old-age home to new quarters at the boys’ school on Poniatowskiego Street, a Jewish community property. This step arose from the need to find temporary lodgings for the refugees who had reached Kielce in the summer of 1940. The Judenrat funded the orphanage with money received from Centos; the old-age home, in turn, was subventioned by JDC in Warsaw. 100 Gazeta Żydowska, 1940, no. 32; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 62–63.

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Both institutions were also aided by a subdistrict trade organization of Jewish artisans, in which any Jewish artisan who ran his own workshop had to be a member by order of the occupation authorities. In 1940, several hundred Jews in Kielce alone still had workshops of their own. Membership dues were 2.5 złoty per month per workshop employee. In general, the products of these workshops served the Wehrmacht but surplus output, if any, was sold to the Polish population as well. By the very fact of its being a subdistrict entity that linked workers in different locations, the organization was able to secure supplemental food rations for its members and their families. In August 1940, the Germans began to compile detailed lists of Jewish property in town. To attain this goal, Jews were given special forms on which they had to list all property in Poland and abroad, including equipment used in their shops, workshops, and warehouses. Toward year’s end, when the authorities and the Judenrat reminded the shop and workshop owners in Kielce that they had to renew their business licenses, it was found that most vendors of food and textiles had disappeared and only 450 Jews took out licenses to operate the enterprises that they owned.101 Hermann Lewi, Pelc’s successor, attempted to accomplish more than his predecessor had. His reorganization of the Judenrat and the projects attendant to it, however, were cut short by the move to the ghetto, by which time Lewi had officially been only three months on the job. During this brief interval, in which thousands of additional refugees came to Kielce and new problems arose, no discernable improvements occurred in the declining conditions of the Jews of Kielce. Again, a comparison is in order. In Radom at this time, living conditions were relatively reasonable. In Częstochowa, the Judenrat, until ghettoization in April 1941, ran some 2,000 improvised “shops” and workshops for Jews, arranged vocational training courses and maintained a systematic budget for health, welfare, and housing.102 Relative to these localities, the Judenrat that functioned in Kielce until ghettoization comes off seeming rudderless and lethargic.

The Jewish Police Talks between the authorities and the Judenrat about the formation of a Jewish police force began in the spring of 1940, even before ­ghettoization. 101 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 66–69. 102 Zvi Rosenwein, “Der Arbeiter-Rat in Chenstochov,” Chenstochov Book [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: Public Committee for the Publication of Memorial Books for the Commemoration of the Częstochowa Community, 1968), 97–98; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 444–445.

From Occupation to Ghettoization   Chapter 2

In ­testimony given in Poland immediately after the war, Jehiel Alpert reported that on Passover 1940 a Jew by the name of Treiger (head of the Judenrat labor department—S. B.) approached him and proposed the establishment of a Jewish militia. The Judenrat, Treiger maintained, needed an auxiliary force. Alpert’s testimony, however, implies that the Gestapo did not allow the Judenrat to operate a militia at that time.103 The idea resurfaced in late 1940 and earned the authorities’ consent this time—presumably due to their realization that the mass influx of Jewish refugees had made a Judenrat auxiliary force essential for the maintenance of law and order. Thus, in December 1940, the Kielce Judenrat invited graduates of high schools or military academies who held matriculation certificates to join the Jewish order service ( Jüdische Ordnungsdienst). The call was widely answered but the Germans agreed to recruit very few applicants—only fourteen, according to Alpert—and even they were considered candidates only. In February 1941, when additional workers for labor out of town were needed, the Germans instructed the Judenrat to use the candidates for the Ordnungsdienst to round up the requisite men.104 According to Mania Feferman, already then, the Jewish policemen could be bribed and some designated labor inductees were able to evade their duty in this manner.105 In Kielce, as in most Jewish communities in the Generalgouvernement, most members of the Ordnungsdienst were refugees from elsewhere, for instance, Vienna, Łódź, Katowice, Warsaw, and even Berlin. Uprooted and under occupation conditions, most of them did not feel part of the local Jewish community and some, intoxicated by their liberties and powers, were driven to treat their fellow Jews cruelly and inflexibly. They believed that compliance and complicity with German orders was a ticket to survival. The local Jews, in contrast, viewed them as foreigners and lackeys of the authorities. Only after ghettoization in April 1941 did the Jewish police in Kielce begin to operate intensively.

103 YVA, 03/2985, testimony Alpert, 2. 104 Alpert attests that on one occasion, as these order police abducted people for quarry labor, he asked a friend who had volunteered for the force why he was helping the Germans. The friend answered, “In Warsaw, if you’re in the militia you don’t starve.” YVA, O.3/2985, 2. See also Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 75. 105 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 19.

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The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)

O

n March 29, 1941, the German governor of Radom District, Karl Lasch, issued an order specifying new housing and economic arrangements in the district, including the formation of ghettos. The ghettoization edict addressed various points: Jewish residential neighborhoods were to be established in each town in the district; the decision on where to situate them had to take into account the lodging and office space needs of the army and the Civil Administration, as well as the residential needs of the Gestapo and the SS. These neighborhoods were to accommodate the entire Jewish population of the locality. Jews were not allowed to use main streets and roads and could not leave the neighborhood without authorization from the head of the subdistrict or the mayor and the local German commander. All remaining Jewish-owned shops on main streets outside the Jewish neighborhoods were to be shut, except for those supervised by trustee companies; all other businesses under Jewish ownership were to be transferred to Germans. The Jewish neighborhood thus formed was to be administered by the Judenrat and the Jüdische Ordnungsdienst (the Jewish order service or Jewish police) in cooperation with the SS and the police. The Ordnungsdienst would maintain law and order in the neighborhood and would prevent the interned from leaving without written authorization. The supervision of Jewish neighborhoods by both German police and “blue” Polish police was not out of the question.1 On February 20, 1941, General Governor Frank issued a directive to the governor of the Radom District ordering the swift and systematic preparation of ghettos for Jews throughout the district by April 5, 1941. The date of this order may have had something to do with Nazi Germany’s plans to invade the Soviet Union that summer. The historian Christopher R. Browning believes,

1 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 53; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 78.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

however, that this linkage should not be overly stressed, as the ghettoization process began before the invasion and continued after it.2 On March 31, 1941, Hans Drechsel, the German commander of Kielce city, issued an order to all townspeople concerning the establishment of a “Jewish residential quarter” (Jüdische Wohnviertel—hereinafter: the ghetto) in Kielce. Its main provisions follow: 1. All Jews domiciled in Kielce shall live in the Jewish neighborhood and shall establish no permanent presence anywhere else. 2. Poles who live in the quarter designated for Jews shall move out by Thursday, April 3 at 12:00 p.m. The transfer shall be handled by the municipal housing department. Non-Jews who fail to leave the quarter shall be forcibly evicted. 3. Jews living anywhere outside the Jewish quarter shall move to their new residences by Saturday, April 5, at 12:00 p.m. Dwellings in the Jewish neighborhood shall be allocated by the housing department of the Judenrat. Jews may bring tools, equipment, and stocks and merchandise from the shops provided they were legally acquired. 4. Jews who do not voluntarily move to the Jewish neighborhood shall be forcibly evicted from Kielce and shall not be allowed to take their belongings.

2 Browning, The Road to the Final Solution, 111–118, 149–150. In the case of Kielce, it is known that the mayor of Kielce wished to create a ghetto as early as January 23, 1941, but the designated area was too small to contain all the Jews in town. To surmount this problem, the mayor made a proposal to Karl Lasch, governor of Radom District: 5,000 Jews would be sent to the nearby small town of Chęciny and Kielce, in exchange, would absorb 2,500 Poles. The district governor demurred, replying that the matter of ghettos entailed in-depth investigation. USHMM Archives, RG-15.031/129. See also Götz Aly, “Endlösung,” Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998), 236; Dieter Pohl, “Die Ermordung der Juden im Generalgouvernement,” Ulrich Herbert, ed., Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939–1945, Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998), 101. The issue was also addressed by Ringelblum, who wrote the f­ ollowing on February 19, 1941: “What are the rationales behind the establishment of the ghetto? It is reasoned that they want to concentrate all the Jews in Poland in four locations: Warsaw, Kraków, Kielce, and Radom. Such a thing is to take place in the event of war with the East. In order to protect the home front.” Ringleblum, Diary and Notes from the War Period, 235, 242.

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  5. Shops, workshops, and other Jewish companies located outside the area of the Jewish neighborhood shall also be transferred to the Jewish quarter, except companies managed by trustees, which shall not be subject to the transfer requirement. Non-Jewish companies shall move out of the Jewish quarter.   6. Non-Jews shall not give refuge to Jews on pain of confiscation of their dwellings.   7. All Jewish dwellings and businesses evacuated in the course of the transfer to the Jewish neighborhood shall be reported to the Judenrat immediately, and those of non-Jews shall be reported to the Polish housing department.   8. The Jewish neighborhood established by the foregoing orders shall be considered an open residential area that non-Jews may enter.   9. Jews shall not leave the Jewish neighborhood for trade or other purposes except via a transit document, equipped with a photograph, issued by the office of the German commander of the city after [said Jews] apply therefore, explaining their reasons and attaching two photographs. 10. Jews employed by non-Jewish companies outside the Jewish neighborhood shall receive group passes for collective exit and reentry between the Jewish neighborhood and the workplace. 11. Jews shall neither enter nor be present on Radomska, Piotrkowska, and Bodzentyńska Streets. 12. The organization of the Jewish neighborhood, maintenance of order, and management of social and sanitation issues shall be the responsibility of the Kielce Judenrat, which shall be answerable to the municipal Kommissar for the faultless implementation of all orders. 13. Non-compliance with the foregoing provisions as well as additional provisions pursuant to this directive shall result in severe penalties and confiscation of property.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Drechsel’s directive was supplemented by three provisions: compulsory labor for youth, an injunction against the posting of obituary notices, and the repeal of a reduction in curfew hours.3 The interesting thing about Drechsel’s ukase, which was based on ­guidelines from District Governor Lasch, is that the prescribed ghetto was to be an open one that Poles could enter and Jews—not just slave laborers— might exit upon the presentation of a special pass from the authorities. The district governor’s order concerning the establishment of open Jewish neighborhoods applied to all Jewish communities in the district, and it is inconceivable that such a decision could have been made without the consent of the highest executive in the Generalgouvernement, Hans Frank. In my opinion, several factors may account for this somewhat aberrant state of affairs: (1) The communities in question were relatively small. (2) After more than a year and a half under occupation, the Jews had been weakened and no one imagined that they might resist. (3) The Germans believed that cooperation between Jews and Poles was altogether unlikely anywhere in the district, which before the war had been known for its manifest hatred and animosity toward the Jews. (4) The construction of fences and walls would have been expensive, at least in the first stage of ghettoization; the Ordnungsdienst, Schupo ­operatives, and Polish police would suffice to restrain the Jews’ movements. A list attached to Kommissar Drechsel’s ghettoization order for Kielce comprised 500–600 buildings along twenty-six streets that had been chosen as the ghetto area. These properties could accommodate 15,000 people at most, while the town’s Jewish population at this time verged on 27,000. The ghetto was situated on northwestern side of town and was bounded by the market square and Piotrkowska Street to the south, the railroad tracks to the west, the tram (kolejka) to the north, and Nowowarszawska and Radomska Streets to the east. The ghetto was partitioned into a large segment and a small one, linked by a passage through Plac Świętego Wojchiecha (St. Wojchiech’s Square)—15 percent of the municipal area in all. Most buildings there were single-storied and lacked running water and sewerage.4 3 Anordnungsblatt für die Stadt Kielce, no. 7/1941, 2–5 (Kielce National Archives, 2643). 4 Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 58; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 80; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 51. See also YVA, TR.10/911, 25; testimony Mosze Mydlo, YVA, M.49.E/85, 1. Section 11 of Drechsel’s ghettoization order lists Radomska, Bodzentyńska, and Piotrkowska Streets as off-limits to Jews. Ultimately, they

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On April 1, 1941, Passover eve, two posters addressed to all townspeople appeared on building walls. The first stated that to implement the ghettoization order efficiently, all owners of horses and carts must present themselves on April 2–5 from 6:00 a.m. on in order to help transfer the evacuees’ possessions; anyone refusing or evading this directive would be punished by the confiscation of their carts. Payment for transport was set at 5 złoty per single-horse-drawn cart, 7.5 złoty for a two-horse cart, and 20 złoty for those who also owned a trailer. No price-gouging would be permitted. As the Germans reckoned that the evacuees could not remove all the furniture, machinery, merchandise, and other belongings from their shops and dwellings to the ghetto in the short time available to them, they announced on the second poster that all furniture and other equipment left behind after the transfer to the Jewish neighborhood would be surrendered by Jews to the Judenrat and by non-Jews to the municipal administration. There would be no compensation for abandoned goods, sale or barter was absolutely forbidden, and violators would be punished by confiscation.5 Although the Germans planned the ghettoization campaign carefully, its implementation proved to be a very messy affair. Jews who had been ordered to vacate their dwellings did not know what new lodgings they would occupy and their concern about finding a mover who could move the possessions in the small time allotted, as well as indecision about what to take and what to leave, plunged the town into turmoil. Some Jews preferred to leave Kielce and try their luck in nearby villages. Young Dawid Rubinowicz of Krajno, one such village, told his diary the following on April 1, 1941: A Jew from Kielce passed by here and said that as of today there would be a Jewish neighborhood in Kielce. […] Jews who have any kind of relatives outside the boundaries of the neighborhood left Kielce and went to their families. […] All of our relatives in Kielce, what are they to do now? Uncle is coming from Kielce today to get advice on what to do. Father said he should come for the time being. […] He went to order a cart for the next day.6

5 6

were included in the ghetto area, presumably due to constraints that arose as the Jews were being removed to their new quarter. Bodzentyńska and part of the market square had Jewish workshops under the management of Gerda Buergenthal. As the façades of these houses faced the “Aryan” side, Poles had access to them while Jewish workers had to enter through backyards. See YVA, TR.10/911, 25. Anordnungsblatt für die Stadt Kielce, no. 7/1941, 10. The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz, Derek Bowman, ed. and tr. (Redmond, WA: Laing Research Services, 1982), 11–12.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

The next day, April 2, he continued: Early this morning Uncle went to get the things from Kielce. All day long carts went by with possessions. […] All the passengers were crying ceaselessly. […] It is already nightfall and Uncle has not returned. […] They arrived only at 2:00 a.m.7

Also hoping that living conditions would be better in a small community than in the big city Rafael Blumenfeld’s father and two sisters left Kielce for nearby Bialogon, and others moved to Bodzentyn and other towns in the area. Concurrently and without the intervention of the authorities, Jews and Poles began to negotiate over dwellings and terms for moving the possessions. It wasn’t easy to obtain a horse and wagon to transport our necessary belongings to the new place. The streets were crowded with countless men, women and children, who went as if on parade with mattresses around their necks, dragging on their backs packages and sacks and pushing hand carts and loaded trolleys.8

Poles and Jews scrambled in the streets of Kielce in search of places to live. Jews who had to vacate the area now designated for exclusive “Aryan” use tried to swap apartments and exchange furniture and other belongings with Poles who lived in the area set aside as the ghetto. There were also opposite cases, of Poles who were forced to relocate from the area allocated for the ghetto and attempted to exchange dwellings with Jews on the “Aryan” side. Information about the condition of apartments was shared universally and some Poles, ignoring German threats, agreed to safeguard Jewish property, especially leftover inventories that could not be moved to the ghetto. Porters and cart owners exploited the situation to profiteer. The destitute found accommodations very hard to arrange; the distribution of flats proceeded amid great disorder. Each person was determined to get a place to live in before the last minute. Persons of wealth and influence sought out the choice apartments in the destined area, while the thousands who converged on the Judenrat headquarters cried and begged for a spot.9 7 Ibid., 12. 8 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 22. 9 Ibid., 21.

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The Judenrat housing department made herculean efforts to locate apartments and rooms for Jews who found it hard to do so on their own. The testimonies available to us indicate that the allocation of dwellings was characterized by corruption, disarray, and bribery; those lacking cash in hand barely got a corner to live in. Several family members were lodged in each room and generally had to share a small kitchen and an outhouse in the yard. Often Jews arrived at an apartment that they had rented from its Polish owners only to find another family already occupying it.10 An area that had had a population of around 10,000 before ghettoization now held some 27,000. Each flat housed three or four families under conditions that ranged from insufferable to life-threatening. Drechsel, fearing disease and epidemics, exercised his authority and ordered the ghetto sealed and fenced off, although it was supposed to remain open. On April 5, 1941, the deadline for relocation to the ghetto, Drechsel announced in a notice that the entire ghetto area was tainted with pollution: 1. The Jewish residential neighborhood is hereby declared a closed area, tainted by pollution. 2. Entry to and exit from this area is forbidden to everyone, without exception. 3. All transit passes and other permits are no longer valid. 4. Inside the closed area, for such time as the area is declared closed, the Jewish police shall be subordinate to Schupo in Kielce. 5. Non-compliance with this order shall result in severe punishment, with no leniency or consideration of circumstances given.11

10 Yestimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 6. The Blumenfelds entered an apartment at 6 Jasna Street that the Judenrat had assigned them. The flat had four rooms and an outhouse and well in the yard; eventually, nine people lived in it. Interview with Rafael Blumenfeld ( January 2001, Tel Aviv). Szmul Yoskowicz and his family were assigned to a one-room apartment in the ghetto; in due course, another family joined them, creating an awful state of overcrowding. “I remember the day of the move to these streets that were later called a ghetto. [...] So many Jews, each trying to salvage something and no means of transportation. [...] They [the Germans—S.B.] gave very little advance notice, a matter of hours, and everyone had to assemble in the ghetto [...].” Testimony Yoskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 12. Zwi Garfinkel’s family, which moved to a flat at the edge of the ghetto shortly before ghettoization, was joined by a religious family of seven from Łódź, which settled in a back room that had once been a shop. Testimony Zwi Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 15–16. 11 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 84n15.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

The ghetto was encased by a high fence made partly of wood and partly of stone and topped by barbed wire. Along the perimeter, signs were posted every few meters in Polish, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew: “Closed Area, Entrance Forbidden.” Signs at the ghetto gates identified the zone as a “Jewish Neighborhood” and as a venue “Infected with Contagious Diseases.”12 The Judenrat set up its new headquarters across from the Great Synagogue on the northern corner of Nowowarszawska, Starowarszawska, and Przedmieszcze Streets. Along with the office of the Judenrat chairman, the building housed five long-standing departments—labor, taxation, finance, supplies, and education—and new departments that came into being upon ghettoization, such as the construction department, established by the Judenrat to deal with the flimsy infrastructure of the forlorn and decrepit ghetto area. This department also handled garbage and waste disposal and was supposed to deal with sidewalk maintenance, installation of gates at building entrances, and construction of wooden bridges over the Silnica River, which cut through the ghetto. At a later time, an agriculture department was set up to exploit arable areas within the ghetto and a post office in the Judenrat building to serve the ghetto’s residents.13 With the move to the ghetto, control over the Jews passed from the Civil Administration to the Gestapo and the SS. Policing was tasked to Ernst Thomas, chief of Cripo, and Hans Gaier, head of Schupo, with “blue” Polish police subordinate to the latter.14 The ghetto was tenanted under the supervision of German police from the 305th Police Battalion, who remained in town until February 1943. In the first six weeks of its existence, the Germans did not dare enter the ghetto and the Jews—even those who worked at jobs deemed essential—did not leave it. Notably, Drechsel may have sealed the ghetto for an additional reason: the time it would take to issue passes for Jews leaving for work. Six weeks after its formation, the ghetto was opened and those with passes were allowed to leave it. Passes were valid for one day only and were inscribed with the date, time, and purpose of departure, along with information of similar nature. Signed by Schupo chief Gaier on behalf of the 12 Testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 5; testimony Mosze Meir Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 84. See also testimony Wacław Ceberski in Fąfara, Gehenna, 90. 13 YVA, TR.10/911, 26; Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, vol. 41; see also Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 20. 14 Geier file, YVA, M.21.1/816.

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town ­commander, they were given to the Judenrat, which distributed them to those who had been posted to labor outside the ghetto. Most recipients of these permits labored in the quarries, the Ludwików foundry, the Henryków lumber processing plant, the Wehrmacht repair workshop (Heeres-Kraftfahrpark— HKP), and the vehicle fleet of the police battalion. Those involved in waste removal, collection of abandoned property, and sundry jobs in Germans’ homes and offices received passes as well. There were also personal permits valid for one month, given to those whose jobs outside of Kielce required them to circulate within the district or even in other areas of the Generalgouvernement. The ghetto was entered and exited via two gates that were guarded by German and Jewish police. The main gate—on Nowowarszawska Street, near the Judenrat building—doubled as a crossing point to the other section of the ghetto; the other was near Okszeja Street.15

The Jewish Ghetto Police In April 1941, the authorities advertised their intent to recruit eighty Jews for service in the Ordnungsdienst. Among the 500 who responded, the Schupo commanders preferred refugees from Vienna and Łódź but also accepted local Jews and fugitives of other provenance. Initially, two twenty-one-man squads were formed. One of them, headed by Genek Guttman, was stationed in the Judenrat building; the other, commanded by Otto Glanttstein, established its headquarters on Okszeja Street, across the Silnica River.16 Both commanders were refugees from Vienna. The force grew to eighty-five by May 1941 and 120 in early 1942. Additional commanders were appointed: Singer for the detail in the Judenrat building and Kurt Schlesinger with the team across the river. Each member of the force had a serial number and was issued with a dark blue uniform, a brim cap, an armband bearing the inscription “Jüdische Ordnungsdienst,” and a wooden or rubber truncheon.17 The Judenrat building also accommodated a Schupo office and, in its courtyard, a lockup with several cells. There Jewish detainees were held under the watchful eyes of the Jewish policeman Bolek (Boris) Birenbaum, until a decision about their disposition could be made. There was another jail at Police Station 2, on Okszeja Street. The courtyard behind Schupo headquarters near 15 Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66; Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 56; Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 28. 16 Ludwigsburg Archive, Darmstadt court, testimony Avraham Meir (March 24, 1966). 17 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 21; testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66. See also testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 5.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

the main gate evolved into an execution grounds for offenders including Poles caught inside the ghetto.18 The ghetto police in Kielce had judicial powers and, as in most ghettos, were authorized to enforce sentences. The boundaries of the criminal and administrative judicial purview of the Jewish police varied from ghetto to ghetto; in Kielce, the force was plainly under the very close and domineering supervision of Schupo and, although it was part of the Judenrat, it took its orders directly from the Schupo and Gestapo commanders. In early 1942, Kurt Schlesinger was sent to Auschwitz, Singer disappeared, and the two Ordnungsdienst squads were merged. Bruno Schindler, a German Jew who had reached Kielce from the Łódź ghetto, took over as head of the force and an Austrian Jew named Gustav Spiegel was named his deputy. The Jewish police carried on in a high and ostentatious manner in the face of the hunger and poverty that typified the ghetto, indulging in evening drinking fests in the ghetto’s restaurants and eateries and exploiting the ostensible protection that the authorities gave them. Since most of them had arrived from Austria and Germany, they looked down on the Jews of Kielce as Ostjuden—lowly Polish Jews. Beatings were a common sight, especially of those who broke the law. The Jewish police went much farther than the German orders required and defied the efforts of the Judenrat chairman to rein them in. In addition, they were exempt from taxes, enjoyed supplemental food rations, demanded and received bribes from Jews, and extorted funds from them. All in all, the Jewish public viewed them as a corrupt element, held them in fear and considered them an inseparable part of the German apparatus that controlled the city.19 An interesting testimony about the Jewish police was given by Nathan Grynberg, who joined the force when the ghetto was formed: One hundred and twenty people served on the police [...]. There were good ones and there were “others.” [...] They received a salary and each 18 YVA, TR.10/911, 26, 76. Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 55. 19 Rafael Blumenfeld interview, January 2001 (author’s personal archives). See also Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 68. Bahn testified that people were more frightened of the Jewish police than of the Germans and, as evidence, recounted a case in which Jewish policemen accompanied the Gestapo in a search for money and jewelry among the ghetto population. At one point, a German policeman searched through the boots of a woman who had hidden her diamond earrings in them but found nothing. When the German went away to search someone else, she thought the danger had passed and shoved the boots deep under her bed. A Jewish policeman, noticing her behavior, called the German back to search more intensively. The earrings were found; the woman was sent to Auschwitz, and her death certificate reached the ghetto some time later. See testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna, 75, 77.

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In Enemy Land policeman had a function. The police force had a store [managed by Grynberg; his wife ran the policemen’s shop—S. B.] [...]. The policemen had unethical duties. If a Jew managed to obtain a sack of potatoes outside the ghetto and wanted to smuggle it into the ghetto, he could do it only with the help of a Jewish policeman and had to bribe the policeman to make it work.20

The First Months The main casualties of ghettoization were workshops and businesses that had operated in town by official dispensation until their eviction. Of 456 Jewishowned shops and businesses that existed in Kielce in January 1941, only 225 remained within the ghetto confines. Yitzhak Kopel’s shop on the corner of Radomska and Bodzentyńska Streets became the headquarters of the Judenrat’s department of posts. One could inquire about the addresses of ghetto residents there; over time, the department officials also handled applications for ghetto exit permits. Since compulsory labor had not been revoked, officials from the Judenrat labor department worked feverishly to gather addresses in case they were asked to round up workers. The Judenrat ordered the tenants in each building to establish a committee and post signs bearing the occupants’ names. Shopkeepers and business owners had to report their new addresses to the Judenrat on pain of losing their livelihood. The trustee company moved its offices into the ghetto and effectively took over its management. Upon ghettoization, all rental contracts and terms previously stipulated among Jews or between Jews and Poles were nullified. At the outset of the ghetto era, all Judenrat clerks were mobilized to help the housing department, which drew up a register of ghetto residents and helped those left without a roof over their heads to find lodgings.21 During the first months of ghetto life, getting organized was everyone’s priority. No one knew how long the new conditions would persist and most people strove to maintain reasonable lives. As there were no schools in the ghetto, parents made clandestine efforts to tutor young offspring. Residents took comfort in any improvement, however miniscule, in their harsh lives.

20 Testimony Nathan Grynberg (April 4, 1966), Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court. 21 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 35 and 60.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Mania Feferman, who together with her husband shared a room with two other couples, writes in her memoirs: The compensation for the cramped quarters was the vegetable garden, a patchwork affair, and the few fruit trees it had. This was our little island of joy. Each morning my uncle’s daughters, Mania and Dorka Kopf, taught children there from the first and second grades. Teaching may have been forbidden, but to teach and see how children learn so quickly, to look at them playing and hear their laughter, was a gladdening thing.22

One could do many things at the ghetto post office: send and receive letters and money, make telephone calls to other Polish cities, and send and receive parcels up to two kilograms in weight, provided the sender has confirmed that the package passed sanitary inspection. The mails were irregular and some parcels sent to the ghetto got lost or arrived with contents missing. Overall, however, the post ran on an orderly basis and gave help and hope to some ghetto inhabitants.23 Gertrude Zeisler’s letters to her family in Switzerland indicate that news about important world events filtered into the ghetto. Her letters to and from Switzerland, she states, arrived within seven or eight days and the Germans did not limit the number of parcels sent to the ghetto. One presumes that the parcel privilege was invoked mainly by refugees who had reached Kielce from Reich territory; most Jews in the ghetto, in contrast, were of Polish origin and had no one to send them anything, especially given the grave shortages that had overtaken the Generalgouvernement. Indeed, Zeisler’s relatives in Prague sent her unlimited parcels containing rare delicacies and books.24 It is blatantly clear that refugees from Vienna were treated differently from Polish Jews, at least in the first months of their presence. An obvious disparity opened between the groups because the former, having brought money with them, could afford more comfortable housing than the latter. They set up 22 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 22–23. Zvi Zelinger, who was eight years old upon ghettoization and whose family was among the wealthiest in the ghetto, later testified that he remembered a very fine house in the ghetto where tutoring took place in the gardens in summer; and that he also was tutored in his home by a young girl. She was replaced by fourteen-year-old Yankele, a gifted artist whom Zelinger calls “the psychologist.” A year later, Yankele died of starvation in the ghetto. See testimony Zvi Zelinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 8–10. 23 YVA, M.49/E/66, testimony Bahn. See also Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 87. 24 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 4.

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their own organizations, refrained from mixing with the masses, were exempt from labor in local enterprise, and stayed in touch with their families around the world. In a letter to her relatives in Switzerland posted on June 5, 1941, two months after ghettoization, Zeisler writes: “[…] Thanks for your offer to send me money […] but there is very little here to buy and everything is very expensive. I am well-supplied with foodstuffs sent to me by my relatives in Prague and really don’t lack for anything […].”25 Yet the move from Vienna to Poland, the shock of the encounter with the “Ostjuden,” and the abrupt disengagement from family members across the Generalgouvernement traumatized many of them. Some of the Viennese attempted to contact family members who had been sent to Lublin District and elsewhere in Poland, only to find this harder to do than to correspond with relatives in the Reich. The sudden uprooting from Western culture and the forced transfer to a society imprisoned under conditions of severe poverty and hardship plunged these refugees into a crisis of morale and an acute despair that soon claimed lives, particularly among the ill and the elderly.26 Epidemic typhus was one of the ghetto’s gravest afflictions. To contain it as best it could, the Judenrat set up a sanitary department with twenty doctors and several dozen nurses and sanitation workers. The ghetto was divided into seventeen subzones, each with a local sanitation committee headed by a doctor and augmented by a healer and two sanitation workers. The Judenrat appointed a sanitation officer in each building to look after hygiene in the building and its surroundings. The Ordnungsdienst established a special sanitation division to deal with epidemics, quickly locate the ill, and help the health department. The Judenrat formed a cleaning company to impose some control over the problem of cleanliness in the ghetto, funding its operations by raising rent by half a złoty per person per month. The cleaning company worked in tandem with the doctors and the Judenrat and took direct orders also from the German administration. Finally, the Judenrat ordered all Jewish males aged 16–45 to spend one day per week doing cleaning and tidying work in the ghetto; shirkers were threatened with punishment.27 Ghettoization exacerbated the struggle for food: Each day the Judenrat gave out soup to hungry Jews who stood in long lines which winded through the streets of the ghetto. More and more 25 Ibid., 4. 26 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 88. 27 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 57–59.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3 people, wasting away or bloated from hunger, roamed the streets with their hands spread open while crying and begging for a slice of bread. Some of those struck by starvation poked through the garbage and ate straw.28

Obtaining food was everyone’s preoccupation, bread was the only topic of conversation, and everyone in the ghetto knew Szmil-Zelig Trembecki and his son Szaja-Shmelke, who as the burial society’s undertakers never lacked for work. To keep ghetto residents from clashing with each other over housing and money, the Judenrat set up an arbitration tribunal that was supposed to work in coordination with the Ordnungsdienst. The Judenrat also had a court that adjudicated financial disputes and attacks against Judenrat members. According to Mosze Meir Bahn, the ghetto court usually convened only after a Jewish policeman or a Judenrat official lodged a complaint. Bahn stresses that although the excessive rights of the Ordnungsdienst and the Judenrat, which worked hand-in-hand, embittered the ghetto population,29 the difficult living conditions and the constant fear of death led to apathy and powerlessness.

Daily Life between Ghettoization and Liquidation In June 1941, the Gestapo uncovered Polish resistance activity in Kielce, that had begun in September 1939 and was directed against the deportation of Poles to Germany for forced labor. Collaboration between Poles and Jews was a well known feature of the underground, notably in the association of Dr. Mosze Pelc and the Kielce’s Polish mayor, Stanisław Pasteczko. Before the month was out, the Gestapo arrested Pelc, Pasteczko, Dr. Gerszon Harkawy (a former doctor in the Polish Army), one Dr. Kozlow, and Dr. Oskar Servetnik, a ­dentist. Several Poles were arrested along with them, including the director of the municipal hospital, Marion Gustek. According to testimony given by Liliana Servetnik, the dentist’s daughter, the Gestapo proposed that the Jewish doctors collaborate with them but met with refusal.30 The prisoners were held in Kielce for three weeks and were then transferred to Radom, whence they were placed aboard a transport to Auschwitz on July 30, 1941. Three weeks 28 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 23. 29 Testimony Bahn, Fąfara, Gehenna, 76, and testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66. 30 Testimony Liliana Servetnik, YVA, 02/516, 1.

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after the Jewish doctors left Kielce, their families received a cable from the local Gestapo informing them that their loved ones had “died of illness.”31 Hermann Lewi, Pelc’s successor at the helm of the Judenrat, faithfully did everything the Germans asked of him. Alice Birnhak, a clerk for the Judenrat, writes in her memoirs that the first thing Lewi did upon taking office was to place his family members on the Judenrat payroll and to put his son in charge of all Judenrat divisions.32 Everyone who worked for the Judenrat tried to arrange jobs with the council for their families. This caused the Judenrat apparatus to swell to around 400 salaried employees in 1942. The beneficiaries of these jobs did not conceal from the public the perks they were given; everyone in the ghetto knew that the Judenrat and the Jewish police lacked for nothing even as the ghetto rank-and-file starved to death.33 In his monumental study on the Judenrat, Isaiah Trunk found that the social structure in most ghettos acquired a pyramid shape with senior Judenrat officials and members of the Jewish police at the top—privileged groups that were free of the obligation to work and untroubled by the menace of deportation to labor camps. Generally, too, they enjoyed preference in the distribution of food because, formally or informally, they could lay hands on a share of the spoils of the smuggling, the clandestine bakeries, the illegal eateries, and the black-market commerce.34 In the Kielce ghetto, there was such constant rage toward the Judenrat and its officials that the council, fearing acts of revenge, set up a special auxiliary section of the Ordnungsdienst (Pomocnicza Służba Porządkowa) to secure the officials’ homes and protect the high-and-mighty from the fury of their public.35 31 Jan Sikorski, “Dr. Mojżesz Pelc,” Przegląd Lekarski 1988: 45, no. 1, 181. See also testimony Liliana Servetnik, YVA, 02/516, 1. Servetnik testifies that two days before Pelc was transferred from Kielce she saw him bleeding and accompanied by an SS man. Later, when she herself reached Auschwitz, Servetnik met Drs. Kleinberg and Krause, who had been brought to Auschwitz from Kielce in early 1942 and served as doctors in the camp. The two told her that her father and Dr. Pelc stayed alive about a month after the telegram reporting their death was received in Kielce, and that afterward they were brutally murdered. Dr. Servetnik was thrown several times out the window of a shack until he died, and Dr. Pelc was murdered by a German who stepped on his throat and crushed it. See also Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 180–185. 32 Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 173. 33 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 64. That ghetto head Hermann Lewi had a basement full of foodstuffs, Szaja Salzberg states, was common knowledge. See testimony Szaja Zalcberg, YVA, M.49/E/1705. Alice Birnhak also tells that in the ghetto Lewi increased his “wealth as did the Jewish policemen.” See Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 185. 34 Trunk, Judenrat, 337. 35 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 41.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Ghettoization caused a delay in the issuance of death and marriage certificates, which previously had been produced without difficulty. The delay stemmed, among other reasons, from the sealing of the ghetto while the population registry was kept on the “Aryan” side of town. On May 13, 1941, some five weeks after the formation of the ghetto, the Polish mayor of Kielce sent the German commander of the city a memorandum as follows: Since the establishment of the Jewish neighborhood, there have been no witnessed signatures for 178 death and twenty-nine marriage certificates. According to the guidelines, every death certificate requires the signatures of a doctor and two witnesses and a marriage certificate entails certification by a rabbi. Unsigned documentation has no legal validity. In this context, it must be assured that Szmul Trembecki, Sasza Rozenbojm, and Rabbi Abeli Rappaport of the “Elders Committee” should be given passes allowing them to visit the population registry office. I should add that since these three were associated with the population registry office in regard to the establishment of the Jewish neighborhood and the activities attendant thereto, their presence now for the issuance of files from said office is also essential.36

Given that the ghetto had been sealed off by then, one assumes that the death and marriage certificates at issue dated from the pre-ghettoization period. By implication, Jews’ marriages, births, and deaths continued to be listed in the Polish population registry from the onset of the German occupation at least to the establishment of the ghetto—although one cannot tell how long before ghettoization those 178 Jews had died and those twenty-nine couples got married. On June 5, 1941, the Germans renamed fifty-eight streets in town: Piłsudski Square (Rynek Piłsudskiego) was renamed as Adolf Hilter Square, Kilińskiego Street as Government Street, and so on. Street names in the ghetto were “Judaized”—Krzyna Street became the Abramgasse; Orla Street the Adlergasse; Nowy Śzwiet the Arongasse; Stolarska Street the Dawidgasse; Dąbroska Street the Feigenblattgasse; Czicha Street the Glücklichgasse; Jasna Street the Grünspangasse; Okrzei Street the Jerusalemergasse; Przechodnia Street the Saragasse; Szydłowska Street the Jojnegasse, and so on—Knoblauchgasse, Maselgasse, Mojschegasse, Rabinerstrasse, Radomerstrasse, Silbersteingasse, Treifegasse.37 The new names speak for themselves and obviously were meant 36 Kielce National Archives, 2651. 37 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 101–102. In September 1941, Ringelblum wrote in his journal: “In Kielce the streets have names like these: Treife Alley...

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to ridicule the Jews. The Germans insisted that the Jews record the new street names on outgoing mail; postal items that carried the old street names were returned to sender. Advertisements in the Gazeta Żydowska had to use the new names as well. Except for several lectures and a few attempts to organize football matches, in the ghetto there was almost no cultural activity, no schools were opened, and there was no evidence any public religious life.38

Labor In the summer of 1941, Kielce had a Jewish population of around 27,000, including some 2,000 from Austria, Germany, and German-annexed western Czechoslovakia.39 Jews who moved their businesses to the ghetto were able to start over and carry on; others had to live off their savings. After six weeks of ghettoization had passed and the closure was revoked, the Germans began to distribute special work permits to Jews who held essential jobs outside the ghetto, such as those at the railroad, the quarries, flourmills, feather-processing factories, the Ludwików foundry, and the Henrików lumber enterprises. Since most such workplaces entailed hard physical labor at a pace few could sustain, some workers disappeared to avoid continued service, again causing the Judenrat trouble in meeting its labor quotas. Soon after the ghetto was opened, the Germans nabbed some 1,000 Jews off the street and confined them in the Great Synagogue, which they had turned into an ad hoc lockup. The captives were sent away to build roads in the Bełżec area, but only after the commander of Schupo set dogs on them.40 The Judenrat, responsible for labor supply, tried to help those who had been inducted for especially arduous labor. The Germans’ strict supervision and unyielding Jerusalem Street... Rebbe Street... Yonah Street... Abraham Street... Garlic Street.... Fig-leaf Street... Flea-bitten Street... By the ghetto gate is a sign in four languages.” Ringelblum, Diary and Notes, 320. 38 Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66. 39 Gazeta Żydowska, cited by Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 89. 40 Testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna, 85. Eliezer Feiner testifies that he worked in a group of six Jews at a fuel station in a hut near the railroad station. Whenever a train carrying barrels meant for fuel storage arrived, the men rolled the barrels down the street and stacked them three high on boards near a spacious yard. When trucks heading eastward toward the Russian front stopped at the station, as they did every day, the six workers filled the barrels with a hand pump and loaded them aboard the trucks. Testimony Eliezer Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 17.

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treatment of workers outside the ghetto, however, as well as the Jews’ fear of abduction to unknown locations outside of town, made many wary of responding to the Judenrat’s entreaties. Most sought work inside the ghetto. Attempting to recruit workers for external jobs, the Judenrat ran advertisements in the Gazeta Żydowska, the propaganda organ of the Generalgouvernement. According to one such advert, the Rosengolc brick works offered fifteen jobs in return for lodging, a salary, and a kilogram of bread per week; applicants and were asked to apply to the Judenrat labor department.41 The Judenrat placed similar advertisements to recruit labor for the HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft) factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, promising those interested that they would be driven each week in a company vehicle and taken home a week later, on Sunday. Lodging and salary were assured. Other ads sought laborers for the Sitkowska quarry, the Arendowski-Barcza firm, and the Rokoszyn-Bukowka quarries, all of which were out of town; again, return transport to Kielce was assured. In late 1941, the Jewish Social Self-Help (ŻSS) in Kraków joined the propaganda campaign to recruit workers for the HASAG works in Skarżysko-Kamienna by promising, in an advertisement in the Gazeta Żydowska, a daily lunch at the Judenrat kitchen for all family members of those volunteering for work in Skarżysko-Kamienna—until further notice.42 Jews who managed to transfer their businesses to the ghetto opened shops and workshops that, together with pre-existing businesses in the ghetto area, formed an infrastructure of 225 enterprises, as against 456 that Jews had owned in January 1941. This was enough to employ several hundred Jews. By late 1941, the ghetto boasted factories and workshops in metalwork, upholstery, tile-­making, carpentry, window frames, glazing, paint manufacture, tanning, shoemaking, and so on. With the ghetto half-starved, many were willing to take any job within its confines but found themselves competing for far too few openings.43 In March 1942, the Germans demanded that the Judenrat set up a large workshop on Bodzentyńska Street, on the edge of the ghetto. Since no venue suitable for such a facility existed in that area, small workshops were set up under the direction of Judenrat members Gutman and Buergenthal and only 41 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 97. 42 Ibid., nos. 80, 96, 97. 43 Jehiel Alpert testifies that until the formation of the ghetto his family owned a building supply shop. Upon ghettoization, the shop remained on the “Aryan side” and since as his family could not afford to keep the business afloat, he turned to tutoring for a livelihood. Testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2983, 6.

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expert professionals were hired. In all, 382 professionals and twenty-four clerks were employed there, the latter in charge of sales and offices. The workshops employed watchmakers, mechanics, photography experts, laundry workers, textile manufacturers, experts in paper manufacture and paper products, hatters, furriers, and woodcarving experts. Eighty-seven Jews produced shoes and 211 staffed a needlework shop.44 Germans snapped up the output due to its fine quality; Poles could order it as well. Prices were partly fixed and partly negotiable. Nevertheless, only a small fraction of the ghetto population found steady work and even these meager offerings dwindled as time passed. According to data from the Judenrat labor department from July–August 1941, only 60 percent of 5,300 able-bodied Jewish males listed in the ghetto were employed: 2,500 outside the ghetto and, inside the ghetto, 320 craftsmen and 400 ­employees of the Judenrat apparatus, including the Jewish police.45 Unemployment rates among women were even higher, mainly because hard physical labor left them with fewer employment options. Very few women worked outside the ghetto except those taken for day jobs usually involving cleaning, laundry, or weeding. It is a safe estimate that the employment rate of women in the ghetto barely reached 25 percent. In this context, Zeisler wrote on November 7, 1941: If there was only a chance of getting some sort of work. But unfortunately that is impossible, especially for women. My friend tried for an entire day to collect potatoes. She gave up despite the fact that she is a hard worker and younger than me. At night she was on the verge of collapse, and all she had achieved was that her last dress and her shoes were ruined… the world is looking very bleak.46

Exceptions existed but were few and generally reserved for true experts. Helen Laufer, an expert seamstress and owner of a fashion store in Łódź, reached Kielce with her husband and sister in 1940 and, as a professional seamstress, was able to make a living from sewing. After the formation of the ghetto, 44 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 80. Gerda Buergenthal-Rosenholtz testifies that her husband worked as a courier for the Gestapo and that at some point the Germans ordered him to establish workshops where Jews could toil for the Reich’s war effort. The facilities were set up on the ghetto border and her husband ran them until the ghetto population was deported. See Ludwigsburg archives, Darmstadt court, testimony Gerda Buergenthal-Rosenholtz, June 20, 1967. 45 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 99. 46 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 10.

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she and her sister were taken each morning to work in a tailoring workshop. “At work we were given bread and a meal and often had a chance to do some work after hours and earn a little money. The Germans’ wives were glad when we sewed them a dress or a coat, so our lives weren’t all that bad [...].”47 The combination of mass unemployment in the ghetto and the scanty response to offers of terrifying jobs outside the ghetto created a grave economic problem that the Judenrat strove ceaselessly to overcome.

Food In Kielce, like everywhere in the Generalgouvernement, the control over the food supply fit into the regime’s larger plan to use the area as a breadbasket for the Reich. The German historian Götz Aly writes that the domestic economic problems of the Generalgouvernement forced Governor Frank, up to July 1940, to import 150,000 tons of grain for bread from the Reich instead of exporting it, and that in 1940–1941 he was ordered to refrain from exporting cereals in significant quantities. By 1941–1942, in contrast, Aly writes, the Germans were exporting 100,000 tons of grains from the Generalgouvernement, and in 1942–1943 they boosted the quantity to 500,000 tons. Aly finds a link between the quantities of food sent to the Reich and the extermination of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Data added by the German historian Christian Gerlach reinforce his view. Gerlach writes that in addition to 504,000 tons of wheat exported from the Generalgouvernement in 1942–1943, 237,000 tons of potatoes and 33,000 tons of meat were shipped out as well.48 These figures indicate that once the Final Solution in the Generalgouvernement went into effect in March 1942, Frank was able to export more food to the Reich. In other words, the systematic murder of millions of Jews had created a food surplus that could be shipped out. Until then, Frank’s decision was to slash rations for the entire Generalgouvernement population. Thus, on September 1, 1941, he issued an order that established uniform nutritional norms for the whole Generalgouvernement area at levels far less that the minimum needed to survive.49 There was a big difference, however, between rations for Jews and rations for Poles—the former were much 47 Testimony Helen Laufer, YVA, 02/1000, 1. 48 Götz Aly, “Endlösung,” Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europaeischen Juden, 310–311; Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998), 210–220, 245. 49 Ibid., 311.

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smaller—and Poles, unlike Jews, could after all augment their rations on the free market. According to Frank’s decree, a Jew was eligible for 2.8 kilograms of bread per month as against 4.2 kilos on average per Pole, and 160 grams of ersatz coffee and 200 grams of sugar (which were often not provided) as against twice as much on average per Pole. Furthermore, the food reserved for Jews was almost devoid of nutritional value. Jews were denied foodstuffs that Poles received, such as white flour, beef, marmalade, eggs, butter, and edible oils, as well as pasta, groats, and oatmeal.50 In February 1942, Ernst Kundt, governor of Radom District, reduced the number of ration cards for the entire Jewish population of the district from 377,000 to only 200,000. Concurrently, the food supply was halved; Jews who until then received 100 grams of bread per day and 200 grams of sugar per month had to make do with much less. When the heads of the Judenräte in the district protested this to the authorities, the latter told them that the order had come from the Generalgouvernement administration in Kraków, that it applied throughout the Generalgouvernement, and that the Polish farmers were at fault for not having delivered the harvest quotas on time.51 Bearing in mind that not all Jewish refugees in Radom District were listed and that the number of Jews living in the district at that time exceeded 400,000, we may adduce from these data that, in view of the cuts in both ration cards and food supplies, from February 1942 on, a Jew in the district received in average quarter of what he or she had been given theretofore. Reis, the eldest of six brothers, lived in the ghetto with his parents and helped them with tailoring and repair jobs and selling the output to Poles. Only his sixteen-year-old brother Hayim worked outside the ghetto, as his sisters did not work and his other brothers were too young. Reis’ account of the daily routine in the ghetto, recorded in his memoirs, was characteristic of the lives of the thousands of Jews within its walls: I awoke at 5:00 a.m. and began to work. […] At a quarter to six, I woke Hayim up and accompanied him to the staging place where the workers 50 Rutkowski, “Martyrologia, Walka i zagłada,” 103; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 156. 51 Ibid., 103. See also Fąfara, Gehenna, 76; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej 1939–1945, 156. Massalski and Meducki’s table indicates that Poles received differential rations: the regular ration plus a supplement for those who did especially difficult forced-labor jobs and a smaller bonus for those who held ordinary jobs. For instance, a Pole who performed hard labor received 8.4 kilos of bread per month while one who worked at a regular job got 5.6 kilos.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3 gathered. On the way, I bought him a quarter-kilo of bread. The bread he got at the end of the week from the Judenrat I doled out in one meal per day for everyone. […] At about 10:00 a.m., Father took my brother Mordechai to stand in line with a bucket at the Jewish Social Self-Help and he came back with soup and a slice of bread. At 11:00, we ate breakfast. At 3:00, Mother began to make the second meal […] potatoes, a bit of oil-fried onions, all this boiled in a giant pot full of water. […] At first Mother kept the money and dispensed the food, but it was enough for her to see the children’s eyes asking for food to run to buy a piece of bread for the young ones with the last pennies. The next day, there would be nothing to spend at the public kitchen. […] Father asked me to hold on to the money. […] I took over both holding the money and doling out the food […] all the while making microscopic calculations about the size of each slice and each portion of soup so that they would be equal and no one would be short-changed.”52

While it existed, the Kielce ghetto was sealed twice. The first closure, immediately following its formation, lasted six weeks. Since survival depended on the minute quantities of food that were allowed to enter, prices skyrocketed and a black market developed. On April 23, 1941, Dawid Rubinowicz wrote in his journal: A boy who’d left the neighborhood [the Kielce ghetto—S. B] came to us. He said that 2 kilograms of rye bread cost 11 złoty, a kilogram of potatoes 1.5 złoty, and so on. I thought, how many people must be dying of starvation, how many are eating peels and other things […] that give them all kinds of diseases that make hundreds of people die.53

Once the ghetto was reopened, Poles came in with foodstuffs and contact with the “Aryan” side was made. Half a year later, on October 15, 1941, Frank again ordered the ghetto closed, and pursuant to this edict Stadtkommissar (city kommissar) Drechsel issued another decree on January 1, 1942, ­prohibiting the Jews of Kielce and the area from leaving their places of ­residence. In this ukase, Drechsel stressed two important points that had been made on the earlier occasion: Only those holding special documents would be allowed 52 Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 15–16. 53 Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz, 12.

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to exit the ghetto and “It is forbidden to give refuge, food, or other assistance to Jews who have escaped and it is forbidden in any way to ease the escape of Jews.”54 This order would remain in effect continuously for eight months, until the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1942. The food shortages worsened during the months of closure because Poles were forbidden to enter the ghetto. Jews sold their last clothing for a slice of bread and children with distended abdomens poked through trash in search for potato peels. For lack of choice, the only solution to the distressing hunger was to try to escape the ghetto by any means in order to obtain food on the outside. This task fell to children who could crawl through the small holes and breaches in the circumferential fence. Allowing the cause of rescuing parents, siblings, or other family members to overcome their fears, the little thieves sneaked onto the “Aryan” side of town, pilfered a few potatoes, and smuggled them back to the ghetto. In time, the smuggling of food became a profession. Although the ghetto was guarded by members of the Ordnungsdienst who were sometimes joined by German police, the smugglers found escape routes and, largely at night, slipped wheat, vegetables, potatoes, and groats into the ghetto. Hadassah Zimmerman writes in her memoirs that the children in the ghetto acted like adults and knew and understood all that was going on. Often a child no older than five or six took the place of his mother who had perished and pressed the last crust of bread into the mouth of his younger brother.55 Although there were wealthy families in the ghetto who lived mainly off their savings, all the memoirists, without exception, recount severe starvation, smuggling, and difficulties in obtaining food in the ghetto. Mania Feferman, who “looked Aryan,” writes in her memoirs that having no choice she decided to test her skills in bartering with Poles. On rainy days, when the risk of exposure decreased somewhat, she removed her Jewish star armband, slipped out of the ghetto through 54 Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement, 1941, Kielce National Archives 03/2640, 595. See also Anordnungsblatt für die Stadt und Kteishauptmannschaft Kielce, 1 January 1942, no. 1, 1. On February 23, 1942, Kundt, the new governor of Radom District, issued an order explicitly threatening any Jew who left the ghetto with the death penalty and extending the threat to anyone who assisted a Jew or gave him refuge. See Rutkowski, “Martyrologia, Walka i zagłada,” 104, and testimony Mosze Mydlo, YVA, M.49/E/85. 55 Hadassah Zimmerman, Unter di poylishe grininke baymelekh shpiln zikh mer nisht kayn Moishelakh un Shloimelakh (Among the greenish trees of Poland Moishe’s and Shloime’s don’t play anymore), unpublished memoir, author’s personal archives. See also testimony Zwi Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 19; Szmul Zablucki, “Testimony of a Holocaust Witness,” tr. and ed., Ari Shalit, unpublished memoir, undated, author’s personal archives, 9; testimony Mosze Meir Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66; and Daniel Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 24.

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an opening that was not especially well guarded, and circulated on the “Aryan” side as a Pole. This itself was very risky because there were Poles everywhere, she said, who would denounce Jews to the Gestapo for a packet of sugar.56 Reis writes that the severe hunger led to a growing number of Jewish informers to the Gestapo from the underworld and hardened the hearts of the wealthy to the plight of less fortunate kin.57 Meir Breitman testifies that his family went back to baking bread even though it was forbidden. “Baking bread was punishable by death; we were supposed to survive on the weekly bread portion that we got through the Judenrat. So sometimes they came and took the bread from the ovens, and we paid a stiff fine […].”58 It being impossible to survive via the ration cards that the Judenrat ­distributed once per month, a black market for food developed in the ghetto. “We stood in long lines to get one piece of bread a week. Sometimes we stood for hours and were told to come some other time.”59 The smugglers who slipped out of the ghetto mainly took with them rags and used clothes, which they traded with Poles for food. Some Jews bought food from the smugglers; others who worked outside the ghetto occasionally managed to bring something home. Anyone who had something to swap for food went ahead with the deal. “Jews swollen from hunger sold their last shirt and women covered themselves in sheets for a bit of food.”60 56 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 25–26. 57 Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442. 58 Testimony Meir Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 6; testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 13. See also Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 25; testimony Mydlo, YVA, M.49/E/85, 1. Unlike the others, Yosef Yitzhak Goldblum says that his family did not suffer from hunger: “I think my father did so much work that he must have had connections with the Judenrat to get food rations [...]”; testimony Goldblum, YVA, O.3/12285, 19. This testimony is definitely unrepresentative of the norm. 59 Testimony Yoskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 13. 60 Fąfara, Gehenna, 76. Eliezer Feiner testifies that his sister unraveled an old sweater and knit a new one from the wool as an object to barter for food. “The bitter cold made her hands freeze all the time, so she did a little knitting and then warmed her hands under the blanket. It took her a month to knit the sweater and with that she was able to buy a loaf of bread, no more.” Testimony YVA, O.3/11630, 16. Reis recalls that to sell a sewing machine to a non-Jew he had to get the machine into the ghetto, work out the price, and disassemble the machine. The big problem, however, was getting the machine out of the ghetto—a project that required the mobilization of the entire family. Smuggling things out of the ghetto had to be calculated down to the second: “Any mistake or unexpected event could put all of us in prison. Nearly all these activities were successful but as time passed and opportunities to make contact with non-Jews shriveled, this source of income also dwindled.” Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 13–14.

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Szmul Yoskowicz comments on the existence of villages near Kielce, such as Dąmbrowa, where the peasants were sick of Jews and there were antisemites who incited against the Jews. We were afraid that if Jews went there in large numbers the Germans might discover us. So we went to the village of Masłów, where they made a lot of butter. […] We went there with a sack and tied the food that we’d we received inside it and made it into a rucksack. We walked in fear through fields, forests, and rivers carrying twenty kilograms, some seven kilometers a day, and later ten and fifteen kilometers each direction. […] Polish guys set ambushes that snared everyone. […] Each trip seemed like an eternity.61

Gertrude Zeisler, a member of the affluent class in the ghetto, wrote on October 31, 1941, that food and high prices were the only topics of conversation there. Seven months later, in a letter of June 5, 1942, she told her family in Switzerland that she had bartered the three items they had just sent her for flour and potatoes. A week later, she wrote that she had traded the sardines sent to her for enough bread and potatoes to last two weeks and that this was a large transaction. Despite insisting that she was “getting by,” Zeisler noted that she had lost weight and was very thin.62 Food was smuggled through buildings that abutted the “Aryan” side, windows that faced apartments along the ghetto fence, openings not regularly watched, and routes improvised each time anew.63 Getting caught smuggling food into the ghetto resulted in summary punishment. Wacław Ceberski, a nonJew who spent the entire occupation period as a traffic supervisor at the PKP railroad station, observed goings-on in the ghetto from his bedroom window. After the war, Ceberski testified about having seen what the Germans did regularly to Jewish children whom they had caught in the possession of smuggled food: “torture, kicks to the head, beatings with rifle butts, and confiscation of the food. Those actually caught receiving food from non-Jews, as happened occasionally, were shot on the spot.”64 Jan Sabat, a Pole who worked at the Kłos flourmill and was responsible for the grain stored in the Great Synagogue in the 61 Testimony Yoskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 14–15; testimony Faeiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 15. 62 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 9, 11, 19–20. 63 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 25–26. 64 Fąfara, Gehenna, 90. Henryk Lappa testifies that in late 1941 he had seen Hans Gaier, the Schupo commander, shoot to death a Jewish boy of fourteen who had left the ghetto without a pass. Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court (March 28, 1966).

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ghetto area, later reported that he and a friend walked over to the ghetto fence one day in order to pass food to the Jews. We had just thrown the food packages over the wall when we heard gunfire in the ghetto […]. From the hills we saw the bodies of two Jewesses laying where they fell on Dombrowska Street in the ghetto. […] A few days later, we arrived with food again and spoke with some Jews who told us that the women had been murdered by the Gestapo. […] A few meters farther I looked back and saw a Jewess about forty years old crossing the street. Ten meters away stood a German policeman, who opened fire without any warning and killed her on the spot.65

Smugglers were dependent on members of the Jewish police who, aware of this, terrorized them during the entire ghetto period. Some of them demanded bribes to look the other way; others, noticing children selling cigarettes and food in the street, confiscated the merchandise, knocked it to the ground, and crushed it under their feet. In several cases, Jewish policemen who caught children with food near the fence took some of it for themselves.66 Between May and December 1941, the Germans fined sixty-eight Jews on charges of illegal trade in food, including Jewish policemen who had collaborated with the smugglers. In late 1941, the Gestapo arrested four Ordnungsdienst members and Gaier, the Schupo chief, shot them to death.67 Word of the murders slowed the smugglers for a while, but hunger continued to gnaw and the “merchants” were back on the streets within days. By February 1942, dozens of Jews involved in the food trade had been fined in sums ranging from 25 złoty to 2,000. When Police Battalion 305 left town that month, the Germans tightened the guard over the ghetto; before the month was out, forty-two Jews had been murdered including two girls aged ten and fourteen, after being caught with food.68 65 Fąfara, Gehenna, 92. See also Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court, testimony Avraham Meir (March 24, 1966). Mark Foigen, who worked for the burial society during the ghetto period, testifies that he buried twelve Jewish youths who had been taken to the cemetery and shot dead after being caught outside the ghetto searching for food. Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court, testimony Mark Foigen (April 15, 1966). 66 Testimony Szmul Yoskowicz, YVA 03/6782, 16. 67 Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 161; Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 167. 68 Ibid. Rumpl of the Schupo shot these girls in the yard of a house on Planty Street. Afterwards, three Jews were brought there and ordered to remove the corpses. Eugeniusz Fąfara, Gehenna, 88. Mania Feferman tells of eleven-year-old Leibke, who for a long time repeatedly returned to the ghetto with pockets and socks full of butter, cheese, and eggs.

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Due to the smuggling, in January 1942 the Jewish police advertised an order in the Gazeta Żydowska absolutely prohibiting Jews from standing near the fence, gates, and any other feature on the boundary of the ghetto.69 Despite all the threats and the many food-runners who were shot by Gestapo men, smuggling continued until the ghetto was eradicated.70 In June 1941, to address the food problem if only in part, the Judenrat construction department set up a sub-department for agriculture, headed by Rotbard (first name unknown). Instructed to prepare plots for growing ­vegetables, the department took charge of several yards, lawns, and fields in the ghetto area. Within a year, some seventy Jews were working in these agricultural areas, sometimes joined by supplemental forces at the Judenrat’s initiative. The produce was sold by public auction in a special market near the former Forester’s House, with prospective bidders tendering proposals to the Judenrat gardens and agriculture department.71

Health and Hygiene The ghastly living conditions in the ghetto promptly led to a severe outbreak of typhus. The ghetto was short on clothing, its residents suffered from hunger and cold, despair tightened its grip on many, and the burial society had its hands full.72 Toward the summer of 1941, after the authorities pressed the Judenrat to take special steps to prevent disease, the council launched a disinfection campaign. Aided by the Jewish police, it set aside isolated buildings in the ghetto where the ill and their families were quarantined while their

69 70 71 72

“One day he made a misstep and the Gestapo murdered him.” Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 26. Apolonia Subicka née Rubinowicz, who lived under an assumed identity in a village near Kielce, visited Kielce on occasion to try to pass food to immured family members. One day in the summer of 1942, she testified, she saw a four-year-old boy on Stolarska Street heading out of the ghetto; a German policeman caught him by the feet and smashed his head against a wall. Eugeniusz Fąfara, Gehenna, 90. See also Eliahu Rubinowicz interview, January 1942 (author’s personal archives). Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 85. Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 103. In the summer of 1942, Stefan Kern witnessed the murder of a mother of five whom a Schupo policeman, patrolling on Bodzentyńska Street, had caught accepting food from a Polish peasant. Ludwigsburg Archives, Darmstadt court, testimony Stefan Kern, May 2, 1966. Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 85; Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 50–55. Statistics gathered at the Polish hospital in Kielce indicate that the number of typhus patients rose each winter during the occupation period. As conditions in the ghetto were immeasurably worse than those on the “Aryan” side of town, where the Germans themselves lived, it may be supposed that the typhus epidemic in the ghetto was hard to stamp out. Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 186.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

lodgings were being disinfected.73 In June 1941, children aged 6–12 received smallpox vaccinations and those born in 1871–1939 were given a double vaccination against dysentery. The vaccinations were obligatory; those who tried to evade them risked the confiscation of their ration cards and punishment by the Ordnungsdienst. By August 1941, the Judenrat had managed to immunize 12,238 Jews against typhus and 4,024 against dysentery; from October 1, 1941, on, it issued ration cards only to those who presented a vaccination certificate.74 To improve hygiene, the Judenrat required the public to bathe in the mikve (ritual bath) twice a week and to sign a special card each time they did so. The sanitation department also signed the cards of those who had baths in their homes and bearers of such cards had to see a doctor once a month to confirm their health, on pain of the withholding of ration cards. For the duration of the campaign (April–July 1941), 18,179 Jews used the public baths, 3,037 heads were shaved, and 50,693 pieces of clothing were disinfected.75 Persons of means in the ghetto obtained the services of a physician or specialist in any field with no difficulty. Medicines, by contrast, were in short supply—with the exception of vaccinations, which the Germans provided— and had to be smuggled in from the “Aryan” side. During the ghetto period, as in the first months of the German occupation, the Judenrat organized short training sessions for nurses whenever action to prevent contagious diseases was needed. Considering the conditions, the Jewish hospital in the ghetto functioned well with its staff of doctors, nurses, and sanitary workers. Nevertheless, in the ghetto’s sixteen months of existence (April 1, 1941–August 20, 1942), some 1,500 Jews died there (about 5.5 percent of the population), mostly from starvation and contagious diseases.76

Relief and Welfare The winter of 1941/42 was especially harsh. The ghetto had no electricity and its inhabitants dared not wear furs for fear of confiscation. In most 73 74 75 76

Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 86. Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 45, 78. Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 78, 114. Młynarczyk (Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 67) incorrectly estimated the death rate from illnesses and hunger at one-fourth of the ghetto population. Had he been correct, at least 6,000 would have died during the ghetto period and the population in the ghetto on the eve of its liquidation in the summer of 1942 would have fallen to some 18,000. The available data on the deportation and liquidation of the ghetto (see Chapter 4) leave no doubt that Młynarczyk’s estimate is fundamentally mistaken.

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apartments, anything that could be burnt was burnt, including clothes, f­ urniture, wooden flooring, and doorposts. When the ghetto authorities learned of this, they ordered the Judenrat to instruct the Jews to stop destroying the buildings. In the biting cold, however, the residents continued to use whatever they could as heating fuel. Eliezer Feiner, whose workplace had stores of coal, testified that he would leave for work wearing baggy pants tied to his hips with a rope and a large coat into which oversized pockets had been sewn. At day’s end, he filled the coat and pants with coal before returning to the ghetto, blending into a group of workers in hope of eluding the prying eyes of the Jewish Police.77 In November 1941, the Judenrat supplied peat for heating78 but in miniscule quantities and at high cost when it could be obtained at all. Zeisler wrote on November 7, 1941, that prices soared with each passing day, that she received only half the goods that had been sent to her and that “Over and above the usual worries one can’t get a supply of wood.”79 To aid the indigent and offer some relief from the cold, three coffee stands were set up in the ghetto and dispensed, free of charge, 1,200 liters of beverage a day, probably enough for at least 5,000 people. Giant boilers were positioned in the streets at various points in the ghetto and whoever was cold could get a hot drink and warm his or her hands. As one might imagine, the boilers drew crowds. The Gazeta Żydowska, reporting all this on January 1, 1942, added that the Judenrat was planning to replace the boilers with mobile kitchens and increase the quantities of coffee distributed.80 The Jewish old-age home and orphanage of Kielce had been t­ ransferred to the ghetto and continued to operate under the aegis of the Judenrat. The old-age home lodged some eighty lone seniors; the orphanage accommodated 288 true orphans and additional children whose destitute parents had abandoned them. Chief Rabbi Rappaport’s wife visited the youngsters and brought them special delicacies for the Sabbath.81 In January 1942, as the especially cold winter exacerbated living conditions that were brutal to begin with, the Judenrat took the initiative to create a committee for urgent a­ ssistance to 77 Testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 16; testimony Selinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 8; Rafael Blumenfeld interview, January 2001 (author’s personal archives); Daniel Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 25. 78 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 113. 79 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 10. 80 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 12; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 7. 81 Hadassah Zimmerman, Unter di poylishe grininke. On the number of children and the elderly in the Judenrat institutions, see testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66, and Eugeniusz Fąfara, Gehenna, 77.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

the poorest. It divided the ghetto into twenty zones, placed someone in charge of each zone, and authorized him to hire four aides. In each zone, the plenipotentiary identified the needy in ways that included the use of the zone’s building committees. The committee that the Judenrat created urged wealthy Jews to assist the poor; collected clothes, money, and food; and on February 14 and 15, 1942, arranged two concerts with the participation of two singers, two pianists, a violist, and two violinists, all amateur musicians from Kielce. Much careful work went into the preparation of the concerts, which aroused interest and drew large crowds. The revenues were pledged to helping poor to cope with the winter.82 In a letter to her family in Switzerland on February 19, 1942, Zeisler wrote: “On Sunday I had a wonderful experience when I attended a charity concert, it’s been ages and ages since I’ve had the chance to hear one. It was fairly amateurish, but it was an outstanding opportunity for me. With the first chords tears streamed from my eyes after such a long time.”83 Living conditions in the ghetto sank to their worst in late 1941 and early 1942, evidently due to a combination of especially cold weather, severe hunger, unemployment, and epidemics. The Judenrat, mindful of the situation, arranged for Michael Weichert’s Jewish Social Self-Help to establish a local welfare committee in Kielce. Lewi, the Judenrat chairman, directed it, and its slogan was: “Let’s help the impoverished right now.” To inspire wealthy families to do their duty for the needy, a leaflet was circulated in the ghetto with the message, “All the hungry shall be sated.” The Judenrat allocated 25,000 złoty to the committee in winter assistance for the poor; this budget also funded a second orphanage for 110 children and two old-age homes for 120 elderly. Milk from cows owned by the Judenrat was delivered to the hospital, the orphanage, and the old-age home. That winter, the Welfare Committee also set up a residence for needy children aged two to seventeen, offering its 211 clients not only care and nutrition but also instruction in sewing and other trades. The home was under Lewi’s sponsorship and some of the older children who took refuge there also held jobs in the Judenrat workshops or in the garden of the home, which covered a bit less than 500 square meters. In addition, the ŻSS provided 493 additional Jews with regular assistance in cash or in food.84 In further efforts to relieve some of the hunger in the ghetto, the Judenrat in early 1942 opened Soup Kitchen 1, which served an average of some 3,000 82 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 71; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 77. 83 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 11. 84 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 47, 51, 87, 119; 1942, nos. 83, 78, 94; see also: Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 72–73.

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lunches every day until the ghetto was liquidated (2,712 in April 1942, 2,928 in May, and so on) and had a breakfast kitchen that served coffee and bread to 1,580 children daily.85 A month after the ghetto was formed it also acquired an eatery for pay, run by Gutman and Grantman. The Judenrat subsidized it and most of its customers—craftsmen and Judenrat officials—did in fact pay for their fare. Although intended to provide 500 meals per day, it turned out nearly 1,000, which, thanks to supplemental funding, included soup and vegetables and at times meat—a rare delicacy in the ghetto.86 Another soup kitchen, established on November 2, 1941, supplied daily hot meals for Jews who received no support and others who until then made do with cold meals.87 Still, this set of establishments and services fell short of what was needed to sustain properly a large population that, as Zeisler describes, had to deal with massive difficulties at each step: “Water had to be hauled in buckets, the excreta had to be eliminated in buckets and above all you had to wait hours in line to get a bowl of soup.”88 The Kielce committee of the ŻSS also delivered weekly rations to Jewish prisoners in the municipal jail on Zamkowa Street.89 In May 1942, the committee added to its rolls some 1,000 Jews whom it deemed to be especially poor and sent food supplements to 650 others who had come home from the hospitals. Given the widespread poverty, the streets of the ghetto swarmed with beggars. The Germans found this irksome and, under their pressure, a ghetto anti-panhandling committee was formed in the summer of 1942, its thirty-five members including Judenrat officials and Jewish police. To put begging to an end, all residents of the ghetto except for the poorest had to make a weekly remittance to the Judenrat of between 2 and 25 złoty, commensurate with their means—with which the council intended to clear the homeless off the streets and lodge them in isolation houses.90 Nothing came of the idea in the end, as the Germans liquidated the ghetto that summer.

85 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 78. 86 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 42, 45, 51, 78. 87 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, nos. 60, 113. 88 Zeisler, I Did Not Survive, 16. 89 Testimony Oscar Berger, YVA, O.33/22, 1. Berger was originally from Katowice; at the beginning of the war he reached Kielce along with his wife and their two children and moved in with his in-laws, who lived there. Berger was arrested by the Gestapo at a later time and spent fourteen months in the municipal jail. 90 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 78. Bahn deemed the activities of the Jewish self-help committee in Kielce insignificant. Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Taxes and Collection It was only after ghettoization that the Judenrat’s taxation and collection departments began to enforce the tax payments on which the council and its budget depended. One presumes that it was to improve the efficiency of tax collection that Hermann Lewi, chairman of the Kielce Judenrat, made contact with other Judenräte in the district and took counsel from them about collection even before the ghetto was sealed off. The second Judenrat, the one chaired by Lewi, imposed six taxes on Kielce’s Jewish population: a head tax, a special tax, a housing tax, an equalizing tax, a hospital tax, and a winter assistance tax. In addition, anyone in the ghetto with a roof over his head had to pay rent to the Judenrat and all business owners had to pay income tax. The first payment in 1941, set at four-fifths of the p­ revious year’s assessment, was due by June 15, 1941. Even those who lost their businesses outside the ghetto were dunned; the proportion of tax that they owed was determined by supervisors from the collection department.91 Most ghetto residents were unable to make their payments on time and many ended up owing the Judenrat money. In the first few months of 1942, realizing that the collection drive was not achieving results and that the coffers were not filling, the Judenrat announced that it would retroactively forgive 50 percent of the 1941 taxes and, starting on March 1, 1942, allow arrears to be paid off in installments. In its efforts to collect sums due from tax evaders and debtors, the Judenrat threatened to revoke all discounts for those who failed to settle up. Still, with the ghetto in a state of complete destitution by March 1942, few debtors were able to meet the tax payments. Thus, the burden of t­ axation fell primarily on the wealthy, some of whom paid the amounts imposed on them and occasionally donated to welfare and charity. Yet not all people of means were frightened by the Judenrat’s threats, so tax evasion persisted even after the council hired thirty policemen to enforce its orders.92 The Judenrat continued to threaten, in March 1942 announcing that regular payments for rent and water had to be remitted by the seventh of each month on pain of confiscation of possessions and their sale at public auction if the debt were not settled within five days.93 By the time all this happened, the Jewish police (Ordnungsdienst) had been at work in the ghetto for one year. On March 6 1942, in an article 91 Gazeta Żydowska, 1941, no. 41. 92 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 105. 93 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 36.

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headlined “First Anniversary of the Jewish Police in Kielce,” the Gazeta Żydowska reviewed a ceremony held in the ghetto to mark the event. The writer reports that the event began with a speech by the chief of the force, Bruno Schindler, about the year that had passed. Following him, Judenrat chairman Lewi wished the police continued productive labors. Then, as described in the program of the event, fifteen policemen received promotions and the size of the force was boosted from 85 to 127. The ceremony ended with an artistic performance by amateur actors and singers from the police ranks, and at its conclusion Schindler announced a fundraising campaign for the aforementioned orphanage under Lewi’s patronage.94

Terror and Punishment Throughout the occupation, the Germans conducted punitive operations and special Aktions against the Jews. Measures of the latter kind—punishments and shows of force for various occasions—were planned in advance by the Commander of Security Police and SD (KdS) in Radom District, usually accompanied by executions, and carried out in all settlements in the district. Their purpose was to eliminate potential opponents, such as those in intelligentsia and communist circles, who were suspected of having ties with local Polish resistance movements. Kielce’s turn for an operation of this kind came in late July and early August 1941, after Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. This Aktion, overseen by Ernst Thomas, the Gestapo chief in Kielce, was directed against former Jewish leaders of the Left and suspected Communists whom the authorities regarded as threats. Gestapo operatives arrived overnight at the suspects’ homes to make arrests. All those arrested, including Noach Treister, S. Golembioski, Hayim Posluszny, and A. Baum, were sent to Auschwitz.95 On December 31, 1941, by general order of Himmler, the Gestapo in Kielce ordered the immediate confiscation of furs owned by Jews on penalty of death. The Kielce Judenrat was instructed to collect furs also from Jews who lived in several surrounding towns—Daluszyce, Nowa Słupia, Bodzentyn, Beilyn, and Suchedniów. After complying, the Judenrat delivered the furs to 94 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 28. 95 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 26; Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 18; Urbański, Kieleccy Żydzi, 163.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

the Kielce Gestapo, whence they were sent on to Reich territory. From then on, any Jew caught wearing furs faced mortal peril.96 Terror, threats, punishments, and humiliation were the lot of the Jews behind the fences. Those caught roaming outside the ghetto, raising prices, or engaging in illegal trade faced fines. Those captured beyond the fence incurred the steepest penalties, imposed by a field court in lieu of imprisonment or death. The most common offenses for which Jews were brought to trial in Kielce were exiting the ghetto without permission, illegal trade, walking in the street without an armband, failure to show up for work, bribery, and so on. At certain times Jews were also arrested for theft, fraud, hostile behavior toward Germans, currency violations, trade in contraband, forgery of documents, deviant behavior, extortion, and other transgressions. Capital punishment was usually imposed only on those caught outside the ghetto without permission or without a reason convincing to the court.97 On November 13, 1941, four members of the Grynszpan family were shot dead for being members of the Communist Party. In February 1942, four Jews were sentenced to death for leaving the ghetto illegally; they were shot in the prison compound on Zamkowa Street. In January 1942, the Germans shot dead seven Jews who had left the ghetto without permission. On April 1, 1942, the Germans shot the Zuchowskis for alleged illegal trafficking in meat. On May 20, 1942, several Jews, among them Getzel Goldberg, were arrested on the same charges and beaten to death in prison. On July 5, 1942, Lucia Goldblit née Mendel was shot dead.98 Even Jews who held slave-labor jobs outside the ghetto were constantly subjected to brutalities, terror, threats, and intimidation, as testimonies indicate. Germans often entered the ghetto, set dogs on Jews, beat passersby, and looted property. Executions took place on the outskirts of town, at the Jewish cemetery in Pakosz, or in the dunes near the Kadżelnia quarries. NonJews who lived in the neighborhood next to the Jewish cemetery testify that German SS men delivered people to the cemetery for execution throughout the occupation period. The murderers rushed their victims to a wooden shack and ordered them to strip and set their possessions aside. From there they led them in pairs to the edge of a burial pit, which Jewish workers had excavated in advance, and shot them dead with automatic weapons. Once all the victims 96 Urbański and Blumenfeld, Słownik, 17. 97 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 81–83. 98 YVA, TR.17/83, 47–49; Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 110; Massalski and Meducki, Kielce w latach, 363–364.

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had been gunned down, the Jewish workers were called to cover the bodies with sand as the Germans collected clothing and belongings left behind and combed them for valuables.99 In early 1942, the Generalgouvernement administration in Kraków decided to eliminate opponents of the Nazi regime and Jewish ex-officers. This Aktion was carried out in various parts of the Generalgouvernement on February 19, 1942. In Kielce, it took place in April, presumably on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday. Ahead of it, in March 1942, the Germans drew up a list of all former military personnel living in the ghetto. To make this registration possible, they ordered the Gazeta Żydowska to print the following notice: “The head of the Jewish Order Service, an organ of the Judenrat in Kielce, announces that, by order of the authorities, former officers in the armies of Germany, Austria, and Poland residing in the area of the Jewish neighborhood shall report to the Order Service secretariat to be registered.”100 The ensuing Aktion, carried out by the Gestapo on April 27–28, 1942, is referred to by some as the “Aktion of the intelligentsia” and is sometimes confused with the “Aktion of the Communists,” conducted in the summer of 1941. In the 1942 Aktion, former military doctors and a group of former volunteer firemen were apprehended; most of them were murdered in the ghetto whereas others were taken to Auschwitz.101 Jehiel Alpert, whose cousin, a reserve officer, was among those arrested, later testified that the Germans entered the apartments in the middle of the night, shot some of the Jews on the spot, and abducted the rest. Among the physicians taken were Drs. Schatz, Smetterling, Heshlis, and Oskar Strum. Alice Birnhak, Dr. Strum’s daughter, writes in her memoirs that the Germans arrived with the accompaniment of Jewish police, removed her father from the house, led him into the yard, and shot him to death.102 Those among the victims of this Aktion who were not sent to Auschwitz were buried in a communal grave in the Jewish cemetery.

A Leadership under Trial Although the Kielce Judenrat, led by Hermann Lewi, had begun to ­function before ghettoization, most of what it did belongs to the ghetto period. For some two years, Lewi attempted to deal with the harsh living ­conditions   99 Ibid., 61–62. 100 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 42. See also Rutkowski, “Martyrologia,” 104. 101 YVA, TR.10/673, 41; YVA, 2083–58, Tel Aviv, Israel Police, Department for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, Kielce file, 4. 102 Testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 4; Birnhak, Next Year, God Willing, 189–191.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

under German occupation and, once the ghetto was sealed, repeatedly sought ways to care for the many in need, locals and refugees alike, whose ­numbers in the ghetto grew with each passing month. By manipulating the various Judenrat departments, Lewi managed to outperform his p­ redecessor in these regards. However, since the overseers of the ghetto regularly entered the area and terrorized its inhabitants, and since to obtain the bare necessities of survival one had to break the law, corruption and intoxication of power spread among the Ordnungsdienst and the Judenrat bureaucrats. In all my interviews with survivors of the Kielce ghetto, it was repeatedly alleged that Lewi had given in to the thoroughly corrupt Jewish police. Most survivors remembered him as a public benefactor and dignitary who let them down as chairman of the Kielce Judenrat. Many survivor-memoirists faulted Lewi for having maintained private warehouses that brimmed with food and for collaborating with the corrupt police. Lewi did manage to improve the welfare of the ghetto for a time and built up the Judenrat’s resources now and then. This, however, made no impression on the memoirists. On the contrary: he will be remembered as a man who looked out for himself, made his peace with the occupation authorities, shared the fruits of corruption, and faithfully carried out the Germans’ orders.103 Lewi was not blessed with long-range leadership vision, and just as he was unable to set up a police force that would follow his orders, so did it not occur to him to attempt to persuade the Germans to exploit the Jews as a labor force within the ghetto as a way to appease them and keep the Jews regularly fed. Lewi did not fight. He succumbed to conditions too quickly and plainly did whatever he could to keep the authorities satisfied. The testimony of Michael Weichert, who often visited the ghetto as head of the ŻSS, suggests that the Germans hounded Lewi, made his life miserable, tortured his conscience, and forced him to attend debauched feasts in town where waitresses mingled naked among the tables.104 On one occasion, sleeping over in Lewi’s house, Weichert rose early and found Lewi’s wife in the kitchen, weeping and holding her husband’s sweat-soaked shirt. “This is how it is night after night,” she told Weichert. “He won’t last very long.”105 Unlike other ghettos, the Kielce enclosure had no Jewish education system, religious life, cultural life, or youth-movement activity—not even

103 Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66. 104 Ibid. 105 Weichert, 217.

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clandestine ones.106 There was no trace of an armed underground; such organizations typically formed only after mass deportations. Nor was there resistance of any other sort, as everyone was busy seeking work, food, or heating fuel for the winter. Thus did the Jews of Kielce endure their seventeen months of ghettoization. Zeisler, in a letter written on August 13, 1942, a week before she was deported to Treblinka, expressed it well: “[…] Desperation seizes us when we hear the hysterical outbursts of the people here. […] It seems I am losing my sanity in this atmosphere of chaos and idleness. Possibly, if I return to a normal environment, I might one day turn back into a decent and thinking human being.”107

Preparing for Deportation Mosze Meir Bahn testifies that four months before the liquidation of the ghetto (May 1942), Wirtz of the Schupo leaked information to Jews who worked in his vicinity about a forthcoming deportation. Jehiel Alpert’s testimony also indicates that in May 1942 rumors reached the ghetto that “something” was happening to the Jews of the Lublin area, i.e., deportation to an unknown location and plans by the Germans to transfer Jews to labor camps in the east. Mania Feferman reports having heard rumors about the suicide of the chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat ( July 1942) and the deportation of thousands of Jews from that city. Rafael Blumenfeld testifies that a Jew named Beckerman, a resident of the village of Bialogon next to Kielce, reached the Kielce ghetto in early August 1942 and spread rumors about Jews being transported to Treblinka for productive agricultural labor.108 Local Poles also disseminated rumors that penetrated the ghetto; the Jews disregarded them. In mid-August 1942, by which time the rumors pertained directly to the Kielce ghetto, some families began hoarding food in anticipation while others sought a means of escape: 106 Blumenfeld does testify about the existence of underground activity in the ghetto, organized by Zionist and Hashomer Hatzair activists whom he names as Mordechai Goldberg, Yosef Sztern, Szmul Lewartowski, Jehoshua Okenhandler, and David Tanenbaum (Blumenfeld interview). Notably, no supporting evidence for this has been found in respect of the “large ghetto” period; after the great deportation, however, a Jewish underground formed in the “small ghetto” (see Chapter 5). 107 Zeisler, 26. 108 Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49/E/66; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 4. Feferman writes that the Jews did not believe rumors spread by Poles because, among other reasons, they assumed that the Poles wished to break their spirits and harm their morale. See Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 27, and Rafael Blumenfeld interview, January 2001 (author’s personal archives).

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3 We have neither enough money nor the right connections to get forged documents. None of our Polish friends offered us help or a hiding place. […] The Polish informers could recognize Jews more easily than the Germans, and they were in every corner. […] We felt helpless we experienced the complete shock of the feeling of impotence.109

In the summer of 1942, Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Commander in Lublin District and the plenipotentiary for Operation Reinhardt (extermination of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement), sent SS Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Josef Blum to Radom District and placed him in charge of preparing the deportation of the Jews there. Blum, who had already accumulated experience in mass deportations elsewhere in the Generalgouvernement, was annexed to the staff of Herbert Boettcher, SS and Police Commander in Radom District, who had been given direct responsibility for deporting the Jews of the district.110 After accepting responsibility for the deportation campaign, Boettcher set up an operational staff comprised of twelve members of the security police in Radom District, headed by Adolf Gottfried Feucht, who directed departments IV B, IV C, and IV D of the Radom Gestapo. Joining the staff was a company from the order police (Orpo) and an auxiliary force composed of dozens of Ukrainians (Trawniki). This complete operational unit became Sonderkommando (or Kommando) Feucht.111 To implement the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the district, Kommando Feucht was joined by units of all police agencies in the district: the criminal police (Cripo), the Schupo, the military police (Truppenpolizei), and others. Feucht directed the extermination Aktion; the operational responsibility was Boettcher’s. At a meeting held in July 1942, several weeks before the deportation, Feucht determined that Ernst Thomas, head of the Kielce Gestapo; Hans Gaier, chief of the Schupo; and all of their aides in Kielce were familiar with the territory, aware of goings-on in the ghetto, and could be relied upon to conduct the liquidation of the ghetto with all requisite efficiency. Feucht himself trained and advised them; he even managed to exploit some of the forces available to him to carry out deportations elsewhere in the district.112

109 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 28–29. See also Rafael Blumenfeld interview, January 2001 (author’s personal archives). 110 Rutkowski, “Martyrologia,” 108; see also Kielce file, YVA, 208–58, 4–5. 111 Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 255–266. 112 YVA, TR.10/911, 30; YVA, TR.10/673, 29; Kielce file, YVA, 2083–58.

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Obersturmführer Ernst Thomas, sixty years old on the eve of the liquidation of the Kielce ghetto in the summer of 1942, was a doctor of ­philosophy who spoke many languages including Hebrew. While serving in Kielce, Thomas obsessively body-searched Jews for valuables and took special pleasure in inflicting cruel and perverse forms of abuse such as ordering men and women to undress, having his aides search their genitals for jewelry, pummeling them, kicking them with his boots, and throwing furniture and other heavy objects at them. His deputy, Sturmführer Hanisch, aged forty, was known as “the ghetto ghost” (das Gespenst). Hans Gaier, chief of the Schupo, was a tall, fair-skinned man, also aged forty. He and Thomas had been working together since 1941. Until the liquidation of the ghetto, Gaier pursued Jews who were involved in the black market, especially boys who smuggled food and those who tried to escape. His deputy, Erich Wollschläger, in his thirties, was fair-skinned, tall, and slender, with a protuberant nose and a piercing gaze that survivors describe as “like death staring at you.” Frighteningly cynical, he terrorized people, laughed when they cried, and shot many Jews for the sheer pleasure of it.113 Wollschläger was placed in charge by Gaier of the “blue” Polish police, which had some eighty men (including four officers) dispersed among the three stations in town. Gaier’s right-hand man, Matheus Rumpl, was considered an expert in executing people by shooting them in the neck. Rumpl—short, ugly, fat, and lame—was called by the ghetto Jews “the shooter” (in Yiddish: der shiser) and he was responsible for the murder of hundreds of them.114 This was the group tasked with clearing the Kielce ghetto of its Jews. Although preparations for the deportation of the Jews of Radom District were completed in June 1942, the Aktion was postponed due to troubles on the front and a ban on the use of trains in the Generalgouvernement for nonmilitary transport. The deferral led to a change in the destination of the transports: Instead of sending the Jews of Radom District to the Sobibór and Bełżec death camps as originally planned, it was decided to begin the ­deportation in 113 Testimonies Elias Gola, Nathan Greenberg, Yakov Mosberg, Darmstadt court. 114 Testimony Szymon Zelcer, YVA, 02/314, 1–3. Zelcer, secretary of the Kielce ghetto Ordnungsdienst in 1941 and 1942, knew first-hand the SS and Schupo men who served in Kielce. See also YVA, TR-911, 73–75. On Thomas’ sexual perversions, see Fąfara, Gehenna, 78. Bahn writes that when Thomas first arrived the Jews in the ghetto had high hopes upon learning he held a Ph.D. Soon, however, the perversities became apparent, especially his bursting into the ghetto at night and his brutalities in Jewish houses. See testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66. On Thomas and Wollschläger see testimonies Dawid Zelcer and Elias Gola, Darmstadt court.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

August 1942 and destine it to the Treblinka death camp.115 In a consultation on the annihilation of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, held on June 18, 1942, in Kraków, Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, SS and Police Commander in the Generalgouvernement, stated that the German police had prepared the Aktions against the Jews down to their last details and that implementation now depended on receiving the requisite trains. Krüger added that Jewish workers in the arms factories of Radom and Częstochowa and their families would be left behind while everyone else would go.116 It should be recalled that the HASAG Granat factory in Kielce, part of the HASAG conglomerate in Radom District, needed Jewish labor and that this necessity had to be taken into account in planning the deportation. In addition, Kielce had quarries, a large sawmill, a steel foundry, and other industries; labor reserves for them, too, would have to be left behind as the ghettos were obliterated. A month later, on July 19, 1942, Himmler—meeting with Globocnik in Lublin—relayed a secret order to Krüger: all Jews in the Generalgouvernement except those in “collection camps” were to be exterminated by December 31, 1942.117 The deportation of the Jews of Radom District began on August 4–5, 1942, with the removal of 6,000 from the Radom ghetto. Later, on August 17–19, another 20,000 Jews in Radom were deported.118 The following day, August 20 1942, Sonderkommando Feucht prepared to evacuate the Kielce ghetto. News of the deportation of the Radom Jews was delivered to Kielce on August 5, by Polish railroad workers who returned to Kielce from Radom. Concurrently, the ghetto’s carpentry shops received orders for railroad boarding steps, a product that had never been manufactured in the ghetto. News of the impending deportation raced through the ghetto and the diverse accounts about how it would be done spread panic and mayhem. The force that was to carry out the deportation of the Jews of Kielce comprised a police unit from Leipzig commanded by Friedrich Auerhammer; seventy SD police (thirty from Sonderkommando Feucht and the rest local), 115 Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, “Bestialstwo z urzędu, Organizacja hitlerowskich akcji depottacyjnych w ramach ‘Operacji Reinhard’ na przykladzie likwidacji Kieleckiego Getta,” Jewish History Quarterly 3 (2002): 361. 116 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 116n400. 117 Rutkowski, “Martyrologia,” 106–109. See Himmler’s order of July 19, 1942, concerning the date of completion of the Final Solution in the Generalgouvernement: Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, Avraham Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust, 275–276; see also Kielce file, YVA, 2083–58. 118 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin Kielce, 541–542.

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150 Schupo men (forty from Kielce, sixty-five from Köln, and two squads from Saxony), and some 100 Ukrainians who were brought in from Radom.119 In January 1942, by order of the Germans, the Judenrat had begun taking a census of Jews aged 12–60, all workers outside the ghetto, and all skilled workers.120 According to the Gazeta Żydowska, shortly before the evacuation of the ghetto, every Jew over age sixteen had to obtain a worker’s card (Kennkarte) from the Judenrat.121 Since the preparations for the extermination of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement had begun back in January 1942, it should be presumed that all censuses and registrations in the ghettos were either to determine the number of Jews who could be exploited for forced labor or to prepare to deport the remainder to the death camps. The deportations had to be planned on the basis of the number of Jews destined for deportation in each and every location in the Generalgouvernement; their exact timing had to be coordinated with the railroad authorities and the administrations of the death camps. Estimation of the population of the Kielce ghetto presumably aided the German authorities in both planning and implementing the deportation. On August 20, 1942, when the deportation of the Jews of Kielce began, the ghetto had a population of 23,000–24,000.122

119 YVA, TR.10/911, 33; Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 117–119. 120 Urbański, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 105. 121 Gazeta Żydowska, 1942, no. 99. 122 Exact figures are lacking because hundreds of ghetto inhabitants were sent to slave-labor camps inside and outside the district during the lifetime of the ghetto and never returned, and because no record of deaths has been found. The estimate reported here is based on a calculation of the number of Jews deported from the ghetto during its liquidation (according to a report from the General Administration of the East Railroad [Generaldirektion der Ostbahn]), the numbers of Jews murdered on-site during the deportation, and the number of Jews who were left behind in the ghetto after the great deportation.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

.  Fig. 1(A)  Stefania Wolman-Zimnowoda, Director of the School for Jewish Girls. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 3808/3.

Fig. 1(B)  March of the air defense league on Sienkiewicza Street, 1935. Walking on the right is the head of the Jewish school in Kielce, Oskar Foier (with the stick), and at his side is Kalman Rotensztreich, the Latin teacher. Image reproduced courtesy of the Leichter family.

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Fig. 2(B)  This picture was sent by the students of the Jewish school "Tushia" in Kielce to their celebrating friends, school students in Degania, on behalf of the Student Society for the Jewish National Fund of the "Toshia" school, Kielce.

Fig. 2(A)  Students of the Jewish school "Tushia" before the war. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 5710.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 3(A) Training commune named after Boruchov, Kielce. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 9502/48.

Fig. 3(B)  Council of the Union of Jewish Craftsmen in Kielce, 1930s. Sitting in the centre is the chairman Szmuel Leichter. Image reproduced courtesy of the Leichter family.

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Fig. 4(A)  Dr. Mosze Pelc, eve of the war.

Fig. 4(B)  Dr. Mosze Pelc in his study before the war. Image reproduced courtesy of the Pelc family.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 5(A)  Members of the Judenrat in Kielce. Second on the right is Hermann Lewi, head of the second Judenrat in the city. This and other images are taken from the album given to Lewi on January 1, 1942, on the first anniversary of his tenure (hereafter: Judenrat album). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Photo Archives, 03282.

Fig. 5(B)  Members of the Judenrat. Judenrat album. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Photo Archives, 032829.

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Fig. 6(A)  Two old men with bands on their arms. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 5473/4.

Fig. 6(B)  Jews on a ghetto street. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 5473/5.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 7(A)  Entrance to the ghetto from Bodzenty n´  ska Street. To the right of the road there is a sign that says: “Area stricken with contagious diseases.”

Fig. 7(B)  Bodzenty n´ ska   Street in the ghetto, 1941–1942. Markowski collection.

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Fig. 8(A)  Ghetto entrance gate on Kozia Street. Markowski collection.

Fig. 8(B)  Entrance to the ghetto from Orla Street, corner of Warszawska Street, 1941–1942. Markowski collection.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

´ wiat Street, ca. 1942. Fig. 9(A) Woman looking through the fence at Novy S  Markowski collection.

Fig. 9(B)  Houses on the ghetto area, Bodzenty n´ ska   Street. Markowski collection.

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Fig. 10(A)  Men carrying bread to communal kitchen in the ghetto. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03270.

Fig. 10(B)  Workers of the communal kitchen established by the Judenrat. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03267.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 11(A)  Children from the ghetto orphanage. First on the right is Hermann Lewi. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03279.

Fig. 11(B) Children from the ghetto orphanage. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03275.

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Fig. 12(A)  Jewish children on their way to forced labor. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 1573/28.

Fig. 12(B)  Food rationing card for May 1941 issued by the branch of the Social SelfHelp in the ghetto. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03272.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 13(A)  Residents of the home for the elderly in the ghetto. Third on the left is Hermann Lewi. Judenrat album. USHMM Photo Archives, 03276.

Fig. 13(B)  Sara Leichter Zeifman, nurse at the ghetto hospital, 1941–1942. Image reproduced courtesy of Leichter family.

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Fig. 14(A)  Bernard Keizer with his son Jurek in the ghetto, June 1942. USHMM Photo Archives, 19700.

Fig. 14(B) Jews are assembled before transport to Treblinka camp. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 2700/103.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 15(A)  Leaders of the Jewish community in Bodzentyn, before the war. First on the left: Schechter, head of the community. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 1187/3.

Fig. 15(B)  Wedding at Suchedniów, October 1938. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 1597/78.

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Fig. 16(A)  Jew with German soldiers, Kielce District. Markowski collection.

Fig. 16(B)  Members of the Judenrat in Che  ˛ ciny. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 1869/237.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 17(A)  Ceremony held on May 29, 1946 in the memory of children who perished in the annihilation of the small ghetto. Participating are some of the children’s parents who have survived the Holocaust. On the reverse side of this picture, Sara Kerbel wrote in Yiddish: “At the cemetery in Kielce, Poland, May 29, 1946, on the day [of remembrance] of the last 46 children [in Kielce] who were tragically annihilated by the German murderers on May 29, 1943. The children of Kielce who lost their lives [are but] a small example of the many Jews [who perished] ... Here lie our children [and among them] my daughter Gizela.” Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 172D01.

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Fig. 18  List of the children who perished in the annihilation of the small ghetto on May 29, 1943. The names of the Bornsztein siblings are given erroneously. The correct names are Bornsztein Yehezkel and Bornsztein Esther. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, M.1.E/36.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 19(A)  Burial of the pogrom victims, July 8, 1946. USHMM Photo Archives, 14392.

Fig. 19(B)  Burial of the pogrom victims, July 8, 1946. USHMM Photo Archives, 14393.

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Fig. 20  Memorial stone placed in the Kielce cemetery after the pogrom. Yad Vashem: Photo Archives, 988/1.

The Ghetto (April 1941–August 1942)   Chapter 3

Fig. 21  Kielce ghetto, 1941–1942. Source of the map: Adam Masalski and Stanisław Meducki, Kielce w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej 1939–1945 (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe and Wrocław, 2007), 51.

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CHAPTER 4

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas (August 1942–January 1943) The First Aktion Thursday, August 20, 1942

O

n the evening of August 19, 1942, a train of approximately fifty sealed freight cars clattered into the Kielce freight depot on Młynarska Street. The floors of the cars were coated with lime; their upper vents were blocked with barbed wire. The cars had neither benches nor sanitary provisions. Affixed to the first and last cars were submachine guns. The train stopped a short distance from the station and remained under guard by the German railroad police, the Reichsbahnschutz.1 At 2:00 a.m. the next day, August 20, Gaier and Thomas arrived with an escort of SS men at the building that housed the Jewish ghetto police and ordered one of the Jews there, Otto R., to summon the entire Jewish police force. By this time, Hermann Lewi and the Judenrat members had been taken to the headquarters of Sonderkommando Feucht in the Kielce Gestapo building on Okrzei Street. There they were informed that they would have to take part in the transfer of part of the ghetto’s population to the east; they were also assured that their family members were safe and not included on the list of deportees. Mosze Meir Bahn would later testify that during the night the Jewish police building, which was under a blackout, was surrounded by Ukrainian police who shoved the Jewish police into the station and assaulted them brutally. Ernst Thomas and Hans Gaier then stood before them and Thomas spoke: “Thus far, you have been faithful and we   1 Testimony Stanisław Ksiąnżek, a non-Jew who worked at the railroad station during the deportation. Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 158. The exact number of cars is not definitively known. At Wollschläger’s trial, sixty rail cars were mentioned as having been at the station. YVA, TR.10/911, 31. Bahn, in his testimony, also notes that sixty cars pulled into the Kielce station. YVA, M.49.E/66.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

hope that you will continue to serve faithfully. You will remain. The fate of your wives and children has yet to be determined; they will probably stay here.”2 The Jewish policemen were instructed to evict all Jews in an orderly manner from their apartments in the Okrzei quarter and gather them at Jasna Street corner Stolarska.3 That same night, the ghetto was surrounded by thick cordons of dozens of Ukrainians and police from the deportation force.4 A Gestapo detachment entered the ghetto and split the area into three zones in accordance with deportation plans that called for three Aktions at three successive times. The section of the ghetto across the Silnica River would be cleared first; the streets close to town would be next, and the area surrounding the synagogue and the Judenrat building would be last. An open field among Jasna, Zagnańska, and Stolarska Streets would serve as the staging point for the deportation.5 At the same time, an opening was cut in the barbed-wire fence surrounding the ghetto to allow deportees to move from Piotrkowska Street to the train platform on Młynarska Street. Gaier, Thomas, Sturmführer Hanisch, and additional police gathered at the gate of the ghetto on Radomska Street and waited for the first evacuees, those designated to be sent out on the first train. The deportation began at 4:00 a.m.6 At 5:00 a.m., thirty Jewish males were ordered to dig a trench on Nowy Świat Street along the Silnica River—two meters deep, fifty meters long, and fifty meters wide.7 In the meantime, Jewish police began to enter apartments   2 Bahn testimony, YVA, TR-49E/66, 9. See also Bahn testimony in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 159. See also testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, YVA, O.3/2985, 10, and YVA, TR.10/911, 31.   3 Testimony Adam Helfand, YVA, M.49E/1309, 1. Helfand testifies that deportees were allowed to take a bag of up to 20 kilograms each and were given half an hour to pack. This testimony recurs in Fąfara, Gehenna ludności żydowskiej, 164. Mark Warszawski, a policeman in the ghetto, testified about the instructions the Jewish police received during the liquidation of the ghetto. Rudy Krueger reports that the Jewish police were given black armbands that they wore throughout the Aktion. See testimonies Mark Warszawski (March 28, 1966), Leib Lee Recht (May 5, 1966), Rudy Krueger (May 6, 1966), and Henryk Lappa (March 28, 1966), Darmstadt court.   4 Testimonies Avraham Meir (March 24, 1966) and Nathan Greenberg (May 6, 1966), Darmstadt court.   5 YVA, TR.10/911, 31.   6 YVA, TR.10/911, 79. Wollschläger testified at his trial that Feucht was also present at the deportation. Ibid., 81. On the creation of an passage in the fence between the town and the ghetto, see testimony Wacław Ceberski (who worked as a signalman at the station) in Fąfara, 173.   7 Testimony Alexander Feingold, Darmstadt court (April 29, 1966). According to Feingold, after the group finished digging the trench, they were ordered to climb into it and lay face down but were not harmed. An hour later, they heard the sound of horse-drawn carts and

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and order their inhabitants to pack and move into the street. The Okrzei neighborhood, the first scheduled for evacuation, had 6,000–7,000 Jewish residents, about one-third of the ghetto population at the time. The police woke them up with shouts, shovings and beatings, and gave them half an hour to get ready. Taken utterly by surprise, the hunted could barely decide what to take. They rushed to grab their most treasured possessions and stuff them into bags or rucksacks. Utter panic spread, heartrending cries against the background of gunfire. The frenzy reached into the streets. Jewish police hurried the deportees toward the staging point as the Nazis and their accomplices fanned out in the streets of the quarter and spread fear. It was an especially violent Aktion, terrified Jews brutally herded toward the staging point as the Germans and their helpers set dogs on them, flayed them, beat them with clubs and rifle butts, and shot them in the street, shouting all the while.8 German police who took part in clearing the ghetto later testified at various postwar trials that all police units, auxiliaries included, fired at Jews indiscriminately and filled the ghetto streets with corpses in the evacuation of Kielce.9 The violent rampage had its effects. Thousands of deportees rushed to the staging point on Okrzei Street and did whatever they could not to draw attention to themselves. Once there, they were put through a selection and divided into three groups—one for transport, the second to remain in place, and the third aggregating the elderly, the disabled, and the children. Those who possessed work permits were ordered to present them. Wives of doctors and of workers at the Ludwików foundry, the Henryków sawmill, the quarries, were then ordered to get out of the ditch and place in it the corpses that were in the carts. Rumpl, Gaier’s deputy, walked among the bodies and shot those that showed signs of life. The group continued to work in this manner for five to six days.   8  Helfand testimony, in Fąfara, 164. See also Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 30–31. Eliezer Feiner testifies: “Next door to us was an apartment with two rooms and a kitchen. In one of the rooms there was an elderly Jew. The soldiers entered with boots and steel helmets, with truncheons and dogs, and shouted Schnell, schnell. The man couldn’t walk […]. They shot him on the spot […]. I saw them tear a baby from its mother’s arms and smash its head against the wall […].” Testimony Eliezer Faeiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 18; see also YVA, TR.10/911, 31. Avraham Urbach recalls being struck with a rubber truncheon and losing consciousness en route to the staging point: “The march continued and from then on I never saw my wife and my children.” Testimony Urbach, YVA, TR.11 2083–58, Kielce file. See also testimony Szaja Salcberg, YVA, M.49.E/1705, 3; testimony Mosze Mydlo, YVA, M.49.E/85, 1; testimony Zwi Abramowicz, YVA, O.3/7433, 25; and testimony Mosze Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66.  9 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 121, no. 429.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

and the HASAG plant were ordered to pass before Gaier and Thomas. After presenting their papers, they were placed with the group that was to remain, which later was joined by the Jewish police and their families.10 All the others— those who had failed the selection—were ordered to toss their valuables into large sacks. Their ID cards were thrown into a bonfire; their owners were told they would get new ones in their new places of residence.11 Those with work papers were carefully examined by the Gestapo police, who accompanied their inspection with beatings, kicking, and gunfire that they intended for both terror and amusement. On the first day of the evacuation, only 500 men passed Gaier’s and Thomas’ inspection; they were interned in a shed on Targowa Street behind the Judenrat building, not far from the Great Synagogue. To raise the level of terror still more, Gaier chose a few of them, stood them up against a wall, and shot them in full view.12 The ghetto being surrounded by a tight police cordon, escape was impossible. The thousands of Jews to be deported by train were divided into groups of several hundred and then into squads of six. This done, all were marched out through the ghetto gate down Piotrkowska Street, on the Polish side of town, to the freight depot on Młynarska Street. The streets that the evacuees used were blocked to traffic, but the non-Jewish population gathered on the sidewalks and watched the Jews being deported. Two black-uniformed Gestapo police marched at the head of the convoy, Schupo “green” police strode alongside it, and Erich Wollschläger himself, Gaier’s assistant, brought up the rear, where several horse-drawn carts hauled deportees who were no longer ambulatory. The march to the railroad station lasted 20–30 minutes. The police escort 10 Testimonies Ben Zion Perel and Aharon Liebling. Darmstadt court. 11 Testimony Nathan Greenberg, Darmstadt court. 12 “[…] Basically, the Gestapo men didn’t take account of the documents; what mattered [to them] was how people looked […].” Testimony Adam Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 2. See also Zwi Abramowicz, YVA, O.3/7433, 27. Bahn says that the Jews who worked at Ludwików, HASAG-Granat, and the quarries were ordered to gather on one side. Testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66. Eliezer Feiner held a work permit for a military fuel station. He was ordered out of the ranks; from then on, according to his testimony, he could see the frightened eyes of his mother, fearing for the child they had taken from her who was doomed to an unknown fate. Testimony Feiner YVA, O.3/11630, 18. See also interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001, author’s private archive. On the first day of the deportation, the Germans shot to death Judenrat secretary Sokolowski and Judenrat members Gutman and Warszawski for no reason. See also testimonies Ephraim Eliahu Rubinowicz (December 22, 1965), Mendel Weinryb (March 25, 1966), and Binyamin Lerer (May 9, 1966), Darmstadt court.

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stayed on the platform until the last of the Jews had been loaded aboard the train, whereupon they and the other deportation forces returned to the ghetto gate to accompany the next group.13 Those who could not keep up were shot on the road by German police; Jewish police were ordered to load the corpses onto carts and deliver them for burial to the trenches that had been dug on Nowy Świat Street for this purpose.14 Access to the vicinity of the railroad station was off-limits to all local Poles except railroad staff and the entire area was kept under tight guard by members of Sonderkommando Feucht. Before boarding the train, Jews were divided into ranks of ten. At first, sixty to eighty people were placed in each car. Finding that there were too many Jews and too few cars, however, the Germans began to cram 120–130 into each wagon. “They were packed in standing, shoulder-to-shoulder with children in between. The crush was awful [...].”15 13 YVA, TR.10/911, 31, 80–81. See also testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna, 160. On Wollschläger’s cruelty during the deportation, see testimonies Frida Goldberg (March 4, 1966), Solomon Bricks (March 11, 1966), Mendel Weinryb (March 25, 1966), Alfredo Sapir (March 21, 1966), Sam Lieberman (April 19, 1966), Adolf Swisarczyk (May 10, 1966), Philip Radecki (May 17, 1966), and Boris Brana (April 19, 1966), Darmstadt court. Weinryb and Sapir recalled that Wollschläger routinely used the word umlegen (put to rest) to denote murder and stated that it was usually Rumpl who committed the act. Lieberman and Adolf Swisarczyk testified, each independently of the other, that one of the Jews who had passed the selection was an Austrian doctor, a former officer in the Kaiser’s army, who had lost his leg in World War I. When Wollschläger saw him, he taunted him (Du hund und hast schon genug gelebt—you are a dog and have lived long enough) and shot him dead. 14 “If someone collapsed from exhaustion or didn’t keep up the pace [the Germans] gave a sign to a Jewish policeman and he grabbed the poor fellow and seated him in a cart. Several carts accompanied the convoy. Everyone loaded on the wagons was shot by an SS man.” Testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna, 160. See also testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 8; testimony Yitzhak Goldblum, YVA, O.3/12285, 23; Sara Kerbel, ‘Al beitenu she-harav, 48; testimonies Dionisa Gabrzinski and Wacław Ceberski, non-Jews who worked at the train station, in Fąfara, 154, 157, 174; and testimony Salcberg, YVA, M.49.E/1705, 3. On the murder of stragglers, see also testimony Zygmunt Śliwiński, a non-Jew who observed the deportation from his apartment on Piotrkowska Street, in Fąfara, 174. Sam Gaska was among the Jews who had dug the trenches on Nowy Świat Street and buried the dead. See testimonies Sam Gaska (March 17, 1966), Szyman Weicman (February 2, 1966), Leib Hochman ( January 31, 1966), Avraham Kerbel (February 27, 1966), Szmul Goldgrub (March 21, 1966), Morris Brikman (March 30, 1966), and Moniek Morris Mydlo (March 22, 1966), Darmstadt court. 15 YVA, TR.10/911, 31. Mosze Mydlo was sent to Treblinka, whence he escaped and returned to Kielce. He testified that 120–130 Jews were squeezed into each railroad car. See testimony Mosze (Moniek Morris) Mydlo, Darmstadt court. See also testimonies Ksiązek and Gawdzinski in Fąfara, 157, 158. Notably, in some transports in the Generalgouvernement Ukrainians packed as many as 140 Jews into each car. The deportation of the Jews of

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

Those who refused to board the train or who tried to escape were shot then and there. When room aboard the train ran out, those remaining were taken back to the ghetto.16 That afternoon, the policemen began to close the doors of the cars. It was an especially hot day, the train did not move; and the passengers were trapped inside the cars without water. The combination of crushing congestion and searing thirst made the wait unendurable. “Packed tight inside the cars, frying in the heat, Jews begged the guards […] for a little water […]. One of the Poles […] ran toward the cars with a container of water. […] An SS man noticed him, trained his handgun on him, and shot him dead […].”17 News of the events at the railroad station and the ghastly sight of the now-vacant ghetto streets stunned the hundreds of Jews who had passed the selection and were imprisoned in the shacks near the ghetto entrance gate. People literally went mad. Some began to tear at their hair, others ran back and forth shouting and wailing, others rolled on the floor and banged their heads while pouring out tears. After a while, they slowly calmed. Some froze in their pain; others entered a state of apathy. No one had the strength to do anything […].18

The train begun to move toward nightfall. Sixteen hours later, at 11:00 a.m. on August 21, 1942, after passing through Skarżysko-Kamienna, Radom, Dęblin, Łuków, and Szydłowiec, it pulled into the Treblinka death camp. Its contents, presumed on the basis of the number of cars, were more than 6,000 Jews.19 As the Jews were being moved to the train, groups of Ukrainians fanned out in the evacuated part of the ghetto and scoured it for fugitives, shooting on sight anyone whom they found. From those incarcerated in the shack near the

16 17

18 19

Międzyrzec in late June 1942, carried out by Police Battalion 101, is a case in point. See Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 170. Testimony Nathan Greenberg, Darmstadt court. Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 4. The Ceberski, a non-Jew, testified that Jewish women removed their jewelry, threw it at the Polish railway workers, and begged for a few drops of water. The Germans who guarded the train would not hear of it. See testimony Ceberski and Antoni Dybko in Fąfara, 174, 177; see also YVA, TR.10/911, 31. Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5. “ […] In the shed were heard the sounds, cries, and wailings of people whose desperation had driven them mad […].” See testimony Salcberg, in Fąfara, 220. YVA, 2083–58, Kielce file, 5. See also Yitzhak Arad, Treblinka, Hell and Revolt (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1983), 261; Urbanski, Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945, 118–124; testimony Nathan Greenberg (April 4, 1966), Darmstadt court.

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synagogue, groups of ten to twenty were taken; each ordered to clear out the contents of vacated apartments under the supervision of a Schupo policeman. Removed at this stage were clothes, shoes, and linens. Poles took part in this work as well, they and their carts having been mobilized for the job that morning. The proceeds were delivered to several storage sites in the ghetto; Poles who caught looting were shot.20 In the meantime, the streets were cleared of the corpses of Jews who had been murdered in the course of the Aktion, including the elderly, the disabled, children, and those shot at the staging point after the selection. According to the testimonies, one may estimate the number of murders on the first day of the deportation at anywhere from several hundred to one thousand. Some victims were interred in the mass graves that had been dug out that morning near the Silnica River; the group that had excavated them also attended to the burial. This detail was minded by police from the Kielce Schupo, some of whom sat near the burial site in white smocks as they issued orders.21 Among the Jews who passed the selection, a few were drafted for work in the Jewish cemetery in Pakosz. Rafael Blumenfeld, who passed Gaier’s and Thomas’ selection that day, August 20, 1942, later testified that he and four others loaded corpses onto a military truck and rode with them to the cemetery. Before burial, the murdered Jews were stripped of their clothes; gold teeth were ripped out, and fingers with gold rings were amputated. At the cemetery, one group of Jews was digging large pits and another began organizing the bodies there. To economize on space, the dead were buried in packs, side by side. When the gravediggers climbed out of the pit, they were ordered to pour lime on the bodies.22 It may

20 “[…] They kept the most important valuables in special warehouses. […] The Germans searched the apartments for gold, jewelry […] and foreign currency.” Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 6. Wollschläger ordered the Polish looters shot; Rumpl carried out the command. See testimonies Avraham Meir (March 24, 1966), Leon Zimrot (March15, 1966), Herman Opatowski (April 28, 1966), and Israel Feisenberg (May 16, 1966), Darmstadt court. See also interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001 (author’s private archives). 21 From the window of his apartment in the ghetto, Mosze Eliezer Szyfman saw a large pit being dug and, subsequently, Jews being taken to it from the ghetto and shot. He identified Wirtz and Rumpl among the murderers. Testimony Mosze Eliezer Szyfman (March 7, 1966), Darmstadt court. 22 Testimonies Sam Geska (March 17, 1966), Aharon Liebling (May 4, 1966), Morris Liebfeld (May 20, 1966), and Philip Radecki (May 17, 1966), Darmstadt court. Marek Fojgen testified that Poles too were ordered to prise gold teeth from the mouths of the Jewish women and strip them of their jewelry. Testimony Marek Fojgen (April 15, 1966), Darmstadt court.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

be assumed that some seriously wounded people were found among the dead; they were shot beside the ditch and then buried with the rest.23 After the Aktion that day, August 20, only the few hundred Jews imprisoned in the shed on Targowa Street remained. Our barracks was in fact a large shack without a floor and with an open ceiling. We spent a night and a day there in horrible sanitary conditions. The next night they moved us to the nearby synagogue and we made room for a group brought in from the second Aktion.24

The Second Aktion Saturday–Sunday, August 22–23, 1942 The next evening, August 21, 1942, another freight train arrived at Kielce for another pre-arranged transport. At dawn on August 22, new trenches were dug on Nowy Świat Street and the Ukrainians from Sonderkommando Feucht began to surround the area between Okrzei Street and the smaller part of the ghetto, which included the extension of Starowarszawska Street, Kozia and Silnica Streets, and parts of Przedmiescie and Nowowarszawska Streets. “Panic seized the ghetto […]. No one went out. Every other day another area was marked off for liquidation. The Jews who had to wait for their area to be liquidated were ordered to stay at home. The ghetto streets emptied.”25 The second Aktion, like the first, began in the early morning and followed the same pattern. This time, however, it lasted for two days and yielded a larger crop of murders. Jewish police again entered houses in the area earmarked for evacuation 23 Interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001. Blumenfeld estimates that about 1,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto on the first day and that some 120 Jews worked in the burial operation in trenches along the Silnica River and at the cemetery at Pakosz. Oscar Berger was involved also in burying corpses on the first day; he and fifty to sixty other Jews worked at a mass grave that had been excavated in a large garden on Okrzei Street, near the forester’s house. Oscar Berger testimony, YVA, O.33/22. Feferman tells about Meir Feigenbaum, one of the Jews who had been ordered to bury the dead. He stood in the street and informed the groups of Jews he met of the cruelty of Rumpl and his band of assistants. FefermanWasoff, The Processed, 35. See also YVA, TR.10/911, 33; testimony Zwi Abramowicz, YVA, O.3/7433, 27; testimony Abraham Meir, Darmstadt court. Michael Finkelstein testified as follows: “Whenever he passed in the street, Rumpl always left some corpses behind [...].” Testimony Finkelstein (April 15, 1966), Darmstadt court. 24 Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5; interview with Rafael Blumenfeld, January 2001 (author’s private archives). 25 Testimony Kerbel, ‘Al beitenu she-harav, 48.

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and ordered their inhabitants to move into the street, line up in columns, and march in an orderly manner to the staging point.26 It can be said that also this time the Germans knew that the freight cars would not hold all the anticipated deportees; this would explain why so many Jews were shot in the ghetto and did not make it to the railroad station. To expedite their processing, the evacuees were stopped for a selection on Okrzei Street, well before the staging point. Police from the evacuation force pulled the elderly and the exhausted from the ranks and murdered them on the street or in building entrances and courtyards near the site of the selection. The rest proceeded to the staging point.27 Among the Jews murdered that day, August 22, were seventy children from the orphanage on Okrzei Street. “The Germans threw a party for themselves. Some of them shot down the children like rabbits […].”28 The rest of the youngsters were led with their teacher to the ditches on Nowy Świat Street, where they were ordered to strip. When they balked, the teacher was ordered to strip first in order to set an example. When she too refused, the Germans and their accomplices began to pummel the children cruelly and undress them by force as they wept and pleaded for help. Then a Jewish policeman was ordered to lead the children to the edge of the ditch, where Matias Rumpl, Gaier’s deputy, shot them dead. A teacher named Gucia was murdered last.29 The evacuation of the Jewish hospital also began that day. Children in the isolation ward of the facility’s pediatric department were thrown to the street from the third floor30; the rest of the ill were briefly allowed to remain. 26 Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5. 27 YVA, TR.10/911, 32. See testimony Morris Rubinstein (May 18, 1966), Darmstadt court. Finkelstein notes that Wollschläger ordered people to show him the palms of their hands; those who did not have calluses passed the selection. Testimony Finkelstein (April 29, 1969), Darmsta.dt court. 28 Testimony Salcberg in Fąfara, 156. 29 “Ninety percent of the children in the ditch were still alive. They arranged them in layers of forty per layer and poured lime on them […].” See testimony Bahn in Fąfara, 161. See also testimony Salcberg, YVA, M.49.E/1705, 3; testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5; and Hadassah Zimmerman, Unter de Poilishe greeninke beimelach shpiln zich mer nisht kein Moishelakh un Shloimelach (Yiddish) (author’s private archives). Shimon Kral, one of the ghetto police who escorted the deported Jews to the train, reported how Rumpl shot twelve Jews in succession. Testimonies Shimon Kral (April 14, 1966), Avraham Meir (March 24, 1966), and Yakov David Lemberg (December 21, 1965), Darmstadt court. 30 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 129. Rudy Krueger related that in the second deportation a group of Gestapo men hurled children to the street from the window of a house on Silnica Street. See testimony Rudy Krueger (May 6, 1966), Darmstadt court. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Poles found the bodies of Jews in a well on Piotrkowska Street, opposite the Church of the Holy Cross.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

The deportation in this Aktion proceeded swiftly, some 6,000 Jews being sent to the Treblinka death camp in one transport. Among them were Chief Rabbi Abeli Rappaport and his wife, two sons, and a daughter.31 The Aktion continued the next day, August 23, 1942, with the summary murder of Jews who remained after the train had left the night before. The first to meet this fate were the seventy residents of the old-age home. They were shot dead in the courtyard of the building and their bodies were brought to the ditches on Nowy Świat Street, near the Silnica River.32 Once this was done, Thomas, Gaier, and Rumpl visited the hospital on Radomska Street, bordering the “Aryan” side of town. This facility was shared by hundreds of inpatients and additional hundreds who had avoided deportation by taking shelter in the hospital beds. At first, the order was to lead the patients out of the hospital and shoot them all in the yard. As the yard was visible from a German field hospital on the other side of the ghetto fence, however, it was decided “not to upset the German patients […]. [The Jewish] Dr. Reiter, the hospital director, was ordered to execute them all within three hours. When he asked by what method they should be executed, Thomas showed him the bayonet.”33 Liliana Servetnik, who worked in the hospital, testified that Dr. Reiter advised Thomas of the presence in the hospital of 1,200 Jewish inpatients. Half an hour later [Servetnik continued], Dr. Fritz Brünner, the SS doctor, arrived at the hospital and gave Dr. Reiter prescriptions for Evipan and Sublimat in large doses. Dr. Reiter called the entire hospital staff and showed us the prescription. Risking his own life, Dr. Reiter kept 300 patients alive. All the others, 900 patients, received from Dr. Reiter and Dr. Steinberg, and in my presence, shots into the veins. The victims knew 31 Thomas ordered Rabbi Rappaport to translate him to German the words of the song “Rose of Jacob.” When the rabbi began to translate, Thomas gave orders to beat him. See testimony of Mosze Bahn in Fąfara, 162. Rudy Krueger testified that Thomas was completely drunk. He sat in the yard at the staging point, selected ten women and shot them with his pistol. Testimony Rudy Krueger, (May 6, 1966) Darmstadt court. 32 Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5; testimony Bahn in Fąfara, 162; testimony Herman Opatowski (April 28,1966), Darmstadt court. 33 Testimony Bahn, in Fąfara, 162. See also YVA, TR.10/911, 32. Henryk Lappa testified that it was Thomas who had overseen the murder of the hospital patients. Thomas, Lapa said, had ordered all the patients to be shot and only because the mass shooting might cause a disturbance among the soldiers interned in the nearby Wehrmacht hospital did he change his mind and order the patients to receive fatal injections instead. See testimony Lape (March 28, 1966), Darmstadt court.

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In Enemy Land what was being done to them. The patients fell asleep as they would [if anesthetized before] an operation. […] [It took between] half an hour and several hours. […] Dr. Brünner returned that afternoon to make sure everything had been done right. […] Some patients still showed signs of life. Dr. Brünner took a long surgical knife and plunged it into their hearts. […] Thomas arrived that evening. Dr. Reiter saved 300 patients by claiming that they were relatives of the hospital staff. The dead were loaded onto carts and hauled away for burial […].34

All Jewish inmates in the town prison were also murdered that day.35 Jewish police were ordered to clear the dead from the roads in the ghetto area and gather them in building vestibules, help move them to ditches, assist in the burial, and wash bloodstains off the streets.36

34 Testimony Liliana Servetnik, YVA, 02/516, 2–4. Different testimonies report different numbers of patients in the hospital. Since Servetnik had worked there and was present during the liquidation, her count should be accepted. Oscar Berger puts the tally at 400–500. Testimony Oscar Berger YVA, O.33/22; see also testimony Salcberg, YVA, M.49.E/1705, 3; testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 5; testimony Fela Lemberg (Perel) in Kerbel, ‘Al beitenu she-harav, 40; See also Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 33, and testimony Miriam Rozenkranc, Tel Aviv District Court, February 10, 1970, YVA, Kielce file, TR.11, 58–2083. Rozenkranc had gone into labor and was in the hospital on the deportation day. “I saw the nurse giving injections to patients and telling them that they were sedatives. [...] In the corridor I met Jewish policemen who were looking for a way to save patients.” Sara Leichter, who had worked as a nurse in the hospital, testified that the Jewish doctors obeyed the Germans’ orders in giving patients lethal injections. Ben Zion Perel’s mother was a patient in the hospital; in his testimony, he reported that patients were killed by injection and, when these failed, by stabbing with surgical knives. Adolf Swiczarczyk reports that patients were given lethal injections between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. See testimonies Sara Leichter (February 7, 1966), Ben Zion Perel (March 1, 1966), Ignatz Stepfel (May 13, 1966), Aharon Liebling (May 4, 1966), Swiczarczyk (May 19, 1966), and Natalia Weintraub ( July 25, 1966), Darmstadt court, and YVA, TR.10/673, 42. Notably, on October 4, 1942, during the ­liquidation of the Jews of the Częstochowa ghetto, Jewish doctors under orders from Paul Degenhardt, the local Schupo chief who directed the Aktion, poisoned severely ill patients in the hospital on Przemysłowa Street. 35 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce, 130. 36 Testimony Meir Warszawski (March 28, 1966), Darmstadt court. See also anonymous testimony, YVA, O.12/7, 3–5. The witness was a Jewish citizen of Mandate Palestine who had gone for a visit to Poland in 1939 and was unable to leave when the war broke out even though he was considered a foreign citizen. His testimony indicates that during the liquidation of the Jews of Kielce he and his family were in the ghetto and that only two months later, on October 27, 1942, was the Gestapo officially advised that they were to be returned to Palestine.

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Word of the murders in the hospital spread quickly among the thousands of Jews who remained in the ghetto. After four days in which thousands of ghetto residents had been deported to locations unknown, masses of Jews ran through the streets in a desperate search for food. Kalman Szein, Feferman writes, stood up among the stunned masses, raised his hands to the heavens, and cried bitterly at passersby: We are all going to die. We’re already the walking dead. Let’s do something. Don’t you see that they’ve planned everything out carefully, step by step, to deceive us and do us in? Let’s do something. The end of our lives is here and now.37

Someone in the crowd that had gathered asked innocuously, “What can we do by now, and with what?” And Szlama the baker angrily asked why Lewi, chairman of the Judenrat, had not disclosed the destination of the deportation transports.38

The Third Aktion Monday August 24, 1942 Four days after the deportation of the Kielce Jews began, the remaining Jews in the ghetto sat at home, anxiously awaiting their turn. Escape from the ghetto was impossible, especially for the elderly and those with families. Issachar Reis recalls having sat at home all day, sewing knapsacks for his parents and his six brothers and placing in each a valuable that could be sold in the event that they became separated. We were on the verge of deportation and our thoughts went to how to fill our bellies. It was the prolonged hunger, the indifference to life, and the exhaustion brought on by the war for survival. […] Across from us was a vegetable garden that had been broken into at the beginning of the deportation. All the starving people grabbed vegetables to eat. Father too brought back a bag with beets. My sisters along with Mama worked all day to cook them. Eating them left us satiated for the first time in a long while. […] It was our last night together. At five in the morning, the police burst into the yard and began rushing people out.39 37 Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 34. 38 Ibid. 39 Testimony Issachar Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 17–18. See also Zablocki, “Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor.”

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The third and final Aktion began on August 24. Early that morning, Jewish police fanned into the streets, calling with loudspeakers for Jews to leave their apartments and present themselves with their parcels in the street. Those summoned were ordered to walk in groups of six toward Okrzei Street, where armed and steel-helmeted policemen lined the sidewalks.40 After they progressed approximately 100 meters, SS men stopped them and took the elderly aside, ordering them to wait there. Later, they gunned them down. The others went on, stragglers being shot on the spot.41 Feferman reports having heard the sound of barking dogs before the policemen appeared. Suddenly, she continues, they were surrounded by armed SS men and Ukrainians, who, fingers on the triggers of their submachine guns, ordered them to leave their homes and move into the street. Although it was summer, they took coats and heavy backpacks with them believing they would be sent to some other village or town, and hurried down the streets in view of the already-empty houses. The entire collective was directed to Targowa Street. The adjacent square near Jasna Street, the former staging and selection point, looked like a battlefield.42 We were stopped by SS men who had formed a line blocking the road. Each of us had to show his work permit. […] I was pulled out of the ranks and the rest of my family marched on. I managed to wave to them. They all turned to look at me, their faces radiating dread and despair […].43

At the staging point on Okrzei Street, another selection was carried out and about 1,000 holders of work permits were left in place. This Aktion was directed by Gaier and Thomas, like the preceding ones, and was equally brutal. Thirty pregnant women who were discovered in its course were taken to Radomska Street and shot dead there.44 Housebound elderly and ill were shot in their apartments or in the building courtyards. Abuse of the deportees continued at the staging point. In the meantime, Gaier and Thomas carried out yet another selection among the 1,000 Jews who held work permits, adding more than half of them to the transport and having the others led to the 40 41 42 43 44

Testimony Shlomo Binuszewicz, YVA, O.3/8647, 8; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 9. Testimony Morris Greenspan (March 22, 1966), Darmstadt court. Testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 9; Feferman-Wasoff, The Processed, 34. Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 18. Testimony Jozef Miernik in Fąfara, 175. Miernik testified that the women kneeled and were shot in that position.

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s­ ynagogue plaza and the nearby shed, where Jews who passed selections in the previous operations had languished under the guard of German police. At this time, some 2,000 Jews were gathered there. Presumably convinced that even this number of Jews was excessive, Thomas launched yet another selection, in which separate groups were formed of doctors and their families, hospital staff, Jewish police and their families, and the few Judenrat members who remained alive.45 During this selection, Bruno Schindler, head of the Jewish police, approached Thomas, presumably to ask for something. Thomas gave him a blow that knocked the policeman’s cap off his head and muttered something at him between his teeth. When Schindler bent over to pick up his cap, Thomas kicked him and said, “You won’t need that anymore.” Then, at Thomas’ order, a Schupo policeman led Schindler to one of the houses and murdered him.46 Of the 2,000 Jews who had passed the selections and assembled in the plaza in front of the synagogue, another 300 were now removed, including Schindler’s wife.47 After these were marched to the train that waited for the final deportees and placed aboard, the transport carrying the last of Kielce’s deported Jews set out for the Treblinka death camp. After the final deportation, SS men aided by Jewish police combed the houses for persons in hiding. Those found were shot dead.48 A few of those who had been left at the staging point were selected to clear away the corpses. Closely watched by the SS, they loaded the bodies onto carts and hauled them to the Jewish cemetery in Pakosz. […] Here began the hasty excavation of giant graves into which they threw the victims of the Aktion. The work was supervised by SS men. 45 Alpert testifies that the selection in the third Aktion left only 200 Jews behind and a total of 2,000 Jews alive in all of Kielce. Testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 10–11. See also YVA, testimony Servetnik, YVA, O.2/516, 3–4. Zwi Abramowicz testifies that the final selection was conducted in the hospital courtyard and that several hundred additional Jews were set aside there and placed aboard the last transport. Testimony Abramowicz, YVA, O.3/7433, 28. 46 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce, 133. Mosze Kalman Winter, one of the Jews who participated in the burial of those shot dead in the ghetto, knew Schindler well. In his testimony, he related that it had been one Wirtz of Schupo who had shot Schindler. Testimonies Mosze Kalman Winter (December 29, 1965), Morris Greenspan (March 22, 1966), and Manuel Friedman (March 16, 1966), Darmstadt court. 47 YVA, testimony Alpert, O.3/2985, 11. 48 YVA, TR.10/911, 33.

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In Enemy Land […] Before the victims were buried, we had to strip them naked. The clothes were burned and the Germans searched the ashes for gold. […] We were forced on pain of death to prise gold teeth from [the corpses’ mouths]. […] This we performed in an automatic and somnambulant manner. […] The terror of the Aktions muddled our senses and deprived us of all mental equilibrium […].49

The ghetto had emptied. Polish wagoners continued to circulate in its confines, loading up possessions that had been removed from the Jews’ former homes.50 In the three Aktions that were perpetrated on August 20–24, 1942, some 19,800 Jews were sent from Kielce to Treblinka in three transports. They had come from Kielce, Łódź, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, and small towns on the Nida floodplain.51 It is estimated that in the course of the deportation from the ghetto some 2,500 Jews were murdered in place, several hundred had managed to escape in the two weeks before the deportation, and some 1,700 passed selection and were kept in town for slave labor.52 49 Testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49.E/1309, 6; testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 19; testimony Meir Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 7–8. See also YVA, TR.10/911, 33, and testimony Bahn, YVA, M.49.E/66. Morris Rubinstein recalls having stripped countless bodies personally and adds that the burial was supervised by a different Gestapo policeman each time. See testimony Rubinstein (May 18, 1966), Darmstadt court. 50 Testimony Aharon Frenkel (April 1, 1966), Darmstadt court. 51 Among them were Mrs. Żimnowoda, principal of the girls’ high school; Sara Reizman, founder of the first public school and trade school; the philanthropist Zagajski; the rabbis of Chęciny and Chmielnik; the merchant Mizenmacher; Prywolski, principal of the public school for boys; the Minc sisters, founders of the first public school for girls; and other notables. Testimony Aharon Liebling, YVA, M.1.Q/174, 3. 52 YVA, Kielce file, TR.11, 2083–58, 5. The estimates for the number of Jews murdered in the three Aktions range from several hundred to four thousand. To approach a semblance of accuracy, the following data should be taken into consideration: 900 Jews murdered in the hospital; some 800 in the first Aktion, around 300 in the second Aktion (not counting hospital patients), and roughly 500 in the third Aktion. This brings the number of Jews murdered in Kielce on August 20–24 to nearly 2,500. The number sent to Treblinka may be reckoned on the basis of an average of fifty-five rail cars per transport and 120 Jews per car, or fifty cars and 130 Jews per car. By this calculation, some 19,800 Jews were deported in the three transports that left Kielce. Assuming that 1,700 Jews remained after the last selection, one may indeed conclude that on the eve of the deportation Kielce had a Jewish population of 23,000–24,000. According to Mosze Meir Bahn, there were 23,500 Jews in the ghetto shortly before the deportation. Most witnesses report place the number of Jews killed in the ghetto at around 2,000, but it is unclear whether this includes the nearly 1,000 murdered in the hospital. If Servetnik’s figure is correct, the number killed in the ghetto rises

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Writing about the liquidation of the Międzyrzec ghetto in June 1942 by Police Battalion 101, Christopher Browning notes the ferocity of the Aktion and remarks that 9 percent of the deportee-designates were shot and killed on site. To stress the brutality, Browning compares the proportion of Jews killed during the Międzyrzec Aktion with the estimated at 2 percent of Warsaw Jews who perished during the Great Aktion in the summer of 1942. He concludes that the Jews of Międzyrzec were killed with such “indescribable” brutality as to leave a grim impression even on the policemen of Battalion 101.53 If we assume that there were 24,000 Jews in the Kielce ghetto on the eve of the deportation and that 2,500 of them perished in its course, then over 10 percent of the Jews of Kielce were shot dead on location during the liquidation of the ghetto. The operation was utterly uninhibited; those responsible for the murders and the deportation in Kielce gave complete vent to their sadistic tendencies and allowed their actions to surpass the call of duty by far. Violent, brutal, and pitiless, they derived exceptional pleasure, even under the circumstances of the times, from abusing Jews and causing them suffering before they died. They were most emphatically not ordinary men. Oscar Berger survived the selection on the first deportation day but was snared in the last sorting and was placed aboard the last transport. Of the trip to Treblinka, he would later testify: “We were packed into the freight cars; children cried and women went crazy […].”54 Chlorine and lime had been laid on in great quantities, causing many to gag to death. Friedrich Rademacher, a member of the transport guard, and Mosze Mydlo, a passenger in one of the transports who like Berger managed to escape from Treblinka, later testified, each independently of the other, that due to the successful ruse of the deportation—which many Jews misconstrued as a population transfer—some still believed that they were being taken to the east for slave labor even after they had been locked inside the cars.55 Even those who feared the worst, however, could not imagine that this would be their final journey.

by at least several hundred, meaning that some 2,500 Jews were murdered during the Aktions— more than 10 percent of the ghetto population on the eve of the deportation. See testimony Szymon Zelcer, secretary of the Jewish police in Kielce in 1941–1942: YVA, O.2/314, 2. 53 Browning, Ordinary Men, 131–132. 54 Testimony Oscar Berger, YVA, O.33/22. 55 YVA, TR.10/911, 33; testimony Mydlo, YVA, M.49.E/85.

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Deportation of the Jews of Kielce District Reports and testimonies about the deportation of the Jews of Kielce District are relatively scarce. The order to liquidate this population was given by Herbert Böttcher, SS and police commander in Radom District. The Gestapo, the SS, and Sonderkommando Feucht, collectively responsible for the campaign to deport the Jews of the district and loot their property, also mobilized gendarmerie forces from various stations in the area as well as “blue” Polish police. The Schupo and the gendarmes were brought in mainly to seal off the area, thwart any possibility of escape, and escort the thousands of Jews on their march to the nearest train station. The Germans considered these auxiliaries’ familiarity with the district immensely important for the discharge of their duties.56 The method invoked to deport the Jews from this area was the same in most cases; its implementation, however, varied from place to place. The Germans divided the Kielce district into three subdistricts: Kielce, Jędrzejów, and Busko-Zdrój. The account that follows will address the liquidation of the Jews in each subdistrict accordingly. Among the various localities, the most copious information that has been preserved concerns Chmielnik, a town some 30 kilometers south of Kielce.

Busko-Zdrój Subdistrict Chmielnik News about the destruction of Kielce’s Jewish community reached Chmielnik in late August 1942.57 At this time, the Judenrat was ordered to dispatch a group of young men for labor at the camp in Podleże village, near Pińczów.58 Also circulating in town were rumors about death camps in Lublin District and the deportation of the Jews of Warsaw to Treblinka. The 8,000 Jews in Chmielnik at the time did not believe these stories. Lemberg writes in his memoirs: […] Jews were going insane trying to figure out what to do. By the end of August [1942], after the deportation from Kielce, we already knew for 56 YVA, TR/673, 44. See also Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, Der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2006), 317. 57 Chmielnik is 30 km. south of Kielce. 58 Adam Neuman-Nowicki, Struggle for Life during the Nazi Occupation of Poland (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 41.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4 certain that the situation was not simple and that Jews were not being sent to work. It had begun to dawn on us that they were being sent to their death. Those who had good connections with peasants in the villages began thinking about a place to hide and giving up everything they owned in exchange for it.59

In the course of September 1942, as the rumors evolved into well founded reports, the Judenräte turned to their German overseers and asked what might lie behind the rumors. The response was an assurance that the lives of those who worked were not in danger. Nevertheless, many Jews began seeking hideouts among non-Jews in the countryside and nearby towns, and some left Chmielnik. In the meantime, the Germans spread a rumor that whoever wanted to leave for Mandate Palestine could register with the authorities. Many Jews did sign up, only to find that it was a ruse meant to distract Jewish public opinion from what was about to transpire.60 The Judenrat and the Jewish police tended to accept the Germans’ promises about sparing working Jews from deportation and, in order to employ as many as possible, the Judenrat established a special committee to set up additional workshops for craftsmen and skilled workers. Many tried to sign up for the purported new jobs but the deportation came too soon to allow anything of substance to take place. Thus, on October 1, 1942, the Germans ordered all Jewish males aged 15–50 and all young unmarried women to report for a roll call at 6:00 the next morning at the market square. The crowd that formed, surrounded by German gendarmes and Polish blue police, underwent a selection by a German committee. The panel designated some 1,200 Jews for transport to the HASAG labor camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna, fifty-five kilometers north of Chmielnik, and forty others for the HASAG-Granat camp in Kielce.61 The families on the market square, who were certain that the deportees were being taken to a death camp, 59 Yakov Lemberg, “Fun Akzie zu Akzie” (Yiddish) [From Aktion to Aktion], Pinkes Chmielnik, 751. 60 Israel Feingold, “Bi-shnot ha-shoa” [in Hebrew] [In the Holocaust Years], Pinkes Chmielnik, 708. 61 Kleinhandler, YVA, M.1.E/2364, 2. On the camp at Skarżysko-Kamienna see Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow. The HASAG-Granat camp in Kielce was set up in September 1942 by the HASAG concern (Hugo Schneider AG, HASAG-Leipzig) on the grounds of a Polish munitions factory that HASAG had taken over in January 1940. The camp, which employed Jewish workers from Kielce and the vicinity, existed until August 1944 (see Chapter 5).

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wept bitterly.62 Two days later, on October 3, 1,270 Jews who had been transferred from Szydłów, Pierzchnica, Bogonia, Piotrkowice, and Pińczów reached Chmielnik.63 The Jews of Chmielnik now knew that the liquidation of their brethren in the nearby towns was a fact; they also realized that they were next. On October 4, 1942, Simhat Torah, every synagogue in Chmielnik was filled to bursting. Jews who had not recited a prayer all year came as well. A short time later, several Jews who had fled during the trip to Skarżysko returned to Chmielnik and told that some would-be escapees had been shot while others bribed their way to freedom. When it was found out that most of the evacuees from Chmielnik had been sent to a labor camp and not a death camp, the rumor spread that those sent to Skarżysko would be kept alive while those left in town would be transported to death. It was widely suggested that the railway cars used in the transports were filled with poisonous chlorine, that the Germans crowded dozens of Jews into every car, and that many died along the way.64 At this time, the gendarmerie forbade the Jewish police from circulating in the city streets, a step that was seen as an ill omen. Panic seized the thousands of Jews who remained in Chmielnik, and since the ghetto there was open and guarded by only a small German contingent, many again began to flee town and seek shelter among Polish friends in nearby villages. Those who stayed behind sold their valuables to peasants in the vicinity in hopes that cash would help them to survive later. Some even tried to find a way to get to SkarżyskoKamienna, offering the Germans money and gold for this purpose.65 On Monday, October 5, 1942, small SS units accompanied by gendarmes and an auxiliary force of Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians, recognizable by their dark uniforms, arrived in Chmielnik from Radom, Kielce, and Busko-Zdrój. They spent that night encircling the Jewish quarter ahead of the deportation Aktion. Gaier, orchestrator of the great deportation in Kielce, came to Chmielnik along with Gerulf Mayer, a captain in the Kielce gendarmerie, and the two of them oversaw the operation. The next day at 5:00 a.m., gunfire broke out in town as Germans strode through the ghetto streets armed, 62 “Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu” [in Hebrew] [Thus was our shtetl destroyed], Pinkes Chmielnik, 608. Moncasz notes that youngsters aged 12–25 were summoned to the roll call; see Moncasz, “In di yorn fun der Hilter-Okupatsie” (Yiddish) [In the years of the Hitlerite occupation], Pinkas Chmielnik, 732; Lemberg writes that men and women aged 18–30 were called, see Lemberg, 751. 63 Pinkas Hakehillot, 232; “Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu” [Thus was our shtetl destroyed], Pinkes Chmielnik 698; Mordechai Goldstein, Bi-khmielnik hayu pa’am Yehudim [ Jews once lived in Chmielnik] [in Hebrew] (Chmielnik Landsmanshaft in Israel, 2004), 89. 64 Feingold, Pinkes Chmielnik, 708. 65 Moncasz, 732; Feingold, 708.

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carrying clubs, and accompanied by dogs. Aided by Jewish police with whistles, they informed the Jews that they were to report by 8:00 a.m. to the livestock market square (Targowice), about two kilometers out of town, near the forest on the road to Szydłów. They threatened to shoot anyone who tarried, went into hiding, or refused an order. Thus, masses of Jews began to pour into the streets66: People are running away. […] Children are being abducted, dogs are biting them, men are losing their wives and women their children. Some of the Jews are fleeing to the cemetery, wearing prayer shawls and caftans, waiting to be shot, so as at least to get a Jewish burial.67

Thousands of terrified men, women, children, and the elderly marched toward the collection point, hoping that again the destination would be “only” a labor camp. We are leaving our home—parents and children, grandfathers and grandmothers and even a great-grandmother. Outside we see […] families clinging to each other lest anyone get lost. Targowa Square is already full. […] Each warns the other to stand straight, not to speak loudly, not to weep, for it can cost you your life […].68

Concurrently, the Germans began searching the Jews’ apartments and shooting anyone elderly or ill that they found as well as anyone discovered ­hiding.69 Those who straggled as they marched to the collection point were shot; the ghetto streets filled with hundreds of bodies.70 66 Arthur and Mary Kleinhandler, “Di 72 nach der Akzie” [The 72 after the Aktion], Pinkes Chmielnik, 747; see also Jehoszua Steinfeld, “Di ershte korbanos” [The first victims], ibid. 745; “Gevies-eides fun Jechiel Mappe un Kalman Mappe” [Taking testimony from Jechiel Mappe and Kalman Mappe], ibid., 715. 67 Lemberg, “Fun Akzie zu Akzie,” Pinkes Chmielnik, 751–752. 68 Rywka Sametband-Mali, “In kampf faren leben” [The struggle for life], Pinkes Chmielnik, 761 (hereinafter: Sametband). See also “Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu” [Thus our shtetl was destroyed], ibid., 698–699; Jehoszua Steinfeld, “Di ershte korbanos” [The first victims], ibid. 745–746; “Gevies-eides fun Jechiel Mappe un Kalman Mappe [Taking testimony from Jechiel Mappe and Kalman Mappe], ibid., 715; Arthur and Mary Kleinhandler, “Di 72 nach der Akzie” [The 72 after the Aktion], ibid., 747. 69 Testimony Sam Ricce (April 24, 1966), Darmstadt court. 70 According to Kleinhandler, some 180 Jews were shot dead during the deportation. Testimony Kleinhandler, YVA, M.1-E/2364, 3.

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In Enemy Land After finishing their “task” in the town, they [the evacuation force— S. B.] reached the livestock market and killed all the stragglers on the way. […] Dead bodies were strewn all along the road. At the Targowice—the market square—the massacre continued. Escape to the nearby field was inconceivable because we were surrounded by a chain of Polish police, the selfsame Granatova policja [Polish “blue” police—S. B.], aided by the fire brigade. […] Ukrainians were there, too; their officer translated the SS orders into Ukrainian for his men. There were no more than thirty German officers and soldiers there and about thirty Schupo […].71

The SS men who waited for the Jews at the livestock market were armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades. At exactly 8:00 a.m., the Jews who had gathered at the collection point were ordered to form straight ranks and parents with small children were instructed to carry them in their arms. They all stood quietly, choking down their fear. Rywka Mali, who did cleaning jobs for the Chmielnik gendarmerie, later testified that Mayer scampered from place to place with his handgun, firing at children. He tore an infant from its mother’s arms, threw it into the street, and shot it dead. Mali termed Mayer the Satan of the Jews of Chmielnik.72 Now it was time to search the belongings of the Jews, who were forced, with shouts and threats, to hand the Germans whatever money, gold, and jewelry they were holding. “Word went about among the Jews: ‘You know why they’re collecting our money? Because where they’re sending us, our money’s no good.’ They still did not believe that this would be their final journey.”73 The looting lasted several hours. Germans walked about with baskets in hand, beating Jews and violently dispossessing them. Gold rings were ripped from women’s fingers, earrings torn forcibly from their ears. Some Jews were made to undress for a body search. Many were shot on the spot; several women committed suicide in desperation. People threw everything they had into the baskets—rings, watches, pins, gold earrings, pearls, bracelets, chains, and other valuables that they had spent years amassing.74 71 Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 699. 72 Testimony Rywka Mali, YVA, M.38/16555, trial of Gerulf Mayer, 7–8. After the war, Mayer served a five-year prison term for his part in the liquidation of the Jews of Kielce Subdistrict. After his release, he was named chief of police in Liebniz. In 1964, he was investigated again for crimes in Kielce Subdistrict during World War II. YVA, M.38/544. 73 Sametband, ibid., 761; Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, ibid., 699. 74 Arthur and Mary Kleinhandler, “Di 72 nach der Akzie,” ibid., 747; Steinfeld, Di ershte korbanos, ibid., 746; Mappe, ibid., 715; Mordechai Goldstein, Bi-Chmielnik hayu pa’am Yehudim, 91–92.

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At 2:00 p.m., the Germans began a selection. The head of the Chmielnik gendarmerie circulated among the Jews, calling out the names of skilled workers from a list. Masses pounced on him as one, begging to be included in the roster. The commotion was such that a squad from the evacuation force armed with clubs rushed over to restore order. After the selection, Walter Schild, visiting Chmielnik on the occasion of the eviction, decided that skilled ­workers who had children and families could not remain with them. “Desperate and weeping, husbands were separated from wives and parents from children. Mothers abandoned their children; people turned into beasts.”75 Since some Jews whom the Germans wanted to leave in place refused to part with their families, ultimately only seventy-two were taken out of the crowd and ordered to wait by the side. It being one of those hot days that are common in the Polish autumn, hunger and thirst took their toll on the thousands of exhausted Jews waiting at the collection point. From the afternoon to the small hours of the night, groups of 1,500–2,000 were led out from the collection point in Chmielnik to the town of Chęciny, a distance of about forty-five kilometers, escorted by guards from the evacuation force. Many were shot at the collection point even before the march began. Others collapsed on the way, stragglers were shot, and the road was littered with hundreds of corpses. The thousands that arrived at Chęciny were kept near the railway station for several days ahead of the arrival of their train. When the railway cars arrived the Germans packed 120–130 people into each. All the passengers were sent to the Treblinka death camp. Many lost their lives on the way.76 In the course of the evacuation, the Germans and their helpers murdered about 500 Jews, including Szmul Zalcman, chairman of the Judenrat. The collection point was a horrible sight. The square, now emptied, ran with the murdered Jews’ blood. Heaps of clothing and the bodies of children, women, and the elderly were strewn everywhere.

The “Small Ghetto” and the Last Jews in Chmielnik The seventy-two Jews who remained at the livestock market square were led back to Chmielnik by local gendarmes who ordered them to sing as they marched. “Sing! They shouted at us. […] We dragged our feet and stumbled 75 Steinfeld, 746; Kleinhandler, 748. 76 Steinfeld, 746., Lemberg, 752; Kleinhandler, 749; Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 700.

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over the dead […].”77 When they reached the police station, Germans standing on the porch of the building ordered them to sing the Zionist anthem Hatikvah and then led them to the former Judenrat building and kept them under guard throughout the night. They wept against the backdrop of gunfire. The gendarmes, presumably preferring their posts in Chmielnik to reassignment to the front, wished to retain a small contingent of Jews in town to justify their continued presence there. Some even offered to hide Jews in the cellars of the gendarmerie in the event of deportation: […] They ordered us to pay for their generous offer. […] They hid several Jews. Each gendarme had ‘his own’ Jew. But whenever they got angry or envied a comrade of theirs for getting more money than they did, they’d get their revenge by murdering ‘their’ Jew.78

The day after the deportation, October 7, 1942, the SS men left town and police from the local gendarmerie sent young women from the group of s­ eventy-two to clean the gendarmerie offices. The men in the group were marched to the ghetto area and the livestock market to collect the dead and bury them in the Chmielnik cemetery. We began gathering the corpses and burying them in a mass grave. Many of the dead were unidentifiable. We tried to draw up a list of the dead Jews and as we dug the graves, we never stopped wondering whether we ourselves would receive a Jewish burial.79

That same day, a rumor spread through Chmielnik that hundreds of Jews were hiding in the forests and with non-Jews in nearby villages and towns. It was true. Soon the fugitives returned to town, fearing that antisemites on the Polish Far Right or local partisans committed to hunting down Jews would discover them and either kill them or betray them to the Germans.80 The Germans placed the returnees together in Mosze Pasternak’s home on Furmanska Street—the former headquarters of the Jewish police. A small ghetto was created of sorts with a common kitchen, and Leon Koralnik was 77 Ibid.; Sametband, 761–762. 78 Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 702. See also testimony Guzia Plotzinik (later, Tova Mali), Yad Yaari Archives, Givat Haviva, A. 272, 4. 79 Kleinhandler, 750; Feingold, 709. 80 Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 702.

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appointed head of the Judenrat. This mini-ghetto had a population of nearly 700, dozens of whom were led out each day at 5:00 a.m., under German supervision, for work in places far from town. They returned to Chmielnik in the evening, weakened and bones aching after a day of digging ditches or hauling heavy loads. Additional dozens were put to work emptying the Jews’ homes of such contents as remained; some even managed to sell part of what they found. Each day, the local gendarmerie held a public auction of Jewish property; most of the goods were bought by peasants from the vicinity.81 This arrangement lasted for about one month. On November 5, 1942, one of the SS commanders in Kielce arrived in Chmielnik with a squad of armed gendarmes. They surrounded Pasternak’s house and forced the Jews dwelling there to gather behind it. Jewish police were ordered to search for anyone hiding and the hundreds of Jews who had returned to Chmielnik were caught. “Suddenly there arrived a convoy of peasant carts requisitioned from the nearby villages. We were set in ranks and put on the wagons one by one.”82 Of the hundreds who had been gathered there, the gendarmerie selected seventy-five and, by order of the Germans, sent the rest in a convoy to Stopnica, about twenty-five kilometers southeast of Chmielnik, where the deportation of the local Jews was about to commence.83 Many Jews escaped en route to Stopnica. About 200 returned to Chmielnik, where some found various hiding places and others sought shelter in the forests or with non-Jews in nearby towns and villages.84 The day after this second deportation, a truck from Kielce carrying twenty Jewish workers and members of their Werkschutz—the guard detail from their factory—rumbled into Chmielnik. The workers entered one of the houses and informed those whom they found there that they were working at the HASAGGranat camp in Kielce. They had been sent to Chmielnik to dismantle some 81 Sametband, 762; Feingold, 710; Mappe, 716; Lemberg, 745. According to Feingold, after the deportation there were around 1,000 Jews in Chmielnik; Sametband puts the number at 500–600 and Lemberg estimates it at 600. The difficulty with these estimates is that during the great deportation dozens of Jews hid in the small ghetto and were joined by others on short visits from their temporary hiding places out of town. Yosef Kleinert, “In a beheltenish in Chmielnik gufa” [In a hiding place in Chmielnik proper], Pinkes Chmielnik, 809–810. 82 Feingold, 711. 83 Lemberg, 745; Mappe, 716; Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 702. 84 Tosia Altman, a prominent Hashomer Hatzair activist in the underground Jewish Fighting Organization in Warsaw, arrived in Chmielnik some time that month (November 1942). Lodging with a non-Jew outside town, Altman intended to escort members of the movement back to Warsaw. As most of the members had been deported, however, only two joined her—Bluma Sametband and Dawid Szniper. Both subsequently perished. See Sametband, 763, and Mappe, 715.

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empty shacks and move them to the labor camp in Kielce, where hundreds of Jews were still employed in slave labor. Anyone who volunteered to go to Kielce, they insinuated, stood a chance of remaining employed and surviving. Several men and women volunteered at once; the Werkschutz agreed to add them to the group of workers, who returned to Kielce after their job was done.85 The third and last deportation in Chmielnik was carried out on December 20, 1942. Local gendarmes, under the command of several SS men, placed the few dozen Jews still in town on horse-drawn carts and drove them to Sandomierz, where they had been assured that they would be able to live as they wished and engage in trade and commerce.86 During this Aktion, Wolf Kofman fell upon an SS man and tried to strangle him, only to be shot dead by another SS operative.87 The few Jews left behind in Chmielnik after the third deportation lived together and performed various service tasks at the local gendarmerie station.88

Stopnica The Germans did not have a gendarmerie station in Stopnica, about sixty kilometers southeast of Kielce, despite the importance of this town in Busko-Zdrój Subdistrict. Instead, they left supervision of the locality to the Polish police, who were subordinate to the gendarmerie in Busko-Zdrój. On September 6, 1942 the ghetto and its Jewish population of 5,000 were surrounded by SS men and all young people of working age were ordered to present themselves or face deportation. Hundreds of women and men were selected on the spot, issued with work permits, and taken in a HASAG truck to the labor camp in SkarżyskoKamienna.89 Two weeks later, on the Simhat Torah festival, all Jews in town were summoned to the market square. Some 3,000 did as told; 400 others, mostly the ill or elderly were shot dead in their homes. Those in the market square were marched on foot to the town of Szczusin, across the Wisla, a distance of sixteen kilometers, where they were placed aboard a train destined to Treblinka. Some seventy Jews were left behind in Stopnica to bury those killed 85 Lemberg, 745; Mappe, 717; Guzia Plotzinik (Tova Mali), 4. 86 Sametband, 763; Kleinhandler, YVA, M.1-E/2364, 3; Kleinert, 815, Kakh nehreva ‘ayaratenu, 702; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 368. 87 Lederman, “Provn fun vidershtand,” Pinkes Chmielnik, 743. 88 Jehoszua Steinfeld, YVA, M.1.E/763. 89 YVA, TR.10/673, 45. See also testimony Lola Wagman, YVA, M.1.E/1139, and testimony Shoshana Rubinstein, YVA, O.3/5468.

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in the deportation Aktion; with them were several dozen skilled workers who collected Jewish property from the ghetto. Seven weeks later, all were sent to a satellite ghetto in Sandomierz and from there were distributed among various labor camps.90

Busko-Zdrój Busko-Zdrój, forty-eight kilometers from Kielce, had a Jewish population of roughly 3,500 before the deportation. The deportation in this town was carried out by the local gendarmerie, under Captain König, and by firefighters. In October 1942, three days after Simhat Torah, these men surrounded the ghetto and some entered the town. The gendarmes, using loudspeakers, ordered the Jews to get into the street within five minutes. All the Jews complied. They were then lined up in ranks of ten and led to the town square. As the deportation proceeded, Germans murdered the Judenrat chairman, Yosef Topiol, shot children, and smashed against walls the heads of children whom they caught trying to flee.91 There being no train station in Busko-Zdrój, the Germans brought some 300 horse-drawn carts with their Polish owners to the town square.92 Women, babies, the elderly, the ill, and the exhausted were loaded onto them. Those left at the staging point underwent a selection and anyone incapable of walking was shot in the square. All the others, some 2,000 people, were marched on foot for sixteen kilometers to Pińczów. A few managed to flee, crossing the Nida River and escaping into the forest not far from Pińczów. Local gendarmes were summoned to seal the area and escort the carts and remaining deportees to the train station. Many Jews were shot in the course of this march, which lasted more than twenty-four hours, and Poles lining the road taunted them and withheld drinking water. Those who reached Pińczów were put through an additional selection, some being sent to HASAG labor camps and others placed aboard a local train (kolejka) and taken to Jędrzejów, twenty-five kilometers from Pińczów. At the Jędrzejów rail station freight cars were waiting, their windows covered in barbed wire. There, the Jews were ordered abandon all their belongings and board the train, which was destined for Treblinka.93 90 91 92 93

Testimony Haim Korenberg, YVA, O.33/156, 6; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 344. Testimony Daniel Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254. Testimony Zophia Peretiankowicz, a local non-Jewish woman, YVA, M.49.E/5698. Testimony Reisl Lemska, YVA, O.3/3500, 2; testimony Peretiankowicz, YVA, M.49.E/5698; testimony Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254; testimony Yosef Rosenberg, YVA, O.3/3553, 2–3.

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´lica Wis  Jerzy Szternberg reached Wiślica, thirteen kilometers south of Busko-Zdrój, in mid-July 1942. On August 2 of that year—so he would testify—Gestapo men arrived with no prior warning, rounded up thirty elderly Jews, and executed them in the nearby forest.94 In late September 1942, at the beginning of the Sukkot festival and following the expulsion of thousands of Jews from nearby Działoszyce, a German official in Wiślica let it slip that it would soon be the turn of the local Jews. At this very time, a gendarmerie commander from Nowy Korczyn visited Wiślica with several of his men,95 combing the town and returning as they had come. On the eve of the deportation, there were some 2,500 Jews in Wiślica. When Rabbi Yitzhak Horowitz learned of the evictions from Działoszyce, he ordered all the Jews, old and young, to set out to the cemetery to recite prayers; even infants in their cribs were to be taken there. […] Now all the Jews prostrated themselves on the ground. […] The men tore their clothing, the ram’s horn was blown, and many fasted for three whole days. The great disaster had come sooner than we expected.96

At 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 3, 1942, the Shemini Atseret festival, the town was surrounded by members of the Nowy Korczyn gendarmerie with the assistance of Polish police. Loud shots were heard in the streets. Immediately, shrill cries erupted from all quarters: ‘The angels of destruction have come’. Jewish police ran from house to house announcing that by 7:00 a.m. all Jews had to assemble at the market square […] on pain of being shot.97

94 Testimony Jerzy Sternberg, YVA, M.49.E/2373. 95 YVA, TR.10/673, 45–46. 96 YVA, 012/8, anonymous. The witness had come from Mandate Palestine with her husband and children in 1939 to visit family members in Poland. During her stay in Wiślica, the Swiss ambassador in Berlin issued her a certification to the effect that she and her family were to be exchanged for German citizens who were under arrest in Palestine. See 8–9. The same testimony was given in writing to the Ghetto Fighters House Archives, no. 13892, 17–18. Zusman, who initially testified anonymously, is identified by name in the latter testimony. 97 Ibid., 9.

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Those who reached the market square confronted some fifteen helmeted gendarmes, all standing, and Germans in machine-gun emplacements, screaming at the Jews to line up in ranks of six. The Judenrat chairman was ordered to instruct all Jews to hand over the keys to their apartments and attach to each key a note with the address, house number, and owner’s name. A Jewish policeman tore a sheet of paper into slips, after which a German gendarme walked around with a basket into which the gathered people dropped their keys and slips as instructed. In the meantime, gendarmes with dogs at their side ransacked the houses for people in hiding and for valuables. Many Jews were indeed hiding in stone cellars they had prepared for this purpose, but the dogs sniffed them out—more than 100 men, women, and children. All were shot on sight as were the disabled and the ill who were not able to ambulate to the staging point. Several hours later, hundreds of Poles with carts reached the square. The Germans declared Wiślica off-limits to Jews and ordered those in the square to climb onto the carts. Once the Jews complied, they were driven to Pińczów, twenty-five kilometers away. Although the evacuation force was watching the deportees, 200 of the latter managed to escape en route in hopes of finding refuge in the forests or among non-Jews. The carts reached Pińczów that Saturday before nightfall and their passengers were ordered to remain in them. The next day, Sunday, they were all moved from Pińczów to Jędrzejów, another twenty-five kilometers away.98 There, they were all loaded into railroad cars, each holding 120–150 persons, and set off to Treblinka.99

Pin ´ czów Early on the morning of October 4, 1942 (Simhat Torah 5703), Pińczów was surrounded by German SS forces aided by local Polish police and other Poles equipped with spades and axes, ready for looting. Pińczów, some twenty-five kilometers from Kielce, had a Jewish population of around 3,500 at this time. The previously mentioned Jews from Wiślica and Busko-Zdrój reached Pińczów that day and were interned in a fenced yard on Jędrzejów Street that was guarded with machine-gun emplacements. As for the Jews of Pińczów proper, the Germans ordered them all—young, old, elderly, ill, babies—to assemble in the market square, near the distillery on Jędrzejów Street. Anyone who disobeyed was caught and shot on the spot. As the d­ eportation began, the 98 Ibid., 9–12. See also Itzhak Kaziemierski, “The Deportation from Wiślica” [in Hebrew], Sefer Wiślica, ed. Yitzhak Eisenberg (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Residents of Wislica, 1971), 214–215; YVA, TR.10/673, 47; YVA, O.3/9066, testimony Esther Weisfeld, 4–5. 99 YVA, M.49.E/2373, testimony Jerzy Sternberg.

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healthy were selected, placed in ranks, and marched out; the ill and the small children were seated in horse-drawn carts. Each deportee was allowed to carry a small knapsack. The convoy proceeded to the Jędrzejów train station as guards on both flanks largely precluded escape into the forests. Some deportees were transported by local trains, whereas the Jews of Busko-Zdrój and Wiśzlica were brought to Jędrzejów on carts and on foot. From the Jędrzejów train station, all were sent to Treblinka on October 5–6, 1942. The Germans stripped the unprotected and abandoned homes of the Jews of Pińczów of valuables; local non-Jews looted the rest.100 In his book on Treblinka, Yitzhak Arad tallies the number Jews deported from Busko-Zdrój Subdistrict at 18,000 on October 2–6, 1942, and another 5,000 on November 5–6, bringing the total to 23,000.101

Kielce Subdistrict ˛nciny Che  The eradication of Jewish communities in Kielce Subdistrict began on Saturday, September 12, 1942, the first day of Rosh Hashana, with the evacuation of the Chęciny ghetto. That day, units of the Kielce Schupo and Sipo reached this town, twelve kilometers from Kielce. The next day, they made Chęciny’s 4,300 Jews assemble in the market square, removed some forty individuals who were too ill to walk, and left behind some fifty, including the Judenräte and the Jewish police. All the others were marched that day to the town of Wolica, seven kilometers away, where there was a train station. As the column progressed, twelve stragglers were shot to death. From Wolica, all who remained alive were sent to Treblinka. The evacuation force then returned to Chęciny and shot to death the ill who had been left behind.102

Suchedniów At 5:00 a.m. on September 22, 1942, Yom Kippur, German and Polish police surrounded the Suchedniów ghetto. Jewish police were ordered to expel the 100 Eliezer Tekel, Pińczów Community Memorial Book [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1970), 312. See also testimony Eliezer Tekel, YVA, O.3/9160, 12; Agnieszka Sabor, Sztetl: Śladami Żydowskich Miasteczek (Kraków: Austeria, 2006), 62–63; and Fąfara, Gehenna, 186, 277, 299. 101 Yitzhak Arad, Treblinka, 261. 102 Testimony Meir Rosenfeld, YVA, M.1.Q/65, and testimony Joel Zack, YVA, M.1.Q/64. See also Agnieszka Sabor, Sztetl, 25, and Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 321.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

ghetto population—900 Jewish families and at least 4,000 persons in all—from their homes and gather them in the market square. The roundup and the attendant search of houses lasted until the afternoon. In a selection at the market square, those found fit for labor were separated and sent to the labor camp in SkarżyskoKamienna. The rest, some 3,000 people, were packed tightly into lime-coated rail cars waiting at the train station. The transport to Treblinka set out that very day.103 Fifty Jews were left behind to remove possessions from the ghetto; once they finished the job, they were sent to the labor camp at Skarżysko-Kamienna.104

Bodzentyn By Yom Kippur 1942, rumors had reached the Jews of Bodzentyn about the deportation of those of Suchedniów, just five kilometers away. Ten days later, on October 3, 1942 (the Shemini Atseret festival), gendarmes entered town and with the aid of Polish police went from house to house, pounded on Jews’ doors, and evicted the residents. The ill, the elderly, and children who could not walk were carried out by family members. The market square soon filled with the 2,000 or so Jews who dwelled in this town at the time. According to Szmul Weintraub, head of the local Jewish community, Polish wagoners were waiting at the square, carts at the ready. Six to eight Jews—presumably those who had difficulty walking—were loaded on to each cart. From then until the afternoon, the wagons shuttled between Bodzentyn and the Suchedniów rail station while the rest of the Jews were led to Suchedniów on foot. What was unusual, Weintraub noted in his testimony, was the calm and order that accompanied that the deportation, without shootings, beatings, or screaming. Except for thirty-two men, mostly members of the Jewish police, everyone was deported on the train from Suchedniów to Treblinka. The remaining Jews, placed together in Weintraub’s house, were made to go house to house in search of valuables left behind by deportees. The gleanings were brought to the police station, where the Germans took what they wanted and sold the rest to Poles. Ten days later, Weintraub discovered that the Germans were about to murder him. He managed to escape; the fate of the others is unknown.105 103 Testimony Riven Weingarten, YVA, M.49.E/1557; see also Der Keltzer, Bulletin fun der gezelshaft fraynt fun Kielce un umgegent in Paris (undated), 18; Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 326. 104 Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 321. 105 Goldie Szachter Kalib, The Last Selection, A Child’s Journey throughh the Holocaust (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 143–148. A different picture emerges from the testimony of Rachel Binsztok, who was sent from the market square to

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According to Arad, 12,500 Jews were deported from Kielce Subdistrict to Treblinka in late September and early October 1942.106

Je ˛drzejów Subdistrict J  ˛edrzejów In early September 1942, when rumors of looming liquidation reached the Jews of Jędrzejów, anyone who could flee the ghetto did so, hiding with Polish acquaintances in villages or in forests near town. After the war, Mordechai Szledszyk wrote that no one trusted the Poles and all fugitives had to keep switching hideouts as even Poles who were thought to be friends betrayed hiding Jews to the Germans, who came and shot them.107 At 4:00 a.m. on September 16, 1942, SS men arrived in Jędrzejów accompanied by local gendarmes and Polish police. An hour later, the Jews were awakened and ordered to vacate their apartments and get into the street. Panicstricken hundreds—women and men, old and young—did as told within minutes. The Germans made them race down Liskowska Street to the local market square. Special units of gendarmerie searched the houses for anyone hiding and pummeled those whom they found. Rabbi Shlomo Shapira, brother-in-law of the Rebbe of Chęciny, was found hiding in his house wrapped in a prayer shawl and wearing tefillin. He and his wife were shot on the spot.108 The entire ghetto population—some 6,500 people—was gathered into one town square by Gestapo operatives and their helpers. Ernst Thomas had arrived that morning from Kielce; the local evacuation force consulted with him and only afterward began a selection. Two hundred and ten Jews were taken out of the crowd and sent back to the ghetto for various jobs; some two hundred more were sent off to the HASAG camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna. the Starachowice labor camp. Binsztok reported that there were corpses in the market square, that she herself had seen pregnant women being killed, that Germans had shouted at Jews to line up in ranks, and that then they had conducted a selection. Testimony Rachel Binsztok, YVA, O.3/8825. It hardly stands to reason that the deportation took place quietly, but it is conceivable that after the selection, done brutally and with threats, the deportees were gripped with fear and marched to Suchedniów in a relatively quiescent manner. 106 Yitzhak Arad, Treblinka, 261. 107 Shimshon Dov Yerushalmi, ed., Memorial Book for the Jews of Jędrzejów (Hebrew/Yiddish) Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Jędrzejów in Israel, 1965), 261. 108 Ibid., 262.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

Those gathered in the square were made to run a distance of two kilometers, where a lengthy train was waiting for them. This one transport sufficed to deliver all of them to Treblinka. The 210 Jews who had been retained to clear out what remained in the ghetto were squeezed into one of the houses on Kielce Street, five or six people per room. For several days everyone was confused, the Germans tormenting them endlessly, making them run back and forth, supplying them with minute quantities of food, and assigning them to especially arduous tasks: sweeping streets, breaking ice in the river, clearing snow, cleaning the lodgings of the Gestapo and the gendarmerie, and burying those who had been shot to death when caught hiding. Some contracted typhus; they were quarantined in an “epidemics room.” The final deportation from Jędrzejów took place on February 17, 1943. The Gestapo men and the gendarmes reported at 5:00 a.m. and roused the inmates from their sleep. The gendarmes’ commander ordered out the ill, naked and barefoot, all of whom were shot to death except one who managed to escape. The others were sent to work in a factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna.109 On September 21, additional Jews from Jędrzejów Subdistrict were sent to Treblinka: 1,000 from Sędziszów, 1,500 from Szczekociny, and 3,000 from Wodzisław. According to Arad, 16,500 Jews from Jędrzejów Subdistrict were sent to Treblinka on September 16–25, 1942.110

Deportations from Radom District—A Tally In a period of just three months, August 5–November 5, 1942, roughly 357,700 of the approximately 400,000 Jews who lived in Radom District in 1941 were deported to Treblinka. Between February 6 and February 17, 1943, 18,500 additional Jews whom the Germans had left behind in the district for labor purposes were deported as well.111 The few thousand Jews who survived in the district after February 1943 worked in slave-labor camps: SkarżyskoKamienna, Pionki, Starachowice, Kielce, and Częstochowa. In August 1944, when the Red Army reached the outskirts of the district, the Germans liquidated most of these camps and sent their Jewish inmates to Birkenau and labor 109 Ibid., 263–264. See also testimony Zeev Brenner, YVA, O.3/7779, 9–11, and Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 320. 110 Yitzhak Arad, Treblinka, 261. 111 Ibid., 261–262.

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camps in Reich territory, hoping to continue exploiting them for productive labor in the war effort. The liquidation of the Jews of Radom District appears to have followed a logistical plan. Sonderkommando Feucht, established with this murder campaign in mind, started out in the ghettos of the major cities, as follows: Radom in early August 1942, Kielce later that month, and Częstochowa in the second half of September. These cities had train stations, and in each case the Jews were carried off to Treblinka in one or more rail transports. Later, the evacuation force was available to deport the rest of the Jews of the district, who inhabited dozens of towns, shtetlakh, and small villages. As for localities in the small subdistricts surrounding Kielce, a common pattern emerges. Before the deportations began, Jews in almost all locations were able to escape and seek refuge in the forests or among local non-Jews. Most deportations took place on Jewish festivals. The leading actors in the deportation were police from the local gendarmerie, assisted in especially small places by Polish “blue” police and also, in larger localities, by Sonderkommando Feucht. In each community, the Jewish police was ordered to take part in the deportation. In all locations, the Jews were herded into the market square and in most they were robbed, beaten, and put through at least one selection. In places that had no train station, Jews were marched to the nearest one; those who died on the way were buried mainly by Poles. In all locations, the Germans left behind several dozen Jews to bury the corpses of those murdered by gunfire during the selection in the market square. In only three localities were “small ghettos” established after the deportation. In Chmielnik, seventy-two Jews were selected and kept on for two additional months; in Stopnica, seventy were retained for seven weeks and then moved to the satellite ghetto in Sandomierz. Jędrzejów was an outlier in this respect: there, 210 Jews were allowed to remain for five months, after which the ill were murdered locally and the others were sent off for slave labor. Why was it that vestigial Jewish populations in these three locations were kept alive after they finished their duties—burying the dead and emptying apartments? Were the Jewish residents of these towns different from those in elsewhere? One may surmise that in these locations the commanders of the local gendarmerie held higher ranks and were able to make decisions on their own, at least for a time. Since they preferred to stay in the region rather than to be sent to the front, they held some Jews behind for as long as possible as a delaying maneuver. In these places, too, those with the best chances of survival were the very few who had passed the selections and were found fit for forced labor.

Deportation of the Jews of Kielce and Surrounding Areas   Chapter 4

The Murderers The murder of the Jews in Radom District was known to German officials at both the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) and the civilian authorities and was a topic of conversation as it proceeded. The subdistrict heads had rid themselves of some Jews even before the organized deportations began, as local bureaucrats were aware. Everyone knew what was being done to the Jews and no one protested or expressed strong feelings about the brutality that accompanied the process. In several places in Radom District, there were even post-Aktion parties. The Wehrmacht was also in on the non-secret. Thus, the Wehrmacht commander in Kielce reported to his counterpart in the Generalgouvernement that between August 16 and September 15, 1942, some 25,000 Jews had been liquidated in Kielce and Chęciny while 2,500 were kept alive to carry out jobs in the area. Everyone found satisfaction with the eradication of the Jews except for feeling that the mission was not quite accomplished until the Jews’ property was properly secured and disinfected. It should be noted that after certain incidents there had in fact been complaints about SS brutalities. In these cases, Kondt and Böttcher rounded up the perpetrators of the deportation and asked them to act in an organized manner—not, presumably, as though they were running a pogrom. It seems, however, that the SS and the police were disinclined to follow orders that they received in private, as they gave vent to their cruelty openly and in public.112 Ernst Thomas and Hans Gaier are considered missing to this day; their fate is unknown. Adolf Feucht was killed in May 1945 in battles in Czechoslovakia. Herbert Böttcher was sentenced to death in 1949 in Radom and was executed by hanging. Wilhelm Josef Blum, Böttcher’s chief of staff, received a death sentence in Radom in 1947 and was executed there. Ernst Kundt was executed in Czechoslovakia. Fritz Liphardt committed suicide in 1947 in a prison in Szczecin. Several civilian police and bureaucrats who served in Radom District were captured by Allied forces and confined in internment camps. Many of them were released between 1946 and 1948 in West Germany and in the Soviet occupation zone in 1950. Several disappeared under false identities and evaded arrest.113 Two trials relating to Nazi crimes in Radom District were held even before the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation 112 Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 330–332, 373–377. 113 Ibid.

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of National Socialist Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufkärung) was established in Ludwigsburg in 1958, and from 1960 onward trials took place actively and continuously. The year 1959 saw the onset of regular investigations ahead of seventeen trials pertaining to several locations in the district, in which hundreds of defendants were made to face justice. The suspects included former members of the Sipo, the Schupo, the gendarmeries, various divisions of the Gestapo, civilian agencies, and Werkschutze; several had been commanders of concentration camps. A few defendants committed suicide, some died during the investigations, others were not tried for reason of insanity, and yet others went free due to the statute of limitations. In 1960, twenty men went on trial before the court in Darmstadt for crimes committed in Radom District. Seven were acquitted and the rest received prison sentences. One of those put on trial was Erich Wollschläger, Gaier’s deputy.114 In 1971, after more than six years of proceedings in which dozens of Jews who had survived the Kielce ghetto testified, the court sentenced Wollschläger to five years in prison.

114 On Wollschläger’s trial, see YVA, O.4/405. On coverage of the trial in the German press, see YVA, O.4/100.

CHAPTER 5

The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps (September 1942–August 1944) The “Small Ghetto”

A

fter the selections described above, only some 1,700 of those who had   inhabited the Kielce ghetto on the eve of its liquidation, including about 150 women and 60 children, remained. This vestige was confined to a barracks on Targowa Street and to the Great Synagogue; in the latter venue, they were held for three additional days without food or water. Some were sent to Piotrkowska, Jasna, and Stolarska Streets to strip the contents of houses; others continued to inter the hundreds of corpses that were still strewn across the ghetto streets. On August 28, 1942, about a week after the deportation, all were ordered to gather for a roll call in the square between the Judenrat building and the synagogue and the barracks. After the headcount, they were marched to the western section of the ghetto (hereinafter: the Small Ghetto.1). […] It was an awful journey. […] We walked with an escort of SS guards along streets of the ghetto that were entirely empty, only curtains fluttering from the windows and doors turning on their hinges and slamming in the wind. People’s bodies lay in the street […].2

 1 YVA, TR.10/911, 34. See also testimony Helfand, YVA, M.49/E/1309, 6; testimony Salzberg, in Fąfara, Gehenna Ludnosci Zydowskiej, 220; Zabludski, Memoirs, 10; testimony Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 7–8. Many testimonies refer to the “Small Ghetto” as a labor camp or “the labor camp on Stolarska Street.”  2 Zabludski, Memoirs, 10. See also testimony Hayim Nusinowitz, Broken Silence: Students at Ben-Gurion High School in Afula Interview Their Town’s Holocaust Survivors [in Hebrew] (Afula, Israel: David Ben-Gurion High School, 1989, 321.

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The Small Ghetto was comprised of several buildings on parts of three streets, chief of which was Stolarska Street. It was bounded by railroad tracks and Zaganska, Piotrkowska, and Stolarska Streets, and its only gate, at the intersection of Jasna and Zaganska, bordered on Gestapo headquarters. The area was fenced off and the 1,700 Jews who entered the apartments in their allotted buildings crowded themselves six or seven to a room. A structure near the Gestapo building housed the Jewish police and their families. The police force had been severely degraded, only twenty-eight members remaining. Gustav Spiegel, a Viennese Jew, was appointed to replace the murdered police chief, Bruno Schindler. Spiegel, whom all memoirists without exception describe as a bloodthirsty informer and a despicable German collaborator, circulated among the hundreds of Jews and proclaimed, “I want it to be clear that if anything goes wrong it’ll be my head on the line and I very much like my head.”3 The Judenrat had lost its leadership function during the great deportation, and Hermann Lewi and his family, who survived the great deportation, took up residence in an apartment building near the gate of the Small Ghetto, across from the building that held the offices of the Jewish police. In several rooms of this building, small workshops were set up in which Jewish tailors worked for the Germans.4 Except for Lewi and several others, all members of the Judenrat and their families had been taken to Treblinka during the great deportation; unlike the Jewish police and the doctors, they had not been ordered to help carry out the Aktions. It appears that the Germans rewarded the police and doctors for not resisting during the deportation and for not refusing to assist as it took place; thus, most passed the final selection and were transferred with their families to the Small Ghetto. Although having avoided deportation to Treblinka, Lewi no longer headed the rump Jewish population. Ernst Thomas, the local Gestapo chief, preferred to have someone who could take part in the reign of terror, and having to choose between Lewi and Spiegel, he unsurprisingly opted for the latter. Spiegel’s first task was to ensure that the Jews of the Small Ghetto carry out their jobs—mainly clearing the ghetto of its contents—in a submissive,  3 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 42.   4 YVA, TR.10/911, 35; trial of Erich Wollschläger, YVA, O.4/405, 5; testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 34; Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 41; Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 28; testimony Avraham Orbach, YVA, 2083–58; testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 20. Yosef Yitzhak Goldblum testified that he shared a room with three other youths his own age, two of whom were his friends. Testimony Goldblum, YVA, O3/12285, 24. Alpert testified that in the Small Ghetto no Judenrat members remained save Hermann Lewi and one Hirszman. Among the Judenrat members who perished, he listed Gottleib, Treger, and Cytrin. See ­testimony Alpert in Fąfara, Gehenna, 12.

The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps   Chapter 5

disciplined, and obedient manner.5 Spiegel put to the men to work at once; several days later, he assigned women to this duty as well.

Daily Life in the Small Ghetto The remaining contents of the ghetto were defined as Reich property. Schupo police guarded the Jews who took part in its removal; Polish carters were also recruited for the task. All household effects—clothing, blankets, pillows, furniture, and valuables—were gathered into piles and brought to predetermined locations for sorting. Clothing and knitted fabrics were taken to a building on the corner of Nowy Swiat and Przedmieszcze Streets, where mostly women toiled under guard of Bernard Wirtz of the Schupo. Light fixtures and electrical appliances were brought to a small structure near the building that lodged the Judenrat. Beds went to the Great Synagogue and furs, rugs, china, and other valuables to the former Judenrat building. A stand was opened where Germans serving in town could shop on a cash-and-carry basis. Various items were sent to the SS club; somebody bought a fur coat for Hans Gaier’s girlfriend; and fine furniture went to the SS riding hall. Items deemed of special worth were transferred to Radom, where valuables from throughout the district were being collected. When the Jews of Radom District were fully removed and their property was gathered up, valuables were first sorted in Radom and then recorded in exchanges of documentation with Berlin and sent on to Gestapo headquarters in Lublin.6 Mania Feferman, one of the first women to be sent for property removal work in the evacuated part of the ghetto, described her experience: We went under armed guard along the empty streets of the Ghetto. A deathly silence hovered in the air filled with the stench of decay and the buzzing of flies. The collection point on Jasna Street, the main scene of the Aktion, looked like a battlefield. Near the wooden shacks, outside the building and near the fences, were pools of clotted blood covered with swarms of flies. Coats and backpacks stained with blood, hats, shoes, prayerbooks, broken glasses and children’s toys, were scattered in the streets. Nobody let out a word. Not a peep.7   5 Testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 12; testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 20; interview with Rafael Blumenfeld (author’s private archive); testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 35.   6 YVA, TR.10/911, 36–37; YVA, testimony Feiner, O.3/11630, 20; testimony Natalia Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 417. See also YVA, TR.10/673, 42; testimony Bandrowski in Fąfara, Gehenna, 433–434; Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 148.  7 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 42.

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Those who were forced to clear apartments in what had been the main ghetto were divided into groups each day, the number of groups commensurate with the number of Schupo police available to oversee their work. The workers scoured apartments, collected artifacts, placed valuables together, transferred everything to warehouses, and there sorted and cataloged the property to their supervisors’ satisfaction.8 In midday, Jewish police escorted them back to the Small Ghetto for a lunch that several Jewish women had prepared for them in a makeshift kitchen; then they were sent back to work. At day’s end, they were all assembled on Przedmieszcze Street, near the Judenrat building. After a roll call there, held jointly for men and women, Jewish police marched them back to the Small Ghetto. Before entering their apartments, the workers were searched by Germans to ensure that no one had taken anything. Removing items from ghetto apartments was considered looting, a crime punishable by death.9 It took several weeks to finish the clearing and sorting work in the former ghetto area; during all this time, the site was hermetically sealed and guarded by German police. When the job was done, hand-picked Poles were allowed to move into and take over the vacated dwellings.10 Much of the sorted Jewish property had to be repaired and renovated before being sent to the Reich. To make this possible, several buildings in the former ghetto were converted into warehouses and equipped with washing machines, irons, and sewing machines. Jewish men hauled the collected clothes to these warehouses, where women sorted, cleaned, repaired, ironed, and folded them. Furniture that cleared the sorting stage was also moved to special warehouses, where it was properly repaired and restored by Jewish craftsmen. The work proceeded under German police guard with the aid of several Volksdeutsche. Some of the loot was bought on the spot by German businessmen who had come to Kielce.11 The Jews who had been concentrated in the Small Ghetto had only the clothes that they had worn on the day of the great deportation. Since it was already autumn, each of them needed a sweater or a coat. The women who   8 Testimony Goldblum, YVA, O3/12285, 23.   9 Goldblum reports that one of the young men who worked with him was shot to death in one of the warehouse yards after the Germans found a valuable that he had cashed in his elastic socks. See testimony Goldblum, 24. Frankel testified about the fatal shooting of a non-Jew who attempted to steal some clothing. See testimonies Marian Frankel (April 21, 1966), Israel Fisenberg (May 16, 1966), and Henryk Lappa (March 28, 1966), Darmstadt court. 10 YVA, TR.10/911, 37; testimony Orbach, YVA 2083–58; interview with Blumenfeld (author’s private archive). 11 Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 29.

The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps   Chapter 5

sorted the looted clothing occasionally seized the opportunity to head out for work in a light dress and return wearing several layers of attire. They risked their lives by doing this, it being considered theft and punishable by death. The memoirists make particular mention of two Jewish girls from Vienna, one of them the famous actress Ella Kovac, each of whom was caught separately with a dress that she had taken for herself. Both were shot dead as an object lesson for the others, who were forced to look on.12 The population of the Small Ghetto grew over time as Jewish refugees from Kielce and the vicinity who had escaped during the deportations and could not survive for long on the “Aryan” side slipped in, mainly in search of food and work. The Small Ghetto became a full-fledged labor camp, hundreds of Jews marching to work in ranks each morning and returning to their homes at night. Apart from sorting belongings in the former main ghetto, some remained at their pre-deportation workplaces, such as the Ludwików foundry, the Henryków sawmill, the HASAG-Granat munitions factory, and at the quarries. Still others did painting and carpentry, service jobs for the Germans, or whatever was deemed essential for Nazi Germany’s war needs. These Jews held special passes and returned to the Small Ghetto at night.13 12 Feferman and Birnhak, each separately, describe the capture by the German policeman Wirtz of a Jewish girl named Gretchen who had smuggled a dress. In front of all the women working with Gretchen at sorting the clothes, Wirtz addressed her: “Dirty Jew. How dare you take a dress without permission.” He took out a pistol, shot her dead, and then ordered some of the women to clean the place up. See Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 221. See also Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 44; testimony Natalia Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 417–418. The murder of the Jewish girl from Vienna was also discussed in the District Court at Darmstadt, Germany, in December 1968, during the trial of Erich Wollschläger. See YVA, O.4/405, 15. Salzberg mentions the same event in his testimony and adds that after the Jewess’ murder, the German commander gave the others a speech warning them that they would face the same fate if they were to break a similar rule. See testimony Salzberg, YVA, M.49E/1705, 3. On the murder of Ella Kovac, see Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 147. Helen Brikman testified before the Darmstadt court that Wirtz sexually assaulted Jewish women, then shot them, and reported that he had caught them stealing. See testimonies Brikman (March 30, 1966), Sara Zur (March 31, 1966), and Sam Ritze (April 24, 1966), Darmstadt court. 13 Meir Breitman worked as a painter at the Wehrmacht offices in Kielce and carried on in this manner in the Small Ghetto. See testimony Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 8–9. Shlomo Binuszewicz worked at Ludwików before the ghetto was liquidated and, passing selection due to the factory logo on his shirt, continued to work there during the Small Ghetto period. See testimony Binuszewicz, YVA, O.3/8647, 8. Fifteen-year-old Baruch Ginzburg continued to work with his father at Ludwików; see testimony Ginzburg, YVA, O.3/9224, 6. Zwi Abramowicz worked with a group of carpenters in the quarries run by Szliwa. Testimony Abramowicz, YVA, O.3/7433, 29.

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Even in the Small Ghetto, some continued to observe the Jewish festivals. On Yom Kippur 1942 (September 21), quite a few gathered in an empty building for public worship. “Some of them were wrapped in prayer shawls and sang the Kol Nidrei movingly. A few of the women broke down and wept.”14 None of the remaining Jews in Kielce knew what had befallen their deported family members. All were confident that they had been transferred to labor sites in the east. Nobody knew about the Treblinka death camp, where the mass murder of Jews had begun in late July 1942, just a month before the Kielce deportation. In October 1942, Yossele Wasser and Mosze Mydlo—two teenagers who had been sent with their families to Treblinka two months earlier—sneaked into the Small Ghetto. They had hidden in a pile of clothing that was being removed from Treblinka by train, leaped off while the train was in motion, and somehow made their way to Kielce. Finding themselves a place in one of the apartments in the Small Ghetto, they reported that all the Jews of Kielce, without exception, had been suffocated to death in gas chambers in a place called Treblinka. The report was corroborated at that very time when a Jewish sixteen-year-old named Sheftel appeared in the ghetto. Sheftel reported that he had hidden with two other boys in a railroad car carrying clothing from Treblinka, had arrived at Warsaw, and from there had walked the whole way to Kielce. When Sheftel too said that Treblinka meant death, his audience was convinced that he had lost his mind. Even after the rumor raced across the Small Ghetto, no one believed it, Spiegel sputtered with rage, and most of the others treated the whole thing as the product of a feverish imagination, the outcome of the boys’ terrifying experiences on their journey. The teens so upset the Jewish public that their lives were in danger and they had to hide. Several Jews, however, decided to ask Poles to see if the rumors were true—to find out what this Treblinka was and whether Jews really were being exterminated by gas. The Poles asked to be paid for the information; several days after payment was tendered, one of them, named Miczewski, shared the information with his Jewish acquaintances in Kielce. Yes, the transports from Kielce had gone to a sealed camp called Treblinka.15 14 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 44. Feferman notes that among the congregants were Gertler and his three sons; the Eisenbergs; Mosze Greenszpan; Mosze Lewin; Israel Vakshlak; Meir Feigenbaum; Jakubowski; the Golembiowski brothers; Zemel; the Mierkiewicz brothers, and others. 15 Testimony Mydlo, YVA, M.49E/85, 2; testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 20. On Sheftel’s escape, see B. Graubard, Death is Called Treblinka, Memories of the Kielce Ghetto as Related by Mendel Weinreb, in Der Kielcer (author’s private archive, in Yiddish). See also testimony

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Loath as they were to believe the rumors, everyone asked themselves how it could be that none of the deported Jews had sent so much as a postcard or scribbled a word. Some, grasping for rational explanations, argued that the absence of signs of life was reasonable under the circumstances. Alternative explanations were rife as well. Even as information from the Poles continued to filter into the Small Ghetto, some remained unconvinced. The gap between having the facts and fully understanding their meaning remained wide. Hearing the rumors concerning Treblinka, many Jews who had contacts with Poles tried to obtain “Aryan” documents in hopes of escaping from the Small Ghetto. To pay for the papers, they gave their benefactors items that they had pilfered from the sorted property or cached money that they had found. Some also managed to smuggle into the ghetto bags of sawdust and other commodities that were needed on the outside, bartering them through windows of apartments that bordered on Polish dwellings. The currency brought in by this trade was stashed away for a time of need, even though all of life in the Small Ghetto took place under a pall of terror and anyone caught trading with Poles was shot to death.16 In a few cases, non-Jews broke into the apartments of Jews who had gone off to work, knowing that money and valuables were hidden there, and made off with the contraband. Mania Feferman reports having discovered to her horror, after returning from work one day, that the apartment in which she was living had been burgled. Zwi Zelinger, one of the few children left in the Small Ghetto, later testified that while rocking a cart in the ghetto back and forth, he suddenly heard shots and saw Germans shooting to death two Polish youths whom they had caught stealing.17 Anyone who thought he or she could escape from the Small Ghetto took the chance. Of the few who succeeded, some were caught, others were turned in by Poles, a few managed to escape, and a small number even made it to Warsaw.18 Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 37; testimony Zelinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 12; Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 44–45; Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 30. Shmuel Joskowicz testified that the Jews ganged up on one of these boys and accused him of spreading panic, as what he was telling could not possibly be true. The boy was ousted from the Small Ghetto but managed to join those working at HASAG-Granat. See testimony Joskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 20–21. 16 Testimony Salzberg in Fąfara, Gehenna, 421; interview with Thomas Buergenthal (author’s private archive); testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442. 17 Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 29; testimony Zelinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 11; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 13. 18 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 48–50. Feferman writes that Herszel Goldberg, together with his brother-in-law and their friend Shtarkman, paid Poles to smuggle them out of the ghetto only to be betrayed to the Germans by their purported rescuers. Of Jews who

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At this time (autumn 1942), the Small Ghetto, like the rest of the district, experienced the so-called “Palestine Aktion.” The Germans announced that anyone who held a Polish passport and paid a special fee would be eligible to depart for Palestine. Those who signed up and paid were immediately arrested, led to the Jewish cemetery, and shot dead.19 The sixty Jewish children who remained in the Small Ghetto, none older than thirteen, were left unsupervised during the day when the adults were at work. Cyla Liberman née Albirt, whose father was a ghetto policeman, reported after the war that most of them were offspring of former Jewish police in the main ghetto, who had passed the selection in the great deportation. Thomas Buergenthal, eight years old at the time, later testified that he had spent entire days totally idle in the Small Ghetto, confined to a room and a half with his mother and four other children, including two whom the mother adopted when she learned that their parents had been sent to Treblinka.20 A few girls in the Small Ghetto took lessons from the teacher Alpert and some children visited the sites of the Aktions in search of valuables that Jews had cast aside as the Germans rummaged through their clothes. “We would dig there and always find all sorts of jewelry and valuables in the dirt.”21 Older children were ordered to keep the Small Ghetto clean and were divided into “cleaning brigades”: Each morning several groups of us children would go out holding brooms, accompanied by an armed guard. I imagine this was a comical sight. […] For me the broom was like a giant building, but I swept with all my power to show I knew how to work […].22

managed to escape using forged papers, Feferman lists the sisters Hella and Regina Tchaikowski, Dorka Shildowska, Berl Goldberg, Natke Wlodaver, Pessia Fried, Abba Orbach, the brothers Yurkowski and their sister; the Gdansk couple, and the brothers Lappa and Bezalel Goldberg. In testimony given shortly the war, Aharon Liebling related that in November 1942 twenty-five Jews living in the Small Ghetto were murdered when Poles told the Germans that they were holding “Aryan” papers. See testimony Liebling, YVA M.1.Q/174, 2. 19 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 155; Fąfara, Gehenna, 423. 20 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum RG-50.030*0046 (interview with Thomas Buergenthal, January 1990); RG-50/393*001 (interview with Thomas Buergental, November 1995). See also Odd Nansen, Tommy, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S 1970, 17–18 (translated into English in 1985 by a student of Buergenthal’s). 21 Testimony Zwi Zelinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 12; Cyla Liberman, interview (author’s private archive). 22 Zabludski, Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor, 10.

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As soon as the Small Ghetto was established, Dr. Lewin set up a hospital with the assistance of a woman who was a certified nurse. In time, four other women who had worked as nurses in the main ghetto were located and the hospital, situated in a large room in one of the buildings, was equipped with beds, blankets, and essential furniture with the assistance of several young men and Jewish policemen. Other rooms in the building were outfitted with a makeshift kitchen and sickbeds; nurses’ rooms were set up on the second floor rooms. Some doctors from the hospital in the main ghetto had survived and were now living in the Small Ghetto and medicine could be bought from both Germans and Poles. As time passed, the Small Ghetto hospital filled with Jews who had fallen ill or sustained injuries while working outside the ghetto.23 For six months, life in the Small Ghetto largely followed a fixed routine. Jews set out each day for work; the women in charge of the kitchen prepared soup in large vats. Zwi Zelinger recalls that since no one knew what the soup was made of, those in line made “neighing” sounds to let others know that the soup du jour contained horse meat. According to Alpert, each person received 1,200 grams of bread per week and while food was limited there was no real starvation, mostly thanks to trade with Poles.24 The routine was briefly ruptured in January 1943 when the Germans, with Spiegel’s assistance, conducted a search in the Small Ghetto during which some 150 Jews were selected and taken away for slave labor in the Starachowice camp.25 As time went on, the ghetto inhabitants continued trying to obtain “Aryan” documents and, if they had a little money left, gave thought to how they might escape, and to where.26

The Murder of Hermann Lewi and the Doctors One day in January 1943, Gaier and Karl Essig entered the Small Ghetto along with a Gestapo party. They broke into Hermann Lewi’s house and seized him along with his wife, two daughters, his daughter-in-law Sonia, another young 23 Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 219, 222. 24 Testimony Zelinger, YVA, O.3/10792, 13; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 12. See also Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 222, and testimony Natalia Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 417–420. 25 Testimony Salzberg in Fąfara, Gehenna, 420. According to Mosze Meir Bahn, the manhunt took place at midnight and Spiegel did not let the victims take money or personal belongings with them. See testimony Bahn in Fąfara, Gehenna, 423. 26 Testimony Aharon Liebling, YVA M.1.Q/174, 2.

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woman, his maid Manela, the Szmulewicz brothers, and two small children. They were all loaded onto the Germans’ vehicles and driven to the Jewish ­cemetery in Pakosz, where they were locked into a disinfection room and ordered to undress. One couple at a time, they were taken to a pit prepared in advance where Schupo police shot them to death. When Lewi’s turn came, Erich Wollschläger stood up in front of him. Levy prostrated himself before the Nazi, presumably to beg for his life, whereupon Wollschläger stepped back and shot the Judenrat chairman himself.27 The next day, Poles living near the cemetery reported having seen everyone being shot. According to a rumor that spread in the ghetto, the Gestapo had information that Lewi had bribed one of the guards while plotting to escape with his family to Switzerland. Another rumor had it that Lewi’s son was caught holding false passports. The underground radio of the Polish government-in-exile announced Lewi’s death.28 News of the murder of Lewi and his family jolted the Jews in the Small Ghetto, who took it as a bad omen. On Purim 1943 (March 21), the Germans informed the Jewish doctors that they would soon be sent to Germany for labor due to a shortage of doctors in the camps there. The physicians, convinced for this reason that the Germans considered their work essential, made every effort to include family members, relatives, and acquaintances in the coveted dispensation. The time came. Two trucks, their beds covered with tarpaulins, pulled into the Small Ghetto and took on a cargo of medical equipment and blankets. Then some forty Jews climbed 27 In their testimony before the Darmstadt court, Mosze Zemel and Leon Zimrot reported that Lewi and his sons had been handcuffed. The cuffs were unlocked after they reached the cemetery. When Wollschläger ordered all the Jews in the group to undress, Lewi refused, and it was when he asked to speak to Gaier that Wollschläger shot him dead. See testimonies Zemel (March 28, 1966), Zimrot (March 15, 1966), Alfredo Sapir (March 21, 1966), Aharon Frenkel (April 1, 1966), Marion Frenkel (April 21, 1966), Aharon Liebling (May 4, 1966), Israel Itzkowicz (May 4, 1966), Leib Lee Recht (May 6, 1966), and Morris Liebfeld (May 20, 1966), Darmstadt court. 28 Trial of Erich Wollschläger, YVA, O.4/405, 6; YVA, M.1.E/75, Sara Kerbel; Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 155; Birnhak, God Willing, 225; Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 51; Daniel’s Story, 34; and interview with Rafael Blumenfeld (author’s personal archives). See also YVA, TR.10/911, 38. All the memoirists and witnesses, without exception, mention the murder of Lewi and his family, although each dates the murder differently between November 1942 and April 1943. Alpert testified that an “Aryan” document cost 1,600 złoty. According to Alpert, Lewi’s name appeared on a list of Jews kept by a Polish woman who agreed, for a fee, to provision them with “Aryan” papers. Testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 15. A week later, Lola and Hermann Kopel were caught selling a typewriter to a Pole; they were taken to the cemetery and shot dead. Other victims were the policeman Dobroszycki and his wife. See Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 51.

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aboard, mostly doctors and family members. They were driven to the cemetery in Pakosz, accompanied by Gaier, Schupo police, and ten Jewish police. On arrival at the cemetery, the latter were ordered to dig a ditch. Finishing their work two hours later, they were sent back to the Small Ghetto. Seeing them climb down from the trucks, everyone realized that the doctors and their families were no longer among the living. Poles who had observed the executions reported that everyone had been ordered to lie in the ditch, where the Germans shot them to death. According to some of these reports, the women and children had thrown stones at the Schupo men. Murdered that day were all the doctors and their families with the exception of Dr. Reiter, his wife, and his daughter, who were brought back to the Small Ghetto.29 After the murders of the Lewis and the doctors, anyone who retained even the smallest amount of money remitted it to non-Jews for a place to hide.

Resistance in the Small Ghetto In early 1942, long before the main ghetto’s denouement, a clandestine organization of young Jews, most of them Communists, formed an anti-Fascist committee with the aim of escaping to the forests and establishing a partisan group; subsequently they were joined by Zionist youths. In late April 1942, however, during an Aktion in the ghetto in search of political activists, the Germans captured and shot to death two founding members of the committee, Hayim Yosef Max and A. Melnik. With that, the group ceased to operate.30 29 Birnhak, God Willing, 249–250; Ferferman-Washov, The Processed, 51; Weiner, Daniel’s Story, 34. See also YVA 2083–58, collection of Tuvia Friedman, testimony Avraham Orbach in Tel Aviv District Court, February 5, 1970 (YVA, Tuvia Friedman Collection). See also testimony Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 6; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 13, and YVA, TR.10/911, 38; testimony Salzberg, YVA, M.49E/1705, 5; testimony Selcer, YVA, O.2/314, 2. Bilicka testified that fifty-four were murdered in the “Doctors’ Aktion” in the Kielce cemetery. See Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 419. Aharon Liebling testified that twenty-six doctors were among the Jews murdered on Purim; see testimony Liebling, YVA M.1.Q/174, 3. Presumably the others murdered were close family and relatives. See also testimonies before the Darmstadt court: Avraham Kerbel (February 27, 1966), Manuel Friedman (March 16, 1966), Sam Ritze (April 24, 1966), Stefan Keren (May 2, 1966), Israel Itzkowicz (May 4, 1966), Leib Lee Recht (May 5, 1966), Adolph Svicherchik (May 10, 1966), Morris Liebfeld (May 20, 1966), Abe Price (April 29, 1966), Elias Blumenfeld ( July 22, 1968), Yente Blumenfeld ( July 22, 1968), and Yeshayahu Salzberg ( July 28, 1968). That month (March 19, 1943), the brothers Avraham-Yakov and Pinkus Goldberg were shot dead in the Kielce prison. See Kielce National Archives, 5596. 30 Testimonies Yedidia Kleinlerer and Gerszon Lewkowicz, ŻIH Archive (301)2760, 1–13.

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A handful of members, however, survived the liquidation of the ghetto in the summer of 1942, and the committee was revived clandestinely once the Small Ghetto got word of goings-on at Treblinka. Its members were Moshka Perlman (Communist), Zelig Wasser (Zionist), his brother Meir, Zilberman (Po’alei Tsiyyon Left), Isik Garfinkel (Zionist), Leon Barwiener (later Daniel Wiener of Hashomer Hatzair), Simha Bunem Goldman and Micmacher (Agudat Yisrael), Lewinsztein (unaffiliated), Yedidia Kleinlerer and Gerszon Lewkowicz (Communist), Kubah Maszenberg (Zionist), and others. Immediately after the war, Kleinlerer and Lewkowicz testified that all members of the Small Ghetto resistance had organized in underground cells of ten members each and that over time the tally of members reached 150. The organization began to raise funds to acquire weapons, Wiener manufactured grenades, and Goldman imported weapons from the “Aryan” side. Soon the organization possessed thirty-three handguns and two rifles. To reach the nearby forests, members formed contacts with members of the Polish Left, mainly from the PPS (Polish Socialist Party), Their main contact was one Szlywinski.31 Daniel Wiener, who had possessed false papers throughout the German occupation period, maintained contact with a Polish member of the AK (Armia Krajowa, Home Army), the underground militia of the Polish government-in-exile. Although Wiener’s wife and two children had been deported to Treblinka in the Great Aktion, in the Small Ghetto he held a labor permit and regularly slipped out to meet with his Polish friend. In October 1942, as rumors about Treblinka wafted through the ghetto, Wiener suggested to several Jews who worked at HASAG-Granat (see below) that they steal weapons and ammunition. A small group took up the proposal; one member even managed to smuggle out a machine gun. Wiener and Lewkowicz then sought ways to escape from the ghetto and join the partisans in the nearby forests. In November 1942, with the aid of his Polish friend, Wiener met a lawyer, who was a commander in the Kielce AK. When he offered to cooperate with the Polish militia and asked it for its help, Wiener received the following answer: “You know that in the forests there are uneducated resistance members who are opposed to Jews, and as there is a risk they will kill you people, it is best you watch yourselves.”32 The contact proposed that Wiener set up a separate forest camp in the vicinity of Kielce, near Góry Świętokrzyskie village. 31 Ibid. 32 Wiener, Daniel’s Story, 31.

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Following up on the suggestion, Wiener left for the forest with four other Jews, including a thirteen-year-old boy whose father had been caught smuggling in the Small Ghetto and had been executed by hanging. Before they could reach their destination, they had to hide in a ditch that they had dug in the forest. After two of them were captured while searching for food, Wiener and his two surviving mates headed back to the Small Ghetto, fearing that they too would be captured. At this point, Wiener and Lewkowicz continued to organize the resistance in the Small Ghetto. The idea of setting up a camp in the forest to which dozens of Jews would escape began to take form, it being assumed that there was nothing to lose and that any escape attempt was worth the effort. By early 1943, the organization had already prepared a place in the forest and several members had arms bought from Poles. The problem was how to sneak a group of several dozen Jews out of the ghetto without arousing the Germans’ suspicion and how to provision the camp for the harsh winter. At this time, as living conditions in the Small Ghetto were relatively reasonable, only six Jews moved to the camp. One day, a member of the underground named Tiszler was caught while slipping through the ghetto fence. The Jewish police who searched his clothing found a handgun and Spiegel, head of the police, threatened to turn Tiszler over to the Germans. When Wiener appealed to Spiegel and asked him to have pity on the man, Spiegel retorted, “I don’t want to give my head for Tiszler.”33 Although Spiegel relented and released Tiszler, the idea of smuggling dozens of Jews out of the ghetto was postponed for the time being. The resistance group scheduled a meeting for the evening of May 1, 1943, arranging it with great care because a venue capable of holding dozens of people had to be found. As part of the plan, somebody informed Spiegel that PPS partisans planned to smuggle dozens of Jews out of the ghetto on May 1. Spiegel, believing this, passed the information on to the Germans, who posted additional guards on the access roads to the ghetto that night. The resistance seized the opportunity to meet in the apartment of Joel Kuper, the former cantor at Beit Tzedek Synagogue. There they exchanged information about events on the front, the Germans’ defeat at Stalingrad, and the extermination of Jews in the Kielce region and more distant areas as well. Plainly aware that the liquidation of the Small Ghetto was just a matter of time, those assembled planned their

33 Ibid., 34.

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escape to the forest camp for the end of May 1943.34 As the day approached, Kleinlerer and Lewkowicz hid thirty-six grenades in the ghetto. The Small Ghetto was liquidated several days later and the two were taken to the labor camp in Pionki, near Radom.

Liquidation of the Small Ghetto On May 14, 1943, Anton Ipfling, commander of the Skarżysko-Kamienna labor camp, paid the Small Ghetto a visit. Assisted by Matthäus Rumpl of the Schupo, he selected 120 Jews and had them taken to Skarżysko in vehicles specially reserved for this purpose.35 Two weeks later, on May 29, 1943, armed Ukrainians surrounded the ghetto. On that fine clear morning, Jewish police pounded on the windows of the buildings and, shouting, ordered everyone to gather in the assembly yard where the selection during the great deportation had been carried out. Gaier and Thomas arrived again, accompanied by Gestapo and Schupo personnel and backed by dogs and Ukrainian units. Gaier ordered all the assembled Jews to line up in ranks and groups. Germans then began to call out the names of people who held documents of one color or another and instructed them to gather in one corner of the yard. In parallel, parents were ordered to hand over their children, whereupon the Germans tore fifty children aged three to ten from their parents’ arms, each policeman leading off five or six. Suddenly I felt an SS soldier grabbing me by the neck and lifting me up. He led me to one of the buildings near the square and threw me in. I got up and said I wanted to go back to my parents. He slapped me so hard that I toppled back into the house […].36

Seeing Gaier, who managed the evacuation, standing in the middle of the yard, Spiegel exploited his position, approached the Nazi along with his 34 Ibid., 35. Further evidence of the formation of an underground in the Small Ghetto was given anonymously in 1948. The writer noted that the members cancelled their plans at the last minute because Spiegel found them out and threatened to betray them to the Germans. See anonymous testimony, YVA, M.1.Q/173, 2. 35 Testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 39–40; testimony Natalia Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 422. 36 Zabludski, Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor, 10. See testimonies Gerda BuergenthalRosenholtz, Morris Rubinstein, Yente Blumenfeld, and Henry Helfing, Darmstadt court.

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wife and their young daughter, and tried to convince him to let the girl remain. Gaier shouted something at him and the little one was snatched away. Dozens of stunned parents broke into hysteric wailing, importuning Gaier and his men in utter desperation to be merciful and spare their children. The older children too approached the Germans and implored, “We are big and strong; we too can work. Please, we beg of you, don’t take us.” 37 The children’s tiny faces crumbled into masks of panic, fear, pain, and anguish. Mothers who tried to conceal infants incurred vicious beatings, their babies torn forcibly from their arms. The children were interned in a small house near the yard, its windows and shutters sealed off and soldiers armed with automatic weapons posted to thwart all possibility of escape. Their screams remained audible throughout.38 The 1,500–1,700 Jews who remained on the square, most of them young adults who were deemed to be cheap labor that could serve the Reich war effort, were divided into four groups and within six hours were distributed among labor camps in the district. One group of about 500 Jews was sent to the slave-labor camp at Pionki; another of about 150 was divided among three camps—Blizyn, Skarżysko-Kamienna, and Starachowice—and some 900 were kept in town. They were marched through the streets of Kielce for some three kilometers, non-Jews looking on from their windows, and were then scattered among three camps, each serving an industrial plant in town. On May 30, 1943, the Small Ghetto of Kielce ceased to exist. The house where the children were imprisoned had two storeys and an attic. The children were kept on the ground floor. Observing a staircase leading to the second floor, three children—Akiva, Shlomo, and Januszek—decided to 37 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 54. See also Sara Kerbel, “Die lezte 45 kinderlach in Kieltse,” Fun letstn khurbn, Book 3 (Munich: Central Historical Commission, October– November 1946), and YVA, TR.10/673, 43. Thomas Buergenthal, by then nine years old, approached one of the Germans with his parents and told the man in German that he was fit for work. The German answered: “We’ll soon see,” and left him there with his parents. See USHMM, interview with Thomas Buergenthal, January 1990, RG-50.030*0046, 4–5, and testimony Gerda Buergenthal-Rosenholtz ( June 20, 1967), Darmstadt court. Cyla Liberman was ten; her parents managed to hide her from the Germans. See Cila Liberman, Celika, A Child Survives Auschwitz [in Hebrew] ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), 39–44. 38 Testimony Sara Kerbel, “The Last 45 Children in Kielce,” collection of Toby Friedman. See also Liberman, Celinka, 39–44; also testimony Breitman, YVA, O.3/8911, 9; testimony Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985, 18; YVA, TR.10/911, 39; YVA 2083–58, collection of Toby Friedman, 6; Fąfara, Gehenna, 505; Cyla Liberman, interview (author’s private archive).

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make the climb and go into hiding. From the second storey, they managed to squeeze through a hole in the ceiling and reach the attic, where they found a gap in a wall opening onto a space barely large enough to accommodate them. From this unlit hideout, they heard footsteps, “then the noise of trucks, the cries of children, more trucks, and then silence.”39 Forty-five children were taken to the cemetery at Pakosz, where all were shot to death in a communal grave.40 The three boys in the attic left their hiding place at night under cover of darkness. However, since equipment remained in the yard where the deportation had taken place, guards were on patrol there and a searchlight illuminated the area. Sensing the presence of a German policeman, the three slipped back into the attic. Three days later, weak and exhausted from hunger and thirst, they heard voices in Yiddish. Peering out of the window, they saw three Jews who had arrived with wagons to collect blankets left in the yard. We started to shout at them. When they saw our heads they went pale as plaster. Hadn’t all the children been murdered, leaving no one? […] They took us down and put us on the carts, each in a different cart so we wouldn’t be found all together. They piled blankets over our heads. It was hard to breathe and I nearly suffocated. We got out […] and were brought into a new camp that had older children so that three more wouldn’t be noticed. […] A few hours later they let us unite with our parents. […] It was hard to look into the eyes of those who had lost their children […].41

The three children had reached the Henryków labor camp in Kielce.42

39 Zabludski, Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor, 11 (author’s private archive). Bernard Schulman testified before the Darmstadt court about the murder of the other children. See testimony Schulman (April 20, 1966), Darmstadt court. 40 After the war, on November 25, 1945, seven mothers and three fathers of the murdered children gathered at the Jewish cemetery in Kielce and there built a monument to their memory. See Sara Kerbel, Fun letstn khurbn, Book 3, 37. 41 Zabludski, Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor, 11 (author’s private archive). See also Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 55; Cyla Liberman, interview (author’s private archive). 42 The Jewish cemetery in Kilece was closed in 1967. In 1981 a monument was erected there to commemorate 330 gravestones that had been desecrated and strewn across its grounds. In 1987 the cemetery was fenced off, the memorial to the victims of the July 1946 pogrom was restored, and a commemorative site for the Jewish children murdered by the Germans in Kielce in May 1943 was put up.

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The Slave-Labor Camps Background Until the outbreak of World War II, several towns in Radom District (known as Kielce District in the interwar period), such as Skarżysko-Kamienna, Starachowice, Radom, Pionki, Ostrowiec, and Kielce itself, had been home to arms and munitions plants. When war began, the Wehrmacht seized these factories and on December 4 1939, after consultations with Hans Frank, chief of the Generalgouvernement, it was decided to put them to work for the army’s needs. From June 1940 onward, the economic interests of the Wehrmacht in the Generalgouvernement were represented by General Maximilian Schindler, who as superintendent of the local arms production inspectorate (Rüstungsinspektion) managed to impose his dominion on the most important munitions factories in the district. Operational management of the factories was assigned to large German and Austrian concerns, which filled all administrative posts with their representatives and employees while military officials maintained inspection of the factories and their output. Until 1942, the main labor force in these plants consisted of the Polish workers and technical staff who had been employed before the war. In March 1942, far-reaching changes occurred in the situation on the fronts and among the Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Consequent to the failure of the German offensive on the eastern front, a new Minister of Armaments took over: Albert Speer. The manufacture of weapons, the shortage of which threatened to halt the ongoing combat in the east, was Speer’s foremost concern, and to tend to it he launched a reorganization of the armaments industry. The same month saw the first deportations of Jews from the Generalgouvernement to the death camps, initially to Bełżec. While this happened, Jews slaved in hundreds of labor camps on Generalgouvernement soil, and with the transfer of executive authority over the deportation of Jews to Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, High SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in the Generalgouvernement, the employment of Jews in these camps became problematic. On June 25, 1942, the Generalgouvernement administration issued an instruction to all labor departments in its territory that henceforth the employment of Jews would be permitted only with the consent of the High SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in each district.43 43 Felicja Karay, “The Conflict among German Authorities over Labor Camps for Jews in the Generalgouvernement” [in Hebrew], Yalkut Moreshet 52, 1992, 121, note 27. See also

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In August 1942, when the obliteration of all ghettos in Radom District began, Schindler resisted the deportation of the Jewish slave laborers and enjoyed the support of high Wehrmacht officers in the Generalgouvernement. The latter opposed the removal of some 100,000 Jews whom they deemed essential to military needs and were loath to forfeit the profits and prestige that came with the labor camps that employed these Jews. Only in September 1942, in the context of the extended offensive against Stalingrad, was Speer able to obtain Hitler’s consent to postpone the deportation of Jewish workers from the armaments factories. On October 15, 1942, the SS and the Armaments Inspectorate negotiated an agreement that stipulated, among other things, that responsibility for all the Wehrmacht’s labor camps would be handed to the SS and the police, that Jews would receive no wages, and that each employer would have to remit a daily fee for each Jewish worker to the district SS and police headquarters. Less than two months later, it was determined all Jews in the Generalgouvernement would be considered prisoners of the Generalgouvernement HSSPF command.44 The Governor General, Frank, also acknowledged the importance of the local armaments industry and favored the continued existence of the factory camps that had come under the inspection of the district SSPFs. In 1942, the Wehrmacht armaments corps established a command center in Radom, the main city in Radom District; it took responsibility for the district’s weapons factories. In parallel, inspection of output was shared by the commands of the infantry, air force, and navy. It was then that Jewish prisoners joined the Poles in the labor force of the Radom District arms and munitions plants.45 Barracks to house the Jewish prisoners were constructed next to each of these facilities, effectively transforming them into slave-labor camps. By that summer, the works in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Starachowice, and Częstochowa Dieter Pohl, “Slave-Labor Camps for Jews in the Generalgouvernement,” Bishvil Hazikkaron 37 (April–May, 2000); idem, “Murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement,” 107–109; idem, “The Murder of Jews in the General Government,” in Ulrich Herbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary Perspectives and Controversies, Vol. 2 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), 83–103; Stanisław Meducki, Przemysł i klasa robotnicza w dystrykcie radomskim w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej (Warsaw: Państowowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981), 114. 44 Obozy hitlerowskie naziemiach polskich 1939–1945: Informator encyklopedyczny (Warsaw: Państowowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979), 48, 58, 81; Berenstein, Eisenbach,and Rutkowski, Eksterminacja Żydów, 322; Rutkowski, “Martyrologia, Walka I zagłada,” 76–77, 88–93, 112–113, 128. 45 Longin Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskei fartyki śmierci, 10–12; Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 345.

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had become Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden (labor camps for Jews); Jews were brought there from throughout the district commensurate with the factories’ needs. The plants in Kielce, which accounted for relatively small share of war industry output, began to employ Jews in 1942. However, residential barracks had not yet been built on their grounds; the Jewish workers returned to the ghetto at the end of each workday. As documented above, the extermination of the Jews in Radom District began in early August 1942 and lasted five months. The war in the east crested at this time, meaning that the Wehrmacht needed regular supplies of munitions. Thus, Speer’s Ministry of Armaments spent night and day striving to boost production of ordnance and sundry weapons. In March 1943, after the authorities in Berlin declared an all-out mobilization of resources for the war effort, the value of the Jewish labor force appeared to have risen.46 In February 1943, after Germany succumbed to the Soviet Army in Stalingrad, the factories in Radom District received huge orders for arms and ammunition. The plants not only had to step up production but also suddenly needed a larger labor force. On May 25, 1943, Schindler sent Speer a secret report describing the inefficiency of the Polish work teams in these factories. The Poles, he opined, were influenced by Communist propaganda, were afraid to cooperate with the German administration, and often failed to show up. Low wages exacerbated their absenteeism by convincing them that they could make a better living on the black market. In the spring of 1943, planning began for the construction of labor camps in Kielce proper, near the three factories that were contributing 46 In January 1943, Oswald Pohl, head of the WVHA (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt—SS Main Office for Supplies and Administration), looked into ways of using Jewish property in the Warsaw and Lublin Districts and the possibility of broad economic development under SS auspices. His investigation was carried out as part of plans for the establishment of Osti (SS-Ostindustrie GmbH, East Industry Company, Ltd.), as was formally constituted in March 1943. The SS chieftains aspired to be direct beneficiaries of Jewish property and labor, and as part of the formation of Ostindustrie they handled matters such as building camps for exploitation of the Jewish labor force and choosing their location, their equipment, the size of the staff in each camp, the sale of Jewish property and so forth. The main labor camps and the future pillar of Ostindustrie were in Poniatowa and Trawniki, in the Lublin District, to which workshops and manufacturing units were transferred from Warsaw. Pohl’s plans were viewed with suspicion by the chief inspectors of arms production as well as by the private concerns, which feared that the SS would take control over all surplus labor in the Generalgouvernement. See Sara Bender, The Jews of Białystok During World War II and the Holocaust (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2008), 221–224; Karay, “Conflict among German Authorities,” Yalkut Moreshet 52, 114.

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s­ ignificantly to the war effort. The managers of these facilities were given a relatively free hand in exploiting whatever remained of the Jewish labor force.47 Although in October 1943 thoughts were given to turning all the camps in the district into concentration camps owned by the SS,48 this was not done; most camps remained under private ownership and served as slave-labor camps subordinate to the SS and the Gestapo.

Ludwików Ludwików was a steel foundry located on Fabryczna Street in Kielce proper. In the years before the German occupation, it turned out farm implements and railroad equipment. In 1937, it began to manufacture the SHL motorcycle with its British 98-cc. engine. On the eve of the war, it also started to produce gear for the Polish Army: helmets, cavalry swords, and so forth. Upon their occupa tion of Poland in 1939, the Germans seized the factory and stripped it of its modern imported machinery. After they nationalized the place, they renamed it Maschinen und Wagonenbau GmbH Werke Ludwigshütte. In 1942, the foundry was leased to a Kraków firm owned by a Polish Volksdeutsche named Zielniewski but remained under German supervision. Though organizationally not subordinate to the German arms industry, the factory remained under the oversight of the armaments command in Radom because it received production orders from the military. From the beginning of the occupation up to 1941, it was run by Paul Steiner, a seventy-year-old German from Breslau, and afterward by Alfred Otto Hertsch, a sixty-year-old merchant from Munich. Its professional management rested in the hands of the Polish engineer Otmar Kwieciński, who had provided this service in the pre-war days. The department managers and foremen were also Poles. Guarding the factory and the prisoners’ quarters were Werkschutze (workplace guards) under the command of Oscar Mach.49 In 1940, Ludwików made farm implements and steel fuel drums for the army’s needs. Several weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 47 Christopher R. Browning, “The Factory Slave Labor Camps in Starachowice, Poland: Survivors’ Testimonies,” in Forced and Slave Labor in Nazi-Dominated Europe (Washington, D. C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004), 63–75 . 48 Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 14; Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 112, 337. 49 Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie Fabryki śmierci na Kieleccyznie, 141, 144; testimony Stanisław Batorski in Fąfara, 225; Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 55; testimony Liliana Servetnik, YVA, O.2/516, 3.

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June 22, 1941, it began to produce wheels for the Pleskau single-horse-drawn wooden wagon. The wooden parts of this contrivance were manufactured in the nearby Henryków plant (see below), which maintained management and production relations with Ludwików. In 1942, following pressure from the Wehrmacht in Kraków for an increase in production, the decision to add Jews to the labor force was made. In late summer 1942, after the great deportation from the Kielce ghetto, some Jews were led out from the Small Ghetto for work in the factory and taken back to the ghetto at night. In April 1943, after further pressure from the Wehrmacht following the defeat in Stalingrad, the Germans began to build barracks alongside the factory to house Jews who would work there on a permanent basis. On May 30, 1943, with the liquidation of the Small Ghetto in Kielce, some 330 Jews were transferred to Ludwików.50 The factory was cordoned off by a tall fence, the entire camp including the workers’ barracks was encircled in barbed wire, and the entire venue became a slave-labor camp. Its administrative staff consisted of ten Germans; its Werkschutze were armed and uniformed Germans and Ukrainians. The foundry employed 330 Jews on a regular basis, including forty skilled laborers and some 200 others who worked as porters in the factory yard and at the loading and unloading dock. The furnaces turned out steel products such as wheel rims for the German army. The Jewish prisoners toiled without wages but received food at no charge. Their work was supervised by a Polish engineer and Polish foremen; the Werkschutze were responsible for keeping the Jews from escaping but did not meddle in the performance of their jobs.51 Most of the inhabitants of Ludwików’s barracks were young men without families. There were also twenty-nine married couples, a few dozen young women, and some fifteen children over the age of ten. Otto Glattstein, a tall, burly Jewish refugee from Vienna, was placed at the head of the camp’s Jewish police, taking his orders from Mach. When Glattstein introduced Mach to the Jews who had been assembled in Ludwików, Mach turned to them and said: “Stay on the hay for the time being until the new barracks are finished,” and watched the Jews climb onto the dusty straw in their new quarters.52 50 The exact number of the Jewish prisoners in Ludwików varies from source to source, but evidently there were some 300 regular workers and another 150 intermittent ones. See Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 154; testimony Batorski in Fąfara, Gehenna, 225. 51 Report by Stefan Sendlak, manager of Żegota (Rada Pomocy Żydom, Council to Aid Jews) in Kielce District, September 22, 1943, in Fąfara, Gehenna, 506. See also testimony Ginzburg, YVA, O.3/9224, 7, and testimony Batorski in Fąfara, 225–226. 52 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 55.

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The day after arriving at Ludwików, the Jews learned from Polish employees at the plant about the murder of the Jewish children at the Pakosz cemetery. The place cultivated an atmosphere of terror from the first days. When Szmuel Blumenfeld, who worked on the loading dock, sustained a serious leg injury, Mach ordered the Jewish nurse Regina Koenigsberg to put him to death by injection. Several days later, Gestapo police raided the living quarters, ordered all the strong men whom they could find to line up against a wall, and trained their rifles on them, terrifying them all. It soon emerged that this was a prank the Germans had arranged for their amusement; once it was over, the frightened men were sent off to unload various equipment from railroad cars that had come into the camp.53 The new barracks were redolent of fresh pine, ventilated, and lined with two rows of double-decked bunk beds. Married couples settled in the corners for privacy; Bela (Balbina) Kolatacz and Berl Szulman were placed in charge of the kitchen and fixed soup, buckwheat, and lentils. Despite the atmosphere of terror in the camp’s first days, Hertsch, the factory manager, treated the Jewish prisoners humanely and persuaded his superiors that feeding them would make them more productive. Thus, one of the inmates reported, “We never suffered from hunger or cold.”54 Even after four years of suffering and loss, some Jews had not abandoned the hope of being freed. One of the prisoners, Szmuel Białystok, earned Hertsch’s affection and was appointed by him as the Lagerälteste, the “camp elder.” Białystok circulated among the Jews and urged them, smiling, to “think positive, brothers, always positive.”55 Work in the factory followed a routine; special difficulties were rare. During the day, Jews worked mainly in manufacturing, on the loading docks, or in the warehouse, and the Polish supervisors treated them matter-of-factly. On days when trains pulled into the factory, the work was harder. Generally speaking, however, the Jewish workers were treated reasonably.56 The living quarters and living conditions in the camp, despite the supervision and the guarding, were far enough from disastrous that Jews hiding elsewhere in

53 Ibid., 56. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 57. 56 Testimony Ginzburg, YVA, O.3/9224, 7. Ginzburg worked in a parts warehouse; his father was in charge of loading railroad cars. Ginzburg fils’ testimony indicates that alhough the work was hard, both were treated well.

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Kielce and the district sometimes sneaked in.57 Dr. Reiter, the only physician to survive the murder of those in his profession in the Small Ghetto on Purim 1943, treated Jewish patients there without filing reports as required. To avoid compulsory roll calls, Glattstein and Białystok bribed Mach with tobacco and spirits. “It satisfied his ego. Master Mach and his dog had a thirst for sycophancy, and thus great problems were avoided by gratifying their appetites.”58 August 1943 marked a year since the liquidation of the Kielce ghetto. Rumors about the fate of the deportees still circulated and the Jewish prisoners, beginning to suspect that something dreadful had indeed happened, turned the anniversary into a quiet convocation. A heavy cloud of grief floated in the air, burdening the otherwise relatively comfortable life in the camp. The inmates established a special committee to raise funds for the Jews of Kielce who had been sent to the Pionki labor camp; the proceeds were transferred via Polish friends at the factory who worked with Jewish prisoners at Ludwików.59 Despite the heavy snow and frozen water that accompanied the winter of 1943/1944, the barracks in Ludwików stayed warm. Apart from the German-provisioned common kitchen, some inmates made arrangements of their own and lived on food that they bought from Poles at the factory. In the evenings, people cooked dinner individually next to their bunks or on an improvised grill outside the barracks. Cooking was done on a metal burner primed by a piece of wood soaked in alcohol. Although cooking in the camp was forbidden, Mach noticed neither the burners nor the redolence of fried food. During those hours, Jerachmiel Luft sang the Yiddish tune “Brothers, the City’s Burning” (Brider, das shtetl brent), and those who finished eating cleaned their bunks and their clothes before bedtime.60 57 One of these infiltrators was a pregnant girl who was unable to conceal her condition and was shot to death. Testimony Batorski in Fąfara, Gehenna, 225. Batorski did bookkeeping work in Henryków. 58 Feferman-Washof, 57. See also testimony Ginzburg, YVA, O.3/9224. Ginzburg was fifteen years old when he began to work with his father in Ludwików. See also testimony Batorski in Fąfara, Gehenna, 225. 59 From Pionki came news that the Gestapo had killed Rubinek, Zilber, Lacks, Herszel Gertler, Lederman, and Rosenberg. Mark Manela, Yonasz Chmielewski and Leibke Rosenberg, who escaped from Pionki, slipped into Ludwików, were caught, and were sent to the GrossRosen concentration camp, in Reich territory. The Motek brothers and David Friedman were shot dead trying to escape from Pionki. Henyek Mincberg was caught in the forests; Poles hacked his body to pieces. Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 58. 60 Testimony Bilicka in Fąfara, Gehenna, 419.

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The respite ended in June 1944, when Mach was transferred and replaced by a Wachmann (security guard) named Grumprich, “whose narrow eyeslits made him look like a pig.”61 Grumprich and other police now began to make regular visits to the living quarters and inspected every crack and corner. They discovered Friedman’s pregnant wife and shot her to death, ordered reports on the ill to be drawn up, cut the food rations, stopped the cooking in the barracks; and slashed permission to leave the barracks for those not on their way to work. One frigid night, Grumprich made all the prisoners line up outside the barracks and, waving his handgun, ordered them to lay face-down in the snow. Then he strode up and down on their backs, shouting wildly and cursing endlessly. Police stationed at the scene looked on, ready and willing to shoot anyone who dared get up.62 Near the factory on the camp premises was a Polish canteen where young Jews returning from work slipped away to buy a roll or an apple. One day, Grumprich set up an ambush near the place and called in the Gestapo. Motek Gertler managed to get away but Arthur Heitler, Yehezkel Holtzman, Weinreich, and Friedman were caught and several days later executed by a firing squad. Another time, Rumpl himself, an expert in killing Jews by delivering a bullet to the neck, personally shot three Jews who failed to show up for work.63 In July 1944, Poles working in the camp spread word that Italy had surrendered. There was also talk that the Allies were pushing the Germans back and the Russians would soon be coming. While the Poles cursed the detested “Bolsheviks,” the Jews were glad to welcome anyone who would liberate them. There were also rumors about the impending evacuation of the prisoners and the factory. Tension filled the air and the general feeling among the inmates was that this was the time to escape. Attendance at roll calls decreased as those who could flee to the forests did so. Some were able to buy rifles—albeit antiquated and faulty—from Poles and managed to escape; they included Bronek Zelinger and Zelig Wasser. In certain cases, Poles who worked at the factory agreed to shelter Jews for pay. Some, however, reported that Jews who had escaped to the forests were being shot by local partisans. They mentioned Strawczinski, Izik 61 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 59. 62 Ibid. Batorski also testified that the Germans had shot a pregnant woman. See Fąfara, Gehenna, 226. Samuel Friedman attested to having seen Rumpl shoot the pregnant Mrs. Leiberman. See testimonies Friedman (March 16, 1966) and Shimon Kral (April 14, 1966), Darmstadt court. 63 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 59. See also Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce Distrikt Radom, 161.

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Silberberg, and Kreizman as cases in point, and to prove it they brought back the men’s handguns and tried to resell them to the Jews.64 Rumors abounded. One day in July 1944, Białystok said that he had heard from Hertsch that the Jews would soon be sent to labor at the factories in Gleiwitz—in the metropolitan Reich—and would not be harmed. Białystok, adept at instilling optimism in those around him, continued by reporting what Hertsch had emphasized to him: Germany needed working hands and Jews were essential to the war effort. The rumor about impending transfer to the Reich spread from mouth to mouth in the barracks, prompting those who were planning to escape to reconsider. Indeed, the camp was evacuated at the end of that month, all its contents loaded onto cars heading west. The rumors of the Russians’ approach were also confirmed, inspiring some Jews to continue their desperate attempts to seek a hiding place. Three youths—Pshigorsky, Silberberg, and Gertler—dug a small tunnel in the Werkschutz food cellar and hid in it. Gertler’s older brother and Motek Tversky tried to join them, were caught and taken to Hertsch, who again showed his humanity by covering for them.65 On August 1, 1944, fourteen months after having been transferred from the Small Ghetto to Ludwików, the Jewish prisoners were led under armed guard to the loading dock along the railroad tracks near the factory. Once they were packed into open railroad cars, the train set out—the destination was unknown. Several hours later, the transport reached the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Józef Wenus, a Pole who had manufactured molds at Ludwików, later testified that on the eve of the evacuation four Jews hid in an inactive enamel coating furnace—the two Isenberg brothers and the two Shatz brothers, whose father, Dr. Shatz, had been deported from Kielce to Auschwitz in January 1941. Poles who knew about this kept the fugitives fed for three days, allowing them to creep out of their hideout only at night to draw water from a tap. One night, a factory guard saw one of them and raised a ruckus. The four were quickly found, bound hand and foot, and brought to the basement. The next day, the Gestapo came and demanded they show them where gold was hidden in the ghetto. When they returned from the ghetto empty-handed, they were all shot dead at the factory fence.66 64 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 61–62. 65 Ibid., 63. 66 Testimony Józef Wenus in Fąfara, Gehenna, 230–232; Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 157. After the Jews were evacuated on Jay 30, 1943, the Small Ghetto was totally

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Henryków Henryków was a sawmill (Holzwerke) on Młynarska Street in Głęboczka, a suburb of Kielce. Established by Hermann Lewi before World War II, it was owned by the Nowak, Haruner, and Lewi families. The plant was nationalized early in the war, and throughout the occupation years Poles worked there under a joint management with the Ludwików foundry. Jews joined the labor force in early 1942, when Henryków began to manufacture wooden parts for the wagons that Ludwików produced. The wooden elements were delivered to Ludwików, where the wagons were assembled. In April 1943, given the need to exploit Jewish labor, the Germans built a residential barracks next to Henryków for Jews who would be working there on a permanent basis. Of the hundreds of Jews who were kept alive for labor purposes when the Small Ghetto in Kielce was liquidated on May 30, 1943, some 250 were transferred to Henryków and the factory became a slave-labor camp. The Jewish prisoners were lodged in a single wooden barracks sixty meters long and ten meters wide, situated in a fenced-in yard. A small latrine stood in a corner of the yard and the barracks were equipped with two long rows of bunk beds, double- or even triple-tiered. At one end of the building, a partition allowed married couples to live separately from the rest of the prisoners. In this corner slept Spiegel and his wife, the Buergenthals and their nine-year old son Thomas, and the Ordermans. Next to the partition was an area occupied by the remaining former policemen and their spouses or girlfriends, as well as Dr. Reiter (who served as physician for both camps) and his wife. Farther on were the other couples, then women, and then the others, most of whom did factory labor and were considered status-less. The bunks came with mattresses; blankets were brought in from the roll-call yard and the Small Ghetto. Next to the barracks was a shed that served in part as a kitchen. There women cooked for all inmates in the camp using provisions supplied by the Germans. Another shack not far from the residential barracks housed a cobblers’ and tailors’ workshop; here, too, prisoners’ clothing was disinfected. Conditions at the workshop were better than those at the sawmill itself. A third small structure had a ditch as a latrine, with separate entrances for women and men.67 destroyed. For more about the Ludwików camp and plant, see document kept in the archive of the Institute for National Memory (Archiwum Instytu Pamięci Narodowej), Archiwum Główna Komisji, 47 (wojeództwo Kielickie), k. 76 i 81. 67 Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 156–157. See also testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 20–22; Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 278–279; testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 53; Liberman, Celinka, A Girl Survives Auschwitz, 45.

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The factory itself was fenced in. It drew its skilled workers from the Polish population; these employees who returned home after their day’s work. Next to the plant were enormous stacks of logs that had been left out to dry; much of the Jewish laborers’ work involved unloading them from trains and hauling them to the workshops and warehouses of the facility. This labor, supervised by the Werkschutz, lasted from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break; sometimes an extra shift was laid on. As time passed, Jews too began to work at the sawmill itself, toiling at the massive saws and furnaces or the humidifiers that were used to soften the lumber. The furnaces had to be stoked with wood at all times. In one of the workshops, saws reduced large logs into smaller ones that were then hauled to the factory and the humidifiers. The next day, when the wood had become flexible, it was bent into wheels for Ludwików’s steel wagons. Here too, the Jewish inmates received no wages but were assured daily food rations at no charge.68 Given the close relations between Henryków and Ludwików, several Germans (Hertsch among them) served in both factories. Kurt Fuß, an SS officer who nevertheless went about in civilian clothing, was the German commander of Henryków; production was managed by Otmar Kwieciński, the Polish engineer who ran Ludwików. The Jewish police at Henryków were headed by Gustav Spiegel, who was on good terms with the Schupo representative in camp, Brünner.69 No evidence is known of a Jewish “elder” in Henryków. It seems likely that Spiegel, given his status in the Germans’ eyes and in continuation of his role in the Small Ghetto, did not want have such an official—analogous to Szmuel Białystok in Ludwików and Hayim Rozencwieg in HASAG-Granat—in “his” camp (see below). Apart from Thomas Buergenthal, there were three children in the camp: Celina Albirt (later Cyla Liberman), aged eleven, who lived with her parents and older brother; Szlamek (Shlomo) Zabludski, thirteen, who lived with his parents; and Akiva Zyto, twelve, who lived with his mother. Zabludski and Zyto were two of the three children who had hid in the attic during the May 1943 “Children’s Aktion” and thus survived it. Januszek, the third, had been taken to the Pionki camp, where his parents had already been sent.70 Zabludski wrote in his memoirs that while in Henryków he had been issued with a broom 68 Testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 21. 69 Report by Stefan Sendlak, September, 22 1943, in Fąfara, Gehenna, 506; testimony Servetnik, YVA, O.2/516, 3; Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 278. See also testimony Mosze Zemel (March 28, 1966), Darmstadt court. 70 Liberman, Celinka, 47.

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and spent twelve hours a day sweeping up the camp. Buergenthal testified that despite his tender age he approached the camp commander on his father’s instructions and offered himself up for work. The commander stared at him in amazement and then ordered him to sit behind his door and perform sundry errands in the camp upon request. Liberman was registered as working in the kitchen and in the cobblers’ shop; Zyto did odd jobs around the camp.71 The German guards did not take kindly to the presence of children in camp, and although they tended not to meddle with the lives of the Jews in their living quarters, they did periodically conduct surprise inspections to flush out shirkers. In such cases, Liberman remembers, someone sounded a special whistle and the children plunged into hiding.72 Both women and men cut up logs at the sawmill—a dangerous task for those inexperienced in it. The night shift was relatively easy because the Poles seldom worked at night and there was no supervision, barring the occasional surprise inspections that persisted as long as the camp did. According to Alice Birnhak, a prisoner in Ludwików, it was rumored at Henryków that the Kielce labor camps were the “best” in Poland, as evidenced by the attempts of many Jews to escape from the Pionki, Skarżysko-Kamienna, and Starachowice labor camps in the hope of reaching Henryków or Ludwików.73 Zwi Garfinkel, who had been sent from the Small Ghetto to the Skarżysko labor camp in May 1943, escaped from the latter location with a friend late that year. The two returned to Kielce and by some roundabout route managed to slip into Henryków. As there was a daily roll call in the camp, they could not remain in the barracks and had to hide among the piles of logs that were set out to dry on the factory grounds. Comrades supplied them with clothing and food until a Jewish policeman, fearing exposure, asked them to leave. The two refused. Soon, however, two other Jews managed to flee from the camp and Garfinkel and his friend legalized themselves by assuming the escapees’ identities.74 A vibrant social life developed in the barracks of Henryków, especially among the unmarried prisoners. Inmates debated political issues, discussed news heard from Poles about conditions on the front, laughed, told jokes, and 71 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum RG-50.030*0046 (interview with Thomas Buergenthal, January 1990), 10; Zabludski, Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor, 12 (author’s private archive); Cyla Liberman, interview (author’s private archive). 72 Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 281; Cyla Liberman, interview (author’s private archive). 73 Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 280. 74 Testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 54–58.

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played cards and other parlor games. Even singalongs and solo performances were held; the German guards not only refrained from interfering but were sometimes invited to join. Women gossiped about romances in camp, for example, a girl who had left the bunk that she had shared with her husband for a new lover. On clear days at twilight, couples strolled outside the barracks, gazing at the blooming magnolia trees on the other side of the camp fence. The Jewish prisoners maintained barter relations with Poles and consummated transactions on a side road near the sawmill fence. Food rations were usually adequate, those who worked near the humidifiers could wash up, and the overall atmosphere in the first months was one of relative ease.75 Three months after he reached the camp, in September 1943, Yakov Silberberg, employed in the tailors’ workshop, warned Spiegel against using a certain flammable as a disinfectant. Spiegel ignored the caveat, causing a fire to break out in the tailors’ workshop, where clothing was disinfected. The Jewish prisoners, aided by Poles, did all they could to extinguish the fire but Fuß, the camp commander, had Silberberg arrested and charged with sabotage. Spiegel did not come to Silberberg’s aid and the next day several inmates were ordered to bring planks from the sawmill and build a gallows beside the kitchen. On that unseasonably cold day, all the Jewish prisoners were ordered out of their quarters to observe the execution. Two Gestapo men led Silberberg to the gallows and Karl Essig, head of the Kielce Sipo, showed up with an interpreter. The sentence was read out to Silberberg in German and translated into Polish. Then Silberberg was ordered to stand on a chair and the Gestapo instructed two Jewish policemen to hang him. Silberberg’s corpse was left dangling from the gallows for the rest of the day; it was buried behind the barracks on the morrow.76 […] It didn’t take an especially big crime to get the death penalty. […] In each case of execution all the prisoners had to come out and watch. 75 Birnhak, 286–289; report from the head of Żegota in Kielce District, September 22, 1943, in Fąfara, 506; Liberman, 47–48. 76 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 59–60; Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 293–294; testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 21; Liberman, Celinka, 49–50. Karl Essig supervised the hanging of Silberberg; all witnesses mentioned the event. Many stated that as the noose was being placed around Silberberg’s neck, he cried out to his comrades, “Brothers, remember to avenge!” See testimonies Mosze Zemel (March 22, 1966), Meir Murer (March 24, 1966), Zalman Lerer (March 22, 1966), Samuel Gerstenfeld (March 29, 1966), Sam Lieberman (April 19, 1966), Monique Midlo (March 22, 1966), Alter Israel Lemberg (April 4, 1966), Nathan Greenberg (April 4, 1966), Stephan Keren (May 2, 1966), Leib Lee Recht (May 5, 1966), Morris Liebfeld (May 20, 1966), Abe Price (April 29, 1966), and others. Darmstadt court.

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Fuß was especially brutal to Jewish prisoners. On arrival each morning, he made the rounds of the mill clutching a riding whip or the shank of a shovel, striking at anyone in his path. He also liked to issue crude profanities in German and shoot in the air to frighten the workers. Many Poles also suffered from his brutality, for which he was notorious in camp.78 In early 1944, several inmates decided to take advantage of a dried-up well in the yard behind the barracks to tunnel out of the camp. At nightfall, they descended into the well to excavate, switching off every so often. They then circulated among the rest of the prisoners, trying to convince them that this was the only way to get free. Most of the men agreed and supported their initiative. The women also backed the idea as the tunnel grew in length. The only vigorous opponent was Gustav Spiegel. One day, the Jews noticed that the Germans had sealed the well.79 In March 1944, the three Zajączkowski brothers and their friend Sewek Szwarcberg escaped from the camp, followed by Henjek Jasne and Tiszler. Spiegel tipped off the Gestapo, which proceeded to hunt them down with dogs. All the escapees were caught; three were shot to death and the other three were brought back to camp and hanged for all to see. Their corpses were left on the posts for twenty-four hours, armed police guarding the site.80 The public hangings kept the Jews in a state of fear, especially since Spiegel and his assistants had increased their vigilance. One night in April, 1944, Fuß arrived with his dog for the evening roll call. His presence at such an event 77 Zabludski, Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, 12 (author’s private archive). See also testimony Liebling, YVA, M.1.Q/174, 4. 78 Młynarczyk writes that in 1944 a band of Polish partisans attacked the factory, caught Fuß, and gave him a public beating. See Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 159. 79 Lieberman, Celinka, 54–55. 80 Feferman-Washof, The Processed, 60; testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 59; testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 22; Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 299–300; Lieberman, Celinka, 55–56. See also Fąfara, Gehenna, 158–159, and testimonies Meir Murer (March 24, 1966), Sam Liberman (April 19, 1966), Monique Midlo (March 22, 1966), Alter Israel Lemberg (April 4, 1966), Stephan Keren (May 2, 1966), and Elias Blumenfeld ( July 22, 1966), Darmstadt court.

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being unusual, it raised suspicions. The census went smoothly, all the prisoners were counted, and Fuß departed in the car that took him about regularly.81 Presumably the visit was connected with the escape attempts and was meant to instill fear among would-be escapees along with everyone else. The crackdown that followed the escape attempts changed the atmosphere in the camp. Now Jewish police closely watched the Jewish prisoners’ every step, fences were guarded with particular stringency, and the German-supplied food rations were cut back. Surprise roll calls became more common. One day, Fuß gave a young Jewish woman a vicious beating in the hope of extracting information from her about two comrades who had vanished.82 Kleinlerer and Lewkowicz, members of the resistance in the Small Ghetto, escaped from the vehicle taking them to Pionki, returned to Kielce, and sneaked into Ludwików, where they found comrades from the underground. Still entertaining the idea of reaching the forests, they reorganized and made contact with a Polish lieutenant named Pióro. Then five of them escaped from the camp, equipped with money with which to buy arms from the Poles, and made it to the forests near Kielce. Here it turned out that the deal had been a ruse—all were murdered by partisans of the Far Right. Several members of the resistance who had stayed in Henryków and Ludwików but still believed they could get to the forests and survive there renewed their contacts with the Polish resistance even though they knew these were rightist antisemites, members of the NSZ. As the Poles were ready to sell them arms this time, several of them escaped to the Kielce forests, aided by a Polish Communist named Stach Jaszecki, and then moved to hideouts in the Chęciny forests. NSZ members shot a few of them in April 1944.83 Of the 150 Jews who had belonged to the underground in the Small Ghetto, several dozen were shot in the forests. When the forests proved to be more dangerous than the labor camps in Kielce, a few of the escapees returned to Henryków. Spiegel, the Jewish policeman, hounded them and confiscated their money and valuables. After the aforementioned fire in the camp, they regrouped for an escape to the forest. Ultimately, thirty men managed to leave in groups of four or five, the last doing so on July 13, 1944. Six of them were shot dead in the forest, six were hanged, and most of the others perished in 81 Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 312. 82 Ibid., 316. 83 One of the Polish murderers was Franciszek Czerwiac of Dombrowa, a killer of many Jews, who continued to hide in the forests even after the liberation. See testimonies Yedidia Kleinlerer and Gerszon Lewkowicz, ŻIH (301)2760.

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sundry ways. Of the original 150, some forty appear to have survived, only half due to their stint in the forests.84 In June 1944, Poles working at the factory spread news about the invasion at Normandy, and a month later it was known that the Soviet Army had liberated the Lublin area. Again, hope stirred in the hearts of the Jewish prisoners; renewed escape attempts ensued and thoughts about places to hide germinated. On August 1, 1944, the camp was surrounded by armed Ukrainians, the inmates were summoned for a roll call, and the men were separated from the women. All the Jewish prisoners were led through the streets of Kielce to the railroad station, where they were stuffed into rail cars, seventy per car. Two days later, without their having received food or water, the train pulled into Auschwitz-Birkenau.85 Shortly after arriving at Birkenau, Spiegel was killed by Jews in one of the barracks.86

HASAG-Granat The third labor camp in Kielce was HASAG-Granat.87 During World War II, the German weapons concern HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft) obtained commissary directorship of several Polish national armaments factories in Radom District: those in SkarżyskoKamienna, Częstochowa, and Kielce. Granat was a munitions plant on Karczówkowska Street that had been built during the Second Polish Republic period. From its inception, it had manufactured for the Polish Army, specializing in hand-grenade detonators that it also sold to the French and Romanian armies and to buyers in South America. Two years before the war, the factory expanded, took on state-of-the-art machinery, and diversified its product lines. Until the war broke out, the factory employed a substantial portion of Kielce’s Polish industrial workers. On September 3, 1939, with the first bombings of Kielce, the Poles began to evacuate the factory. A few hours before the Germans entered town, some of the machinery was disassembled and carried 84 Ibid. 85 Testimony Garfinkel, YVA, O.3/9147, 60; testimony Feiner, YVA, O.3/11630, 23; Birnhak, Next Year God Willing, 325–335; Lieberman, Celinka, 56–57. 86 Interview with Thomas Buergenthal, August 2004, Washington, D.C. (author’s private archive); Thomas Buergenthal, A Lucky Child, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009, 69. 87 Felicja Karay, “Heaven or Hell? The Two Faces of the HASAG-Kielce Camp”, Yad Vashem Studies 32, 269–321.

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off and the technical staff fled. In January 1940, the factory was acquired by HASAG, headquartered in Leipzig, and renamed the Hugo Schneider A.G. Werke in Kielce (hereinafter: HASAG-Granat). SS Obergruppenführer Axel Schlicht was appointed as its director and the engineer Max Mansfeld, who worked for a Leipzig concern, was chosen as his deputy. Max was replaced in October 1942 by an engineer named Degenhardt and eighteen Germans were brought in from Germany to manage key departments. Problems arose in running the machinery due to the disappearance of parts in the early going of the occupation; skilled workers were in short supply as well. Due to developments in the war and the plight of the Polish population, however, the Polish workers and the engineers and technicians returned to the factory. Although some received administrative posts over time, everyone remained subordinate to the German management. In 1940, HASAG-Granat turned out diverse munitions products; following Operation Barbarossa, production expanded and 150 new machines were brought from Leipzig to make parts for Mauser rifle rounds. HASAG’s production lines in Kielce took their orders from the firm’s factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, to which some of its output was sent.88 In February 1942, 1,379 Polish workers were on the Kielce factory’s payroll, although there was some absenteeism and not everyone actually worked. In early 1942, HASAG’s plants in Skarżysko-Kamienna and Kielce were the only ones among sixty-four arms factories in the Generalgouvernement that specialized in ordnance; both were granted the status of Wehrmachtbetriebe, a military factory. By mid-1942, HASAG held a monopoly on the manufacture of ordnance for the infantry and plans to ramp up production were afoot. This made it necessary to assure a reserve labor force for the Kielce factory, and Paul Budin, general director of HASAG, weighed the possibility of setting up a labor camp there to exploit Jewish labor, which was much cheaper than the Polish alternative. Herbert Betcher, police and SS leader (SSPF) in Radom District, favored the establishment of Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden (labor camps for Jews) because this would leave him in continued control of the Jews, bolster his status, and inject funds into the coffers of the SS.89 In autumn 1942, HASAG-Granat in Kielce put up barracks to lodge Jewish prisoners who would work there permanently. Several dozen Jews from Kielce who had worked there before the deportation stayed on as before and 88 Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 140–143. 89 Karay, “Heaven or Hell,” Yad Vashem Studies 32, 272–275; Testimony David Landau, YVA, O.3/7572.

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returned nightly to the Small Ghetto. Issachar Reis received a job at the needlework shop on the factory premises in lieu of a friend who had found a hiding place outside the ghetto. The fifteen workers at the shop, roughly half of whom were Poles, sewed uniforms, mainly for the Werkschutz. Reis quickly adjusted to the work even though he had never done it before. Several weeks later, when the barracks were ready, he and his comrades were told that they would not be returning to the ghetto and henceforth would live in the newly-built housing.90 By the end of January 1943, the Germans in Operation Reinhard had wiped out most of the Jewish communities in the vicinity of Kielce. The few Jews who had escaped the deportations or were left in “small ghettos” heard about the Kielce HASAG camp and some managed to get there somehow. One location that received this news was the town of Chmielnik, where dozens of Jews languished in a “small ghetto” after the great deportation there in October 1942. Within a month, a truck from Kielce carrying Werkschutz guards and twenty Jewish workers aboard reached Chmielnik to dismantle empty wooden houses and move the parts to Kielce. The Jews entered an occupied house and introduced themselves as workers for HASAG-Granat. As they labored, they hinted that anyone who volunteered to travel to Kielce had a chance of finding employment and staying alive. Several men and women immediately volunteered, and the Werkschutz agreed or (presumably) was bribed to let them join the group when it returned to Kielce after finishing the job.91 Thus Jews joined HASAG-Granat from places as diverse as Chęciny, Stopnica, Staszów, Nowy Korczyn, Opatów, Łódź, and elsewhere. The Jewish society that evolved in the camp was quite diverse as well.92 In January 1943, HASAG purchased its factories in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Częstochowa, and Kielce from the Generalgouvernement and HASAG-Granat 90 Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 20–21. 91 Yakov Lemberg, in Pinkas Chmielnik, Yizkor-Buch noch der Charuv-gevorener Idischer Kehila (in Yiddish), 745; Yechiel Mapeh and Kalman Mapeh, Pinkas Chmielnik, 717; Moreshet Archives, Givat Haviva, A.272, testimony of Tova Mali, 4. It seems that the second largest group in HASAG-Granat, after the Kielce Jews, were Jews from Chmielnik. Testimony Yosef Weinfeld, YVA, O.2/604, 6. 92 Kalman Mapeh, “Chmielniker in Kielcer HASAG,” in Pinkes Chmielnik, 839. In midNovember 1942, when representatives of HASAG arrived in Staszów looking for workers for Granat, dozens of teenagers who were hiding in groups in the forests preferred to perform slave labor because fugitive Jews faced betrayal by Poles and death by gunshot if if found by Germans. See testimony Hanna Jurista, YVA, M.1.E/1142, and testimony Zwi Landgarten, YVA, O.3/6496, 3. In February 1944, fifty Jews from Łódź also reached the camp; see testimony Natan Fuchs, YVA, M.1.E/1984.

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was asked to step up its output.93 On May 30, 1943, some 300 Jews were transferred to HASAG-Granat from the Small Ghetto in Kielce, joining the 200 or so Jews already working there. By June, thirty-eight Germans, thirty-nine Volksdeutsche and forty Werkschutz—guarded both the factory and the prisoners. Their captain, Karl Berger, received his orders from Schlicht.94 The Jewish prisoners were housed in five wooden barracks, three for men and two for women, separated from the factory by a high fence. The residential quarters and the camp were each individually cordoned and the camp in its entirety was encircled in tall barbed wire. Each barracks housed about 100 prisoners in two rooms, a divider separating men’s quarters from women’s. The beds were doubled-tiered bunks with neither mattresses nor blankets. Heating was provided in the winter and some inmates eventually obtained blankets that served them in lieu of mattresses. By order of Hayim Rozencweig, the Lagerälteste (camp elder), two people slept on each bunk. The residential area had latrines and a shower; the prisoners wore civilian clothing. The Jews were completely forbidden to leave the barracks and the camp; they were led to their workplaces in the factory under Werkschutz guard and had to present a special pass to enter. By June 1943, the place had become a slave-labor camp. The kitchen that served the Jews was run by a couple who had a son. The prisoners drank coffee and received 300 grams of bread in the morning, got pea soup at midday, and dined on coffee and a portion of bread at night. Most fended off hunger by buying foodstuffs from Polish workmates.95 The camp had an infirmary; at least two prisoners were doctors who had medicines. Prisoners who fell ill avoided to tell about their illness and preferred instead to continue working in the camp. Thus, the number of patients seeking help in the infirmary was quite small.96 93 Karay, “Heaven or Hell,” Yad Vashem Studies 32, 231. 94 Testimony Joskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 30; Karay, Heaven or Hell, Yad Vashem Studies 32, 229, 232; Kaczanowski, Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci, 155; Fąfara, Gehenna, 232. 95 Testimony Daniel Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254, 2–3; testimony Moskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 24, 29. Notably, survivors’ testimonies make no special mention of the amounts of food received by Jewish prisoners in the camp. One presumes that the Jews became habituated to minuscule quantities of food during the occupation and the ghetto period, giving Moskowicz the sense that the food in the labor camp was good at least by comparison with the Kielce ghetto. All testimonies given by Poles, in contrast, emphasize the extreme parsimony in doling out food to Jews in the camp relative to the provisions that they received. See Fąfara, Gehenna, 224–234; 236–237. 96 Karay, “Heaven or Hell,” Yad Vashem Studies 32, 243. See also testimony Weinfeld, YVA, O.2/604, 7.

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Officially, Jewish laborers were under the authority of the Kielce SS, which received a fee from HASAG for every Jewish worker whom it employed. Those who ceased to be fit for labor, be it due to illness, weakness, hunger, or overwork, were sent to the HASAG plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna, where their chances of staying alive were slim. Every few months there was an inspection in HASAG-Granat. On these occasions, the workers were sorted, the plant managers reviewed the ranks, and SS men pulled out those who appeared weak or ill and evicted them from the camp. Those most imperiled during these inspections were children. No children from Kielce were present at HASAG-Granat; any youngsters there from October 1942 onward had arrived with their parents from the surrounding towns. It seems, however, that even these were too many for the Germans to tolerate, for in July 1943 there was an order to collect all youngsters aged 8–12, who were carried off by the Germans.97 Issachar Reis writes in his memoirs that there were also illness inspections. The days leading up to them, he says, were terrifying; people were afraid both of falling ill and of appearing on a sick list that Lagerälteste Rozencweig prepared in advance in collaboration with Berger, the German. There appears to have been a hierarchy among the Jewish prisoners, Rozencweig playing a part in it: The well-off somehow bought their way off the list. As in normal living conditions, class differences stood out here, too. The paupers who got the hard jobs also constituted the fodder for the transports [deportations— S. B.] and the rich usually bribed their way to easy jobs and were also relatively immune to selections.98

The Jews who worked at the factory initially made 4 cm naval machine-gun rounds. Later on, they turned out casings for 2 cm rounds for use in machine guns mounted on aircraft. The production line mostly consisted of Jewish men and women who worked in two shifts, each shift eight to twelve hours long. Four women operated the lathes and filled quotas that were m ­ easured by the 97 See Hagstrom, Sara’s Children, 148. See also Arie Haran, ed., Asher zakharnu lesaper (We told what we remembered), twenty four members of Kibbutz Meggido testify [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Moreshet–Sifriyat Poalim, 1988), 66. 98 Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/6442, 21. Yosef Weinfeld later testified that in one of the rollcall selections of the prisoners he was placed with a group of Jews that stood no chance of staying alive. He managed somehow to hide, and later assumed a new name, Gavriel Rosenfarb. He was again accepted for work and retained that name till the liberation. See testimony Weinfeld, YVA 02/604, 7.

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weight of the bullets. Two Jewish prisoners, one from Kielce and one from Chmielnik, inspected the quality of the output. Jews also filled cases for antitank shells, unloaded railroad cars laden with steel bars, washed bullets in acid and honed drill bits. Some of these tasks were especially arduous. Unloading steel bars on cold nights, for example, seemed to take forever as fingers stuck to the frozen metal. Some jobs were outright dangerous, aside from the punishment awaiting those who did them poorly. Jewish prisoners also drilled electrical ducts in walls, worked in the stables, the pigsty, the gardens, and the carpentry, and at construction, plumbing, sewing, and cobbling. Now and then they were sent out to unload equipment or harvest potatoes in various locations in Kielce Subdistrict. All jobs, without exception, were carried out under the close watch of the Werkschutz.99 The daily regimen in camp was as follows: reveille at 4:30 a.m., then roll call, breakfast, and the first work shift, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., with a halfhour lunch break at noon. Everyone worked seven days a week.100 Survivors describe Schlicht, the camp commander, as a tall man of about forty who always wore a green SS uniform and carried a sidearm. Feared by Poles and Jews alike, he spiced his visits to the factory by flashing his riding whip without cause and setting his dogs on his victims. He viciously beat any Jew who did not meet his or her work quota; sometimes he summoned Jewish prisoners to his office for beatings, torture, and body searches for valuables.101 Mielke, one of the foremen, was reviled as a sadist, pervert, and murderer who attacked Jews at random, pulled them from their jobs on the night shift, commanded them to strip, searched them for money and jewelry, and pummeled them with wooden planks, truncheons, and canes. He also invited couples and individuals to play abusive “games” and assaulted or whipped those who refused to play along.102 Berger, commander of the Werkschutz, was known as “the Blaster,” a nickname that speaks for itself. Among the Volksdeutsche,   99 Kalman Mapeh worked as a porter in the camp. For a long time, porters were driven in trucks to Chmielnik, Staszów, Stopnica, and other places to load potatoes and deliver them to a processing plant that was part of HASAG-Granat. See Kalman Mapeh, “Chmielniker in Kielcer HASAG,” Pinkees Chmielnik, 839–840; see also testimony Joskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782, 26–27; Hagstrom, Sara’s Children, 147; and Karay, “Heaven or Hell,” Yad Vashem Studies 32, 232. 100 Fąfara, Gehenna, 228. 101 Testimony Henryk Cymer in Fąfara, Gehenna, 229–230. “Shlicht and Berger were the worst. When seen from afar they were avoided. They would summon people to their offices and beat them there.” See also testimony Stanisław Polut, ibid., 236. 102 Ibid., 227, 230.

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Kalwart, in charge of supplies for the camp, was revealed in testimony given immediately after the war as having beaten Jews into unconsciousness, abused them regularly, forced them to pay him for water, and made them clean the outhouses and sewage trenches.103 Avraham Redlich of Nowy Korczyn testified in the post-war trial of the Volksdeutsche Herman Lachman, one of those in charge of the Werkschutz. In late 1943, Redlich reported, Lachman threatened to kill him, stole hundreds of złoty from him, and then ordered that he be given twenty-five lashes. Leon Tekel of Pińczów testified at the same trial that Lachman would continually search Jews’ pockets, raining down blows all the while. He shot to death one young woman as well as another eight Jews who were hiding in the carpentry shop.104 Hayim Rozencweig of Kielce, the Lagerälteste, is an interesting character. The little that is known about him gives the impression is that the Jews held him in high esteem. It is a fact that the survivors, in their post-war testimony, judged him favorably.105 Schlicht did like him and took care to restrain Milke and Berger when Rozencweig complained to him about their brutal behavior. But things were not as simple as that. The testimonies suggest that there was a reason for Schlicht’s special relationship with Rozencweig. It seems that Jews in the Kielce region who wished to enter HASAG-Granat contacted SS and Gestapo brokers who charged them for this service. This, David Landau testified, explains why the camp had some “protected” Jews, wealthy Jewish families, and former Jewish policemen with their children who arrived from various towns in the vicinity. Once they made it into the camp, they knew that their bribery had worked and usually felt relatively safe.106 Schlicht presumably continued to take bribes from these Jews and burned the candle at both ends. That is, he flaunted his authority, strictness, and cruelty to “unprotected” Jews while knowing, due to his relationship with Rozencweig, whom the wealthy Jews were—not to mention the furriers, tailors, and cobblers who did various personal jobs for him and thus joined the “privileged” and protected caste. Landau mentions Kuba Zeifman of Chmielnik, whom Schlicht admired for his golden hands—he produced clothing, coats, and gloves, which Schlicht handed out to SS men, “from nothing.”107

103 YVA, M.21/574. 104 Testimonies Hersz Fisz and Shaul Jurista, YVA, M.21.1/673. 105 Testimony Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254; Testimony David Landau, YVA, O.3/7572. 106 testimony David Landau, YVA, O.3/7572. 107 Ibid.

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The behavior of the Polish supervisors, the Meisters, was brought to light in the testimony of Moniek Kleinhandler of Chmielnik, who spent almost two years in the camp. Kleinhandler, who was not among the “privileged” and the protected, recounted the cruelties of the Polish foremen, who tortured the Jews “just like the Germans.”108 According to Yosef Weinfeld, each prisoner’s fate depended on the Meister who supervised him or her. If the Meister was drunk, he beat the workers indiscriminately. Others treated the Jews decently.109 Rozencweig, aware of the social gaps in the camp and concurrently involved in Schlicht’s “dealings,” insisted that Jews who had more must share their wealth with the “regular” prisoners,110 whom Reis called “paupers.” It should be recalled that most of the Jews who worked in HASAG-Granat were from Kielce and had reached the camp with nothing but the clothing that they wore, while many of the Jews from the vicinity who had evaded the deportations brought money and jewelry that helped to keep them alive. The latter Jews, regarded by the prisoner population as the camp’s monied class may not have had a direct line to Schlicht but knew that they were protected through Rozencweig’s mediation and realized that they were somewhat dependent on his graces. Hence, when Rozencweig asked them to share with others, they went along and covered some of the general population’s expenses. The result was an immediate improvement in the quality of food, the key to survival. Rozencweig’s decision to bribe Schlicht and establish special relations with him was motivated by the hope of mitigating inequalities among the prisoners. Needing the affluent Jews to satisfy Schlicht’s greed, he could not object to their status. This tended to perpetuate the differences, which stemmed mainly from the social and economic heterogeneity of Jewish society in the camp. Indeed, Landau’s and Reis’s testimonies reveal a clear hierarchy among the inmates. At the top stood the “privileged,” among whom Landau included Rozencweig and those associated with Schlicht. Reis writes that they formed a 108 Testimony Moniek Kleinhandler, YVA, M.1.E/2364. In contrast Tova Mali, who also reached the camp from Chmielnik, testified that hunger at HASAG-Granat was not severe, that only a few people were murdered, and that conditions were tolerable overall. See testimony Mali, Moreshet Archives, Givat Haviva, A.272, 4. The differences between the witnesses in their memories of conditions in the camp originate, inter alia, in the personal circumstances of each and from the fact that men had to work physically harder than women. Szaja Granek, for example, testified before the Darmstadt court that workers at HASAG-Granat sustained severe beatings on the job. See testimony Granek (May 2, 1966), Darmstadt court. 109 Testimony Weinfeld, YVA, O.2/604, 7. 110 Testimony Fishgartn, YVA, 49.E/254.

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ruling class of collaborators that embraced gangsters, desiccated intellectuals, and former public figures who served as kapos in the camp, “heavily beat[ing] anyone who dared to disobey orders and [making] the Germans’ job much easier.”111 Next in rank were prisoners who performed sundry tasks not directly related to the factory work. The third and lowest tier was populated by Jews who did the camp’s DDD (dreary, dirty, dangerous) jobs and lived under a denser cloud of terror than did the others. Motek Pisarz, who had been chief of the Jewish police in Nowy Korczyn, continued to serve in this capacity at HASAG-Granat; the testimonies indicate that he beat Jews on more than one occasion.112 As for daily life in the camp, Hayim Fligelman attests: [It] followed a routine […]. Each person thought about how to fight for his survival. The Germans brought the newspaper Krakauer Zeitung to work; sometimes it made its way to us, too, so we knew what was happening on the front. I don’t recall any events of cultural life. In idle hours we played cards. We knew when the [ Jewish] festivals were coming. On Yom Kippur we fasted, but on Passover we ate everything.113

The available official records relate that twenty-five Jews were murdered at HASAG-Granat from the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1944— presumably not including the children who were removed from the camp in the summer of 1943.114 The survivors’ testimonies make no mention of an active Jewish underground, but it may be assumed that any activity that transgressed the camp’s rules would have been carried out in secret. Jews who planned to escape needed non-Jews’ help to link up with Polish resistance movements. Some did receive funds and false papers through the Polish resistance that facilitated their escape,115 but in other cases Poles turned in escaped Jews or divulged their plans in advance; when this happened, their prey fell into German hands and were murdered to the last one. In the summer of 1944, the HASAG-Granat administration began to disassemble the machinery at the plant. 111 Testimony Reis, YVA, O.33/5442, 21. 112 Hagstrom, Sara’s Children, 154–157. 113 Testimony Hayim Fligelman, YVA, O.33/5560. 114 Karay, “Heaven or Hell,” 254. 115 Młynarczyk, Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom, 153.

The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps   Chapter 5 People understood that they were about to be sent away. When they began to take apart the machines, the Meisters got nervous, took out their vengeance on prisoners, and beat them horribly. Some [inmates] tried to escape. Six or seven made it. One was caught by an SS man and was shot dead. After the escape attempt, they [the Germans—S. B.] dyed the prisoners’ clothing white.116

One of the would-be escapees was Pisarz, the chief of the Jewish police, who was caught and executed. Some prisoners suspected that Rozencweig would also try to make off; he was placed under constant guard. One day in June 1944, Berger, the commander of the Werkschutz, ordered all inmates to gather for a roll call and informed them that he had received an order to evacuate the camp. Thanks to Schlicht—Berger promised—they would be able to continue their work in other HASAG camps.117 In July 1944, trucks pulled into the camp and carried off dozens of Jews, unloading them in the town of Przedbórz, near the front, where they were made to build a camp and dig anti-tank trenches.118 In early August 1944, a train arrived in camp to evacuate the Jewish prisoners. As Simon Feingold’s mother sewed gold coins into the lining of his pocket, a member of the Werkschutz noticed her, stepped over, gave her a beating, and took the coins; the next day, she was evicted from the camp. When her son learned of this, he approached the assailant and tried to strangle him. As they fought, other Werkschutze arrived and shot Feingold dead.119 The next day all the remaining Jews were evacuated and taken to the Częstochowianka labor camp in Częstochowa, along with the factory machines and equipment. There they remained until they were liberated in January 1945.120 As this transport made its way, it picked up additional Jews who had been working in Skarżysko-Kamienna and other labor camps until more than 100 were pressed into each car. In all, some 500 Jewish prisoners were sent to Częstochowa. “The trip lasted 16 days. Each day four to five people […] died 116 Testimony Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254, 3. 117 Testimony Landau, YVA, O.3/7572. Paula Blank and Meir Skorecki were among the Jews from Chmielnik who tried to escape and were shot dead. See Kalman Mapeh, Chmielniker in Kielcer HASAG, 841. 118 Ibid. 119 See Hagstrom, Sara’s Children, 210, see also testimony Fuchs, YVA, M.1.E/1984; testimony Landgarten, YVA, O.3/6496; testimony Yoskowicz, YVA, O.3/6782. 120 Kalman Mapeh, Chmielniker in Kielce HASAG, 842; testimony Weinfeld, YVA, O.2/604.

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of suffocation, hunger, and thirst. Some were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp.”121 Once there, many more perished from starvation and disease. The rest were sent to Dachau, Bergen Belsen, Theresienstadt, and other camps.

Interim Summation The first question is whether the “Small Ghetto” in Kielce should be considered a labor camp, as the survivors termed it. After Aktions involving the liquidation of ghettos, it was not uncommon for the Germans to leave a residual Jewish population (Restgetto) in place to clear out the ghetto’s contents. It should be assumed that this practice was the result of an explicit directive, as it took place in large as well as in small ghettos not only in the Generalgouvernement but in other administrative regions, for instance, Białystok District, the Ostland, Łódź in the Warthegau, and elsewhere. Left behind in these ghettos were Jews who had passed selection and were deemed able-bodied so that, among other things, they could continue to serve Nazi Germany’s war effort as a vital labor force and would gradually be transferred to slave-labor camps that were short of workers. The difference between the fate of the Jews in Radom District and that of Jews in other districts of the Generalgouvernement and other occupation zones is that the extermination of the Jews in Radom District began in the summer of 1942, just as the arms and munitions plants in the district were being turned into slave-labor camps and needed Jewish labor to step up their output as required. Until these new camps were ready to absorb those hundreds or thousands of workers, however, residual Jewish populations were kept alive in the three large ghettos of Radom District (Kielce, Radom, Częstochowa) in small portions of the original ghettos. These “small ghettos” took on the characteristics of SS-controlled labor camps. Since the interim period was relatively long—nearly a year in the case of Kielce—it is not surprising that survivors in their later testimonies described the small ghettos of Kielce and Radom as labor camps, even though they were located within the area that had been the ghetto until its liquidation. Kielce also differs from other locations in the daily living conditions of its Small Ghetto: no one there was unemployed under any circumstances; no one was “privileged.” Life there, absent the families that had been carried off to parts unknown, was such as to identify the place in the survivors’ collective memory as a camp, not a ghetto. 121 Testimony Fishgartn, YVA, M.49.E/254, 3.

The “Small Ghetto” and the Labor Camps   Chapter 5

The second question is whether the Kielce camps were indeed, as survivors have put it, “more comfortable” in their daily living conditions and survivability than the other labor camps in Radom District. Importantly, notwithstanding the studies that have been done on the topic, comparative research still awaits its redeemer.122 It should be borne in mind that the large factories in the district were in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Starachowice, Ostrowiec, and Pionki, and that some of them (for example, Skarżysko-Kamienna) had employed Jews as early as 1941. According to Kaczanowski, some 50,000 Jews labored in the district during the occupation period, including 4,000 who were sent there in October 1943 from the Płaszow and Majdanek concentration camps. The three camps in Kielce proper were set up only in mid-1943, and in their fourteen months of existence approximately 1,000 Jews worked there on a permanent basis, plus several hundred more who rotated among them. All the labor camps in Radom District, except those in Częstochowa, were liquidated in late July and early August 1944. The camps in Kielce had fewer workers than the other camps in the district and living conditions there were somewhat better. Rumors about “good” living conditions in the Kielce camps, disseminated even before the camps came into being, were probably based on fact to some extent, although some of the survivors probably overstated the case or were among the few who were “privileged” and treated well on that account—even as the others cringed under their taskmasters. Kielce’s three camps were “young,” established after the German defeat in Stalingrad. Their commanders lacked experience in the administration of camps for slave labor and, at least during the first few months, those in each camp had the sense that the venues were reasonable. During the second half of 1943, dozens of Jews were transferred from the camps at issue to other camps in the Radom District, where they encountered harsher working conditions and a much different daily regimen. It was these Jews who spread the rumor that the camps of Kielce were “better,” as this had been their first impression. 122 As of the present writing, the following studies have been published on the labor camps in Radom District: Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow: Skarżysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996) (on Skarżysko-Kamienna); eadem, The HASAG-Apparatbau in Częstochowa [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Częstochowa Landsmanshaft and Successor Generation in Israel, 2006) (on the camps in Częstochowa); eadem, “Heaven or Hell? The Two Faces of the HASAG-Kielce Camp,” Yad Vashem Studies 32, 269–321 (on the HASAG camp in Kielce), Christopher R. Browning, Nazi policy, Jewish workers, German killers (Cambridge University Press, 2000); Sara Bender, “Jewish Slaves in Forced Labour Camps in Kielce, September 1942–August 1944,” POLIN 23 (2011) ( Jews in Kraków), ed. Michał Galas and Antony Polonsky, 437–463.

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Importantly, however, the difference in conditions was relative rather than absolute. The Kielce camps were also rough: the SS enforced strict discipline, the Werkschutz guarded their prisoners, living and food conditions were wretched, the labor was arduous, and life featured abuse, terror, and murder. Yet in Kielce, as in the other labor and concentration camps, those who worked stood some chance of survival. It seems that among the three camps in Kielce, the conditions were harshest in Henryków. This, in my estimation, had to do with the absence there of a Jewish Lagerälteste who could protect the prisoners, soften the edicts against them, and advocate on their behalf. In Ludwików, Białystok endeared himself to Hertsch; in HASAG-Granat, Rozencweig formed a special bond with Schlicht. In both cases, this definitely affected the attitude toward the Jewish inmates for the better. By contrast, in Henryków, Spiegel tormented the Jews, betrayed them to the Germans, and collaborated with the Germans in their efforts to sustain an atmosphere of fear and terror in that camp, possibly explaining why more Jews were murdered in Henryków than elsewhere. It also shows that cooperation between a Jewish “elder” and a camp commander was usually helpful in temporarily assuring tolerable living conditions for Jews and did not necessarily reflect vile, contemptible collaboration. It may be inferred similarly that not only in the ghettos but in the labor camps as well, the policies of the local German commander, the personality of the “elder,” and relations between the two did much to determine the day-to-day living conditions of the Jewish prisoners—and not necessarily orders from higher echelons. While the authorities in Berlin were responsible for the ultimate fate of the Jews, it appears that those Jews who found their way to labor camps stood a better chance of coming out alive.

CHAPTER 6

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict during the German Occupation Polish-Jewish Relations in World War II—Historical Background

O

n September 2, 1939, a day after the outbreak of war between Poland and Germany, Jewish politicians at a meeting of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, immediately declared their full support of the Polish state. Salomon Seidenman, a member of the house, announced on behalf of Jewish circles that the entire Jewish population was placing itself at the disposal of the military high command and presented itself for enlistment as a demonstration of its willingness to make any requisite sacrifice at this historic moment. Continuing, Seidenman said that Poland as a mighty power was an ideal for the Jewish public that enjoyed equal rights in the Polish state. Hearing this, the chamber burst into applause. That same day, leaders of the Bund urged the Jews to take up arms in defense of Poland’s freedom and set forth to fight for the independence, freedom, and social justice of all Polish citizens. Of the 100,000 or so Polish citizens of Jewish extraction who served in the Polish Army (one-tenth of the entire force), some 7,000 enlisted soldiers and 100 officers perished on the battlefield and additional thousands were taken captive by the Germans and the Soviets.1 It soon became clear, however, that relations between Poles and Jews would be determined neither by shared sacrifice in the war against the Germans nor by the memory of the Jewish population’s involvement in the defense of the capital, Warsaw, but by chilling tales about the behavior of the Jewish population in the eastern Polish territories that the Soviet Union had 1 Dariusz Libionka, “ZAZ-AK i Delegatura rz ądu RP wobec eksterminacji Żydow Polskich,” Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją Niemiecką 1939–1945, Studia i Materiały (Warsaw: Kagero, 2006), 18.

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occupied on September 17, 1939, and retained until Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The fate of Polish Jewry during World War II and the subject of Jewish– Polish relations have preoccupied Polish literature and, especially, Polish historians since the end of the war. Most Polish books and articles that deal with the Jews during the Holocaust discuss the question of how Poles—nationally and individually—are perceived by the community of nations. This historiography is characterized by a blatant attempt to overstate immeasurably the aid that Poles extended to Jews during the war and a tendency to reject and contest testimonies, diaries, and memoirs of Jews who lived in Poland during the German occupation. Jan Tomasz Gross, in his book on Polish–Jewish relations, has little to say about that period of time.2 Polish society’s hostility toward the Jews during the occupation, he believes, came about because pursuant to Germany’s antiJewish policies in Poland, members of prominent Polish social strata, foremost the petty bourgeoisie, had seized Jewish property. For this reason, he concludes, these groups sympathized ab initio with the total segregation of the Jews and also, at times, with the rapid and absolute solution of the Jewish problem. Another precipitant of hostility, according to Gross, was the sense among Poles until 1941 that the Jews were less threatened by political repression than they were. After all, Jews at that time were only infrequently arrested and were not being sent to the Reich for slave labor. The Poles failed to notice that while the German assault against them centered on the intelligentsia, Jews were persecuted indiscriminately, irrespective of social or economic rank. In this context, it is noteworthy that many sources that Gross does not list confirm this widespread view of the condition of the Jewish population. In a report from the Polish underground to the Polish government-in-exile in London in the second half of 1941, it is stated that, objectively, conditions for Jews in Poland undoubtedly appear better than those for the Polish population, which has been deprived of all self-government and the right to associate and establish self-help organizations.3 A third factor that Gross lists is reports from the Soviet-annexed territories of eastern Poland of cases in which Jews served the Soviets to the obvious detriment of Poland and Poles. Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation. The Generalgouvernement 1939– 1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); see esp. ch. 5, “Collaboration and Cooperation.” Gross devotes just one footnote to the Jews: ibid., 185–186, note 3. 3 Andrzej Żbikowski, “Antysemityzm, szmalcownictwo, współpraca z Niemcami a stosunki polsko-żydowskie pod okupają niemiecką, Polacy i Żydzi, 432. 2

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

From the outset of the German occupation, the Bund and the various Zionist factions had sought ways of reaching the Polish underground. Their hopes for a relationship stemmed mainly from their urgent need for material assistance and their desire to make contact with the free world. Yet the Jews neither received the underground’s recognition nor managed to establish relations with the Polish population at large. This is because the Polish underground, which represented the Polish government-in-exile and, supposedly, the interests of all Polish citizens including Jews, rejected all appeals from Jews and totally overlooked their plight in the first years of the occupation. Unlike the occupied countries in Western Europe, where Jews were seen as full-fledged citizens and where much of the population considered attacks on them to be attacks on the nation at large, the Polish public and its leadership basically considered Jews foreigners toward whom no obligation for protection or concern existed. Moreover, a considerable fraction of the Polish population even identified with the Germans’ anti-Jewish policies.4 On November 3, 1940, fourteen months after the war broke out, Polish labor and welfare minister Jan Stańczyk issued a statement on behalf of his government in London on equal rights for the Jewish population of Poland after the war—a declaration that clashed frontally with the sensibilities of substantial portions of the underground movements. It should be recalled that while this statement stressed equality of rights for the Jewish population—although accompanied at times by faint references to the concept of emigration—the dominant discourse in Poland featured pre-war expressions such “solving the Jewish problem.” The impression that one gains from the reports that reached the government-in-exile is that most Poles preferred to see an emigration plan implemented—an attitude that did not contradict condemnation of the German anti-Jewish policy.5 Polish antisemitism metamorphosed in various ways during the war as events and conditions in the occupied country drew new themes alongside the old patterns. As the Jews were displaced and eradicated, Poles claimed Jewish businesses, seized their property, and moved into their occupations. These processes heightened Polish antisemitism due to the Polish usurpers’ guilty 4 Israel Gutman, lecture on selected aspects of Polish–Jewish relations during World War II, the 7th World Congress for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 1980. See also idem, “Jews-PolesAntisemitism,” Israel Bartal and Israel Gutman, eds., The Broken Chain: Polish Jewry through the Ages, vol. 2: Society, Culture, Nationalism [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 605–639. 5 Libionka, “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura,” 23.

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consciences for behaving like the Jews’ heirs, and because of fears that Jews would demand the restitution of property and status after the war. Newspapers affiliated with the fascist Right fanned these sentiments by writing consistently that Jews would have no place as equal citizens in postwar Poland.6 In November 1941, a report on the condition of Jews in Poland arrived in London via the Vatican.7 Its authors, whose party affiliations are hard to ascertain, wrote among other things that the German occupation had significantly aggravated differences and disaffections between Poles and Jews, making Jewish hatred of Poles and antisemites’ antagonism toward Jews pressing issues. The report stressed that the Germans pursued different policies toward Poles and Jews: political and national persecution of Poles and, mainly, economic persecution of Jews. In particular, the latter were not being tortured, deported en masse, or martyred, so were better off in this respect. The authors conceded that collectively, of course, and not individually, the Jews were much worse off. The two populations, the report authors continued, also viewed the occupier differently: Poles heroically dealt with their misery while the Jews broke down and groveled before the conquerors wherever they could, offering themselves up for service (many as agents of the Gestapo) and so forth. Moreover, the Jews, “in their respect for brutal power, an esteem so typical of their race […] are afraid of despising the powerful Germans. Their negative feelings, their bitterness and complaints about their bitter fate, they direct at the Poles.” The inferiority of the Jewish race, the rapporteurs added, blinded the Jews to the Poles’ heroism; consequently, the Jews remained a “foreign element” from the point of view of Polish society.8 A highly important relief organization that operated in Poland during the German occupation was the Central Relief Council (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, RGO), established in 1940 to coordinate all social-welfare councils that had arisen in Poland after the occupation began. When it first began operations under an informal leadership, its seven members included a Jewish representative from Kraków who served at the Poles’ invitation. When he was killed, the RGO entered into collaboration with the Jewish Social SelfHelp organization (Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna, ŻSS). In Warsaw, for instance, the Jewish population was aided by the municipal social services Emmanuel Ringelblum, Last Writings: Polish-Jewish Relations, January 1943–April 1944 ( Jerusalem: 1994), 267. 7 Żbikowski, Antysemityzm, szmalcownictwo, wsółpraca, 444; Libionka, “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura,” 24. 8 Żbikowski, Antysemityzm, 444–445. 6

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

organization, a practice the occupation authorities tried to stop even before the ghetto was sealed. After the sealing (in November 1940), only Jews hiding outside the ghetto were aided by the RGO; from 1943 onward, a relatively large number of Jewish children also received benefits from it, not just in Warsaw.9

The Attitude of the Armia Krajowa and the Delegatura toward the Jews and the Jewish Problem through the Lens of the Underground Press During the German occupation, various resistance groups and movements came into being in Poland, each competing with the others and promoting different operational plans. Most were represented in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), the central military resistance organization in occupied Poland, which operated from the autumn of 1939 throughout the national territory; and by various organs of the representative office of the Polish government-in-exile (the Delegatura). In January 1942, the Polish Communists (the Polish Workers’ Party, Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) set up a second underground movement, the National Guard (Gwardia Ludowa, GL), subsequently the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL). Only a few Far-Right groups remained outside the consensus. Jews did not join the Polish underground in large numbers because they faced many significant obstacles in so doing. There are a few known cases of attempts by Jews to enlist that met with rejection, as in the July 1942 report by the Delegatura’s Kraków news agency, which describes the Jews as a stubborn race that blames the Poles for their fate. Their cleverness and intelligence, the reporter asserted, is aimed only at material matters, apart from the urge to make a living the Jews have nothing and contribute nothing to the resistance in content or in any other way. Hence, there is no reason to speak of the possibility, let alone the need, of reaching an accord with them in the realm of common political-economic aspirations.10 In her study on Jewish–Polish relations in World War II, Johana Michlic affirms that the representation of Jews as hostile and harmful foreigners was one of the main factors behind their marginalization in the ethno-national political camp and its supporters in the Polish underground’s Home Army, the AK. The Polish nationalists who resisted the German occupation did not see the   9 Claus Peter Friedrich, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 21, 216–218. 10 Libionka, “ZAZ-AK i Delegatura,” 108–112.

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Jews’ suffering as part of the tragedy of occupied Poland. The depiction of the Jew as a pernicious stranger was also an important tool for those underground political parties that were preparing to exclude the Jews from their vision of a post-war Polish state. This was true for the Endecja and the political parties of the Far Right, the Christian Democrats, the leaders of the Peasants Party, and Christian organizations such as the Polish Revival Front (Front Odrodzenia Polski, FOP).11 In his thorough and detailed treatise on the armed combat union of the Home Army (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ-AK) and the Delegatura as it bears on the destruction of Polish Jewry,12 the Polish historian Dariusz Libionka writes that in the first years of the occupation little was done to seek rapprochement with the Jews or link their fate with that of the Poles. Libionka maintains that although in 1942 the crimes against the Jews took on monstrous proportions, the ZWZ-AK took no military action, even the most limited, in defense of the Jews, and that strategic and tactical considerations were not the only factors behind its inaction. In mid-1942, a fairly significant change took place in the AK’s approach toward armed operations, inspired in part by German terrorism on Polish soil. The annihilation of the Jews did not, according to Libionka, influence the long-term strategy of the AK’s central committee, although it certainly was a point of reference in its activity given its fears that once the Jews were gone the Poles’ turn would come next. Jews in Poland, as stated, were never considered integral members of Polish society, and even those who were far from antisemitic never questioned their “foreignness.” Estrangement from the Jews, which escalated steadily after the Nazis ghettoized them, also produced their social exclusion.13 From early 1943 onward, as the murder of Polish Jewry became increasingly common knowledge in London, Władysław Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister in Exile, periodically sent the AK messages instructing it to aid escaping Jews to the extent possible. A response to London sent on August 5, 1943, by AK commander General Tadeusz “Bór” Komorowski, listed three obstacles to far-reaching assistance of this kind. First, argued Komorowski, Poles view Jews as foreigners who are often hostile to Poland, as the Jews demonstrated in their behavior during the Soviet occupation and, often, in the Generalgouvernement as well. Second, armed Jews are well represented in the bands of robbers and 11 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 132. 12 Libionka, “ZAZ-AK i Delegatura.” 13 Ibid., 54–55.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

Communists that are plaguing Poland and are noted for especial cruelty in their treatment of the Polish citizenry. Third, Polish public opinion and the resistance may frown on any large donations to Jews that might damage their own reserves and hence Poland’s direct interests.14 Until late 1941, the Polish underground press did not discuss the changes that were taking place in Polish–Jewish relations. Newspapers representing democratic and left-wing groups did provide occasional accounts of the ghettos’ awful overcrowding, atrocious sanitary conditions, and pitiless German exploitation. The Polish nationalist press, by contrast, reminded its readers that the pre-war conflicts had not blown over and that after the war a serious reckoning would take place, especially in regard to the Jews’ behavior during the Soviet occupation. When war between Germany and the Soviet Union erupted in the summer of 1941, information about the murder of Jews by the Einzatzgruppen began to seep into the Polish underground press in the Generalgouvernement. In August 1941, as the Biuletyn Informacyjny published extensive reports on the Warsaw ghetto, a few items appeared about the plight of the Jews in the eastern districts, the earliest dealing with the murder of the Jews of Białystok. From October 1941 onward, reports also began to arrive about the murder of Jews in Lithuania and the Lithuanians’ role in it, which the newspapers covered prominently.15 The most sensitive response to the annihilation of the Jewish people appeared in the Biuletyn Informacyjny, the most important news publication of the Polish underground. Edited by Aleksander Kamiński, it published the largest number of reports on the murder of Poland’s Jews among the organs of the underground press, referred to the Germans’ crimes as such, and condemned them vehemently. It reported the Germans’ attitude toward Jews, Poles, and war prisoners (soldiers from the Polish Army), the hardships, the Germans’ anti-Jewish edicts, the labor camps, the formation of ghettos (mainly those of Łódź, Warsaw, and Kraków), and the conditions in them. The Delegatura newspaper, Rzeczpospolita Polska, reported quite regularly on the persecution of Jews but allowed antisemitic clichés to pollute its coverage from time to time. This was particularly evident in Kraj, the Delegatura’s news service. Like the newspapers of the right-wing underground, Kraj took a hostile line toward the Soviets, the Germans, and the Jews, and this integrated animus emerged the portrait of the Jew as a powerful, influential character who sets his evil eye on 14 Ibid., 102. 15 Ibid., 34.

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“excessive privilege.”16 Only Prawda, the underground newspaper of the Polish Revival Front, edited by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, warned in May 1942 against the corrosive effect of the annihilation of the Jews for Jewish–Polish relations. The Polish Socialists also devoted greater attention to the murder of Jews and called for solidarity with the threatened Jewish workers.17

Denunciations, Extortion, and the “Blue” Polish Police The Polish scholar Barbara Engelking, probing records left behind by the Security Police and SS commander in Warsaw District (Der Kommandeur der Sicherpolizei und des SS fur Distrikt Warschau), discovered a file containing 255 anonymous denunciations by Poles against Jews that were submitted to German authorities between July 7, 1940, and June 23, 1941. The subjects of the denunciations are quite diverse: eighty-six alleged crimes committed by Jews, such as smuggling, living outside the ghetto, failing to wear the armband, illegal profiteering, and so on. Engelking divides the betrayals into those relating to smuggling contraband into the ghetto and doing business with Poles, on the one hand, and illegal residence on the “Aryan” side of town or being outside the ghetto without an identifying band, on the other. The informers’ most common motive, Engelking writes, was envy; the denunciations were sent voluntarily and not for reward. In some cases, informers used antisemitism as a cloak for greed.18 Similarly, the historian Jan Grabowski, examining files that reached the special court in Warsaw during the occupation, found forty-eight that ­pertained directly to Szmalcownicy, Polish extortionists. Grabowski’s article is a first

16 Ibid., 26–30. The main newspapers of the Polish underground published no reports on the involvement of the Polish population in pogroms and murders of Jews in Łomża and Szczeczin Subdistricts of northeastern Poland in the summer of 1941, even though reports of this nature did circulate in documents for internal use and were edited by the AK information and propaganda offices. On the Poles’ role in murder of Jews in the districts of northeastern Poland in the two months after the onset of Operation Barbarossa, see Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors, and Machcewicz and Persak, Wokól Jedwabnego. On German newspapers in Polish that appeared in all major cities in the Generalgouvernement, mainly to promote antisemitism among the Polish population, see Ringelblum, Last Writings, 264. 17 Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 21, 225–227. 18 Barbara Engleking-Boni, “‘Dear Mr. Gestapo,’ Denunciations to the Authorities of the Polish Regime in 1940–1941,” in Facing Memory: The Polish Account, ed. Miri Paz [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2007), 123–141.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

attempt to diagnose activities of this kind, as described in the source materials, as acts of aggression by Poles against Jews, based on racial hatred.19 The historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, while believing that Polish– Jewish relations during the occupation did have pathological manifestations, blames only the Germans for this while stressing the efficacy of their antiJewish propaganda. As for Poles, Chodakiewicz is less concerned about deciphering their motives than about showing that in nearly all cases the Polish police had acted under duress, if not with brutality then at least commensurate with the circumstances of time and place. Chodakiewicz is also among those who argue that the Poles’ disapproval of Jews gathered strength when reports of widespread collaboration of the Jewish population with the Soviets began to arrive from the east, adding that the antipathy toward Jews worsened in 1942 and 1943, especially in the countryside, where law and order broke down entirely. In Chodakiewicz’s opinion, since the activities of local criminals and Soviets caused the phenomenon, these two elements were associated with Jews in the Polish public mind. This confluence of factors reinforced the traditional image of the “Jewish enemy” amid the Poles’ suffering under Soviet and German occupation. 20 The historian Andrzej Żbikowski investigated, inter alia, reports from activists in Żegota (Rada Pomocy Żydom—“Council to Aid Jews”) on the extent of Polish extortion.21 The relatively large collection of papers, reports, and correspondence left behind by the organization shows that several d­ ocuments 19 Jan Grabowski, Z. R. Grabowski, “Germans in the Eyes of the Gestapo, Ciechanów District 1939–1945,” Contemporary European History 2004, no. 13 (1), 21–43. A large number of Gestapo documents—more than 10,000 files of the AIPN Ciechanów Gestapo, as well as the special courts that operated in this district, have been investigated to date only in terms of German oppressive measures against the Polish population and German extermination Aktions against the Jewish population. Since the completion of this study, two books on Poles’ aggressive actions against Jews in peripheral districts of Poland have appeared: Barbara Engelking, Jest Taki Piękny Słoneczny Dzień…. Losy Żydów szukających ratunku na wsi polskiej 1942–1945 (Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagłada Żydów, 2011); Jan Grabowski, Judenjagd: Polowanie nz Żydów 1942–1945 (Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagłada Żydów, 2011). 20 Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955: Współistnienie—zagłada— ­komunizm (Warsaw: Fronda, 2000), 261–266, 275–288, 311–312. 21 Żegota, an underground organization in occupied Poland; operated from December 1942 to January 1945. Founded and directed by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, it had representatives of five Polish groups and two Jewish ones—the National Jewish Council and the Bund, represented by Adolf Berman and Leon Feiner. The director of the Jewish section of Żegota was Witold Bieńkowski on behalf of the Delegatura; at times this post was filled by Władysław Bartoszewski. For further reference, see Israel Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), s.v., “Żegota.”

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among 100 essential ones in the Żegota legacy address the negative attitude on the Warsaw street toward the Jewish tragedy, including the extortion of Jews who had gone into hiding. Żbikowski identifies Władysław Bartoszewski and Teresa Prekerowa as the first to write about the Polish extortionists. Despite political and organizational support from underground political parties with the exception of the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe, SN) and the AK, the practical possibilities open to Żegota were limited. In three pamphlets that it printed up and disseminated to the Polish public in May, August, and September 1943, Żegota wrote that any Pole who collaborated in the murder of Jews via extortion, denunciation, or participation in looting committed a severe transgression of the laws of the Polish Republic. It appears, however, that despite repeated appeals to the Delegatura from December 1942 onward, the activists in Żegota had no influence on the judicial system of underground Poland and their delegate to this council did not raise the topic for much time. In an editorial on May 6, 1943, headlined “Exploitation of the Gravest of Tragedies,” the Rzeczpospolita Polska wrote that a decisive majority of the Polish public views the Germans’ crimes against the Jews with disgust and has profound sympathy for their victims. Still, the editorialist added, there are corrupt individuals, regrettably including some in police uniform, who do not hesitate to exploit the tragedy of the Jews—hunted and persecuted by the Germans—to extort them and make them pay a high ransom.22 The Jewish historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, in his study on PolishJewish relations (written in 1944 while its author was hiding in Warsaw) notes that Polish extortionists and informers were the constant nightmare of Jews who had escaped from ghettos to the “Aryan” side of town. Although more Jews circulated in search of hideouts in Warsaw, the big city, than anywhere else in Poland, dread of extortionists and informers and the atmosphere of a hunt by Poles for Jews in those days were characteristic of the whole country: The schmaltz people [the fat-grabbing extorters—S. B.] operate in organized gangs. You pay one of them off—you are not clear. You immediately get passed from hand to hand in a chain that squeezes a man down to his skeleton. They are the accomplices of the detectives, the police in uniform, and everyone who lays in ambush for the Jew. They are the locusts that in their hundreds or perhaps thousands cover the faces of 22 Żbikowski, “Antysemityzm,” 482–485; 493.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6 Jews on the Aryan side, stealing their money, jewelry, and often everything they’ve got. It sometimes happens that a schmaltz man, like a true mugger, takes from his victim not only his money but also his clothes.23

The Israeli historians Israel Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, relying mainly on Jews’ testimonies, list 120 murders of hiding Jews and Jewish partisans by the Polish resistance on occupied Polish soil.24 Libionka notes that very few members of the AK went on trial on charges of this kind and that most of the reportage about the matter was laconic. Additionally, Libionka states, settling accounts with Jewish partisans was in fact a responsibility of local bands of the Polish resistance and in some known cases the AK showed tolerance toward armed Jewish groups, even though elsewhere it sought to wipe out every Jew whom it could find.25 Of the Polish police, Ringelblum wrote as follows: […] They call them “blue” or “uniformed” to avoid defining them as “Polish” police. This force and its men played a wretched role in the annihilation of Polish Jewry. With great determination they discharged all the tasks imposed on them by the Germans, including […] participating in deportation operations; capturing Jews and escorting [other captors], participating in the capture of people hiding after deportations, and carrying out the execution of Jews who were sentenced to this [punishment] by the Germans.26

Rescue and Assistance from the Catholic Church and Polish Circles Polish historical research focuses mainly on Church officials who aided Jews or treated their plight sympathetically. Of the stance of the Church during World War II, Ringelblum, while in hiding in Warsaw in 1944, wrote as follows: Nearly all the clergy was apathetic to the unprecedented tragedy of the murder of the entire Jewish people. […] The “Polish” clergy behaved 23 Ringelblum, Last Writings, 231. 24 Israel Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War Two (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 217–220. 25 Libionka, “ZAZ-AK,” 119. 26 Ringelblum, Last Writings, 235.

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From mid-September 1939 to July 1945, the head of the Polish Catholic Church, August Hlond, remained outside Poland. In his wartime diary, his entries about Jews relate to them in negative contexts only. His stand-in at the helm of the Church, the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Sapieha, was one of the few members of the clergy in the Generalgouvernement to have ties with the Governor General, Hans Frank. On November 2, 1942, Sapieha gave Frank a memorandum that he had composed on the subject of the terrorism being waged against the Polish population, decrying such treatment of Poles but not objecting to the liquidation of Jews apart from the use of Poles for this purpose.28 In subsequent communications with the authorities, Sapieha made no reference to the extermination of the Jews of Poland and the topic was not mentioned at any of the three conferences that the bishops in Poland held during the occupation. Sapieha did, however, report having interceded mainly on behalf of Catholics of Jewish origin. “The aid to converts by the Polish priesthood,” Ringelblum remarks, “shall be remembered in their favor. But it should not be viewed as an act of assistance to Jews.”29 Libionka claims that the Polish Church could not grasp the immensity and significance of the tragedy that had befallen the Jewish people due to the German persecution of the Church and the Polish bishops’ attitudes toward the Jewish problem.30 As for the nature and scope of the aid given by the Polish Church, the German occupation may be divided into two periods. In the first, from the outbreak of the war to the middle of 1942, the assistance mainly took the form of care for converts, issuing certificates of baptism that allowed their holders to obtain the documents necessary for survival, and sundry acts of philanthropy. In the summer of 1941, after the launching of Operation 27 Ibid., 276. 28 Dariusz Libionka, “The Catholic Church in Poland and the Jews and the Holocaust 1939–1945” in Bishvil Hazikaron, 35, January 2000, 28–30 [in Hebrew]. 29 Ringelblum, Last Writings, 275. 30 Libionka, “The Catholic Church in Poland,” 32, 35.

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Barbarossa, nuns ­occasionally sheltered Jewish refugees, as recurred in the Generalgouvernement during the liquidation of the ghettos in 1942. Later on, nuns also helped to conceal Jewish children in the convents, orphanages, safe houses, and residences that they ran, most of the youngsters being from assimilated and intelligentsia families. In the second period, from mid1942 onward, a substantial portion of the activities of priests who aided Jews focused on hiding Jews in convents and helping refugees from liquidated ghettos. This assistance was either one-off or long-term, depending on the circumstances; there are many well-known cases of concealment of individuals or families in church buildings that lasted for years.31 Concurrently, however, testimonies and documents reveal the dim view of Jews that held sway among the clergy and the perceptibly antisemitic atmosphere in many institutions that hid Jewish children.32 The complex picture in aid to Jews is reflected in a manifesto issued in the summer of 1942 by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, urging Poles to protest the murder of Jews despite their being Poland’s ideological, political, and economic enemies. The publisher of the manifesto, titled Protest, was the Polish Revival Front, a Catholic underground organization that provided welfare and education services. This concurrently philosemitic and antisemitic document was disseminated for clashing purposes—to stress that Jews were being saved even by Poles who did not like them, or the opposite: to emphasize that even Poles who decided to help Jews did so despite themselves. Kossak-Szczucka realized that Polish Catholics had to sound a protest based on conscience, in the name of a Catholicism compliant with God’s commandments and as Poles, in order to avoid being accused of complicity in crimes and in the degeneration and brutalization of Polish society. In this matter, Jan Błoński wrote an important article on which we should dwell briefly.33 Since Kossak-Szczucka, Błoński maintains, had long affirmed the religious precept of “Love thine enemy,” it was clear to her that precisely due to the Jews’ blindness and unfairness toward Poles, the latter should wish to aid and rescue them all the more: the more vile the enemy, the greater the commandment to sacrifice oneself on his behalf. Only the best of Poles, Błoński adds, were able to follow Kossak-Szczucka’s lead: those capable of grasping 31 On this matter, see Nahum Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009). 32 Libionka, “The Catholic Church in Poland,” 33. 33 Jan Błoński, “Polish-Catholics and Catholic-Poles, the Gospel, National Interest, Civic Solidarity, and the Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Yad Vashem Studies 25, 181–196.

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the moral paradox that Jews must be saved for the very reason of their being ­undesirable. All the others, unable to deal with the paradox, would find in her words only support for their apathy. Antisemitism did not rule out compassion and the extension of aid to Jews, but Kossak-Szczucka saw no possibility of coexistence between Jews and Poles, and if the Jews could somehow disappear without being wronged, she presumably would have found it a relief.34 As for the involvement of the Polish government-in-exile in rescuing Jews in Poland, David Engel maintains that practical Polish involvement stood very little chance of success. In 1943, wishing to avert a total rift with the Jews of the free world, the government-in-exile acceded to several requests from Jewish entities to support rescue efforts. In May 1943, explicitly mentioning the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Sikorski in a radio broadcast to Poland urged his compatriots to aid and shelter Jews. This took place at a time when Poland’s diplomatic status had fallen due to the affair of the murders in Katyn. The Jewish leaders, mindful of the political exigencies that led to the announcement, were not overly impressed by it. It took the Polish Government another year to make further progress in the field of rescue by establishing, on April 20, 1944, the Council for Matters Relating to the Rescue of the Jewish Population in Poland (Rada do Spraw Ratowania Ludności Żydowskiej w Polsce). The Council’s self-defined objective was to rescue any Polish Jew who could be rescued. The government-in-exile pledged to allocate £800,000 to the Council. In practice, however, it forwarded only 15 percent of this sum and, in its last meeting, on June 20, 1945, the Council found that the government had been derelict in its funding duty.35 In this context, the historian Johana Michlic believes that the idea of rescuing Jews, like other resistance activities that the Germans forbade and punished in ways that included execution, deterred many Poles. What further confirms her point is that immediately after the liberation (1945–1947) and for many years after the war, Poles who rescued Jews did not want their names to be published due to fear of revenge by Polish ultranationalists; many even had to change their place of residence on this account. In other words, they feared the Poles more than they did the Germans.36

34 Ibid., 185–194. 35 David Engel, “The Question of the Jews in Holocaust-Era Poland,” Israel Bartal and Israel Gutman, eds., The Broken Chain, vol. 1, 518–520. 36 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 190–191.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

Relating to the new historiography on Jewish–Polish relations during World War II, Jan Tomasz Gross described the question of Polish–Jewish relations during the war as but a weak thread in the historiography of that era. If one tugs at this thread, the whole complex weave stands to come undone. Antisemitism, Gross continues, has polluted entire parts of twentieth-century Polish history and placed them off-limits, giving rise to diverse interpretations that are offered as fig leaves for what actually took place.37 In his lengthy essay on Polish–Jewish Relations, Emmanuel Ringelblum captured the matter adroitly: Nazi Fascism, antisemitism’s ally, has taken over the majority of the Polish population. These we blame for the fact that in the campaign to rescue the Jews Poland will not occupy a place comparable to the countries of Western Europe. The indifference of the Polish antisemites, who have not learned a thing, is to blame for the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have been saved. […] It is their fault that tens of thousands of Jewish children who could have been received by Christian families or in facilities and institutions were not saved. 38

Poles and Jews in the Kielce Region Research on the role of Poles in crimes against Jews in the vicinity of Kielce during World War II is largely a continuation of research on events in various parts of Poland, following studies by the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamieci Narodowe, IPN) in 2000–2002 on the Jedwabne incident.39 In 2005, the Polish journal Zagłada Żydów (“The Jewish Holocaust”) published primary scholarship on crimes committed by Poles against Jews in the Kielce region in World War II. 40 The findings follow: 1. The crimes in question consist of theft of Jewish property: merchandise from warehouses; real estate; money; jewelry, furs and clothing. This property was seized in two ways: during the Aktions and when escaping 37 Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors, 131. 38 Ringelblum, Last Writings, 295. 39 Machcewicz and Persak, eds., Wokól Jedwabnego, vol. 1–2 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamieci Narodowe, 2002). This study was undertaken pursuant to Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors. 40 Ałina Skibinska and Jakub Petelewicz, “Udzial Polaków w zbrodniach na Żydach na prowincji regionu świętokrzyskieg,” Zagłada Żydów, Studia i materialny (Warsaw: Kagero, 2005), no. 1, 114–147.

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Jews were caught by Poles and promised safety if they handed over their jewelry and foreign currency, and were betrayed once having done so. 2. Most crimes against Jews were committed by Poles in 1943–1944, after the ghettos in the Kielce area had been liquidated. The victims had managed to escape and hide in forests and areas known to Poles or with Poles whom they had known before the war. These Jews wandered from village to village, sometimes in family groups, seeking refuge among Poles at great risk and for considerable sums of money. According to numerous testimonies, Jews who hid in villages for long periods had the help of villagers at first. Over time, however, the same Poles who aided them were the ones who betrayed them or assisted in their murder. 3. Among those who participated in betraying and informing on Jews were village mayors (Soltis). Poles who caught fugitives Jews delivered them to these local officials, who turned them over to Polish police or the Gestapo. These two police forces maintained a network of Polish informers whom they rewarded for each Jew whom they betrayed with vodka, sugar, and at times also money and jewelry that had been found in the Jews’ possession. Representatives of the two police forces met for joint operations and had precise information on where Jews were hiding and when they could be caught. 4. Poles all across the social spectrum, from the wealthy and the educated to members of the intelligentsia and down to simple peasants, took part in informing. The informants included farmers, peasants, forest workers, accountants, artisans, merchants, and others. Most were Catholics aged 20–50, but there were also boys aged fourteen or fifteen and sometimes people over sixty. Women were among the informers but none took part in murdering Jews. Some Poles passed information to the Polish police and the Gestapo about Poles whom they suspected of aiding Jews, claiming in their defense that wished only to settle scores with Jews. 5. The Partisan groups in the Kielce area were quite powerful and some of them saw the murder of Jews as their main activity. Those at issue were affiliated with the AK, the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne, NSZ) and the Peasant Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie, BCh). There is no proof that their murders of Jews were perpetrated on orders from above; presumably it was

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

done at their members’ p­ ersonal initiative. Some partisans murdered Jews by gunfire or blows of rifle butts; peasant members of partisan units, who did not carry arms, used axes.41 Franciszek Szczubial, a democrat and a Polish patriot, was a member of the Civil Guard (Gwardia Ludowa), a Left-affiliated partisan resistance movement that arose in occupied Poland in 1942. Szczubial’s house in Kielce was the contact point for the partisans. Hunted by the Polish police during the occupation, Szczubial testified later that Jews who fled to the forests could hardly survive without aid from the local population. He himself supplied food to six Jews hiding in the forest. When the NSZ discovered their hideout, however, they were led out, dispossessed, and left naked; one was shot dead. 42 Jacek Młynarczyk writes that the Germans’ attitude toward the Jews also influenced that of the Poles. Poles in Kielce (Radom District) took part in looting Jewish-owned stores and vandalizing synagogues from the beginning of the German occupation, often at their own initiative. In October 1939, for instance, Poles burned synagogues in Tomaszów and Częstochowa to the ground, shattered windows, raided private apartments, looted all they could, and stopped only when German police arrived.43 The Polish police in the Kielce area were poorly educated; some had completed only third grade. They had free rein in the villages and imposed their whims on the entire countryside. In their operations against the Jewish population, they acted autonomously even though they were subordinate to the German authorities in the Generalgouvernement. Back in 1939, when Jews were ordered to wear an identifying armband, Poles extorted all Jews whom they caught without one. Concurrently, the Polish police who controlled Jewish trade exploited their status to enrich themselves by capturing Jews who dealt on the black market and confiscating their goods, money, and homes.44 In and around Kielce, Polish police murdered dozens of Jews including women and children, ordered villagers to bury them, dispossessed them, guarded those whom they sent in cart to the transports, and led Germans to where Jews were hiding. Polish police who discovered Polish protectors of Jews, beat them, destroyed their property, murdered the Jews in the protectors’ yards, 41 Ibid., 122–126, 128. 42 Testimony Franciszek Szczubial, YVA, M.49.E/5620, 2. 43 Młynarczyk, Judenmord, 231. 44 Ibid., 234.

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and ordered the Polish benefactors to bury them—often without bothering to report this to the Germans.45 The betrayal and murder of Jews by Poles in the Kielce area, like elsewhere in Poland, appear to have been precipitated by three main factors: compliance with German orders, hatred of Jews and a desire to be rid of them, and eagerness to appropriate their possessions and property. The sense that Jews were outlaw, that Jewish property was free for the taking, and that Jews could be murdered and dispossessed at no cost gave Poles during the occupation the idea that it was “open season” on the Jews, setting the stage for atrocities. Thus, Jews caught by Poles were tortured, women raped, and acts of resistance met with beatings, taunting, or, if the molesters had arms, peremptory murder. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Poles who were complicit in these crimes did not emanate from the rabble or the criminal class; most belonged to the village elites. In Poland, this fact has been resisted for many years because, among other reasons, recognizing it would turn many Poles into passive partners in these crimes. On May 10, 1943, Mosze Meir Bahn sent a letter to Jewish friends who had been taken to one of the labor camps in Kielce. His missive sheds some light on the experiences of Jews who sought hiding places in the villages near Kielce: I am writing to you even though we are in hiding. A week ago we all (five of us) approached a non-Jew in Białogon [in Kielce Subdistrict— S. B.] whom we had given things for safekeeping and asked to have them returned. The Pole was being held in jail and his wife gave us back a few torn shirts and refused to return the rest. We planned to visit several Poles to get them to hide us but it didn’t work out. One of the Poles whom we’d already reached an agreement with to give us a hiding place didn’t even let us enter his house and didn’t want to speak with us. He was very frightened and demanded that we immediately leave the yard, threatening that if we came to him again he’d turn us in to the police. This was the answer we got from every Pole whom we turned to. They don’t consider us human beings. People we lived together with on good terms are now unwilling even to stand next to our shadow and exchange a word with us. They flee from us as if we were carrying the plague. We’ve “fallen” so deep that 45 Skibińska and Petelewicz., 132–135. After the war, seventeen trials were held in Kielce for Polish policemen who were accused of responsibility for the deaths of dozens of Jews. The police claimed in their defense that they had merely escorted Jews on German orders.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6 it’s hard to grasp. All the literature can’t describe how badly we’ve been humiliated. We’re like lepers. […] There is no expression in the world that can describe on paper how debased we are. You in the labor camps are not debased as badly as we are by the Poles who are our acquaintances.46

Ringelblum describes the difficulties attending to the concealment of Jews in outlying towns: In the towns and especially the villages, everyone knows everyone. A stranger attracts wide attention. The Germans knew that in the outlying towns some Jews went into hiding among their neighbors or in the nearby surroundings, after every deportation.47

Concealing Jews was especially difficult in places where antisemitism had been rife before the war. People feared their antisemitic tattletale neighbors more than they did the German terror. Entire areas were cleansed of Jews who had gone into hiding, mass searches were conducted, and peasants who gave refuge to Jews were punished. In the Kielce region, known for its antisemitism and anti-Jewish riots, local residents betrayed Jews en masse.48 Concluding his essay on Jewish–Polish relations, Ringelblum wrote: When the merciless sword of destruction tore into the Jewish people, the [Polish—S. B.] governmental agencies did nothing to save the mere handful of Jews who remained. The official bodies’ attitude toward matters pertaining to the vestigial Jewish population is incongruent with the magnitude of the tragedy that has visited the Jewish people in Poland, a tragedy unprecedented in human history.49

Accordingly, Poles who risked their lives to save Jews were special indeed, or as Ringelblum calls them, idealists. He elaborates: The life of a Pole who hides Jews is not easy. […] Day after day the masses of inhabitants are drugged by the antisemitic toxin in the newspapers, on 46 ŻIH—Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute (Poland), 301/5673, Correspondence Set, 3. 47 Ringelblum, Last Writings, 237. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 278.

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Aid and Rescue in Kielce and the Vicinity The thousands of cases of rescue in occupied Poland show that, no matter how dire the circumstances, rescue was possible everywhere, albeit amid numerous difficulties and immense risk.51 Even before ghettoization, Poles in Kielce are known to have extended substantial help to Jews in small numbers of instances. In his postwar testimony, Yosef Goldblum recounted one such case. His father had had a close Polish friend, a professional cobbler, who lived in an outlying quarter of the city. In the summer of 1940, sixteen-year-old Goldblum, fearing abduction for slave labor in Lublin District, was sent to the cobbler’s house and spent a month there.52 In another case, a Dr. Pienecki testified that in late 1941, under an assumed identity, he arrived in Kielce from Staszów with his son and was aided by his daughter-in-law, who was hiding in a convent in town. The two were admitted to the convent, were allowed to live there, and acted as Catholics in every way. Eighteen additional Jews were hiding in the convent under false identities, including an engineer, but since some did not “look Aryan,” rumors about these “false Gentiles” accompanied the convent continually. The Jews there knew of each other’s existence and protected each other; one assumes that someone in the convent protected them as well. Even so, Pienecki writes of constant fear of exposure. When the priest alleged one day, in a sermon, that the Jews’ current tribulations proved that they were paying for what they had done to Jesus,53 several Jews left the convent and took to the city streets, where they were exposed and murdered.

50 Ibid., 279. 51 Israel Gutman, General Introduction, in Sara Bender and Shmuel Krakowski, eds., Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Poland, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), IX–XVI. 52 Testimony Goldblum, YVA, O3/12285, 16. 53 Testimony Dr. Pienecki, YVA, M.1.E/1510.

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There is no doubt they were caught by Poles rather than Germans, for they possessed “Aryan” papers and were fluent in Polish. The Department of the Righteous among the Nations at Yad Vashem documents two cases of rescue in Kielce in which Poles were recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Bolesław Idzikowski became active in rescue in the ghetto period by smuggling food to his Jewish friends at no charge. During the great deportation in August, 1942, he helped three Jewish friends to escape and found hiding places for them, hid two Jewish youths in his home, and arranged hideouts for their parents among his acquaintances. All of his benefactees survived and were liberated by the Soviet Army in January 1945.54 The second rescue in Kielce that awarded the benefactor the title of Righteous among the Nations began in October 1942, two months after the liquidation of the ghetto. At this time, Walentyna Strzemien, a shopkeeper in Kielce, hired a young woman who presented her with “Aryan” papers and retained her even after discovering that she was Jewish. Until the liberation of the city, Strzemien looked after her and her mother, who lived in the former area of the ghetto.55 When one speaks of Poles who helped save the lives of Jews in Kielce, one should recall that unlike elsewhere in Poland—mainly in the east—where by July 1941 the Jews already knew that the Germans were murdering them, in Kielce, until the beginning of the deportation on August 20, 1942, they knew nothing about mass murders among their number and about the death camps, except for sporadic rumors that were not considered well grounded. The liquidation of the ghetto came as a total surprise and none of the 24,000 Jews in the ghetto knew a thing about Treblinka, to which the Jews of the town were sent in three transports in the course of five days. The Poles, in contrast, through their contacts with railroad workers and relatives, knew that the Jews who had been placed aboard the trains were being sent to a place from which they would never return. With few exceptions, however, Jews could not hide in Kielce. Unlike Warsaw or Kraków, Kielce had no Polish intellectuals or leftists who retained pre-war ties with Jews and were now willing to risk their lives to rescue them. Such Jews who managed to escape from the Kielce ghetto found themselves with nowhere to hide and had to escape to forests that swarmed with antisemitic partisans. Alternatively, they had to find some way to return to the Small Ghetto or slip into three labor camps that had been set up in the city in the spring of 1943. 54 Bolesław Idzikowski file, YVA, M.31/2875. 55 Walentyna Strzemien file, YVA, M.31/3924.

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The difficulty in finding shelter in Kielce is attested to by Leopold Bider, who reached Kielce from Kraków in November 1942 under a false identity. Bider spent about a month in a boarding house of sorts run by a Polish woman who presumably was unaware that he was Jewish. Deeming this refuge unsafe, Bider then took a room that was offered for rent, only to find that the landlady was a Gestapo agent. “I couldn’t leave the apartment I was living in because anyone looking for a place to live was suspected of being a Jew.”56 When the landlady told her neighbor that Bider was a Jew and that his papers were false, he had no choice but to threaten, in the event that she betrayed him to the authorities, to expose her as a double agent and reveal her ties with the Polish partisans. She left him alone from then on; he spent the next two years living in her home and earned a living by tutoring. One surmises that there were other such cases in Kielce and that Jews who had false papers could secure temporary housing for pay. That these cases are yet to be discovered suggests that they must have been few. Where the number of rescue actions in the communities surrounding Kielce is concerned, the situation was different from that in Kielce proper due to the month that lapsed between the liquidation of the Jews of Kielce (in late August 1942) and the onset of deportations from the other communities. This interlude was immensely important because while those in Kielce had no advance knowledge of the deportation, news of the events in Kielce quickly spread throughout the district and many Jews began to seek ways of saving themselves in the event that deportations in their area would come next. Some prepared bogus birth certificates and identity papers; others planned to flee to the dense forests in the area. A few tried to place possessions with Poles for safekeeping and yet others searched for some Polish acquaintance or friend who might be willing to help them in their extremis. Although hundreds of Jews in the small regional communities fled before the deportations began, many fell into traps set by Poles who then betrayed them to the Germans. Many others did not give up, going from one Pole to another in attempts to convince them to let them hide, if only for a day or two. Some non-Jews flatly refused, others commiserated but responded with endless excuses, and a great many expressed willingness to safeguard Jews’ possessions. The exceptions were those who agreed to shelter Jews in their homes at risk to their own lives. In most cases, periods of time spent hiding in localities around Kielce were temporary and brief, mainly due to fear of 56 Testimony Leopold Bider, YVA, M-40/1045, 3.

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the nationalist partisans of the Polish Right, whose numbers in the area grew steadily as the war dragged on. Jews who remained in the vicinity after the large waves of deportations continued to seek refuge among their Polish neighbors—mainly people with whom they had relatively good relations before the war—until the liberation in January 1945. Helping Jews was much riskier to life and family in the Kielce region than elsewhere in Poland because manhunts for Jews in hiding and their Polish rescuers were particularly intensive there. In this respect, events in that area recall what transpired in the various communities of Eastern Galicia, where right-wing Ukrainian gangs persistently hunted down Poles who were hiding Jews, and in Białystok District in northeastern Poland, which saw waves of pogroms in the 1930s and multiple murders of Jews by Poles after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.57 Among the thousands of Poles whom Yad Vashem recognized as Righteous among the Nations, it appears that some 300 were involved in around 130 acts of rescue in the Kielce, Busko-Zdrój, and Jędrzejów Subdistricts. The available statistics, however, do not reveal the exact number of Jews who ­survived by their means. In Kielce proper, where there were around 40,000 Jews on the eve of the war and some 27,000 during the ghetto period, two Poles were recognized as Righteous among the Nations—one for his feats in the ghetto era and one for what he did afterward. The other 128 acts of rescue took place in small towns and villages nearby.58 If so, the number of Righteous from Kielce and the vicinity is extremely low by the standards of other districts in the Generalgouvernement. During the second Aktion in Chmielnik (November 5, 1942), Yosef Kleinert, his wife, and their four-year-old son hid in the town’s Jewish cemetery. Once the deportation was completed, as with every deportation, peasants from the surrounding area entered the Jews’ now-vacant homes and carried off whatever they could. When this activity was over, Kleinert and his family left their hideout and Kleinert returned to town and met with Bronisława A. of Przedbórz, who along with her husband Władysław, poor peasants, had previously worked for the local authority. Before the war, Władysław, known for his 57 Consider events in Łomża and Grajewo Subdistricts and the towns of Jedwabne, Radziłów, and others. See Machcewicz and Persak, Wokól Jedwabnego, 260–262, 326, 337, 340–342, 361, 366, 860–879. 58 See index to Righteous among the Nations: Poland. Notably, Yizkor books and Polish sources make it clear that there were additional cases of rescue in the area, for which no one was recognized as Righteous among the Nations for various reasons.

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Marxist views, had done carpentry work in the employ of local Jews; during the German occupation he did the same for the municipality. One day, an SS man subjected him to a beating that proved fatal several months later, leaving twenty-eight-year-old Bronisława and her two children, aged ten and twelve, in very dire straits. At her encounter with Kleinert, she told him she remembered well the help he had given her before the war, the sweets he used to send her children, and everything his father had done for her ill mother. When Kleinert told her his story, she replied, “Move in with me; I will save you.”59 Bronisława lived in a small house with a kitchen and one room completely filled by two beds and a closet. Aware that she was risking her life and that of her children by sheltering Jews, she shared the secret with her offspring. Kleinert was impressed by Bronisława’s readiness to save him but worried about Janek S., her lover, who supported her financially and would have to consent to her decision. Janek was considered the black sheep of his prominent family because he refused to study, consorted with ruffians, and enjoyed getting drunk and womanizing. Bronisława suggested that Kleinert have a word with him. The next morning, Kleinert met with Janek at a tavern, told him about his bitter fate, and asked for his compassion. Janek asked him a few questions, thought it over, and promised to reply. Meeting again three hours later, Janek told Kleinert he was determined to save him and his family and had decided to move in with Bronisława to help her make the rescue succeed. On November 20, 1942, Kleinert brought his wife and son to Bronisława’s home and returned to the ghetto. For several days, Kleinert and Janek moved various items from the ghetto to Bronisława’s house, Janek’s neighbors being convinced that Janek was bringing his lover belongings that he had pilfered from the homes of the deported Jews. In the meantime, Kleinert stayed in the Small Ghetto, moving from one attic to another. On December 20, 1942, when the final evacuation of the Jews of Chmielnik began, he realized he had to flee. The Poles in the area suspected each other of sheltering Jews and constantly spied on one another. Bronisława’s house was too small to accommodate Kleinert for more than for two or three days at a time. Three days after Kleinert moved in, however, his wife saw Bronisława taking potatoes from a winter storage cellar under the wooden floor of her house and asked Bronisława to arrange a hideout for her family there. After Janek removed straw from his mattress to prepare a bed for her and her son and procured a night bucket, she and her son moved into the 59 Josef Kleinert, In a Baheltenis in Chmielnik Gufa [Yiddish], in Pinkes Chmielnik, 812.

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cellar. Bronisława opened her house to the neighbors to prove to them that it was free of concealed Jews, and three days later Kleinert arrived and went straight into the cellar. The refuge was barely wide enough for two people and too short for a man of average size, meaning that the Kleinerts had to keep their legs folded all the time. The only light and air they had came through slits in the floorboards. Kleinert reimbursed Bronisława for what she spent on his family’s food; occasionally she asked for an additional sum. Every day she prepared a watery potato soup for her guests and emptied out their bucket. At their meals in the cellar, the Kleinerts were joined by large rats but eventually got used to them. At night, Janek kept them up to date on local news, including periodic updates about Jews who had been betrayed and caught, Jews who had been shot to death, and Jews who had found shelter in exchange for large sums of money. In the autumn of 1943, when it came time to store potatoes for the winter, Janek loaded rags aboard a wagon, drove to the field, and took on a load of potatoes. On his return, he unloaded some of them as the neighbors looked on and cached the remainder with relatives. As time passed, Kleinert’s money ran out, local conditions worsened, hardly any Jews remained in hiding, and the Germans were abducting Poles for slave labor. By then, the Kleinerts had spent twenty months in concealment. Despite the risk and the hardships, Bronisława and Janek persisted in their act of rescue. In September 1944, Soviet Army forces arrived in Chmielnik but then withdrew to about twelve kilometers from town and encamped. The town became a front. Dozens of German soldiers took up positions there. The Wehrmacht established a food depot in Bronisława’s yard, creating constant traffic there. Once a tin of processed meat rolled into the Kleinerts’ cellar and a German soldier stuck his hand in to retrieve it. Kleinert was sure that the German saw his family but told no one.60 On January 13, 1945, the Soviet forces began shelling the town. The endgame approached as Chmielnik burned. Just as the walls of Bronisława’s house collapsed atop the cellar, the Russians entered town and informed its inhabitants they were liberated. Thanks to Bronisława and Janek’s act of rescue, the Kleinerts’ lives were saved. The Kleinerts never approached Yad Vashem about what had been done for them and their rescuers have never been recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Irena Budzyńska owned a hostel in Busko-Zdrój that continued to operate during the war. Jews living under assumed identities on the “Aryan” side of 60 Ibid., 811–818.

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town reached the facility and Budzyńska put several of them on her payroll. She arranged recitals for a Jewish pianist in various locations, assisted others in obtaining “Aryan” papers, and, when the ghetto in Busko-Zdrój was liquidated in the autumn of 1942, helped those who reached her to find hiding places. Nothing is known about what befell the Jews whom Budzyńska aided, and no one has asked to have her recognized as Righteous among the Nations.61

Polish Righteous among the Nations in the Kielce Vicinity In 1953, the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) passed the Yad Vashem Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority Act into law and instructed the eponymous institution, in its function as the national memorial authority, to create a monument and a memorial to the “Righteous among the Nations who took their lives into their hands to rescue Jews.” Since 1960, a public commission at Yad Vashem has been calling attention to Righteous among the Nations. The thousands of acts of rescue in occupied Poland that the commission has documented show that, despite the grim circumstances, the multiple hardships, and the immense risk, rescue opportunities existed everywhere. Given the paucity of rescue operations in the Kielce area, the few that did occur should be highlighted. This is done below, for both the general reader and scholars of the period. The matter of Jewish infants left with Poles for survival purposes is one of the most complex aspects of the broad topic of rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. To be accepted by a non-Jewish family, Jewish children usually had to be baptized and renamed. Some youngsters whose parents perished grew up oblivious to their Jewishness, and others who came across this information accidentally left Poland without knowing who their parents were or where and when they were born. Jurek Keizer was born in Kielce in 1940. When he was one year old, his parents volunteered for work at the Lipnica labor camp and sought a family with whom they could leave their son for supervision. They found the Włodeks—Stanisław, Jadwiga, and their two small sons—of Węgleszyn village near Jędrzeów. Stanisław Włodek was a school principal and an activist the Polish resistance. In 1943, as the Germans searched for partisans and resistance operatives, a radio receiver was discovered in his home. Jadwiga was arrested and sent to Auschwitz; Włodek escaped and had to hide in the forests. 61 Testimony Irena Budzyńska, YVA, M.49.E/5697.

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Three-year-old Jurek was left with the two sons, aged eight and ten, who worked in neighbors’ fields for food and shared their proceeds with little Jurek each night. Włodek, fearing that the Jewish boy would be discovered, asked his sister Teofila Kowalik, who lived in a different village, to take him in. Teofila complied warmly; Jurek remained with her until the liberation and then was reunified with his mother. Yad Vashem recognized Włodek and his sister as Righteous among the Nations.62 Among the hundreds of Jews whom the Germans rounded up in Chmielnik on November 5, 1942, for the second deportation, were Alte Shor, her husband, her daughters Yona and Sara, her son-in-law Joel Zilberberg, and her sons Abraham and Nahum, aged eight and twelve. The Germans put Shor’s husband and two daughters on one of the wagons carrying Jews to Stopnica and brutally loaded Shor, her sons, and her son-in-law on another. When the convoy passed the first village outside of town, many Jews were able to escape into the nearby forest, Shor’s daughter and son-in-law among them. As they fled, they came across a Polish policeman who urged them to keep running and promised not to harm them. Shor and her sons stayed with the convoy until several kilometers before Stopnica, where the carter urged them to run away. The three made it into the nearby forest and heard the shots fired at Jews trying to escape. At 11:00 that night, Shor and her sons left the forest and returned to the main road. A Pole whom they met there warned them not to head toward Stopnica and led them to a cabin that he owned, inhabited by two young Poles. After assuring himself that they were well received, he took them to the village of Służów to meet one Stempian, a Polish acquaintance of Shor’s. Stempian gave them some food and then went to Chmielnik to apprise himself of the state of affairs there. On his return, he reported that several members of Shor’s family members had gone back to town. Two days later, Stempian led them back to Chmielnik, where Shor reunited with her three children, who had not been taken away in the evacuation to Stopnica.63 Aware that Jewish police under German orders were hunting Jews who had secretly returned to the ghetto, Shor hid in the home of Manka Ląterowicz, a Polish woman who owned a bakery and gave her a warm welcome. Concurrently, 62 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 387–388, 878; see also YVA, M.31/3280 and 31/3280a. 63 Alte Shor, “In gorangl farn lebn fin main mishpukhe” (The struggle for my family’s life), Pinkes Chmielnik, 824–827.

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Shor’s nephew, Leib Koslowski, circulated anxious and frightened in the local market. There he encountered Stanisław Kaszuba, a tobacco merchant and a disabled World War I veteran from Żydów village (near Pińczów) who knew the Shor and Koslowski families well. When he heard from Koslowski about the deportations from Chmielnik and his fears for his family, Kaszuba offered to shelter the family and arranged to remove them from town under cover of darkness. Koslowski and his daughter-in-law were brought to Kaszuba’s home along with Shor and her four sons and daughter, where they were placed in a small room. Kaszuba, aided by his sons Stefan and Ryszard, built a bunker for the eight refugees under the floor.64 The fugitives lived in constant fear of discovery. One day, eighteen members of the AK burst into the Kaszuba home seeking Alte Shor and her family, as Kaszuba was known to have befriended her, and threatened to shoot everyone unless Kaszuba told them where the Jews were hiding. When he denied he was hiding Jews, they beat him, his wife, his sons, and his daughter Daniela. All maintained their silence as the AK unit combed the house for six hours and reached the door to the bunker, which held firm. Kaszuba’s daughter brought the hiding Jews food and news of the outside world. Soon, however, the Jews’ money ran out and they could no longer pay Kaszuba for their food. Some time later, the AK paid the village another visit, twelve operatives pounding on the doors. When they came to Kaszuba’s home, he opened up and, weeping, told them that he had no Jews in his house. He insisted he had never liked Jews, explained that he was an amputee, related all his other troubles, and asked for their pity. They searched his home and left after finding nothing. After these two incidents, the Kaszubas began to believe that the Jews hiding in their home must be saints and that their escape from discovery was a miracle. With that, they resolved to save their guests’ lives no matter what. Although the Kaszubas had fallen into poverty by this time, Daniela continued to deliver a bowl of soup to the bunker every day. Out of fear, however, she stopped talking to the Jews and the family eventually ceased all contact with them. As Shor and her family struggled to understand what was happening, they received less and less food and the children were beginning to starve. One night, desperate and in tears, Shor saw her husband in a dream and told him the children were hungry. Her husband asked 64 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 341; YVA, M.31/5826; and Shor, Pinkes Chmielnik, 827–828.

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her to plead with Kaszuba to give them food and told her to promise that he would amply reward the gentile after the war. At daybreak, still deeply affected by her dream and after having had no contact with Kaszuba for much time, he knocked on the door of the bunker and told her that her husband had appeared to him in a dream and asked him to look after her and the children. From then on, the Kaszubas were very devoted to the Jews under their care, allowing them to stay in the room over the bunker and meeting all their needs. Shortly after this incident, the Germans installed a telephone switchboard in the Kaszubas’ home. Given that the house was made of wood and the slightest movement could be heard, again the hiding Jews had to go down into the bunker and stay there motionless. The neighbors’ suspicions were never dispelled and Kaszuba spared no effort to convince them that he had no Jews in his home. On Christmas 1944, as the Soviet Army approached Żydów, large numbers of Germans entered the town, took up positions around Kaszuba’s house, and appropriated a room there to store their clothing. The Kaszubas realized they had to remove the eight Jewish refugees from of the bunker. Kaszuba’s wife secretly moved them to the stable. After a pit was dug there, the fugitives entered it and Kaszuba covered it with a pile of manure and placed a cage of ducks there. The Jews spent twenty days in this refuge. On January 13, 1945, Soviet Army forces entered and liberated the village. For twenty-eight months of incessant mortal danger, Kaszuba, his wife, and their three children sheltered eight Jews in their home—members of the Shor and Koslowski families—and thus saved their lives.65 All were recognized as Righteous among the Nations. In March 1940, the Gestapo in Kielce arrested Dr. Nissan Balanowski for his pre-war public activities. Released a half a year later and eager to avoid further arrest, Balanowski escaped to Chmielnik, where he was hidden and cared for by Wacłav Ścisło for a year and a half. In September 1942, when news about the liquidation of the Kielce ghetto arrived, Ścisło provided Balanowski with “Aryan” papers and smuggled him into Warsaw, where he lived under an assumed identity until the city was liberated.66 In the autumn of 1942, when the deportation of the Jews of Chmielnik began, Rosa Langwald escaped to the Partykas, a Polish family in the nearby 65 Ibid., 824–836. 66 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 701; YVA, M.31/4563.

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village of Drugnia. Marianna Partyka prepared her a hiding place in a barn and invited her to spend evenings with the family. The Partykas maintained Langwald in hiding for two years, devotedly meeting her basic needs, and helped her to put her life together after the liberation as well.67 In November 1940, after the Warsaw ghetto was sealed, Helena Nawrócka escaped to Suchedniów with her Polish boyfriend, Kazimierz Dębicki. To protect Nawrócka’s Jewish identity, the two arranged a fictitious marriage. Nawrócka was arrested anyway and was released only thanks to Dębicki, who testified that his wife was a devout Catholic. Esfira Dębicka, Dębicki’s Jewish stepmother, was arrested after being betrayed to the Gestapo and in her interrogation failed to answer one of the questions about Catholic customs. Even so, her stepson managed to get her freed after convincing the investigators that she regularly attended church. Dębicki, an activist in the Polish Socialist resistance, aided Jews in additional ways, including provided them with lifesaving false papers.68 In August 1942, Guta Szinowloga and her eight-year-old daughter escaped the Warsaw ghetto and reached Chęciny, where they had relatives. A month later, the deportation of the Jews of Chęciny having begun, the two escaped to the home of Karol Kiciński, the Polish guard of the town’s Jewish cemetery, who lived with his daughter Janina in a small house near the graveyard. Kiciński dug a bunker for Szinowloga and her daughter, and together with his own daughter cared for his protégés. Eventually members of the right-wing Polish resistance came to suspect Kiciński of hiding Jews and searched his home. Despite the risk to his life and that of his daughter Kiciński, was undeterred and continued to hide Szinowloga and her daughter for two years, until the liberation in January 1945.69 When the Pińczów ghetto was liquidated in the autumn of 1942, the Szneiders escaped with their daughter and three sons to the nearby forest, where they hid for four months with the assistance of Polish villagers. One day in January 1943, aware that the brutal winter left them no chance of surviving outdoors, they left the forest and walked to Dębówka, a village near Pińczów, and in the middle of the night knocked on the door of the home of Franciszek and Józefa Matjas. Franciszek Matjas had worked at Szneider’s flourmill before the war and the two had been friends. The Matjases warmly accepted the six 67 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 583; YVA, M.31/4303. 68 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 170–171; YVA, M.31/2017. 69 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 344; YVA, M.31/2518.

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Jewish refugees, built them a hideout that offered protection and good conditions, and gave them refuge for two years until the liberation.70 When the Pińczów ghetto faced liquidation, Eduard Solewicz and his sister Helena fled to the nearby village of Wrocieryż and reached the house of Teofil and Katarzyna Mika, Polish peasants who knew their parents well. The Mikas concealed them in their home for more than two years, until the liberation in January 1945. 71 Feliks Szymański of Dziewieczyce, a village near Pińczów, saved David Wollgelertner and another Jew by building them a hideout in his barn, feeding them whenever he could, and treating them with exceptional generosity from June 1944 to January 1945.72 In the summer of 1942, as rumors spread through the Kielce region about the deportation of the Jews of Kielce proper, Helena Fiszer’s parents in Pińczów sent their eight-year-old daughter to hide with Aniela Goldszmid, a Polish doctor who had a Jewish husband. Goldszmid took the Jewish girl to her sister, Leonka Tarabula, who lived in the nearby village of Miernów. Leonka and her family gave Fiszer a warm welcome and, to avoid unnecessary questions, baptized the girl and provisioned her with “Aryan” papers. Fiszer spent the next three years with the Tarabulas and was made to feel like a member of the family in every respect. After the liberation, Leonka Tarabula went to the trouble of transferring Fiszer to a Jewish orphanage in Kraków, from which she immigrated to Israel in 1950.73 In late 1942, the Tarkas of Stawieszyce village discovered that the Miller siblings—Esther, Malka, and Jakob—had escaped the deportation in nearby Wiszclica and were hiding in fields that the Tarka family owned. Before the war, Stanisława Tarka had bought baked goods at the Millers’ bakery; when the presence of the Jews in hiding became known, she dispatched her ten-year-old son Saczek to deliver food to them while the rest of the family prepared a hideout for the Millers in their granary. When the Miller children moved to it, little Saczek brought them food each day. Two years later, when Malka was murdered as she set out for one of the villages to sell some of her personal effects, the Tarkas brought Esther and Jakob into their house, where they spent the next two weeks until the liberation.74 70 71 72 73 74

Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 495–496; YVA, M.31/3935. Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 514; YVA, M.31/7097. Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 803–804; YVA, M.31/5271. Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 809; YVA, M.31/3255. Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 811; YVA, M.31/3397.

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In the summer of 1942, Helena Szmelholc and her two sons escaped from Busko-Zdrój and with the help of a Polish acquaintance in the resistance reached the nearby village of Ruczynów and the home of the Misztals, who were also active in the underground. The three Jewish refugees were warmly received and were soon equipped with “Aryan” documents. The Misztals and their son represented the Jews to their neighbors as relatives and the Szmelholcs went about the village freely for over two years, until the liberation.75 Władysław Szafraniec lived with his parents, who were underground members, in Rataje, a village in Busko Subdistrict. From 1942 on, the Szafraniecs concealed the Wolfowicz couple, Wolfowicz’ brother, and Herman Kleinplac on their farm. In May 1943, the Szafranieces received an anonymous letter with a demand for payment in the sum of 100,000 złoty to avert their murder and that of all the Jews whom they were protecting. The Szafranieces managed to smuggle the hiding Jews to safer quarters, continued to support them, and later aided the Freiman family as well.76 In major cities and towns, even smaller ones, Jews’ chances of finding help and refuge were extremely slim; in the countryside, where hardscrabble peasants lived on farms so remote as not even to have close neighbors, the chances of finding help were better. Most saviors had previously known their Jewish protégés, possibly explaining, among other factors, their willingness to offer refuge. These people persisted in their mission of mercy without being deterred by the very real risk that it posed to their own lives. All of them, in addition to altruists and humane Poles of good will, prove that even in an environment of denunciations, betrayals, antisemitic partisans and Polish murderers it was nevertheless possible to save persecuted Jews.

Comparative Discussion and Conclusions One may identify the singularities of the Jewish community in Kielce by conducting a brief comparative discussion of what befell the Jews in the three main Jewish communities in Radom District—Radom, Kielce, and Częstochowa—during the German occupation and the Holocaust. In performing this comparison, it is necessary to differentiate between the German policy toward the Jews, on the other hand, and the behavior and activity of the Jewish leadership and daily life in these communities, on the other. 75 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 523; YVA, M.31/7915. 76 Righteous among the Nations: Poland, 776; YVA, M.31/2838.

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

The German policy toward the Jews in Radom District was dictated by the district leaders on the Generalgouvernement and, after ghettoization, by the district SSPFs (SS and police leaders). When the Generalgouvernement district officials were in charge, all mayors in Radom District received the same instructions. When the district SSPFs took over, they handed directives to the various local commanders of the Schupo for implementation. Although each Schupo commander carried out these orders on the basis of his personal interpretation, the method was the same.77 The three large ghettos in Radom District were established in April 1941. Until then, the German policy toward the Jews had been the same: Each community had to remit a “ransom,” Jewish-owned property in each was “Aryanized,” and Jews in each city were abducted for slave labor in their hometowns and elsewhere; in the summer of 1940, young Jews were sent from all over the district to Lublin District for labor. And in each Jewish community, living conditions and daily life deteriorated significantly. One phenomenon, however, was unique to Kielce, probably because the Jewish community there was smaller than its counterparts in Radom and Częstochowa. From the onset of the occupation to the establishment of the ghetto, large numbers of refugees reached Kielce, causing the local Jewish population to balloon from around 20,000 to some 27,000—a development that had especially dire effects in the ghetto period. Before the war, most Jews in Kielce belonged to the middle and lower classes, and the establishment of the ghetto in an impoverished and rundown part of town that now contained 77 The information about Radom is based on the following Polish-language sources: Helena Kisiel, “Mieszkańcy radomskiego getta w świetle żródeł archiwalnych,” Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego 33(1) (1998), 71–85; Piątkowski, “Judenraty w dystrykcie radomskim,” 51–70; Kazimierz Jaroszek and Sebastian Piątkowski, Martyrologia Żydów w więzieniu radomskim 1939–1944 (Radom: Archiwum Państowowe, 1997), 4–10; Adam Rutkowski, “Hitlerowskie obozypracy dla Żydów,” 107–127; Sebastian Piątkowski, “Obóz pracy przy ulicy Szkolnej w Radomiu (1941–1944),” Zeszyty Majdanka 19 (1998), 41–50, Piątkowski, Żydzy w hitlerowskim więzieiu w Radomiu 1939–1944 (Radom: 1994); and the following Hebrew and/or Yiddish sources: Radom Book, Yitzhak Perlow and A.S. Stein eds. (Tel Aviv: Radom Landsmanshaftn in Israel and the Diaspora, 1961); Yeshayahu Unger, “Radom,” Fun letstn khurbn 1 (August 1946); Simha Haruvi, “Radom During the Holocaust,” Master’s thesis, Haifa University, 1978. The information about Częstochowa is based on the following sources : L[ieber] Grenner, Viderstand un umkum in Tshenstokhover geto (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, 1950); Shlomo Vaga, Khurbn Tshenstokhov (Buenos Aires: Central Landslait-Farein in Argentina, 1949); Sefer Częstochowa; Zeev Wolf Glikson, “In Tshenstokhover geto,” Fun letstn khurbn, 2 (1946); Urbach, History of the Jews of Częstochowa; Nathan Eck, Wandering on the Roads of Death: Life and Thoughts in the Days of Destruction ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1960), 77.

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thousands of refugees, most of whom had arrived penniless, merely amplified the poverty and wretchedness that characterized the ghetto from the time it was formed to the time it was destroyed. In Radom and Częstochowa, things were different, and even though the ghetto in Glinice—a Small Ghetto in an outlying neighborhood of Radom—is reminiscent of life in the Kielce ghetto, the large ghetto in Radom, inhabited by 20,000 Jews, was relatively well maintained. Life in the Częstochowa ghetto was undoubtedly more reasonable in every sense, under the circumstances of the war and the occupation, than that in Kielce and Radom, for reasons including the pre-war presence of an affluent Jewish stratum there. As for the influence of the ghetto Jewish leadership on daily life, Lejb (Leon) Kopiński, chairman of the Częstochowa Judenrat, availing himself of the large apparatus that the Judenrat operated there, played both sides of the game, managing in my estimation to satisfy both the Germans and the ghettoized Jews. As evidence, Kopiński, unlike Yosef Diamant, his counterpart in Radom, continued to head his council long after the ghetto was obliterated. Notably, in the testimonies that are available to us, no aspersions about Kopiński’s functioning are expressed. In contrast, Diamant, who displayed the requisite leadership capabilities and knowledge to keep the ghetto inhabitants employed in enterprises that were set up at his initiative and who even earned the appreciation of survivors, was unable to placate the Schupo commander in Radom and was arrested. The social and economic infrastructure of the Jewish community in Częstochowa was strong before the war and remained strong throughout the occupation, playing a role in the relatively good conditions that prevailed in that city. Even before ghettoization, the two Jewish entities that were set up in Częstochowa in parallel with the Judenrat—TOZ and the “Workers’ Committee,” a trade organization that was set out to protect Jewish workers, a phenomenon unparalleled in the history of the ghettos in Poland—give evidence of a community that had a special degree of social and economic awareness unmatched in Radom and, least of all, in Kielce. In Kielce, the economic and social foundations of the Jewish community had been shaky even before the war once the occupation began, both chairmen of the Judenrat, Pelc and Lewi, proved to be powerless individuals whose weakness the German authorities adroitly exploited. The three communities were also differentiated in the matter of the Jewish police. In Kielce, the commander and most members of the force were Jewish refugees from Reich territory who disdained the local “Ostjuden” and felt no

Jews and Poles in Kielce Subdistrict   Chapter 6

connection with the local community. This influenced their behavior toward the Jews of Kielce, who considered most of the police hostile, condescending, and prone to collaboration with the occupier. In Radom, in contrast, the head of the Jewish police, Joachim Geiger, was a local resident who had engaged in protective services before the war. Geiger, like the Chairman of the Judenrat, was imprisoned in April 1942 for refusing to turn over Jews. In my judgment, it is not mere chance that specifically in Kielce it was the Jewish police who were sent to evict to the Jews from their homes as the ghetto was being liquidated. The Schupo in Kielce trusted the Jewish police to obey orders, whereas the same bureau in Radom and Częstochowa understood plainly that it was better to send in the Sonderkommando Feucht, the evacuation force, to remove Jews from their homes and deliver them to the staging point. One method was used to obliterate the large Jewish communities in Radom District, each ghetto in succession. In every location, thousands of Jews had to be left behind after mass deportations for ongoing duties, both in cleaning up the ghetto and as a labor force in local enterprises that served Nazi Germany’s war effort. The deportation from Kielce, masterminded by the sadistic commander of the Schupo and his deputy, was much more murderous, brutal, and ruthless than the corresponding Aktions in Radom and Częstochowa. In each of these three cities, the Germans, after the great deportations, set up small ghettos that the Jews would eventually remember as labor camps. In 1943, these mini-ghettos were also eradicated and their inhabitants were transferred to barracks and other structures put up next door to enterprises and factories in the district, where they toiled for the war industry. These facilities became Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden—slave-labor camps for Jews. In the summer of 1944, as the Russian front approached, Jews who toiled in the labor camps in Kielce, Skarżysko-Kamienna, Starachowice, Pionki, and Radom were removed, whereas most of those who worked in Częstochowa remained on the job for five additional months until the city was liberated in January 1945. Although most of them were transferred to Reich territory two days before the Soviet forces entered the town, some 5,000 whom the Germans had not had time to evacuate remained in Częstochowa on liberation day and survived. Especially noteworthy is the Jewish resistance movement that took shape in Częstochowa in October 1942, after 30,000 Jewish townspeople had been shipped to Treblinka. In Kielce, a similar effort was made after the liquidation of the ghetto, whereas in Radom no such self-organization is known to have occurred. The plans for resistance in Kielce did not succeed, but in Częstochowa a large and active underground formed and organized armed

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resistance in the Small Ghetto and, afterwards, in the nearby forests. There is no doubt that this resistance organization’s special connection with the Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa—ŻOB) influenced the members in Częstochowa and inspired them to take up arms against the Germans. All the Judenrat chairmen were murdered: Mosze Pelc in Auschwitz in January 1941, Hermann Lewi in the Jewish cemetery of Kielce in January 1943, Yosef Diamant in Treblinka in the summer of 1942, and Leon Kopiński in Treblinka in the summer of 1943. The three large Jewish communities in Radom District were obliterated without a trace, apart from monuments and graveyards.

Epilogue The Pogrom The Yalta conference (February 1945) made it possible to establish a provisional Polish coalition government that was under the decisive sway of the Communist Party. The new regime in Warsaw defeated its opponents in the rural hinterland and boosted its political strength by steadily eroding that of the non-Communist Poles. In the first years of People’s Poland, the Polish public debated at length about the character of the country, its internal structure, and its place under the political circumstances that had come about at the war’s end. This situation had implications for all matters pertaining to the Jewish sector, the treatment of which entailed special caution because it constituted in many senses—in the eyes of the rest of the world—a litmus test of the new Polish regime’s intentions and sociopolitical complexion. Yisrael Gutman writes that the immensity of the Jewish tragedy—the murder and devastation that had left so many imprints in Polish soil—forced the Polish Government, at first in any event, to display sincere sensitivity and consideration where Jewish affairs were concerned.1 Nevertheless, only in Poland did Jews continue to be murdered even after the German Reich fell. In the initial postwar months, convoys of deportees and liberated prisoners returned to their homelands and homes in a multidirectional migration to and from various parts of Europe. Amid this great polynational flow, thousands of Jews flocked back to Poland in the hope of finding some vestige of their families. What these Jewish refugees faced on arrival was not only the dire conditions of life in devastated Poland but also the hostility of the Polish population, which often escalated into outright mortal danger. Far-Right factions of the Polish resistance, nearly all of which were quintessentially antisemitic, had retained their weapons upon the formation of the Sovietsponsored Polish Government; now they continued to hide in the forests and waged armed struggle against the higher-ups of the new regime and the Jews.2   1 Yisrael Gutman, “The Jews in Poland after the War (b),” Yalqut Moreshet 34 (December 1982), 129 [in Hebrew].  2 Yisrael Gutman, “Polish Antisemitism in Its Last Incarnation,” Yalqut Moreshet 13 ( June 1971), 129–130 [in Hebrew].

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Eager to whip up Poland’s widely diffused antisemitism, they brandished an old bugaboo—the Żydokumuna, the “Jewish-Communist conspiracy”—to depict the Jews as the progenitors of the new regime that had been imposed on Poland. Traditional Polish antisemitism, which had not vanished during the German occupation and the Holocaust, was augmented after the war by new sources of odium. Many Poles greeted the very repatriation of Jews from the Soviet Union with demonstrative resistance, balking at the return of Jews to their workplaces and the restitution of their prewar property. Many Poles alleged that the Jews were the mainstays of the new Communist regime in Poland, that they were running Poland on the basis of Soviet dictates, and that they had been appointed to high positions in the Party and the governing apparatus. This perception of a Jewish takeover of Poland at Soviet behest reverberated widely and gained support from Church officials, rightists, and well-known interwar politicians. This version of events found support in the presence of Jews in bureaucratic posts low and high, as would have been unimaginable in independent Poland. The outcome was a violent struggle against the Jews, spearheaded by Polish resistance organizations that had opted for aggressive underground action against the new Soviet-sponsored regime in formation. The groups that subscribed to this course of action included extreme rightist and Fascist nationalist elements that had operated in Poland before the war, such as the NSZ and WiN (Wolność i Niezawislość—“Freedom and Independence”), which viewed the Soviets as a worse enemy than the Germans. Convinced that war between the West and the USSR would soon erupt, they reasoned that to hasten the confrontation and defeat the new regime by inducing outside intervention, violence and terror should be invoked. These groups activated armed gangs that roved in forests near towns and planned a struggle backed by terrorism. In contrast to their attacks on governing institutions and officials, which they formulated painstakingly, they assailed Jews indiscriminately and murdered hundreds of Holocaust survivors including children and women. Some of them claimed that the Jews who had returned from the Soviet Union were not Polish Jews but Russians whom the Soviet regime had sent to assist in the overthrow of Poland.3 These bands received extensive support from the Polish masses and, under this stimulus, expanded their activities and   3 Israel Gutman, “Polish Jewry from Liberation to Emigration, 1944–1948,” in East European Jewry between Holocaust and Resurrection 1944–1948 (Binyamin Fuchs, ed.) (Sede Boqer: The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, 1987, in Hebrew), 118.

Epilogue

began to waylay Jews in broad daylight, their assaults cascading into pogroms. The method behind these massacres was based on blood libels. Rumors that Jews abducted Christian children and murdered them for ritual purposes were set in motion; the ensuing hullaballoo evolved into a pogrom. In his book Between Liberation and Flight, David Engel writes about sundry manifestos and posters that were circulated across Poland from January 1945 onward, urging Poles to dispossess and ostracize Jews, sever trade relations with them, induce them to emigrate, and boycott anything associated with them. One publicly disseminated missive explicitly threatened the Jews with murder by calling on Poles to draw weapons on them in order to rid Poland of filth and trash.4 These urgings echoed so powerfully among Poles that in the first few months after the liberation, rightist underground gangs led to the deaths of hundreds of Jews who had returned to their shtetlakh or were en route to them, and murdered Jews in their homes or as they walked in the street, in public buildings, public transport, on the train, and elsewhere. In some cases, murder was preceded by robbery; in others, Poles participated in attacks on Jewish neighbors’ homes. In yet others, Polish customers pounced on Jewish business proprietors, and the like. In at least five instances in 1945, Jews were slain against the backdrop of a Medieval-style blood libel, and in 1946, pursuant to the Polish-Soviet repatriation accord (discussed below), the attacks expanded to include trains that carried Jews returning from the USSR. In all, roughly 1,500 Jews were murdered in Poland between November 1944 and late 1947.5 The new regime in People’s Poland considered the attacks on Jews one of many expressions of a campaign launched by its opponents to undermine rule and show the Free World that it could not surmount popular resistance   4 David Engel, Between Liberation and Flight: Holocaust Survivors in Poland and the Struggle for Leadership 1944–1946 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1996, in Hebrew), 50–51.   5 Ibid., 51–53. The count of 1,500 Jewish Holocaust survivors murdered by Poles in assaults and pogroms in 1944–1947 is presented by Miri Paz, citing data from the Institute of National Remembrance. Among the murderers were Poles who had usurped Jews’ homes and property and wished to keep them. Members of illegal organizations that engaged in anti-Soviet subversion accused Jews of murdering Polish children for religious ritual purposes. See Miri Paz (ed. and tr.), Facing Memory: The Polish Account (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2007, in Hebrew), 25. See also Yisrael Gutman, The Jews in Poland after World War II ( Jerusalem: Center for Research on the History of Policy Jewry and Its Culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Zalman Shazar Centre, 1985, in Hebrew), 33. Gutman tallies 351 murdered Jews between November 1944 and December 1945. See also Hannah Shlomi, “Self-Organization of the Jewish Vestiges in Poland after World War II, 1944–1950,” in Bartal and Gutman (eds.), The Broken Chain. Polish Jewry through the Ages, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Centre, 1977, in Hebrew), 533–534.

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and impose order on the conflicted, fractured country. The anti-Jewish trend, which portrayed the Jews as supporters and major beneficiaries of the regime, was consistent with resistance to Communist rule in Poland and became part of it. Nationalist antisemites saw the Jews as the powers behind the new regime, which some defined not as a Polish government but a Jewish one that took its marching orders from Moscow. Indeed, many Jews—relatively speaking—held positions in the governing apparatus; some attained high ranks. Generally speaking, too, the Jews welcomed the new government largely due to the understanding and sympathy that it displayed toward them, in contrast to Polish rule during the Second Republic era.6 On May 3, 1945, armed bands of Polish students rioted on streets in Kraków where significant numbers of Jewish Holocaust survivors had established their homes. The brigands smashed windows, hurled stones at Jewish passersby, unleashed verbal violence, and dispersed only when a Soviet garrison force entered the city. The tension precipitated by the incident steadily mounted in ensuing months and peaked with the diffusion of a blood libel in August 1945. On August 11, marauders attacked a synagogue in the Kazimierz quarter, pelted the worshippers with stones, and set the building ablaze using Torah scrolls as fuel. Afterward, an incensed mob, including students and onlookers in uniform, stormed a Jewish public building and Jewish homes nearby. The rioting persisted for more than twenty-four hours, during which time a woman Holocaust survivor was murdered and five Jews badly injured. The pogrom, strongly similar in nature to those that swept the country at the onset of the Republican era and in the 1930s, included the looting of what remained of Jews’ property and a manhunt in which Jews were dragged into the street to be murdered. Additional examples follow. In Piaski, the Jews received a public demand in April 1945 to leave town within a week lest “appropriate measures” be taken against them.7 In September 1945, inhabitants of Gniewoszów (Kozienice Subdistrict) murdered five Jews.8 In March 1946, four Jews were murdered in Łódź, and in April two were murdered in Katowice. Poles hurled stones at the Zionist youth movements’ orphanages and training communes. They beset

 6 Gutman, Jews in Poland after World War II, 28–29.   7 See Engel, Between Liberation and Flight, 51; idem, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946,” Yad Vashem Studies 26, 43–85.   8 Yakov Goldstein, Autumn Memoirs (Ghetto Fighters House: Beyahad, 2007, in Hebrew), 1–81.

Epilogue

Jews in the streets and on public transportation. In small towns to which Jewish survivors had returned, the abuse was worse still. In July 1945, representatives of the Jewish community in Poland appealed in writing to the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Cardinal Sapieha, a key personality in the Church. The signatories stressed the murders being perpetrated by armed gangs against Jews who had survived the Holocaust, expressed their concern about the ongoing anti-Jewish campaign that proposed to wipe out the survivors, and entreated Sapieha to speak out publicly on the topic. Several days later, Sapieha issued a pastoral letter that, while not mentioning Polish Jewry, underscored, among other points, the duty of maintaining the morel hygiene of the Polish nation and stated that vengeance against and exploitation of the suffering of “our brethren should be considered a grave sin, if not a crime […].”9 In December 1945, a hand grenade was lobbed at the “Jews’ House” in Kielce; although no one was injured, the incident threw the residents into a panic. A delegation from the local Jewish committee appealed to the district bishop, Czesław Kaczmarek, asking him to act to attenuate the antisemitic savagery that was sweeping the town. In a discussion with the Jewish representatives, Kaczmarek spoke his mind. It would be best, he stated, for the Jews to return to their traditional occupations because their influence on the new regime in Poland and their positions in the public administration and the bureaucracy were arousing the Polish residents’ resistance. One could understand the Poles’ resentment of them, he added.10 The anti-Jewish violence and persecution in Poland crested in 1946. Lethal attacks on Jews accelerated in May and June. Twenty-four Jews were murdered in the first week of May alone. On May 4, armed Poles assaulted twenty-six members of the Gordonia movement commune in Kraków and murdered fourteen of them. On May 14, the secretary of the Jewish community organization in Skarżysko-Kamienna was assassinated; on May 22, the body of an activist in the local Jewish welfare system was found. On June 3, 1946, several women, children, and elderly were killed or injured in an attack by a group of young Poles in Katowice on a train arriving from the Soviet Union with Jewish repatriates aboard.11   9 Natalia Aleksiun, “Postwar Attitudes and Memory: The Polish Catholic Church and the Jewish Question in Poland, 1944–1948,” Yad Vashem Studies 33, 117–118. 10 Ibid, 110. 11 Engel, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946,” 33–34; idem, Between Liberation and Flight, 129.

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In March 1946, the CKŻP (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce—Central Committee of the Jews of Poland) presented the Polish Government with a series of appeals concerning the dangers that Jews were facing in all parts of the country. In response, senior government officials, including the President and the Prime Minister, issued unequivocal public statements decrying the attacks on Jews and promising to take all requisite actions to uproot the phenomenon from Polish society. Concurrently, attempts to co-opt the various Church echelons in the public censure of antisemitism continued. These efforts focused particularly on August Cardinal Hlond, head of the Catholic Church in Poland. Hlond, however, refrained from condemning antisemitism in Poland, instead accusing the Jews of hijacking the government and repressing the Christians. Most of the Catholic press in Poland also maintained silence in regard to the anti-Jewish violence. Just the same, there was a group in the Polish cultural elite that denounced the violence vehemently, and several articles in Catholic journals urged restraint and sagacity in the treatment of national issues—a call that one may construe as a stance against the violence.12 These measures, however, were unavailing; the antisemitic manifestations continued. Ahead of Passover 1946, notices appeared across Poland warning Polish parents to watch over their children because too many children had been vanishing. One such advertisement told about a rabbi who had been nabbed in a synagogue with his white robe bloodstained and a photo of a girl who had been stabbed to death next to him.13 In May 1946, Michael Zylberberg, secretary of the postwar Komitet Organizacyjny Żydowskich Kongregacji Wyznaniowych w Polsce (Committee of the Organization of Jewish Religious Congregations in Poland), met with Cardinal Hlond. In their talk, which was defined as private, the prelate refused to issue a public statement to his flock lest it be construed as representative of the official stance of the Church.14 The Jews’ sense of physical insecurity mounted during this time, peaking in early July 1946 in the Kielce pogrom, which prompted tens of thousands of Jews to leave Poland.

12 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 228; Aleksiun, “Postwar Attitudes and Memory,” 120– 121. 13 Ibid., 119. 14 David Kahane, After the Deluge: An Attempt to Revive the Religious Communities in Poland after World War II (1944–1949) ( Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1981, in Hebrew, 60–61).

Epilogue

The Pogrom—July 4, 1946 On July 1, 1946, a Polish eight-year-old named Henryk Błaszczyk went missing in Kielce. His father, Walenty, a local cobbler, set out to find him. This failing, his worried parents apprised the police of the disappearance, in response to which notices about the missing child were pasted up on the walls of buildings in town. As word about the vanished Polish child spread through Kielce, sundry rumors filled the air. Two days later, on July 3, Henryk came home and said that a Jew had kidnapped him and put him in a cellar in one of the houses. He had spent two days there without food, he stated, and only thanks to “some kid” who brought him a chair had he been able to escape through a window. The next morning, July 4, Walenty Błaszczyk and his son headed for the police station to give testimony. On the way, they were joined by an acquaintance. As the three of them passed the house at 7 Planty Street, the acquaintance instructed Henryk to point at the building and to acknowledge that it was in its cellar that he had been held against his will. When Henryk was asked if he could identify the man who had locked him in the cellar, he pointed at a short male who wore a green hat and happened to be standing near the house at that moment. At the police station, about 200 meters from the residence on Planty Street, the boy’s account was deemed credible and the station chief ordered the arrest of the man in the green hat. Six policemen, accompanied by Błaszczyk père and Błaszczyk fils, set out to detain the “suspect,” one Kalman Singer, a Jew. Singer was taken to the station house and beaten by one of the policemen. Then the police began straightaway to spread rumors that Jews had held the boy captive in the cellar and stated that they should be pummeled for the crime.15 At this time ( July 1946), some 240,000 Jews were living in Poland, most having come from the USSR under the repatriation accord that Poland and the Soviet government had concluded after the war.16 Under the terms of the agreement, refugees who had held Polish citizenship until September 17, 1939, were allowed to return from the Soviet Union. Most of the returnees were directed to several cities in western Poland and a few survivors from Kielce who returned to this city shortly after the war moved back into their homes in the center of town. As time passed, however, matters started to get complicated, for reasons including the arrival in the city of police and employees of 15 Bożena Szaynok, “The Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946,” Yad Vashem Studies 22, ­199–235. See also Sara Bender, “After the Germans Left,” Ha’aretz ( July 4, 1996), Section B, 4 [in Hebrew]. 16 Gutman, The Jews in Poland after World War II, 13.

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the Ministry of Internal Security who, according to the plan, were supposed to be housed in apartments in the city center. The Jews were evicted from their homes and transferred to two buildings that had been reserved for them— one at 7/9 Planty Street (the aforementioned “Jews’ House”) and the other at 18/20 Focha Street. In May 1945, seventy-nine Jews were living in Kielce; their numbers grew to 306 by early 1946 and receded to 163 in May of that year. The forty or so Jews who inhabited the Jews’ House were members of a commune affiliated with the Hanoar Hazioni youth movement (more broadly, the Hanoar Hazioni-Akiva Union); having survived the Holocaust, they had gathered in Kielce to take agricultural training ahead of emigration to the Land of Israel. The local Jewish committee, chaired by Dr. Severyn Kahane, who had survived the war under the borrowed identity of Mieczysław Buczek, was also headquartered in this building.17 Daniel Wiener, born in Kielce, survived the war and returned to Kielce in July 1945 in hopes of finding surviving kin. Not encountering any Jew, he decided one day to walk over to the home of one Kaffar, a Polish friend from before the war. The two, delighted to be reunited, spent the whole day feasting and exchanging experiences. Shortly before midnight, Wiener showered and went to sleep in a comfortable bed with a pillow and clean sheets. Too exhilarated to fall asleep, at 1:00 a.m. he overheard people who had reached the apartment talking about Poles whom the Russians had interned in the local lockup and the need to release them. One of the visitors, mistakenly opening the door to Wiener’s room, asked Kaffar who the sleeping man was. When Kaffar replied, “It’s my Jew,” the guests suggested to him that he “wipe him out right now.” The visitors remained in the flat, drank themselves to inebriation, discussed how they would murder the Jews who had settled in Kielce, and ultimately fell asleep. At 5:00 a.m., Wiener managed to flee from his Polish friend’s home. In the street, he asked a woman who was scrubbing the sidewalk whether she knew where Jews were living in the vicinity. She directed him to the building on Planty Street, where he encountered dozens of Jews, including some whom he had known in Kielce before the war. Wiener advised them of what he had heard in his Polish friend’s home that night and warned them about what they were facing. “We aren’t afraid of the Poles anymore,” they replied. “We have 17 The Provisional Central Committee of Polish Jews, officially established in November 1944, relocated to Warsaw in January 1945 when that city was liberated. In 1945, ten district Jewish committees were set up in Poland; they resembled cultural and welfare institutions for the integration of the tens of thousands of Jews who had survived and flooded Poland in the first half of 1946.

Epilogue

weapons, there’s a police station nearby, and we have the Russians.”18 Wiener spent the next two days searching for family members and, failing to find any, decided to leave town. On the morning of July 4, 1946, it was discovered at the Jews’ House in Kielce that Singer, an Orthodox young man who had survived the concentration camps, had been arrested and taken to the police station. Dr. Kahane set out to demand his release. By the time he returned to the Jews’ House, the rumor about Henryk Błaszczyk’s abduction and testimony to the police was spreading quickly through town and enflaming tempers against the Jews. In short order, an agitated Polish mob gathered in front of the Jews’ House, convinced that more than a dozen Christian children were being held inside for the use of their blood in the baking of matzo according to the ancient tradition or—in a revised version—in transfusions for wounded Russian soldiers. The libel was augmented by another rumor: that the Christian children imprisoned in the building were already dead.19 Rafael Blumenfeld, a member of the collective that had taken up residence in the Jews’ House, subsequently described the situation: Incited masses crowd in front of the building and along the nearby streets clutching rods and stones. Hysterical cries ring out in the void: “Death to the Jews, we’ll finish Hitler’s work” […]. The mob roils and begins to hurl stones at the lower-story windows of the building […]. We slam the doors of the commune shut and move heavy objects such as tables, cupboards, and beds toward them as bulwarks against the marauders.20

Among the first to mass around the Jews’ House were groups of women who began to issue antisemitic chants and goad the masses. An hour later, at approximately 11:00 a.m., two military vehicles stopped at the building and several soldiers armed with automatic rifles bounded from them: Only a few moments pass and suddenly the sound of shattering glass is heard […] accompanied by the detonation of rounds fired directly at the 18 Wiener eventually emigrated to Canada and documented the events in his memoirs, Daniel’s Story, 61–62. 19 Andrzej Garlicki, “Dom na Plantach,” Polityka 27 ( July 2001), 60. 20 Rafael Blumenfeld, “The Hanoar Hazioni Akiva Union Collective in Kielce before and after the Pogrom,” Massuah 13 (1985, in Hebrew), 185. See also Yisroel Turkeltaub, “Chmielniker kurbonoys in Keltser pogrom,” Pinkes Chmielnik, 927–928.

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Police also reached the building. Several Jews living in the house brandished the licensed weapons that they held for defensive purposes. Dr. Kahane called the district administration and advised it that thousands of people were surrounding the building and might break in. In the churning commotion, policemen removed Berl Frydman from the building; he was murdered by the seething mob. Firefighters who arrived to disperse the crowd by the use of pressure hoses were repelled and retraced their steps. At this time, a report about the troubles on Planty Street was sent to Bishop Kaczmarek. Since the bishop was out of town, Father Roman Zelek headed for the Jews’ House. On the way, he asked a Polish officer what was going on and, told that all was under control, he decided to go home. The policemen broke into the building and entered the apartments where the Jews were living. […] A Polish Army officer appeared and demanded that we hand over the weapons. After I gave him the handgun, he demanded that [I] hand over the ammunition. I went up to my room and found it totally demolished. Everything had been plundered and ruined. The kibbutz [collective] room across the hall had already been emptied of people […]. The soldiers went down the hallway firing their weapons, thus killing and wounding the young people there […]. We heard the ringing of a telephone. Dr. Severyn, who had been waiting for a call from the district governor all that time, entered the room where the phone was […]. Suddenly soldiers broke into the room, shot him, and killed him on the spot.22

Concurrently, police began to throw Jews out of the windows into the street and the mob outside crashed through the doors of the building and shoved its way in. Rabbi David Kahane, a Holocaust survivor from Lwów who

21 Blumenfeld, 111. 22 Testimony Jehiel Alpert, Sefer Kielce, 254. After the war, Alpert chaired the district committee of the Ihud Zionist organization in Kielce. See also testimony Alpert, Yad Vashem Archives 0.3/2987, 23–33.

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served after the war as Chief Jewish Chaplain of the Polish Army and chair of the Jewish Religious Council in Poland, wrote about this in his memoirs: […] At noon their numbers climbed into the thousands […]. The organizers paraded through the crowd, inciting them and urging [them] to storm the building and kill the Jews. Among their slogans were: “Death to the Jews!” “Death to our children’s murderers!” and “We’ll finish Hitler’s work!”23

To thwart the mob from entering the Jews’ House, police, members of the Security Service (Wojewódzki Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, WUBP), and other security people ringed the building and took up vigil at its three entrances. Unable to disperse those who had gathered on the plaza in front of the house, the police asked the army for assistance. The behavior of the police inside the building gave the mob a second wind; it began to throw stones at the building and shouted that the Jews were murderers of Polish children. The Jews trapped in the house were thrown outside, abandoned to the mob, and beaten with planks, rods, and any other handy weapons.24 Subsequent testimony by a Polish policeman made it clear that the Jews who had been evicted from the house were dragged to a nearby square and murdered brutally. The soldiers who had encircled the building did not intervene; several even helped to remove other Jews.25 Observing their refusal to descend to the courtyard of the building, one Polish policeman shouted at the Jews, “The Germans didn’t have time to wipe you out but we’ll finish the job.” The witness continued: “The mob took this as a signal to storm the building […]. They began to beat, murder, and smash everything they laid their hands on [...].”26 Briefly the police and the soldiers managed to push the multitude out of the building and evacuate the dead and the wounded to the municipal hospital. The district authorities contacted the municipal police and demanded the dispatch of a riot-dispersion squad to the site of the riot. The police refused, 23 Kahane, After the Deluge, 62. In late November 1944, when he reached Lwów from Lublin, Rabbi Dr. David Kahane met with General Michał Rola-Żymierski, the Polish minister for military affairs, who named him Chief Jewish Chaplain of the Polish Army. 24 Hayim Grade, “Kielce,” tr. from Yiddish to Hebrew by Avigdor Ha’ meiri, Davar, 1948, 220. Grade (1910–1982), Yiddish poet and novelist. 25 Szaynok, “The Pogrom in Kielce,” 162–169. See also Jerzy Daniel, Żyd w zielonym Kapeluszu (Kielce: Scriptum, 1996), 30–46. 26 Kahane, After the Deluge, 62. See also Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Di levaya fun de Keltser kedoyshim,” Der naye lebn, 23(48) ( July 12, 1946).

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stating that although they had such a unit, its members had been busy the previous night in operations against members of the resistance and could not undertake another mission.27 At around noon, representatives of the Polish Labor Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR, the ruling party), soldiers and army officers, the commander of the Soviet units in Poland, and the commander of the Polish internal security forces reached Planty Street. The soldiers fired in the air and managed to hold the crowd at bay. The situation seemed to have calmed. Elsewhere in town, however, brigands continued to batter and murder Jews and the spasms of hate escalated. At approximately 12:30 p.m., during lunch break at the Ludwików steel mill, located next to the Jews’ House, some 500 workers broke through the factory gates and headed into Planty Street. Armed with knives, poles, keys, and metal implements, they crossed through the army ranks easily and broke into the Jews’ House. The pogrom reignited, resulting in the murder of another twenty or so Jews.28 Violence continued elsewhere in Kielce. At 3:30 p.m., Avraham Moskowicz, Regina Fisch, and Regina’s infant son were forced out of an apartment at 15 Leonarda Street and murdered in a location out of town. “That day, July 4, the rioters also attacked the Częstochowa–Kielce train. The engineer deliberately slowed the train; all the Jews were pushed out and murdered.”29 The marauders also stripped the victims’ bodies of watches, clothing, shoes, and cash. In the afternoon, army units from Warsaw reached Kielce and dispersed the rabble that, together with the Ludwików workers, numbered more than 2,000. The Jewish dead and wounded were taken to St. Alexander Hospital; uninjured survivors were led to the local stadium and the offices of the Security Service. That day, July 4, 1946, at least forty-seven Jews, including children and pregnant women, were murdered and more than fifty were injured. For one 27 Grade, “Kielce,” 220. 28 Ibid., 220–221. 29 Testimony Jehiel Alpert, YVA, O.3/2985. See also Sefer Kielce, 256; Daniel, Żyd w zielonym Kapeluszu, 44–48; and Karolczak, “Kielce 4 lipca 1946,” 2–3. Brunon Piątek, a Polish inhabitant of Kielce who worked at the Ludwików foundry, wrote in his memoirs that on the day of the pogrom, as he rode his bicycle toward the train station to greet his wife, he observed a large number of men standing on the platform. The moment the train pulled in, they began to force people who were identifiable as Jews to detrain. Immediately afterward, Poles assaulted the Jews with stones and rods that they had torn off the brakes of the railroad cars, murdering them. Testimony Piątek, YVA, M.49.E/212.

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whole day, a collective of some 200 Jews had been abandoned to a violent horde that acted with tacit consent. No one among the police, the Church, or Polish public circles at the location came out to defend the beleaguered victims. Of all the anti-Jewish violence that swept Poland in 1945–1946, the Kielce pogrom marked the pinnacle. What arguments were offered in explanation of the slaughter? Postwar Poland was going through a political crisis, precipitated not only by the entrenchment of a regime that much of Polish society loathed but also by the post-liberation shattering of the cement that had held together the segments of this society and its political and ideological systems during the occupation. Once the era of shared resistance to the German occupier had passed, prewar violent tensions and rivalries, temporarily suspended during the occupation due to the common cause of opposing the Nazis, surfaced afresh. The absence of a democratic political tradition in Poland and the intrusion of a foreign military and political player—the Soviet Army and the Soviet apparatus—propelled the political rivals into a blood-soaked collision that no force could impede.30 It was a difficult time, clashing forces often descending into outright civil war in which nationalist bands hunted down and murdered loyalists of the new regime in large numbers. The political forces that gave the new people’s government its underpinnings had a shaky hold on the population. What is more, the new regime did not protect the Jews energetically because, in its struggle for existence, it did not stand to gain in popularity by doing so. Instead, it sought to explain the assaults on the Jews as but one of many manifestations of its opponents’ campaign to subvert people’s rule and show the Free World that it could not maintain sound daily life and impose order on the factionalized, conflicted country. In the resulting situation, the Jews believed that the new regime did not dare to come out openly against the Polish thugs and repress the antisemitism that they represented.31 Even after it was over, the pogrom on Planty Street did not attenuate the anti-Jewish climate in Kielce. Manhunts for Jews continued in the city streets. Poles of Jewish appearance also sustained attacks, humiliations, and vicious beatings. The pogrom atmosphere spread to the suburbs of Kielce and the surrounding localities. Polish train passengers who noticed Jews aboard beat them and threw them off. In a demonstration next to the Jews’ House on the 30 Daniel Blatman, “The Kielce Pogrom—Polish Antisemitism or the Outcome of a Political Struggle?” Bishvil ha-Zikkaron 13 ( June 1996, in Hebrew), 6. 31 Gutman, “Jews in Poland after the War,” 27–28.

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afternoon of the pogrom day, anti-Jewish slogans were chanted, and in a consultation at the local office of the National Council, the district chief of police still insisted that his institution had information about Jews’ having murdered Polish children. That evening, representatives of the various political factions met with the deputy district governor to reach understandings. At the encounter, the deputy district governor censured the Council of Bishops (the Kuria) for the apathy that it had displayed during the events. The discussants worked out the wording of a leaflet that was to be disseminated to cool the tempers. Concurrently, the CKŻP sent Dr. Adolf Avraham Berman and Yitzhak Zuckerman to Kielce; they delivered food and clothing to the Jewish townspeople. That evening, the authorities announced a curfew, the police declared a state of emergency, and large military and police forces were dispatched to the town.32 Four days later, on the afternoon of July 8, the funerals took place. The victims of the pogrom were interred in the old Jewish cemetery of Kielce, at the Pakosz grange. The wake was two kilometers long. Townspeople lined the streets as the procession passed and some 10,000 escorted the dead, including many Poles who participated by order of the authorities. A French photographer who commemorated the pogrom and the funeral subsequently testified that the wake was headed by a delegation from the Ludwików foundry and a special army unit tasked with state funerals and ceremonies. Marching behind them were delegations from the PPS, the PPR, municipal and district professional organizations and trade unions, youth organizations, Polish Jews, and Jews from various Diaspora communities. At the graveyard, the minister for national reconstruction, the minister of internal security, the mayor of Kielce, Rabbi David Kahane, and Adolf Berman delivered remarks. After the eulogies, groups of Jews remained behind with Rabbi Kahane at the rows of graves. They recited Jewish prayers and offered additional eulogies. As they began to say the Kaddish, it started to rain.33 More than forty coffins were laid side-by-side in a common grave sixty meters long. Subsequently, a red sandstone monument was installed over the tomb in the form of an obelisk with an inscription in Hebrew and Polish: “Buried here are martyrs who were murdered on Tammuz 5, 5706 [ July 4, 1946], in Kielce. May God avenge their blood.” 32 Szaynok, “Pogrom in Kielce,” 170–180. 33 Daniel, Żyd w zielonym Kapeluszu, 54–56.

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This marked the end of the vestigial Jewish presence in Kielce; nearly all of the rest had been taken to Treblinka in the summer of 1942. The trial of those accused of murdering Jews commenced the day after the funeral, July 9, 1946, before a high military tribunal that had come especially to Kielce. Armed soldiers were stationed in front of the building. At the end of the three-day trial, twelve Poles were convicted”; nine of them were sentenced to death and were executed on July 12. Additional trials took place in September–December 1946. The thirty defendants who then faced prosecution before the district court in Kielce included several Polish policemen and soldiers who were accused mainly of looting property from the Jews’ House and antisemitic incitement during the pogrom. One of the soldiers, convicted of stabbing an injured Jew to death, received a life sentence. Poles who were accused of battery and accessory to murder received prison sentences; several defendants were exonerated outright. Local officials of various ranks were also arrested and prosecuted in Warsaw in December 1946. They were sentenced to short prison terms and, once released, appointed to new posts.34 In a work titled Najnowsze dzieje Żydow w Polsce w zarysie (“Modern history of the Jews in Poland”), it is reported that strikes broke out in Poland after the verdicts were handed down. In Łódź, a textile plant was idled. In Radom, railroad workers walked out. Strikes erupted in other towns. Workers demanded an opportunity to avenge themselves on the Jews and threatened to take to the streets.35 Shortly after reaching Kielce, Berman and Zuckerman met with district officials to decide how to treat the Jewish townspeople who had survived the pogrom. It was decided that the remnant, including those in the municipal hospital, would be sent on to Łódź in a special Red Cross train. The injured were removed from the hospital and, due to concern about further assaults, the convoy set out under military escort and an armored vehicle. When the train reached Łódź, the injured and the other survivors were handed over to the town’s Jewish committee for care.36

34 Daniel, Żyd w zielonym Kapeluszu, 58–70; see also Urbański, Społeszność żydowska w Kielcach, 40. 35 Garlicki, “Dom na Plantach,” 62. 36 Pinkas Hakehillot Lublin-Kielce, 500.

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Fallout and Consequences The pogrom in Kielce had a traumatic effect on the Jews in Poland and throughout the Jewish world, and reverberated widely in Poland and abroad. Polish writers and intellectuals loudly protested the very fact that the murder of Jews continued in postwar and post-Holocaust Poland and lamented the perseverance of the Nazi spirit there even after Nazi Germany had been trounced. The Polish government and public figures who remonstrated against racist discrimination acted vigorously to keep the pogroms from spreading. The main portion of blame for what happened in Kielce was laid at the feet of Polish rightwing circles and petty officials who had done nothing to prevent it and failed to crack down even afterward. In the aftermath of the pogrom, the clergy felt that it was being arm-twisted to react to the excoriation that it faced from its political rivals, Jewish organizations, and even liberal Catholic intellectuals.37 The Polish historian Krystyna Kersten looked into the questions of postwar Polish antisemitism and the Jews’ empathy for the formative regime of the country. In a 1992 book, she wrote that the image of the Jews in Poland had not changed since the 1930s, its characteristics persisting during the war and after it as well. Whenever Polish society underwent one of its countless crises, particularly in the Second Republic period and during the German occupation (1939–1945) but also in the initial postwar years and the time of the Communist consolidation, the Żydokumuna equation, born at the dawn of the twentieth century—the Jew as a revolutionary who subverted and reviled Polish nationalism—gained acceptance in Polish society. The Jew-as-Communist image, which endured even during the German occupation and the obliteration of the country’s large Jewish collective, led in the early postwar years to an almost total identification of the Jews with the new regime in Poland. The main reason for this was the prominence of Jews in high government positions, an especially important factor because several of them were held responsible for the dire terror that the new regime brought to bear against the nationalist circles. In Kersten’s opinion, Communists of Jewish origin who labored to establish pro-Soviet rule in postwar Poland and began their activity while riding out the war in the Soviet Union contributed to the derogatory image of the Jews and made it easier to identify all of Polish Jewry with the detested new regime.38 37 Aleksiun, “The Polish Catholic Church and the Jewish Question,” 123. 38 Krystyna Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, kumunizm: Anatomia pólprawd 1939–68 (Warsaw: Niezalezna oficyna wydawnicz, 1992), 9–63. See also Daniel Blatman, “Polish Antisemitism and ‘JudeoCommunism’: Historiography and Memory,” East European Jewish Affairs 27(1) (1997), 35–41.

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The anti-Jewish troubles in postwar Poland and their climax, the Kielce pogrom, may be explained against the backdrop of the resentment, suspicion, and reciprocal accusations on the part of the Jewish and Polish populations, which rested on parallel sets of stereotypes that thwarted any possibility of mutual understanding. The Jews, for their part, did not forgive the Poles for turning their backs on them as they suffered in the Holocaust, the failure to help Jews who attempted to escape extermination, and the public displays of delight over and empathy with the murder of Jews. The Poles, in turn, begrudged the Jews for the hostility that they displayed toward Poland’s national aspirations, the aid they had extended to the Soviets when the latter annexed the eastern territories of the country at the beginning of the war (September 1939–June 1941), and their collaboration with the Stalinist government that arose in Poland after the liberation. According to Joanna Michlic, it was NSZ squads that organized the anti-Jewish violence in the initial postwar years. More Jews were attacked during that time than in the entire interwar era with the exception of 1918, and leaflets against the Communist regime immediately after the war invoked anti-Jewish terms that had been current in the interwar Republic. After World War II, Poles again considered the Jews a national force that might ruin Poland’s future—a basic antisemitic talking point that the Polish Right had promoted in the 1930s. The post-World War II violence, Michlic contends, had the further goal of ridding Poland of ethnic minorities—she describes it as an “ethnic cleansing”—and Poles saw the Jews as a threat to their population. In Michlin’s estimation, due to the climate of terror that the new regime’s secret service (the UB) had fomented, Poles feared for both their property and their lives, allowing the myth of the Jews as new regime’s executors to gain traction in their thinking. Thus one may also understand why the Poles believed in blood libels at this time and how these allegations amplified the perception that the Jewish enemy murdered Poles and conspired to control the world, with the Poles as his slaves.39 The Polish Church, possibly the most important of the players that could have alleviated tensions after the war and could have denounced the attack on the Jews, reacted to the pogrom with mixed messages. By and large, clerics offered no response at all, it being argued that this anti-Jewish event was not religious, let alone Catholic, in nature. The Council of Bishops in Kielce (the Kuria) and the Kielce District governor did urge the townspeople and those in 39 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 215–219.

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the subdistricts to stay calm. A different and exceptional stance was taken by Teodor Kubina, the Bishop of Częstochowa, who on July 7, 1946, stated the following in a joint manifesto with local institutions: Nothing justifies the crime perpetrated in Kielce, an act that should outrage both God and man. The reasons and the background for this crime should be charged to dastardly fanaticism and ignorance that have no justification whatsoever […]. Everything published about ritual murders is false. No member of Christian society in Kielce, Częstochowa, or anywhere else in Poland has been harmed by Jews for religious-ritual purposes. We know of no case in which Jews abducted a Christian child. All rumors to this effect the products of criminals who disseminate them deliberately to confuse simple people and foment criminality.40

On July 11, 1946, a week after the pogrom, under the pressure of American journalists, August Cardinal Hlond, doyen of the Catholic priesthood in Poland and the possessor of definitive spiritual and moral authority, issued a statement that included the following: […] The Catholic Church decries murder whenever and wherever. It denounces it in Poland as well, whether those murdered are Poles or Jews, be it in Kielce or in other corners of the Polish Republic […]. The course of the wretched and saddening events in Kielce proves that they should not be attributed to racism. They sprouted against a totally different, painful, and tragic background. These events are a ghastly tragedy that fills my heart with desolation and woe […]. During the occupation, Poles concealed Jews and saved them from mortal peril. Many Jews survived thanks to Polish people and Polish priests. The benign treatment of the Jews has been sundered because Jews who seized senior government positions are trying to impose on Poland a regime that most Poles revile. This is a dangerous game that induces much stress. It is true that violent political confrontations in Poland are claiming Jewish casualties, but the number of Polish victims is immeasurably greater […].41

40 Garlicki, “Dom na Plantach,” 62. 41 On Cardinal Hlond’s remarks, see Kahane, In the Vise of Hate [in Hebrew], 52–54.

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In his statement, not only did Hlond refrain from unequivocal censure of the pogrom and explicit condemnation of the blood libels; he also granted the murderers the status of “policymakers.” Hlond practiced duplicity—speaking in one voice when facing a representative of the Jews and another when addressing the public. Hlond did not hesitate to accuse the Jews, who were grieving for their relatives and fellows at this time, of conspiring or playing a central role in the political developments that had placed Poland under Soviet rule. Jews who had been fringe players in postwar Poland were perceived not only by the enflamed mob but also by Poland’s spiritual shepherds as factors of influence who were impacting a country beset by continual ferment and positioned at the locus of global struggles. As other members of the clergy hunkered behind their wall of silence, the Vatican press justified the Polish Church’s neglect on the grounds that the troubles fell outside its remit.42 S. L. Shneiderman, an American Jewish journalist who was in Kielce at the time of the pogrom and witnessed the day’s events, subsequently described how a group of foreign newspapermen responded to Hlond’s statement. The journalists, through the offices of the Jewish committee in Lublin, turned to the Bishop of Lublin, later Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, and asked him to release a statement of his own about the reasons for the pogrom in Kielce. Wyszyński traced the anti-Jewish events to a general animus toward politically active Jews at this time. In effect, then, Wyszyński repeated Hlond’s remarks. The Germans, Wyszyński added, had sought to exterminate the Jews because they disseminated Communism—but he himself condemned all forms of murder. Asked about his stance on the ritual-murder libel, Wyszyński stated that the question of Jews’ use of blood had not been clarified once and for all.43 After the Kielce pogrom, the Jewish question became a regular topic of attention in the Catholic press in Poland, which disclaimed the allegations of Church responsibility for the bloodbath and even denied the very existence of strong anti-Jewish passions in Poland. Most initial responses in the Catholic press immediately after the murders were defensive. Soon enough, however, a

42 Kahane, After the Deluge, 67. See also Gutman, Jews in Poland after World War II, 37. A.J. Kochavi, “The Catholic Church and Antisemitism in Poland following World War II as Reflected in British Diplomatic Documents,” Gal-Ed 11 (1989), 116–128 [in Hebrew]. See also Aleksiun, “The Polish Catholic Church and the Jewish Question,” 124–127. 43 S.L. Shneiderman, “Tsvishn shrek un hofenung: a rayze iber dem nayem Poyln,” Dos Polishe identum 25, (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-Farband fun Polishe Idn in Argentina, 1947), 129–130.

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watershed was crossed: the press adopted the strategy of blaming the Jews on various grounds and rebuffed all complaints against the Church as unjust.44 The pogrom in Kielce continued to churn in Polish public life. The Prime Minister, Edward Osóbka Morawski, denounced it trenchantly and bemoaned the return to Kielce of the vile Nazi spirit that had rampaged in Auschwitz and Majdanek a short time earlier. In several cases, workers attending public assemblies at their plants expressed their disgust over the murder of the Jews. Individual Jews, aided by a special Jewish defense committee, armed themselves, and young members of the community, foremost from the Zionist pioneering youth movements, took training in armed defense against antisemitic hooligans. The pogrom created an atmosphere of distress and alarm; the survivors experienced a growing sense of existential danger. The state of the dreadstricken Jews of Poland worsened as a wave of assaults against Jews swept the country. Jews who had thought to reestablish their lives in Poland were disabused of their hopes and began to emigrate en masse. Within three months of the pogrom in Kielce, some 60,000 Jews had left Poland via the Bricha movement. Decades after the massacre, many researchers continued to debate its causes and the Polish public kept it on its agenda. The question of who had set the whole thing in motion still burned. The reactionary forces of the day, some claimed, did it in order to plunge Poland into a civil war that would justify the need for an even stiffer crackdown on the internal enemy. Conversely, said others, the new regime perpetrated the events to avenge itself on Polish society, which had handed it a disappointing message in a plebiscite held four days before the pogrom, and to distract foreign attention from the uncomfortable (to the regime) results of the poll.45 The secret service was accused of having precipitated the events in order to threaten Jews who had taken up high positions in the new regime and to encourage them to flee from Poland to whatever destination, the farther the better. It was also argued that the pogrom had been an extension of Stalin’s Soviet arm, meant to show the world that the Poles could not settle their domestic problems and needed a fraternal helping hand. Some even insisted that it had been a Jewish provocation and that 44 Aleksiun, “The Polish Catholic Church and the Jewish Question,” 129–130. 45 Garlicki, “Dom na Plantach,” 60. In Garlicki’s opinion, the release of the plebiscite results was delayed because the authorities had decided to falsify them, a time-consuming process. Experts from Moscow labored to prepare the forgeries in a way that would convince Western public opinion of their veracity. The results were published eight days after the pogrom and were received in the West with utter indifference.

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“international Zionism” stood behind the deed, bringing on the violence in order to engage the world’s conscience and highlight the grim fate of Diaspora Jewry in hopes of obtaining the world powers’ consent to Jewish statehood.46 In his book Neighbors, Jan Tomasz Gross contends that the timeless undertone of suspicion of ritual murder underlay the anti-Jewish violence in Poland, it being believed that Jews used fresh blood of Christian children for the preparation of Passover matzo. Gross deems this to be a deeply entrenched belief among Catholic Poles and not only among those in faraway areas. Even after World War II rumors about Jews’ involvement in ritual murder continued to bring enraged Polish mobs into the streets of the country’s cities within minutes.47 The Kielce pogrom, another chapter in the history of Polish antisemitism, was an additional and especially powerful manifestation of the crisis in PolishJewish relations that had festered for years. One may see it as a link in a chain of murders and violence perpetrated by underground Fascist and antisemitic groups that had operated intensively against the ruling authorities since the 1930s. During the war, these groups, most of whose members aligned themselves with the Polish Right, had murdered thousands of Jews and hunted for hiding Jews, denounced them, and turned them over to the Germans. Their pretext for killing hundreds of Jews across Poland in 1945–1946 was twofold: treason against Poland and support of the pro-Communist government. It was the broad Polish public circles that backed these slogans that set the stage for the events that crested in the Kielce pogrom. The Jewish cemetery in Kielce was closed in 1967. In 1981, a monument was installed at the location, made of the 330 tombstones that had been desecrated and strewn about. In 1987, the graveyard was fenced in, the monument in memory of the victims of the program was revitalized, and a memorial to the Jewish children whom the Nazis had murdered in Kielce in May 1943 was established. In 1996, fifty years after the pogrom, Bogusław Ciesielski, the mayor of Kielce, asked forgiveness of the Jews at a memorial ceremony in town. Addressing a large audience that included guests from Israel, Ciesielski affirmed the impossibility of denying the fact that people in Kielce had taken up metal rods, stones, and planks to murder Jews who had previously been cruelly injured in the war. Seeking forgiveness was a basic gesture to them, he added.48 46 See article published upon the anniversary of the Kielce pogrom: Karolczak, “Kielce 4 lipca 1946 r.,” 1. The article is based on Daniel, Żyd w zielonym Kapeluszu, published in Poland that year. 47 Gross, Neighbors, 99–100. 48 Karolczak, “Kielce 4 lipca 1946 r.,” 1.

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The Polish violence against the Jews who had gathered in Poland after the war was triggered by many things, as this overview demonstrates. Its predominant motive, however, was a form of Polish antisemitism that drew on the vision of the Polish Right, centering on the aspiration to establish an ethnocentric Poland, new and free of Jews. It was no coincidence that 1946, the year of the Jews’ return to Poland from the USSR, was the most violent.

The Debate Continues The debate surrounding the Kielce pogrom persists to this day. Over the years, Polish historians have offered three versions in their attempts to explain what brought on the atrocity. One version claimed that the deep-seated, longenduring antisemitism of the Polish population and the exceptional corruption engendered by the five years of German occupation converged with the long-term effects of Nazi propaganda to induce the crime. The second account accuses the Polish Communists, agents of the new regime in postwar Poland, of perpetrating the pogrom in order to depict the Polish Right-wing underground as putrid and corrupt in the eyes of both domestic and world public opinion. The third rendering also blames the Polish Communists but adds the Soviet secret police to the roster of culprits.49 In 2006, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the pogrom, the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland50 published a book about the Kielce pogrom, including investigative pieces, critical revisitings, insights, and conclusions about the massacre.51 The book contains four articles: two by Bożena Szaynok, who had dealt with the pogrom in the early 1990s, and two on which the book is built.52 49 Jan Grabowski, “Rewriting the History of Polish–Jewish Relations from a Nationalist Perspective: The Recent Publications of the Institute of National Remembrance,” Yad Vashem Studies 36(1), 223. 50 This institute was established in 1998 to administer the vast archives of the Communist secret police in Poland. At that time, the Institute also received a far-reaching statutory and educational mandate to serve as a center for historical research and information. Notably, this entity is an agency of the Polish state; its goals are closely related with the political goals of the ruling Polish Government. 51 Łukasz Kamiński and Jan Żaryn, eds., Wokól pogromu kieleckiego (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006). 52 Ryszard Smietanka-Kruszelnicki, “Pogrom in Kielce—The Underground as Defendant,” and Kamiński and Żaryn, eds., Wokól pogromu kieleckiego, 26–79. See also Jan Żaryn, “The Catholic Church Hierarchy vis-à-vis Polish Jewish Relations between 1945–1947,” and Kamiński and Żaryn, eds., Wokól pogromu kieleckiego, 80–118.

Epilogue

Ryszard Smietanka-Kruszelnicki strains mightily to present his version of the events: after the pogrom, the Communist authorities attempted to incriminate the right-wing Polish underground and hold its members responsible. By means of copious documentation, however, Kruszelnicki tries to prove that the rightist Polish gangs were not strong in and around Kielce at that time and that the Communist regime faked evidence against its political enemies in order to misrepresent the struggle among Poland’s various political forces. The article leaves the unmistakable impression that the writer embraces the classic narrative, which held the Soviets responsible for what had happened. Jan Żaryn, the other co-editor of the book, strives to explain the stance of the Polish Catholic Church toward the Jews. He claims firmly and explicitly that the war had infected both the Poles and the Jews with moral corruption. Many Jews were swindlers, idlers, profiteers, and the like during the occupation but the Church, like individual Poles, helped the Jewish population even though the Jews had collaborated with the Soviets against the Poles in 1939– 1941, foremost in the eastern (Soviet-annexed) part of the country. In Żaryn’s opinion, the Jews were responsible for creating the stigma of collective ingratitude that had adhered to them in post-1945 Poland. That their participation in the ruling mechanisms of the new regime upset the priesthood and exacerbated its disillusionment with the Jews was also the latter’s fault, Żaryn maintains. In his preface to the book, Janusz Kurtyka, who headed the Institute of National Remembrance at the time, writes that the pogrom was undoubtedly a provocation that the Communist authorities planned in order to undermine confidence in their political rivals. Just as every pogrom in Tsarist Russia was inspired and, in some cases, managed by the Russian secret police, Kurtyka writes, the pogrom in Kielce was in no way novel.53 The main discussion in the book focuses on the provocation issue. The central argument is that the Soviets had provoked the pogrom in cohorts with the Polish regime, which was subordinate to the Soviets at the time, as opposed to an initiative by Poles who sought an opportune moment to shed the Jews’ blood and teach them once and for all that they no longer had anything to seek in Poland. According to this reasoning, Stalin, eager to avenge himself on Polish society, wished to show the world that the Poles could not cope with the problems they faced and needed help to sustain routine life in a normal country. The Polish historiography tends to stress only this one pogrom, overlooking the larger wave of anti-Jewish violence in 1945–1946. The bloodbath in 53 Kamiński and Jan Żaryn, eds., Wokól pogromu kieleckiego, 7–8.

295

296

Epilogue

Kielce stands out as the one case of anti-Jewish mayhem that is discussed in Polish popular and research literature alike. According to Joanna Michlic, most Polish historians who researched the determinants and planners of the Kielce pogrom have argued for years, like the study on Kielce put out by the Institute of National Remembrance, that the incident was a provocation by special units of the Communist regime. Few consider it a spontaneous event and more than a few see no reason to investigate the role of the local Polish population in what happened, due to lack of public interest.54 It is hard to understand how even today, more than sixty-five years after the fact, certain Polish scholars acting in the name of a highly important institute that operates in the service of the Polish Ministry of Justice continue to cling to the thesis, raised six decades ago, of the Kielce pogrom as a Soviet provocation. The outrage in Kielce should be regarded has having been provoked by the Polish antisemitic spirit, an event in which an aroused and goaded Polish rabble that fully believed the Jewish blood libel set out to spill the blood of several dozen Jews who had survived an accursed war. The Polish angst in relation to the Jews, widespread in interwar Poland, endured after World War II. Poles then held the Jews responsible for the Soviet takeover of their country’s governance and deemed them to be collaborators with the new regime, responsible for the Communists’ crimes against the Polish opposition and Polish society at large. It was at this time that the Poles, continuing to portray the Jews as utter enemies of Poland and of themselves, sought to rid themselves of even the rump Jewish population that the country retained. Jerzy Jedlicki, one of Poland’s most prominent intellectuals at the present writing, writes about a “Polish national reckoning.” He wonders about where the emphasis in the collective memory will ultimately come to rest: on the thousands of Poles who saved Jews during the war or on those who collaborated with the German occupiers, induced the deaths of innumerable Jews, and abetted the Jewish tragedy with their hatred and dehumanization? Jedlicki objects to the erecting of a barrier between heroism and baseness, between compassion and ruthlessness. “[…] We cannot maintain the affirmative side without the negative side […]. Both extremes […] the rescuers […] and those who doomed [ Jews] to death […] came from all walks of society and inhabited a social milieu that was indifferent to the fate of their Jewish neighbors […].”55 Jedlicki, who stresses that Poland was one of the countries most affected by the 54 Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 216. 55 Jan Jedlicki, “How Does One Cope With This?” in Paz (ed.), The Polish Reckoning, 213–214.

Epilogue

antisemitic obsession, also claims that the Holocaust not only failed to change the value aspect of the Poles’ position but even exacerbated existing discord. “What others regarded as the most ghastly event of the twentieth century,” he says, “was for some a meaningless episode.”56 Another book that appeared upon the sixtieth anniversary of the pogrom is Fear, authored by Jan Tomasz Gross57 of Neighbors fame. In this opus, Gross takes up the Kielce pogrom and attempts to estimate its impact on the Polish nation and long-term events. His j’accuse embraces the Polish Church, the Communists, the Poles in Kielce, and anyone who in his opinion expedited the slaughter. In his Conclusions chapter, Gross rules out all but one possible explanation for the extreme antisemitism that overtook Poland immediately after the war: the result of an opportunity that the Polish population had exercised during the war. To his mind, postwar Poles not only considered Jews a collective threat to the economic and security status quo but also feared the shock that they dealt to their clean Christian conscience due to their having participated in looting Jews’ property and acquiescing in the Nazis’ murderous antisemitic incitement. In Gross’ opinion, the motive for the postwar assaults on the Jews, which were conceived as an attempt to rid the country of them once and for all, was neither the Jew-Communist nexus nor beliefs and attitudes that Nazism had instilled, but the wish to defend Polish interests. The lethal and broad-dimensioned hatred of Jews in postwar Poland was predicated on profound fear of this population group, a fear that, in Gross’ view, would have waned with time. In fact, the Jews’ return to Poland reminded Poles of their collaboration with the Germans and the fact that they had stood by as the Jews faced extermination—matters that they wished to consign to oblivion. Gross holds that Poles’ crimes against Jews during the war amounted to the exploitation of a situation that the Poles had not sought but had stumbled into as a result of the circumstances of the war and the German occupation.58 In my judgment, even if Gross is not guilty of deliberate tendentiousness, his remarks reflect a sophistry that aims to cleanse the Poles of culpability. One of the main weaknesses of his book Neighbors is its inadequate attention to Polish–Jewish relations in the Łomża and Szczuczyn Subdistricts in the interwar period and their effect on Poles’ conduct during the war. Similarly, in 56 Ibid., 218. 57 Jan Tomasz Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006). 58 Ibid., 247–249.

297

298

Epilogue

Fear Gross refrains from dealing with the roots of the antisemitism and its manifestations in and around Kielce District in the Second Polish Republic. After writing Neighbors, Gross received the reputation of a hater of Poles and a de facto agent for the Jews, a scholar who produced an indictment that besmirched the Poles’ good name. In the conclusions section of Fear, Gross seeks to restore his reputation in Poland by pinning the blame for the Poles’ behavior on the Germans and the Jews themselves. It does seem that anything Gross may write would be interpreted in Poland as anti-Polish. It redounds to his credit, however, that Neighbors raised for public discussion in Poland important historical and moral issues that Poles had been disregarding for years. Indirectly, too, it helped Poles to seek a more accurate understanding of their society’s behavior toward the Jews in World War II. Fear, in contrast, was received in Poland with harsh criticism and aggressive hostility from the moment it rolled off the press. The question of whether the Kielce pogrom was the tipping point in the mass emigration of Jewish survivors from Poland remains unanswered. Researchers are of many minds about its precipitants and reasons; it deserves thorough research and discussion. Another matter worthy of investigation and questioning is why the pogrom occurred specifically in Kielce and not in other cities where larger numbers of survivors had congregated. May one assume that it was not fickle fate that this specific pogrom, a watershed for the Holocaust survivors in Poland, took place in Kielce and nowhere else, in a region that had been particularly violent and antisemitic in the interwar era and central in disseminating these ideologies under the baton of Roman Dmowski and the Polish Far Right? Do the origins of the outbreak of barbarism in July 1946 in Kielce lie deep in the soil of the town’s past? The pogrom in Kielce, as stated, has been privileged with a surfeit of documentation and research. The Jewish community itself, however, and its annals and doings in the course of the world war, have remained overshadowed and relatively obscure. I hope that by producing this study I have helped to shed a ray of light on the history of this vibrant, bustling community that was twice stricken—once by extermination and then by the murder of its survivors.

‫‪Bibliography‬‬ ‫‪Archive sources‬‬ ‫)‪I. Archive Yad Vashem (Jerusalem‬‬ ‫עדויות‬ ‫‪ ,03/2985‬יחיאל אלפרט (פולנית) ‪1967‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49/212‬ברונון פיונטק (פולנית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/1705‬שעיה זלצברג‪( ,‬פולנית) ‪1945‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/66‬משה מאיר באהן (פולנית) ‪1945‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/9147‬צבי גורפינקל (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/6782‬שמואל יוסקוביץ' (עברית) ‪1992‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/12285‬יוסף יצחק גולדבלום (עברית) ‪2003‬‬ ‫‪ ,033/6442‬יששכר רייס (עברית) ‪1952‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/7799‬אברהם בראון (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,04/405‬פנחס אייזנברג (גרמנית) ‪1968‬‬ ‫‪ ,033/3496‬דוד גוטרמן (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/7433‬צבי אברמוביץ' (עברית) ‪1994‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/9224‬ברוך גינצבורג (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/85‬משה מידלו (פולנית) ‪1945‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/10792‬צבי זלינגר (עברית) ‪1999‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/11630‬אליעזר פיינר (עברית) ‪2000‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/8911‬מאיר ברייטמן (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,02/1000‬הלן לאופר (גרמנית) ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,02/516‬ליליאנה סרבטניק (גרמנית) ‪1945‬‬ ‫‪ ,033/22‬אוסקר ברגר (עברית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,02/314‬שמעון זלצר‪( ,‬גרמנית) ‪1946‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/1309‬אדם הלפנד (פולנית) ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,03/8647‬שלמה בינושביץ' (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1Q/174‬אהרון ליבלינג (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1/E/2364‬מוניק קליינהנדלר‪ ,‬הוועדה ההיסטורית המרכזית‪ ,‬מינכן‬ ‫‪ ,M1/E 902/763‬יהושע שטיינפלד‪ ,‬הוועדה ההיסטורית המרכזית‪ ,‬מינכן‬ ‫‪ ,M1/E/1139‬עדות לולה וגמן (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬

‫‪Bibliography‬‬

‫‪ 03/5468,‬עדות שושנה רובינשטיין (עברית) ‪1989‬‬ ‫‪ ,0.33/156‬עדות חיים קורנברג (יידיש( ‪1955‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/254‬עדות דניאל פישגרטן (פולנית) ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,03/3500‬עדות רייזל למסקה (יידיש)‪1971‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49.E/5698‬עדות סופיה פרנטיאקוביץ' (פולנית) ‪1960‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/3553‬עדות יוסף רוזנברג (פולנית) ‪1971‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-38/16555‬עדות רבקה מאלי (גרמנית)‬ ‫‪ ,445/83-M‬עדות רבקה מאלי (גרמנית) ‪1964‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/9160‬עדות אליעזר טקל (עברית) ‪1955‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/9066‬עדות אסתר וייספלד (עברית) ‪1955‬‬ ‫‪ ,8/210‬עדות ללא שם‪ ,‬אישה מארץ ישראל (עברית) ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-49.E/15571945‬עדות ריבן ויינגרטן (פולנית) ‪1945‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1.Q/65‬עדות מאיר רוזנפלד (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1.Q/64‬עדות יואל זאק (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/7779‬עדות זאב ברנר (עברית) ‪1994‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/2373‬עדות יז'י שטרנברג (פולנית) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/8825‬עדות רחל בינשטוק (עברית) ‪1995‬‬ ‫‪ ,7/210‬עדות ללא שם‪ ,‬איש מארץ ישראל (עברית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/5620‬עדות פרנצ'ישק שצ'וביאל (פולנית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/5697‬עדות אירנה בודז'ינסקה (פולנית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M1Q/173‬עדות ללא שם (יידיש) ‪1948‬‬ ‫‪ ,M.1.E/75‬עדות שרה קרבל (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/245‬עדות דניאל פישגרטן (פולנית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,02/604‬עדות יוסף ויינפלד (עברית) ‪1957‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1E/1142‬עדות חנה יוריסטא (יידיש) ‪1947‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/6496‬עדות צבי לנדגרטן (עברית) ‪1987‬‬ ‫‪ ,M1E/1984‬עדות נתן פוקס‪ ,‬פריט ללא רישום‬ ‫‪ ,033/5560‬עדות חיים פליגלמן (עברית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M.1.E/1510‬עדות ד"ר פיאנצקי (יידיש)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-40/1045‬עדות ליאופולד בידר (פולנית)‪ ,‬ללא תאריך‬ ‫‪ ,M-49E/5697‬עדות אירנה בודזינסקה (פולנית) ‪1960‬‬ ‫‪ ,O.3/7572‬עדות דוד לנדאו (עברית) ‪1994‬‬ ‫‪ ,03/2184‬עדות אביגדור אלבאום (פולנית) ‪1962‬‬ ‫‪ ,M.1.E.2364‬עדות קליינהנדלר (יידיש) ‪1948‬‬ ‫חומר משפטי‬ ‫‪ ,TR-10/673‬כתב אישום ופסק דין נגד גרולף מאייר (‪ )Mayer‬וקרל מאכר (‪)Macher‬‬ ‫‪ ,M.21/574‬עדות ניצולים על פושע המלחמה קווארט (‪1948 )Kwart‬‬

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II. Archive of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D. C., USA RG-15.031/129 RG-15.031/12752 RG-50.030*0046 (Interview with Thomas Buergenthal), January 1990 RG-50/393*001 (Interview with Thomas Buergenthal), November 1995

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‫‪III. Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle, Ludwigsburg, Germany‬‬ ‫‪Darmstadt Court of Law‬‬ ‫‪Testimonies taken by police investigators in various countries, including Israel,‬‬ ‫‪Argentina, the United States, Canada, Australia, and West Germany, II—206‬‬ ‫)‪AR-Z 157/60 (StA. Darmstadt 2 Js. 1752/64 and others‬‬ ‫מוסרי העדויות‪:‬‬ ‫גרדה בורגנטל‪-‬רוזנהולץ (‪ 20‬ביוני ‪)1967‬‬ ‫אברהם מאיר (‪ 24‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫נתן גרינברג (‪ 4‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ברנרד זלינגר (‪ 16‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫הנריק לפה (‪ 28‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סטפן קרן (‪ 2‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫יעקב דוד למברג (‪ 21‬בדצמבר ‪)1965‬‬ ‫אפריים אליהו רובינוביץ' (‪ 22‬בדצמבר ‪)1965‬‬ ‫קלמן משה וינטר (‪ 29‬בדצמבר ‪)1965‬‬ ‫דוד זלצר (‪ 13‬בינואר ‪)1966‬‬ ‫שמעון וייצמן (‪ 2‬בפברואר ‪)1966‬‬ ‫לייב הוכמן (‪ 31‬בינואר ‪)1966‬‬ ‫שרה לייכטר (‪ 7‬בפברואר ‪)1966‬‬ ‫פרידה גולדברג (‪ 4‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סלומון בריקס (‪ 11‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫משה אליעזר זייפמן (‪ 7‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אברהם קרבל (‪ 27‬בפברואר ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סמואל גולדגרוב (‪ 21‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מאיר מארק ורשבסקי (‪ 28‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מוריס בריקמן (‪ 30‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מנדל ויינריב (‪ 25‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מוריס גרינשפן (‪ 22‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ליאון צימרוט (‪ 15‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ליאו לייב פדר (‪ 16‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מנואל פרידמן (‪ 16‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סם גסקה (‪ 17‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אליאס גולה (‪ 18‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אלפרדו ספיר (‪ 21‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מארק פויגן (‪ 15‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ברונו פלוטני (‪ 19‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אהרון פרנקל (‪ 1‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬

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‫שמעון קרל (‪ 14‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סם ליברמן (‪ 19‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מוניק מוריס מידלו (‪ 22‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סם ריצה (‪ 24‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אלכסנדר פיינגולד (‪ 29‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מיכאל פינקלשטיין (‪ 11‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אלתר ישראל למברג (‪ 4‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫בן ציון פרלה (‪ 1‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫איגנץ סטפפל (‪ 13‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫הרמן אופטובסקי (‪ 28‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אהרון ליבלינג (‪ 4‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫לייב לי רכט (‪ 5‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫רודי קריגר (‪ 6‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫בן בנימין לרר (‪ 9‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אדולף סביצ'רצ'יק (‪ 10‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מוריס רובינשטיין (‪ 18‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫יעקב מוסברג (‪ 20‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מוריס ליבפלד (‪ 20‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫פיליפ רדצקי (‪ 17‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ישראל פיסנברג (‪ 16‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫בוריס ברנה (‪ 29‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫נטליה ויינטראוב (‪ 25‬ביולי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫משה זמל (‪ 28‬במארס ‪1966‬‬ ‫מאיר מורר (‪ 24‬במארס (‪)1966‬‬ ‫זלמן לרר (‪ 22‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫סמואל גרסטנפלד (‪ 29‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫הלן בריקמן (‪ 30‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫שרה צור (‪ 31‬במארס ‪)1966‬‬ ‫מריאן פרנקל (‪ 21‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ברנרד שולמן (‪ 20‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫שעיה גרנק (‪ 2‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ישראל איצקוביץ' (‪ 4‬במאי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אייב פרייס (‪ 29‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬ ‫אליאש בלומנפלד (‪ 22‬ביולי ‪)1966‬‬ ‫ינטה בלומנפלד (‪ 22‬ביולי ‪)1968‬‬ ‫ישעיהן זלצברג (‪ 28‬ביולי ‪)1968‬‬ ‫אלכנדר פינקלשטיין (‪ 29‬באפריל ‪)1966‬‬

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IV. Instytut Pamie ˛ci Narodowej (IPN), Poland   Kielce: K.76 i 81, K-37, K-129, K-92/93, Ds-23/68, Ds-21/68

. . V. Z  ydowski Instytut Historyczny (Z  IH), Poland )‫ ללא תאריך‬,‫ עדות משה מידלו (פולנית‬,301/85 )1943 ‫ משה מאיר באהן (יידיש‬,301/5673 )1947 ‫ (יידיש‬,'‫ עדות ידידיה קליינלרר וגרשון לבקוביץ‬,2760)301(

VI. Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach, Poland 03/5596; 03/2640; 2643; 2651; 2652 Kielce Municipal Documents Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernament für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete, no. 9/1939 Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme des Vermögens des früheren polnischen Staates innerhalb des GG, 15/11/1939, VBIGG (1939) Verordnung über die Errichtung einer Treuhandsttele für das GG, vom 15/11/1939, VBIGG I (1939) Mitteilungsblatt der Industrie-u. Handelskammer für den Distrikt Radom mit den amtlichen Bekanntmachungen der Abteilungen Wirtschaft und Preisebewachung im Amt des Distriktchefs Radom Anordnungsblatt fuer die Stadt Kielce, no. 7/1941

VII. Yad Yaari Archive, Givat Haviva, Israel A. 272 ,)‫גוציה פלוצינניק (טובה מאלי‬

VIII. Ghetto Fighters’ House Archive, Israel ‫ עדות אסתר זוסמן (יידיש) ללא תאריך‬,13892 ‫בית לוחמי הגטאות‬

Document Collections ''‫ ירושלים תשל‬,‫אברהם מרגליות‬,‫ ישראל גוטמן‬,‫ עורכים יצחק ארד‬,‫השואה בתיעוד‬ 1995 ,‫—המכון לדוקומנטציה בישראל‬Die SS und Polizeifuehrer in Radom 1939–1945 Tatiana Berenstein, Artur Eisenbach, Adam Rutkowski, Eksterminacja Zydow na ziemiach polskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej: Zbiór dokumentów, Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1957

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‫‪Secondary Works‬‬ ‫‪Books‬‬ ‫– וילה אורבך‪ ,‬תולדות יהודי צ'נסטוחובה‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2000 ,‬‬ ‫– דוד אנגל‪ ,‬בין שחרור לבריחה‪ ,‬ניצולי השואה בפולין והמאבק על הנהגתם‪ ,‬תל אביב‪,‬‬ ‫‪1996‬‬ ‫– יצחק ארד‪ ,‬טרבלינקה‪ ,‬אבדן ומרד‪ ,‬תל אביב‪1983 ,‬‬ ‫– שרה בנדר‪ ,‬מול מוות אורב‪ ,‬תל אביב‪1997 ,‬‬ ‫– כריסטופר ר' בראונינג‪ ,‬הדרך אל הפתרון הסופי‪ ,‬ירושלים תשס"ה‬ ‫– כריסטופר ר' בראונינג‪ ,‬אנשים רגילים‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2004 ,‬‬ ‫– ליבר ברנר‪ ,‬ווידערשטאנד און אומקום אין טשענסטאכאווער געטא‪ ,‬וארשה‪1950 ,‬‬ ‫– ישראל גוטמן‪ ,‬יהודי וארשה ‪ 1943–1939‬גטו מחתרת מרד‪ ,‬ספריית פועלים‪1977 ,‬‬ ‫‪ ,‬היהודים בפולין אחרי מלחמת העולם השנייה‪ ,‬המרכז לחקר תולדות יהודי פולין‬ ‫– ‬ ‫ותרבותם‪ ,‬מרכז זלמן שזר‪1985 ,‬‬ ‫– שלמה וואגא‪ ,‬חורבן טשענסטאכאוו‪ ,‬בואנוס איירס‪1949 ,‬‬ ‫– אברהם ויין (עורך)‪ ,‬פנקס הקהילות פולין‪ ,‬מחוזות לובלין וקיילצה‪ ,‬כרך שביעי‪ ,‬ירושלים‬ ‫תשנ''ט‬ ‫– ישעיה טרונק‪ ,‬יודנראט המועצות היהודיות במזרח אירופה בתקופת הכיבוש הנאצי‪,‬‬ ‫ירושלים תשל''ט‬ ‫– שמחה חרובי‪ ,‬בימי השואה‪ ,‬עבודת גמר לתואר שני‪ ,‬אוניברסיטת חיפה‪1978 ,‬‬ ‫– משה לנדא‪ ,‬מיעוט יהודי לוחם‪ ,‬ירושלים תשמ"ו‬ ‫– עמנואל מלצר‪ ,‬מאבק מדיני במלכודת‪ ,‬יהודי פולין ‪ ,1939–1935‬תל אביב תשמ"ב‬ ‫– שלמה נצר‪ ,‬מאבק יהודי פולין על זכויותיהם האזרחיות והלאומיות‪ ,‬תל‪-‬אביב תש"ם‬ ‫– מירי פז (עורכת)‪ ,‬החשבון הפולני עימות עם זיכרון‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2007 ,‬‬ ‫– פליציה קראי‪ ,‬המוות בצהוב‪ :‬מחנה העבודה סקרז'יסקו=קמייננה‪ ,‬ירושלים תשנ"ד‬ ‫– איאן קרשו‪ ,‬היטלר‪ ,‬הגרמנים ו"הפתרון הסופי"‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2011 ,‬‬ ‫– עמנואל רינגלבלום‪ ,‬כתבים אחרונים יחסי פולנים‪-‬יהודים ינואר ‪ ,1944–1943‬ירושלים‬ ‫תשנ''ד‬ ‫‪Aly, Götz. “Endlösung,” Voelkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen‬‬ ‫‪Juden. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998.‬‬ ‫‪Böhler, Jochen. Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939.‬‬ ‫‪Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2006.‬‬ ‫‪Borodziej, Wlodzimier. Teror i polityka. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1985.‬‬ ‫‪Browning, Christopher R. Remembering Survival, Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor‬‬ ‫‪Camp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.‬‬ ‫‪Dzikowski, Władysław. Przemysł maszynowy Kielc. Szkice z historii zakładów.‬‬ ‫‪Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1972.‬‬

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Gerlach, Christian. Krieg, Ernährung, Voelkermord, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998. Gross, Jan T. Polish Society under German Occupation. The Generalgouvernement 1939–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. . Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Frank, Hans. Okupacja i ruch oporu w dzienniku Hansa Franka 1939–1945. Edited by S. Płoski, L. Dobroszycki, J. Garas, M. Getter. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1970. Jaroszek, Kazimierz, and Sebastian Piatkowski. Martyrologia Zydów w wiezieniu radomskim 1939–1944, Radom: Archiwum Państwowe, 1997. Kaczanowski, Longin. Hitlerowskie fabryki śmierci na Kielecczyźnie. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1984. Kamiński, Łukasz, and Jan Żaryn, ed. Wokół Pogromu Kieleckiego. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006. Kersten, Krystyna. Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm: Anatomia pólprawd, 1939–68. Warszawa: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992. Machecewicz, Paweł and Krzysztof Persak, ed. Wokół Jedwabnego. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2002. Tom 1–2. Madajczyk, Czesław. Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1970. Mallman, Klaus-Micael, Jochen Böhler, and Jürgen Matthäus. Einsatzgruppen in Poland, Darstellung und Dokumentation. Darmstadt: Deutche Historiche Institute Warschau und der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universtaet Stuttgart, 2008. Massalski, Adam, and Stanisław Meducki. Kielce w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej 1939–1945. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1986. Meducka, Marta Pawlina. Kultura Żydow wojewodztwa kieleckiego 1918–1939. Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1993. Meducki, Stanisław. Przemysł i klasa robotnicza w dystrykcie radomskim w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej, Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981. Michlic, Joanna Beata. Poland’s Threatening Other. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Młynarczyk, Jacek Andrzej. Der Holocaust in Kielce / Distrikt Radom. Universität Essen, Magisterarbeit, 2000. . Judenmord in Zentralpolen, Der Distrikt Radom im Generalgouvernement 1939–1945. Darmstadt: Deutsches Historisches Institut, 2007.

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‫‪Penkalla, Adam. Żydowskie ślady w wojewodztwie kieleckim i radomskim. Radom:‬‬ ‫‪TRAMP, 1992.‬‬ ‫‪Piatkowski, Sebastian. Żydzi w Hitlerowskim wiezieniu w Radomiu 1939–1944.‬‬ ‫‪Radom: n. p., 1994.‬‬ ‫‪Pohl, Dieter. Die Ermordung der Juden im Generalgouvernement, in:‬‬ ‫‪Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939–1945, Neue Forschungen und‬‬ ‫‪Kontroversen. Frankfurt am Main: Ulrich Herbert, 1998.‬‬ ‫‪Röhr, Werner. Die Faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen (1939–1945).‬‬ ‫‪Vol. II of Nacht über Europa, edited by Elke Heckert, Bernd Gottberg, and‬‬ ‫‪Jutta Wenzel. Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 1989.‬‬ ‫–‪Seidel, Robert. Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, Der Distrikt Radom 1939‬‬ ‫‪1945. Padeborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006.‬‬ ‫‪Urbański, Krzysztof. Spoleczność w Kielcach. Kielce: Museum Narodowe, 1989.‬‬ ‫‪. Zagłada ludności żydowskiej Kielc 1939–1945. Kielce: Museum‬‬ ‫‪Narodowe, 1994.‬‬ ‫‪. Kieleccy Żydzi. Kraków: Malopolska Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992.‬‬

‫‪Articles‬‬ ‫– נטליה אלקסיון‪' ,‬הכנסייה הקתולית והשאלה היהודית בפולין‪ ,'1947–1944 ,‬בתוך‪ :‬דוד‬ ‫– זילברקלנג (עורך)‪ ,‬קובץ מחקרים ל ''ג‪ ,‬ירושלים תשס''ה‬ ‫– דוד אנגל‪' ,‬דפוסים של אלימות אנטי ‪-‬יהודית בפולין‪ '1946–1944 ,‬בתוך‪ :‬דוד זילברקלנג‬ ‫(עורך)‪ ,‬קובץ מחקרים כ"ו‪ ,‬ירושלים תשנ"ח‬ ‫‪' ,‬שאלת היהודים בפולין בתקופת השואה '‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬עור–כים‪ :‬ישראל ברטל וישראל‬ ‫– ‬ ‫– גוטמן‪ ,‬קיום ושבר‪ ,‬כרך ראשון ‪1997‬‬ ‫– דניאל בלטמן‪' ,‬פוגרום קיילצה – אנטישמיות פולנית או תוצאה של מאבק פוליטי?'‪,‬‬ ‫בתוך‪ :‬עורך דניאל בלטמן‪ ,‬שביל הזיכרון‪ ,‬גיליון ‪1996 ,15‬‬ ‫– יאן בלונסקי‪ ,‬פולני‪-‬קתולי וקתולי‪-‬פולני‪ ,‬בתוך עורכת‪ :‬מירי פז‪ ,‬החשבון הפולני עימות עם‬ ‫זיכרון‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2007 ,‬‬ ‫– ישראל גוטמן‪' ,‬יהודי פולין משחרור להגירה‪ ,'1948–1944 ,‬בתוך‪ :‬עורך בנינין פינקוס‪,‬‬ ‫יהודי מזרח אירופה בין שואה לתקומה ‪ ,1944–1948‬אוניברסיטת בן‪-‬גוריון בנגב‪,‬‬ ‫קריית שדה בוקר ‪1987,‬‬ ‫‪' ,‬היהודים בפולין לאחר המלחמה'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ילקוט מורשת‪ ,‬ל"ד‪ ,‬דצ–מבר ‪1982‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫‪' ,‬האנטישמיות הפולנית בגלגולה האחרון'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ילקוט מורשת‪ ,‬י"ג‪ ,‬יוני ‪1971‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫‪' ,‬עבודת כפיה של יהודים בשירות הגרמנים במזרח‪-‬אירופה בת–קופת מלחמת‬ ‫– ‬ ‫העולם השנייה'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬בעלטה ובמאבק‪ ,‬תל אביב‪1985 ,‬‬ ‫‪' ,‬עבודת היהודים בשירות הגרמנים במזרח אירופה במל–חמת העו–לם ה‪,'2-‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫בתוך‪ :‬ציון‪ ,‬שנה מ"ג‪ ,‬חוברת א‪-‬ב תשל"ח‬

‫‪Bibliography‬‬

‫‪' ,‬הקונצפציה של העבודה בתפיסת היודנראט ומשמעותה במציאות'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬דמות‬ ‫– ‬ ‫ההנהגה היהודית בארצות השליטה הנאצית‪ ,‬ירושלים תש"ם‪.‬‬ ‫‪ ,‬יהודים‪-‬פולנים‪-‬אנטישמיות‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬קיום ושבר‪ ,‬חלק ב'‪ ,‬עורכים‪ :‬ישראל ברטל‪,‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫ישראל גוטמן‪ ,‬ירושלים‪2001 ,‬‬ ‫– יאן גרבובסקי‪'' ,‬משכתבים את תולדות היחסים בין פולנים ליהודים''‪ ,‬יד ושם‪-‬קובץ‬ ‫מחקרים ל"ו (‪ ,)1‬עורך‪ :‬דוד זילברקלנג‪ ,‬תשס"ח‬ ‫– רחל הודרה‪' ,‬האישה היהודייה בפולין'‪ ,‬דוד זילברקלנג (עורך)‪ ,‬קובץ מחקרים ל"ב‪,‬‬ ‫ירושלים תשס"ד‬ ‫– אהרן וייס‪' ,‬בירורים בשאלת מעמדה ועמדותיה של ההנהגה היהודית בפולין הכבושה'‪,‬‬ ‫בתוך‪ :‬ליויה רוטקירכן (עורכת)‪ ,‬קובץ מחקרים י"ב‪ ,‬ירושלים תשל"ח‬ ‫‪' ,‬היחסים בין היודנראט למשטרה היהודית בשטחי פולין הכבושה'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬דמות‬ ‫– ‬ ‫ההנהגה היהודית בארצות השליטה הנאצית ‪ ,1945–1933‬הרצאות ודיונים בכינוס‬ ‫הבינלאומי השלישי של חוקרי השואה‪ ,‬עורכים ישראל גוטמן‪ ,‬רחל מנבר‪ ,‬ירושלים תש"ם‬ ‫– יז'י ידליצקי‪' ,‬כיצד מתמודדים עם זה?'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬עורכת‪ :‬מירי פז‪ ,‬החשבון הפולני עימות עם‬ ‫זיכרון‪ ,‬תל אביב‪2007 ,‬‬ ‫– א‪ .‬י‪ .‬כוכבי‪' ,‬הכנסייה הקתולית והאנטישמיות בפולין לאחר מלחמת העולם השנייה'‪,‬‬ ‫בתוך‪ :‬עורך עמנואל מלצר‪ ,‬גלעד י''א‪ ,‬עמ' ‪ ,128–116‬תל אביב‪1989 ,‬‬ ‫– דריוש ליביונקה‪' ,‬זרים‪ ,‬אויבים מסוכנים‪ :‬דימוי היהודים ''והבעיה היהודית" בעיתונות של‬ ‫האינטליגנציה הקתולית בשנות השלושים'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬דוד זילבקלנג (עורך)‪ ,‬קובץ‬ ‫מחקרים ל "ב‪ ,‬ירושלים תשס"ד‬ ‫'הכנסייה הקתולית בפולין נוכח היהודים והשואה בשנים ‪ ,'1945–1939‬בתוך‪:‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫בשביל הזיכרון‪ ,‬גיליון מס' ‪ ,35‬ינואר‪2000 ,‬‬ ‫– י‪ .‬ליפשיץ‪' ,‬הפוגרומים בפולין בשנים ‪ ,1919–1918‬ועדת מורגנטאו ומשרד החוץ‬ ‫האמריקני'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ציון כ"ג‪-‬כ"ד‪1959–1958 ,‬‬ ‫– עמנואל מלצר‪' ,‬המערך הפוליטי נוכח הקצנת האנטיש–מיות ‪ ,'1939–1930‬בתוך‪:‬‬ ‫עורכים‪ :‬ישראל ברטל וישראל גוטמן‪ ,‬קיום ושבר יהודי פולין לדורותיהם‪ ,‬כרך א'‪1997 ,‬‬ ‫‪' ,‬לבעיית הגזענות בחברה הפולנית (‪ ,)1939–1933‬בתוך‪ :‬גלעד‪ ,‬י"ד‪1995 ,‬‬ ‫– ‬ ‫– שלמה נצר‪' ,‬יחסי פולנים יהודים בעשור הראשון לקיומה של הרפובליקה הפולנית השנייה‬ ‫(‪ ,')1928–1918‬בתוך‪ :‬משואה ‪1989 ,17‬‬ ‫– דיטר פוהל‪'' ,‬מחנות עבודות הכפייה ליהודים בגנרלגוברנמן''‪ ,‬בשביל הזיכרון‪ ,‬עורך‪:‬‬ ‫דניאל בלטמן‪ ,‬גיליון ‪ ,37‬אפריל מאי ‪2000‬‬ ‫– קלאוס פטר פרידריך‪' ,‬עבודה משותפת ושיתוף פעולה בפו–לין‪ ,'1945–1939 ,‬בתוך‪:‬‬ ‫עורכים‪ :‬שרה בנדר‪ ,‬איריס מילנר‪ ,‬דפים לחקר השואה כ''א ‪2007‬‬ ‫‪'',‬רצח היהודים בגנרלגוברנמן''‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬עורך אולריך הרברט‪ ,‬עורך המהדורה‬ ‫– ‬ ‫העברית דוד בנקיר‪ ,‬מדיניות ההשמדה הנאצית ‪ ,1945–1939‬ירושלים‪2001 ,‬‬ ‫– פליציה קראי‪' ,‬העימות בין הרשויות הגרמניות סביב מח–נות עבודה ליהודים‬ ‫בגנרלגוברנמן'‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ילקוט מורשת נ''ב‪1992 ,‬‬

‫‪308‬‬

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,)‫ דוד זילברקלנג (עורך‬,'‫ 'גן עדן אן גיהנום? שתי פנים של מחנה האסאג קיילצה‬,  – ‫ ירושלים תשס"ד‬,‫קובץ מחקרים ל"ב‬ ‫ קובץ מחקים‬,)‫ אהרון וייס (עורך‬:‫ בתוך‬,'1946 ‫ ביולי‬4 ,‫ 'הפוגרום בקלצה‬,‫– בוז'נה שאינוק‬ ‫ ירושלים תשנ''ג‬,‫כ''ב‬ ,‫ קיום ושבר‬:‫ בתוך‬,'‫ 'שרידי היהודים בפולין לאחר מלחמת העולם השנייה‬,‫– חנה שלומי‬ 1997 ,‫כרך ראשון‬ Bender, Sara. “Jewish Slaves in Forced Labour Camps in Kielce September 1942–August 1944.” POLIN 23 (Oxford, 2010). Berenstein, Tatiana, and Adam Rutkowski, “Przesladowania ludności żydowskiej w okresie hitlerowkiej administracji wojskowej w Polsce.” Biuletyn ŻIH 39 (1961). Berenstein, Tatiana. “O podłożu gospodarczym sporów między władzami administracyjnymi a policyjnymi w Generalnej Gubernii 1939–1944.” Biuletyn ŻIH 53 (1965). Blatman, Daniel. “Polish Antisemitism and ‘Judeo-Communism’: Historiography and Memory.” in East European Jewish Affairs 27:1 (1997). Browning, Christopher R. “The Factory Slave Labor Camps in Starachowice, Poland: Survivors’ Testimonies.” In Forced and Slave Labor in NaziDominated Europe. Washingron, D. C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004. Kielbon, Janina. “Przemieszczenia Żydów miedzy dystryktami radomskim i lubelskim (1940–1944).” Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego XXXIII:1 (1998). Kisiel, Helena. “Mieszkańcy radomskiego getta w świetle źródeł archiwalnych.” Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego, XXXIII:1 (1998). Libionka, Darius. “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura rządu RP wobec eksterminacji żydów polskich.” In Polacy i Żydzi 1939–1945, edited by Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2006. Mendelson, Ezra. “Interwar Poland: Good or Bad for the Jews?” In The Jews in Poland, edited by Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Milewski, Jan J. “Polacy i Żydzi w Jedwabnem i okolicy przed 22 czerwca 1941 roku.” In vol. 1 of Wokół Jedwabnego, edited by Paweł Machecewicz and Krzysztof Persak, Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2002. Młynarczyk, Jacek Andrzej. “Bestialstwo z urzędu. Organizacja hitlerowskich akcji deportacyjnych w ramach ‘Operacji Reinhard’ na przykładzie likwidacji kieleckiego getta.” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 203/3 (Warszawa, 2002).

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Piątkowski, Sebastian. “Judenraty w dystrykcie radomskim.” Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego XXXIII:1 (1998). . “Obóz pracy przy ul. Szkolnej w Radomiu (1942–1944). Zeszyty Majdanka 19 (1998). Rutkowski, Adam. “Martyrologia, walka i zagłada ludności żydowskiej w dystrykcie radomskim podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej.” Biuletyn ŻIH 15–16 (1955). . “Hitlerowskie obozy pracy dla Żydów w dystrycie radomskim.” Biuletyn ŻIH 17–18 (1956). Skibinska, Alina, and Jakub Petelewicz. “Udział Polaków w zbrodniach na Żydach na prowincji regionu świętokrzyskiego.” Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały 1 (Warszawa, 2005) Zbikowski, Andrzej. “Antysemityzm, szmalcownictwo, współpraca z Niemcami a stosunki polsko-żydowskie pod okupają niemiecką.” In Polacy i Żydzi 1939–1945, edited by Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2006.

Memoirs Books ‫ תשי''ז‬,‫ תל אביב‬,‫ ספר קלצה‬,)‫– פנחס ציטרון (עורך‬ 1960 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫געווארענער יידישער קהילה‬-‫בוך נאך דער חרוב‬-‫ יזכור‬,‫– פנקס כמיעלניק‬ 1962 ‫ תל אביב‬,1939–1945 ‫ יידישע אליינהילף‬,‫– מיכאל ווייכערט‬ 1981 ‫אביב תשמ''א‬-‫ תל‬,‫ פון דער חרובער היים‬,‫– על ביתנו שחרב‬ 1947 ‫ בוענאס איירעס‬,‫ שרעק און האפענונג‬,‫ שניידערמאן‬.‫ל‬.‫– ש‬ ‫ ביולעטין פון דער געזעלשאפט פריינט פון קעלץ און אומגעגנט אין פאריז‬,‫– דער קעלצער‬ )‫תמיד אונזער שטעטעל חמיעלניק (לא תאריך ומקום הוצאה‬-‫ א נר‬,‫– ספר הזיכרון‬ 1981 ‫ ירושלים‬,‫ אחרי המבול‬,‫– דוד כהנא‬ 1992 ‫איגוד יוצאי לבוב והסביבה‬,‫ בצבת השנאה‬,‫– דוד כהנא‬ ‫ המכון לחקר בעיות‬,‫תש''ה‬-‫ אוסף תולדות קדושי ת''ש‬,‫ אלה אזכרה‬,)‫– יצחק לוין (עורך‬ ‫היהדות‬ ‫יורק תשי''ט‬-‫ ניו‬,‫החרדית‬ ‫ ירושלים תשנ''ג‬,‫ יומן ורשימות מתקופת המלחמה‬,‫– עמנואל רינגלבלום‬ 1971 ,‫ עורך יצחק אייזנברג‬,‫– ספר וייסליץ‬ 1970 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫– ספר זיכרון לקהילת פינצ'וב‬ )‫ תל אביב (ללא תאריך‬,‫ ספר הזכרון ליהודי ינדז'יוב‬,‫ שמשון דוב ירושלמי‬:‫– עורך‬

Bibliography

2004 ‫ ארגון יוצאי חמיילניק בישראל‬,‫ בחמיילניק חיו פעם יהודים‬,‫– מרדכי גולדשטיין‬ 2002 ‫ ירושלים‬,‫ ילדה ששרדה את אושוויץ‬,‫ צלינקה‬,‫– צילה ליברמן‬ ‫ תלמידי ביה''ס התיכון ע''ש דוד בן גוריון בעפולה מראיינים ניצולי‬,‫– שתיקה שהופרה‬ 1989 ‫ עפולה‬,‫שואה בעירם‬ ‫ בית לוחמי הגטאות תשכ''ד‬,'‫– יומנו של הנער דוד רובינוביץ‬ ,‫ בתוך ספר צ'נסטוחוב‬,''‫ראט אין טשענסטאבאוו‬-‫ ''דער ארבעטער‬,‫– צבי ראזענוויין‬ 1968 ‫ירושלים‬ ‫ (ארכיון פרטי של‬,‫ זיכרונות שלא ראו אור‬,‫ עדותו של ניצול שואה‬,‫– שמואל זבלוצקי‬ )‫הכותבת‬ 1961 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ ספר ראדום‬,‫ עורכים‬,‫ שטיין‬.‫ש‬.‫ א‬,‫– יצחק פרלוב‬ )‫ (שני כרכים‬1968–1967 ,‫ ירושלים‬,‫– ספר צ'נסטוחוב‬ .77 '‫ עמ‬,‫ ירושלים תש"ך‬,‫ התועים בדרכי המוות‬,‫– נתן עק‬ Birnhak, Alice. Next Year God Willing. New York: Shengold, 1994. Fąfara, Eugeniusz. Gehenna Ludnosci Zydowskiej. Warszawa: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1983. Hagstrom, Suzan E. Sara’s Children, The Destruction of Chmielnik. Fredericksburg, VA: Sergeant Kirkland’s Press, 2001. Feferman-Washof, Mildred (Mania). The Processed, 1945–1946 (manuscript in the collection of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D. C. and available to the author). Kalib, Goldie Szachter. The Last Selection, A Child’s Journey through the Holocaust. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Nansen, Odd. Tommy. Gyldendal: Norsk Forlag A/S, 1970. Neuman-Nowicki, Adam. Struggle For Life During the Nazi Occupation of Poland. Lewiston, N. Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. Sabor, Agnieszka. Sztetl. Śladami żydowskich miasteczek. Kraków: Austeria, 2006. Wiener, Daniel, Daniel’s Story, 2001 (manuscript in the collection of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D. C. and available to the author). Zeisler, Gertrude. I did not survive: Letters from the Kielce Ghetto. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing, 1981.

Articles 1 ‫ חוברת‬1946 ‫ פון לעטצטען חורבן‬,'‫ 'ראדאם‬,‫– ישעיהו אייגר‬ ,'‫ 'קיבוץ ''איחוד הנוער הציוני עקיבא'' בקילצה לפני ואחרי הפוגרום‬,‫– רפאל בלומנפלד‬ 1985 ‫ תשמ''ה‬,‫ משואה י''ג‬:‫בתוך‬

311

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‫– זאב וולף גליקסון‪' ,‬אין טשענסטאכאווער געטא'‪ ,‬פון לעטצטען חורבן ‪ ,1946‬חוברת ‪2‬‬ ‫– הניה סטרלסקי‪ ,‬בתוך אשר זכרנו לספר‪ :‬כ''ד חברי קיבוץ מגידו מעידים‪ ,‬תל אביב ‪1988‬‬ ‫– הדסה צימערמאן‪ ,‬אונטער די פוילישע גרינינקע ביימעלעך שפילן זיך מער נישט קיין‬ ‫משה'לעך און שלמה'לעך (ארכיון פרטי של הכותבת)‬ ‫– יעקב גולדשטיין‪ ,‬זיכרונות בשלכת‪ ,‬בית לוחמי הגטאות ‪2007‬‬ ‫– ש' קאטשערגינסקי‪ ,‬די לוויה פון די קעלצער קדושים‪' ,‬דאס נייע לעבן'‪ ,‬גליון ‪,)48( 23‬‬ ‫‪ 12‬ביולי ‪1946‬‬ ‫– שרה קרבל‪'' ,‬די לעצטע ‪ 45‬קינדערלעך אין קעלץ''' בתוך פון לעצטען חורבן‪ ,‬צייטשריפט‬ ‫פאר געשיכטע פון יידישן לעבן בעתן נאצי‪-‬רעזשים (ידיעון לקורות חיי היהודים בתקופת‬ ‫השלטון הנאצי)‪ ,‬מינכן‪ ,‬אוקטובר‪-‬נובמבר ‪ ,1946‬חוברת ‪3‬‬

‫‪Newspaper Articles‬‬ ‫– "הארץ"‪ ,‬שרה בנדר‪ ,‬אחרי שהגרמנים עזבו‪ 4 ,‬ביולי ‪( 1996‬חלק ב')‬ ‫– "דבר"‪ ,‬שנתון ‪ ,1948‬חיים גרדה‪ ,‬קלצה‪ ,‬תרגום מיידיש אביגדור המאירי‬ ‫– היינט יובילי‪ ,‬י‪ .‬דאווידזאהן‪ ,‬דער ''היינט'' און יאגעללא‪)1928( ,‬‬ ‫– "סקופ"‪' ,‬אותיות מספרות'‪ ,‬גיליון מספר ‪ 10 ,481‬ביולי ‪1997‬‬ ‫– דער קעלצער‪ ,‬ביולעטין פון דער געזעלשאפט פריינט פון קעלץ און אומגעגנט אין פאריז‬ ‫(ללא תאריך)‬ ‫‪Daniel, Jerzy. “Zyd w zielonym Kapeluszu.” Scriptum (1996).‬‬ ‫‪Garlicki, Andrzej. “Dom na Plantach.” Polityka 27 (2001).‬‬ ‫‪Karolczak, Jadwiga. “Kielce 4 lipca 1946.” Słowo Ludu 155 ( July 6–7, 1996).‬‬ ‫‪Lewartowski, David and Krzysztof Urbański. “Nad Brzegami Silnicy.” Nowiny‬‬ ‫‪Kurier ( June 28, 2002; July 12, 2002; July 19, 2002; July 26, 2002).‬‬ ‫‪Gazeta Żydowska 6, 15, 17, 24, 27, 32, 37, 46 (1940); 35, 41, 42, 45, 47, 51, 60, 78,‬‬ ‫‪80, 86, 87, 96, 97, 99, 113, 114, 119 (1941), 28, 36, 42, 78, 83, 85, 94, 99 (1942).‬‬ ‫‪Sikorski, Jan. “Dr. Mojzesz Pelc.” Przegląd Lekarski 45:1 (1988).‬‬

‫‪Encyclopedias‬‬ ‫– ישראל גוטמן (עורך)‪ ,‬האנציקלופדיה של השואה‪ ,‬תל אביב ‪ ,1990‬כרכים‪ :‬שני‪ ,‬רביעי‪.‬‬ ‫– אברהם ויין (עורך)‪ ,‬פנקס הקהילות פולין – כרך שביעי‪ :‬מחוזות לובלין—קיילצה‪ ,‬יד‬ ‫ושם‪ ,‬ירושלים תשנ''ט‪.‬‬ ‫‪Gutman, Israel, Sara Bender, and Shmuel Krakowski. The Encyclopedia of‬‬ ‫‪the Righteous Among the Nations, Poland. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004.‬‬ ‫‪2 volumes.‬‬ ‫‪“Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945.” In Informator encyk‬‬‫‪lopedyczny, Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979.‬‬

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Interviews—Private Collection ‫) תל אביב‬2001 ‫ראיון עם רפאל בלומנפלד (ינואר‬ ‫) תל אביב‬2002 ‫ראיון עם בלה קולטץ' (פברואר‬ ‫) ירושלים‬2002 ‫ראיון עם שרה לייכטר (פברואר‬ ‫) רעננה‬2002 ‫ראיון עם אליהו רובינוביץ' (ינואר‬ ‫) חדרה‬2002 ‫ראיון עם צילה ליברמן (מארס‬ DC ‫) וושינגטון‬2004 ‫ראיון עם תומס בורגנטל (אוגוסט‬ 1990 ,‫ זיכרונות‬,‫ראיון עם יוחנן פלץ‬

313

Index A

Abramowicz, Zwi, 75n59, 160n8, 161n12, 165n23, 167n45, 197n13 Achiezer society, xx, 27 Admor (Hasidic grand rabbi) of Raków, xxiv, 26 Agriculture department ( Judenrat), 56, 101, 120 Agudat Yisrael (Agudas Yisroel), xxiv, 10, 20–22, 24–25, 31, 33–34, 36–37, 204 Akiva (youth movement), 19, 280 Al Hamishmar (“On Guard”), 15, 32 Alexander Hasidim, 13, 68 Alliance of Democrats (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne, SD), 45 Alpert, Jehiel, 18, 53n11, 60n25, 78n68, 89n94, 90n96, 93, 100n10, 101n12, 102n17, 111n43, 122n80, 128, 130, 159n2, 162n14, 170n40, 171n45, 171n47, 194n4, 195n5, 199n17, 200–201, 202n28, 203n29, 207n38, 282n22, 284n29 Altman, Tosia, 181n84 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 9, 11–12, 28, 84, 87, 91 Anti-Fascist Committee, 203 Antisemitic League, 45 Arbeitsamt, see Labor department Arendowski-Barcza, 111 Artwiński, Stefan, 51, 56 Association of Artisans, 10, 24, 37 Auerhammer, Friedrich, 133 Auschwitz-Birkenau, ix, 90, 103, 107, 108n31, 126, 128, 189, 207n37, 217, 218n67, 224, 262, 272, 292, 297n57

B

Bahn, Mosze Meir, 53n8, 71n51, 74n57, 75n59, 77n67, 78n68, 101n12, 102n15, 102n17, 103n19, 105n23, 107, 110n38, 110n47, 116n55, 122n81, 124n90, 129n103, 130, 132n114, 158, 159n2,

160n8, 161n12, 162n13–14, 166n29, 167n31–33, 172n49, 172n52, 201n25, 254 Balanowski, Nissan, 265 Balicki, Szmul, 16 Bank Ludowe, 11 Banks, xviii, xxiv, 10–12, 18–19, 33, 66, 71 Bar Kochva (sport club), 22, 40 Bartoszewski, Władysław, 245n21, 246 Batorski, Stanysław, 212n49, 213n50–51, 215n57–58, 216n62 Batya, 20 Baum, A., 126 Beckerman, 130 Beit midrash, 27, 31 Beit Tzedek Synagogue, 205 Beitar (youth movement), 16–18 Bergen Belsen, 234 Berger, 26 Berger, Karl, 227–230, 233 Berger, Oscar, 124n89, 165n23, 168n34, 173 Berlin, 93, 172, 184n96, 195, 211, 236 Berlinski, Shlomo, 37 Berman, Adolf Avraham, 245n21, 286–287 Betcher, Herbert, 225 Bialogon, 99, 130 Bider, Leopold, 258 Bieńkowski, Witold, 245n21 Bikur Holim, xxii Bilicka, Natalia, 195n6, 197n12, 201n24, 203n29, 206n35, 215n60 Bilsky, Kurt, 69 Bimko, Fishel, 37 Binsztok, Rachel, 187–188n105 Binuszewicz, Shlomo, 170n40, 197n13 Birenbaum, Bolek (Boris), 102 Birnhak, Alice, 60n25, 64n34, 67n39, 82n78, 85n85, 88, 90n97, 108, 128, 197n12, 201n23–24, 202n28, 203n29, 218n67, 219n69, 220, 221n75–76, 222n80, 223n81, 224n85 Bishopf, 74 Biuletyn Informacyjny, 243

Index Blank, Paula, 233n117 Błaszczyk, Henrik, 279, 281 Błaszczyk, Walenty, 279 Blizyn, 207 Blum, Wilhelm Josef, 131, 191 Blumenfeld, Beer, 11 Blumenfeld, Elias, 203n29, 222n80 Blumenfeld, Rafael, viii, xi, xviiin7, xixn9, xxn10, xxin12–13, xvn24, xvn26, 2n2, 6n10, 7n13, 10n19, 11n21, 11n23, 13n24–25, 14n26, 15n28, 16n29, 18n31–32, 20n33–34, 22n36, 23n39, 25n42, 26n43, 28n45, 29n47, 32n53, 34n56, 36n59–60, 37n62, 38n64, 39n66–67, 43n72, 49n86, 53n11, 68n41–42, 70n44, 70n48, 73, 75n59, 80n73, 82n78, 84n81, 85, 86n86, 87n92, 90n98, 97n4, 99, 100n10, 103n19, 122n77, 123n82, 126n95, 127n96, 130, 131n109, 161n12, 164, 165n23–24, 195n5, 196n10, 202n28, 281, 282n21 Blumenfeld, Szmuel, 214 Blumenfeld, Yente, 203n29, 206n36 Bnos Agudat Yisrael, 21 Bodzentyn, 14, 19–20, 81, 99, 126, 149, 187 Bodzentyńska Street, xvi, 34, 53, 96, 97–98n4, 104, 111, 120n70, 141, 143 Bogonia, 176 Borków factories, 90 Borochov, Dov Ber, 19–20, 50 Breitman, Meir, 117, 172n49, 193n1, 197n13, 203n29, 207n38 Bremer, Louis, 59 Breslau, xix, 212 Brikman, Helen, 197n12 Brit ha-Tsohar (“Revisionist Zionists’ Union”), 17 Browning, Christopher R., 55n15, 82n77, 94, 95n2, 163n15, 173, 212n47, 235n122 Bruker, Pola, 19 Bruner, Henryk, 12, 51 Brünner, 219 Brünner, Franz, 59 Brünner, Fritz, 167–168 Buchenwald, 234 Budin, Paul, 225 Budzyńska, Irena, 261–262 Buergenthal, Gerda, 98n4, 111, 112n44, 206n36, 207n37, 218–219 Buergenthal, Thomas, ix, xii, 199n16, 200, 207n37, 218–220, 224n86 Bug River, 55, 77, 79n70 Bugayer, Mosze, 38

Bund, xxiii, 4, 22–23, 37, 40, 49, 51, 237, 239, 245 Bureau of Craftsmen, 12 Busko-Zdrój, 18, 29, 54, 81, 174, 176, 182–186, 259, 261–262, 268

C

Catholic Church, 41, 44, 247–248, 249n32, 277n9, 278, 288n37, 290, 291n42, 292n44, 294n52, 295 Ceberski, Wacław, 101n12, 118, 159n6, 162n14, 163n17 Central Committee of the Jews of Poland (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, CKŻP), 278, 286 Central Relief Council (Rada Głowna Opiekuńcza, RGO), 240–241 Centralna Towarzystwo Opieki nad Sierotami i Dziećmi Opuszczonymi (Institute for the care of needy Jewish orphans and children), 29n46 Chachmei Lublin yeshiva, 27 Chęciny Hasidim, xxiv, 13–14, 26 Chęciny, xiv, xvii, xix, xxiv, 31, 52, 62, 71, 172n51, 179, 186, 188, 191, 223, 226, 266 Chmielnik, xvii, xxiv, 18, 25n42, 26, 31, 52, 62, 62n30, 71, 81–82, 172n51, 174–182, 190, 226, 226n91–92, 229–231, 233n117, 233n120, 259–261, 263–265, 281n20 Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan, 245 Christian Democrats, 242 Christian Peasants Party (Stronnictwo Chrescijansko-Ludowe), 42 Ciechanów District, 245n19 Ciesielski, Bogusław, 293 Civil Administration in Kielce, 54, 57 Cohen, Fiszel, 65 Collection department ( Judenrat), 125 Commission for Polish Relief, 87 Committee of the Organization of Jewish Religious Congregations in Poland (Komitet Organizacyjny Żydowskich Kongregacji Wyznaniowych w Polsce), 278 Council for Matters Relating to the Rescue of the Jewish Population in Poland (Rada do Spraw Ratowania Ludności Żydowskiej w Polsce), 250 Credit cooperative, 12 Cymrot, Leon, 79 Cytron (member of Judenrat), 65 Cytron family, 60 Cytron, Aron, 18

315

316

Index Cytron, Pinchas, xn2, xvn4, xvin5, xviiin7–8, xixn9, xxn11, xxin12, xxiiin19, xxivn23, 6n10, 10n20, 11n22, 14n26, 15n27, 16n28, 18n32, 21n35, 22n36, 24n41, 25n42, 26n43, 27n44, 28n45, 29n48, 31n51, 33, 35, 36n59, 37n63, 45n74 Czarnów neighborhood, 14, 33, 80 Czarnowska Street, 25 Czerniaków, Adam, 78n69 Czerwiac, Franciszek, 223n83 Częstochowa, x, xviiin7, 20, 22, 39, 40, 51, 59n23, 72, 89, 92, 133, 168n34, 189, 190, 210, 224, 226, 233–235, 253, 268–272, 284, 290 Częstochowianka, 233 Czicha Street, 109

D

Dąbroska Street, 109 Dąbrowa Górnicza, xiv, xviii Dachau, 234 Daleszyce, 81 Dąmbrowa Tarnowska, 63 Darmstadt, 84n22, 218, 223n12, 228n27, 229n29, 234n39, 257n108, 328 Daszewski, Jan, xxi Dębicka, Esfira, 266 Dębicki, Kazimierz, 266 Dęblin, 163 Dębówka, 266 Degenhardt, 225 Degenhardt, Paul, 168n34 Delegatura, 46n77, 237n1, 239n5, 241–243, 245n21, 246 Demski, Jósef, 51 Diamant, Yosef, 61, 72, 270, 272 Discount Bank, 11 District Council, 27 Dmowski, Roman, xxiv, 5, 8, 41–42, 44, 47, 298 Dobroszycki (couple), 202n28 Dom Bankowy, xxviii Domb, Jehiel, 62n30 Dombrowska Street, 119 Drechsel, Hans, 56, 79, 95, 97, 100–101, 115 Drugnia, 266 Duma, xxi, xxv Duża Street, 27 Dzialowski, Jisroel, 39 Dziewieczyce, 267

E

Echa Kielcekie, xxi Economic affairs, department of (Judenrat), 56

Eggers, Emil, 58 Ehrlich family, 4, 12, 27, 49, 69 Ehrlich, Alter, 33, 35, 37 Ehrlich, Jehuda, xvii–xviii, xxii, 37 Ehrlich, Yosef Elhanan, 25 Eichler, Michal (Michael), 20 Eisenberg (couple), 198n14 Eisenberg, Meir, 10n20 Eizenberg, Alter, 21 Eizenberg, Chaya, 17 Eizenberg, Herszel, 65 Eizenberg, Mosze Dawid (Mosze Eli Naftolis), 21n35 Eizenberg, Pinchos, 53 Elencweig, Mendel Max, xxiii, 27, 38, 51 Endecja (Demokracja Narodowa, the National Democratic Party, also known as ND or the Endeks), xxiv, 5, 24, 41–46, 49, 242 Engel, David, 250, 275, 276n7, 277n11 Engelking, Barbara, 244, Essig, Karl, 58, 201, 221 Et Livnot (“Time to Build”), 15, 32 Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), 54, 58, 62, 69–79, 196, 212, 227, 229–230

F

Fabryczna Street, 212 Feder, Leo Leib, 79 Feferman, Mania, 53n11, 65n37, 68n41, 70n48, 71n51, 93, 99n8, 101n13, 102n15, 102n17, 105, 107n28, 116, 117n56, 117n58, 118n63, 119–120n68, 126n95, 130, 131n109, 160n8, 165n23, 168n34, 169–170, 194n3–4, 195, 195n7, 197n12, 198–199n14, 199, 199–200n18, 202n28, 207n37, 208n41, 212n49, 213n52, 215n58–59, 216n61, 216n63, 217n64, 221n76, 222n80 Feigenbaum, Meir, 165n23, 198n14 Feigenblat, Shlomo, 21, 38 Feiner, Eliezer, 110n40, 117n60, 122, 160n8, 161n12, 194n4, 195n5–6, 218n67, 219n68, 221n76, 222n80, 224n85 Feiner, Leon, 245n21 Feingold, Alexander, 159n7 Feingold, Israel, 175n60, 176n64, 180n79, 181n81 Feingold, Simon, 233 Feucht, Adolf Gottfried, 131, 133, 158, 159n6, 162, 165, 174, 190–191, 271 Finkelstein, Aleksander, 32 Finkelstein, Leon, 4

Index Finkelstein, Michael, 165n23, 166n27 Finkler, Hayim Meir of Pińczów, xxiv, 31, Finkler, Pinchas, 20 Finkler, Yitzhak, 33–34 Fisch, Regina, 284 Fiszer, Helena, 267 Fligelman, Hayim, 232 Focha Street, 280 Foigen, Mark, 119n65 Foyer, Solomon, 35 Frank, Hans, 54, 56, 59n23, 79n71, 86, 97, 209, 248 Frankel, Marian, 196n9 Freiheit (Dror) movement, 19 Freiman family, 268 Freizinger, H., 25, 27 Fridman (member of Judenrat), 65 Fried family, 12 Fried, Pessia, 200n18 Friedman, 216 Friedman, David, 215n59 Friedman, Ina, 87n89 Friedman, Manuel, 171n46, 203n29 Friedman, Samuel, 216n62 Friedman, Toby, 207n38 Friedman, Tuvia, 59n23, 203n29 Furmanska Street, 180

G

Gaier, Hans, 59, 101, 118n64, 119, 131–132, 158–159, 160n7, 161, 164, 166–167, 170, 176, 191–192, 195, 201, 202n27, 203, 206–207 Galicia, viii, 8, 18, 41–42, 63, 259 Garfinkel, Isik, 204 Garfinkel, Zwi, 53n8, 73n56, 85, 86n87, 100n10, 116n55, 194n4, 195n5, 199n15, 205n35, 218n67, 220, 222n80, 224n85 Garlicki, Andrzej, 281n19, 287n35, 290n40, 292n45 Gaska, Sam, 162n14 Gawdzinski, Dionizy, 162n15 Gazeta Kielecka, xxiv–xxv, 1, 4, 6 Gazeta Żydowska, 60, 110–111, 120, 122, 126, 128, 134 Gdansk couple, 200 Geiger, Joachim, 271 Gemilut Hasadim, 27–28 Gendarmerie, 57, 59, 176, 178–184, 188–190, 192 General Cooperative Bank, 11 General Zionist Party, 15

Generalgouvernement, xin3, 54–57, 59n23, 60–61, 65–67, 69–70, 72, 74–76, 81, 83n79, 86–87, 93, 95n2, 97, 102, 105–106, 111, 113–114, 116n54, 128, 131–134, 162n15, 191, 209–210, 211n46, 225–226, 234, 238n2, 242–243, 244n16, 248–249, 253, 259, 269 Gerlach, Christian, 113 German police, 53, 58n22, 74, 76, 94, 101, 116, 133, 160, 162, 171, 196, 253 German Reich, 54–56, 69, 76, 81, 105–106, 112n44, 113, 127, 190–191, 195–196, 207, 215n59, 217, 238, 270–271, 273 Gertler, 198n14, 217 Gertler, Herszel, 215n59 Gertler, Michal (Michael), 22 Gertler, Motek, 216 Gertler, Yosef, 28 Gestapo, 57–59, 67n40, 71, 74, 79, 90, 93–94, 101, 103, 107–108, 112n44, 117, 119, 120, 124n89, 126–128, 131, 158–159, 161, 166n30, 168n36, 172n49, 174, 184, 188–189, 192, 201–202, 206, 212, 214, 215n59, 216–217, 221–222, 230, 240, 244n18, 245n19, 252, 258, 265–266 Ghetto in Kielce, ix, 83n79, 108, 115, 129–130, 132–134, 155, 173, 192–193, 198n15, 213, 215, 218, 227, 257, 265, 270 Ginzburg, Baruch, 80, 197n13, 213n51, 214n56, 215n58 Ginzburg, Jochewed, 29 Glattstein, Otto, 102, 213, 215 Głęboczka, 69, 218 Gleiwitz, 217 Glinica, 82 Globocnik, Odilo, 72, 76, 131, 133 Glos Makabi, 40 Glos Narodu, 46–47 Gniezno, 56 Godzinski, Mordechai Leib, 53n10 Goldberg, Berl, 200n18 Goldberg, Bezalel, 200n18 Goldberg, Eliasz, 15 Goldberg, Frida, 162n13 Goldberg, Getzel, 127 Goldberg, Herszel, 199n18 Goldberg, Lappa, 200n18 Goldberg, Leibel, 28 Goldberg, Mordechai, 130n106 Goldberg, Mosze, 20 Goldberg, Szmul, 21 Goldblit, Lucia, 127

317

318

Index Goldblum, Yosef Yitzhak, 53n8, 77n67, 78n67–68, 79n70, 117n58, 162n14, 194n4, 196n8–9, 156 Goldfarb, Dawid, 34 Goldfarb, L., 25 Goldgrub, Szmul, 162n14 Goldhar, Mosze Michael, xxiv Goldlust, Uri, 16 Goldman, Avraham, 38 Goldman, Dawid, xxiv, 31 Goldman, Simha Bunem, 21, 25, 204 Goldszmid, Aniela, 267 Goldwasser, Gustav, 38 Golembioski, S., 26 Gordonia, 20, 277 Göring, Hermann, 55, 69 Gorlice, 2 Górno, 69 Góry Świętokrzyskie, 204 Gotlib, Aron, 65 Gottfried, Israel Mayer, 53n10 Grabowski, Jan, 244, 245n19, 294n49 Grajewo, 47n81, 259n57 Granat (factory), 51, 70n45, 133, 161n12, 175, 181, 197, 199n15, 204, 219, 224–232, 236 Granek, Szaja, 231n108 Grantman, 124 Gratz, 63 Graus family, 12 Graze, Ulrich, 70 Great Synagogue, xix, xxii, 3, 14, 25–27, 34, 36, 45, 52, 68, 84, 90, 101, 110, 118, 161, 193, 195 Greenberg, Nathan, 132n113, 159n4, 161n11, 163n16, 163n19, 221n76 Greenspan, Morris, 170n41, 171n46 Gross-Rosen, 215 Gross, Jan Tomasz, 238, 244n16, 251n37, 251n39, 293, 297–298 Grostal, Leon, 37–38 Grumprich, 216 Gryngras, 27 Gucia, teacher, 166 Gur (Gerrer) Hasidim, 21, 24, 68 Gustek, Marion, 107 Gutman, Israel, 42n69, 46n76, 75n60, 133n117, 239n4, 245n21, 247, 250n35, 256n51, 274n3, 275n5 Gutman, Jehuda, 28 Gutman, Judke, 65 Gutman, (member of Judenrat), 111, 124, 161n12

Gutman, Yehezkel, 65 Gutman, Yisrael, ix, 54n12, 87n89, 273, 275n5, 276n6, 279n16, 285n31, 291n42

H

Hajman brothers, xviii Hakhnasat Kalla, 27 Handlowe Bank, 11 Hanisch, 132, 159 Hanoar Hazioni (the General Zionist youth), 15, 19, 280, 281n20 Hanoch, Yulia, 33 Hapoel, sports organization, 40 Harkawy, Gerszon, 107 HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft), 70n45, 111, 133, 161, 175, 175n61, 181–183, 188, 197, 199n15, 204, 219, 224–233, 235n122, 236 Hashomer Hadati (“Religious Guard”), 14 Hashomer Hatzair, 17–18, 130, 181, 204 Haskala, xxiii Hauser, Henryk, xxiii Hausler, Szyja, 20 Haynt, xxv Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 27, 33, 275n5 Hehaluts Hadati (“Religious Pioneer”), 14 Hehaluts training kibbutz in the name of Dov Ber Borochov, 19 Hehaluts, 17, 18–19 Helfand, Adam, 159n3, 160n8, 161n12, 163n17–18, 164n20, 165n24, 166n26, 166n29, 167n32, 168n34, 179n49, 193n1 Henryków factory, 51, 69, 90, 102, 160, 197, 208, 213, 215n57, 218–220, 223, 236 Herendorf family, 34 Herszkowicz (member of Judenrat), 65 Herszkowicz, Yitzhak, 29, 84n81 Hertsch, Alfred Otto, 212, 214, 217, 219, 236 Herzl, Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev), 20, 30 Herzliya society, 36 Heshlis, 128 Hevra Kadisha (volunteer burial service), 21n35 Heydrich, Reinhard, 54–55, 57, 60–61, 63–64 Himmler, Heinrich, 54–55, 72, 81, 126, 133 Hirszkowicz brothers, 51 Hitahdut (“Union,” Jewish Socialist-Zionist labor party), 20

Index Hitler, Adolf, 50–51, 128, 210, 281, 283 Hlond, August, 248, 278, 290, 290n41, 291 Hochberg, Alter, 30 Hochman, Leib, 162n14 Hoffman, Mosze, 38 Holtzman, Yehezkel, 216 Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), 204, 241–242, 244n16, 246–247, 252, 264 Horowitz, Hayim Szmuel Halevi, xxiv, 31 Horowitz, Yeshaya Pinchos, 52 Horowitz, Yitzhak, 184 Hotel Polski, 5, 73 Housing department ( Judenrat), 91, 95–96, 100, 104 Hovevei Tsiyyon, xxiv, 30 Hrubieszów, 77, 79

I

Idzikowski, Bolesław, 257 Ihud, 282n22 Illmer, Joachim, 57 Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamieci Narodowe, IPN), 251, 275n5, 295, 298 Ipfling, Anton, 206 Isenberg brothers, 217

J

Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze’ev), 17–18, 33 Jagiełło, Eugeniusz, xxv Jagiełło, Michael, 46 Jakobowicz, Jakob, 53n10 Jakubowski, 198 Janasiński, 99 Jaroński, Wiktor, xxv Jasna Street, 100n10, 109, 159, 170, 193–195 Jaszecki, Stach, 223 Jedlicki, Jerzy, 196 Jędrzejów, 18, 52, 63, 174, 183, 185–186, 188–190, 259 Jedwabne, 251, 259n57 Jeger, Hayim, 6 Jewish cemetery, 25, 49, 127–128, 164, 171, 200, 202, 208n40, 208n42, 266, 272, 286, 293 Jewish community administration, 11, 14, 19, 28 Jewish community council, 2, 21n35, 23 Jewish community organization, 25n42 Jewish community, x, xiv, xvi, xvii, xxi, xxvi, 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 20, 23, 24, 30n49, 32n52, 43–44, 52, 62–66, 68, 71, 78, 82n77, 89, 91, 93, 149, 174, 187, 268, 269–270, 277, 298

Jewish Defense Committee, 7, 292 Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), 181n84, 272 Jewish gymnasium for boys, 35, 81 Jewish hospital, xxi, xxii, 83, 85n83, 89, 121, 166 Jewish National Assembly, 14 Jewish National Fund, 15, 17n27, 33, 136 Jewish orphanage, xxi, 27, 267 Jewish police, 66, 92–94, 100, 102–103, 108, 119–120, 124–126, 128–129, 158–162, 165, 168, 170–171, 173n52, 175–177, 180–181, 184, 186–187, 190, 194, 196, 200, 203, 205–206, 213, 219, 221, 223, 232–233, 263, 270–271. See also Ordnungsdienst Jewish Real Estate Owners Union, 12 Jewish Social Self-Help organization (Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna, ŻSS), 61n28, 87, 111, 115, 123, 146, 240 Jewish trade union, 22 Jewish underground, 130n106 Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), see American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Jordan River, 39 Judenrat, 43, 60–66, 71–81, 83–84, 86–89, 91–96, 98–104, 106–108, 110–113, 115, 117, 120–126, 128–130, 134, 139, 144–147, 150, 158–159, 161, 169, 171, 174–175, 179–181, 183, 185–186, 193–196, 202, 270–272 Jührend, Ricard, 59

K

Kaczmarek, Czesław, 277, 282 Kadzielnia quarry, xviii, 12, 69, 73–74, 75n59 Kaffar, 280 Kahane, David, 278n14, 283n23, 286 Kahane, Severyn, 280–282 Kalwart, Volksdeutsche, 230 Kaminer family, 21n35 Kaminer, Hanoch, 20 Kaminer, Idel, 21, 38 Kaminer, Mordechai Fishel, 20 Kaminer, Mosze, 3 Kaminer, Yitzhak, 38 Kaminska, Ida, 39 Kamiński, Alexander, 243 Kamiński, Łukasz, 294n51–52, 295n53 Kaner (member of Judenrat), 65 Kantor, Yitzhak Mayer, 53n10 Kaplan, Yitzhak, 45

319

320

Index Karay, Felicja, 70n45, 76n64, 175n61, 209n43, 211n46, 224n87, 225n89, 227n93–95, 227n96, 229n99, 232n114, 235n122 Karczoswka Mount, 73n57 Karczówkowska Street, 224 Kaszański, Dawid, xx Kasztan, Mosze, xix Kaszuba (Krupa), Daniela, 264–265 Kaszuba, Ryszard, 264 Kaszuba, Stanisław, 264–265 Kaszuba, Stefan, 264 Katowice, xviiin7, 93, 124n89, 276–277 Katyn, 250 Katzmann, Fritz, 57 Keizer family, 60, 65 Keizer, Bernard, 148 Keizer, Jurek, 148, 262–263 Keizer, Nechemia, 15 Keizer, Szymon, xxv Keltser Tsaytung, 39 Keltser Undzer Express, 38 Keltser Vokhenblat, 38 Keltser-Radomer Vokhenblat, 38 Keren Hayesod (Foundation Fund), 11, 15, 32–33 Keren, Stefan, 203n29, 221n76, 222n80 Kersten, Krystyna, 288 Kiciński, Janina and Karol, 266 Kielce municipality, 26, 38, 68n41 Kielczanin, 38 Kirszenbojm, Avraham, 29 Kirszenbojm, Mosze, 19 Kirszenbojm, Yitzhak, 14 Klarman, Yosef, 17 Kleinberg, Dr., 84, 108 Kleinert, Yosef, 181n81, 182n86, 259–261 Kleinhandler, Artur, 175n61, 177n66, 177n68, 177n70, 178n74, 179n75–76, 180n79, 182n86 Kleinhandler, Mary, 177n66, 177n68, 178n74 Kleinhandler, Moniek, 231 Kleinlerer, Yedidia, 203n30, 204, 206, 223 Kleinman, A., 65 Kleinman, Avraham, 18 Kleinplac, Herman, 268 Klingbeil, Mosze, 17 Kłos (flourmill), 12, 69, 118 Klotz, Anton, 69, 74 Kluska, Kalman, 20 Kluska, Ze’ev (Wolf) Zalman, 13, 25, 33 Kny, Frantz, 69, 79 Koenigsberg, Regina, 214

Kofman, Mosze, 28 Kofman, Wolf, 182 Kolatacz, Bela (Balbina), 214 Kolejowa Street, 60 Kolno, 47 Komorowski, Tadeusz (Bór), 242 König (captain of gendarmerie), 183 Końskie, 18, 79 Kopel, Hermann, 202n28 Kopel, Leib, 17 Kopel, Lola, 202n28 Kopel, Mendel, 38 Kopel, Yitzhak, 104 Kopel, Yosef, 38 Kopf, Dorka, 105 Kopf, Mania, 105 Kopiński, Leib (Leon), 72, 270, 272 Koplewicz, Yehuda, 16 Koppe, Wilhelm, 54, 81 Koralnik, Leon, 180 Kossak-Szczucka, Zofia, 244, 245n21, 249–250 Kovac, Ella, 197 Kowalik, Teofila, 263 Kozia Street, xix, 34, 142, 165 Kozienice Subdistrict, 276 Kozlow, Dr., 107 Kozlowski, Asher, 10n20, 28 Kozlowski, Mosze, 35 KPP, also KPRP (Polish Communist Party), 22, 48–49. See also Polish Communists Kraków, xiii, xiv, 54, 59n23, 60n26, 63, 79, 81, 87, 95n2, 111, 114, 128, 133, 212–213, 235n122, 240–241, 243, 248, 257–258, 267, 276–277 Krakowski, Shmuel, 247, 256n51 Kral, Shimon, 166n29, 216n62 Krause, Dr., 108n31 Kreizman, 60, 217 Kripo (Kriminalpolizei), 57 Kristau, Willy, 39 Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm, 56, 67, 72, 76, 133, 209 Ksiązek, 162n15 Kubina, Teodor, 290 Kuflewicz, Hayim, 27 Kultur Lige, 22, 37 Kundt, Ernst, 54, 114, 116n54, 191 Kuper, Joel, 205 Kuperberg, Paula, 17 Kupferminc, Shlomo, 28 Kurtyka, Janusz, 295 Kwieciński, Otmar, 212, 219

Index L

Labor camps, xii, 72, 76–77, 79, 108, 130, 134n122, 175–177, 182–183, 187–189, 193–236, 243, 254–255, 257, 262, 271 Labor department ( Judenrat), 56, 74, 117, 91, 93, 101, 104, 106, 111–112, 209 Lachman, Herman, 230 Laks, Noach, 37, 65 Land of Israel (Eretz Israel, Israel), viii, xii, xxiii, 4, 13–20, 31–33, 35, 37, 58n22, 64, 80, 267, 280, 293 Landau, David, 225n89, 230–231, 233n117 Landau, Yehezkel, xxvii Landau, Yosef, 39 Langwald, Avraham, 62 Langwald, Rosa, 265–266 Lappa, Henryk, 118n64, 159n3, 167n33, 196n9 Lasch, Karl, 54, 72, 94, 95n2, 97 Ląterowicz, Manka, 263 Laufer, Helen, 112, 113n47 League of Nations, 23n38 Lederman, 215n59 Leichter family, 135, 137, 147 Leichter, Sara, 84, 90n96, 147, 168n34 Leichter, Sinai, 33 Leichter, Szmuel, 13, 28, 137 Leipzig, 133, 175n61, 225 Lemberg (Perel), Fela, 168n34 Lemberg, Alter Israel, 70n64, 221n76, 222n80 Lemberg, Yacov David, 166n29, 174, 175n59, 176n62, 177n67, 179n76, 181n81, 181n83, 182n85, 226n91 Leonarda Street, 284 Leonów glass works, xviii Leszczyński (Singer), 4 Lev, Binyamin, 10n20 Lewartowska, Edia, 33 Lewartowski, Szmul, 130n106 Lewensztein, Mosze, 37 Lewi family, 27, 220, 229, 244 Lewi, Adolf, 17–18 Lewi, Hayim, 34 Lewi, Hermann, 3, 10n20, 25, 28, 69, 89–92, 134, 108n33, 123, 125–126, 128–129, 139, 145, 147, 158, 169, 194, 201–202, 202n27–28, 218, 270, 272 Lewin, Binyomin, 24 Lewin, Dr., 201 Lewin, Mosze, 198 Lewin, Yitzhak, 30n49

Lewinson, Yosef, xxii, 29, 49 Lewinsztein, 204 Lewinsztein, Mosze, 62n30 Lewinzon, Dr., 84 Lewkowicz, Gerszon, 203n30, 204–206, 223, 223n83 Liberman, Cyla (Celina Albirt), 60, 200, 207n37–38, 208n41, 219–220, 220n71–72 Liberman, Sam, 222n80 Libionka, Dariusz, 46–47, 237n1, 239n5, 240n7, 241n10, 242, 247–248, 249n32 Library, xxi, xxiii, 18, 22, 27, 36–37 Lichtenstein, Hayim, 11 Liebniz, 178n72 Lifszyc, Mendel, 28 Linat Hatzedek (“Righteous Rest”), 3, 27–28, 64 Liphardt, Fritz Wilhelm, 57–58, 191 Lipnica, 262 Liskowska Street, 188 Literarishe Bleter, 32n52 Łódź, xviii, xxii, 15, 20, 39, 56, 62n30, 80–82, 93, 100n10, 102–103, 112, 172, 226, 234, 243, 276, 287 Łomża Subdistrict, 41, 47n81, 244n16, 259n57, 297 Lubetkin, Zivia, 19 Lublin District, 54, 72, 76–77, 79, 88, 106, 131, 174, 211n46, 256, 269 Lublin, xxiv, 27, 46, 78–79, 130, 133, 195, 224, 283, 291 Ludwigsburg, viii, xi, 59n22, 192 Ludwików foundry, 58, 69, 102, 110, 160, 161n12, 197, 212–215, 217–220, 223, 236, 284, 286 Luft, Jerachmiel, 215 Łukasziewicz, Mieczysław, 7 Łukomski, Stanisław, 47n81 Łuków, 163 Lwów, 8, 20, 53, 282, 283n23

M

Mach, Oscar, 212–216 Machalski, Kazimierz, 56 Machtinger brothers, 12, 27, 69 Machtinger, Mosze, 33 Main Office for Reich Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), 54, 57, 191 Main square, 58, 76 Main Trustee Office for the East (Haupttreuhandstelle-Ost), 69 Majdanek, 235, 292

321

322

Index Mali, Rywka, see Sametband-Mali, Rywka Mali, Tova, 180n78, 182n85, 226n91, 231n108 Manela (maid), 202 Manela, Mark, 215n59 Manela, Mosze, 68 Mansfeld, Max, 225 Mappe, Kalman and Jechiel, 177n66, 177n68 Market (rynek) square, xv, 1, 58, 97, 98n4, 175, 177–179, 182, 184–188, 190 Markowicki, Mordechai, 62n30 Martov, Julius (Yuliy Zederbaum), 4 Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH Werke Ludwigshütte, 69, 212 Massada, 16–17 Massada, 39 Massalski, Adam, 52n4, 114n51 Maszenberg, Kubah, 204 Maszerberg, Lejzer, 53n10 Matjas, Franciszek, 266 Matjas, Józefa, 266 Max, Hayim Yosef, 203 Mayer, Gerulf, 57, 176, 178 Mayerson, Joel Dawid, xix Mazal, Dawid, 14 Meducki, Stanisław, 52n4, 114n51, 155 Mendelsohn, Ezra, 43 Menge, Szmul, 17 Micenmacher, Israel, 37 Micenmacher, Yitzhak, 35 Michlic, Joanna, 46, 241, 250, 289, 296 Mickiewicz, Adam, xxii Mickiewicza Street, 35, 40 Micmacher (member of Judenrat), 204 Miczewski, 198 Międzyrzec, 163n15, 173 Mielke, foreman, 229 Mierkiewicz brothers, 198n14 Miernik, Jozef, 170n44 Miernów, 267 Mika, Katarzyna, 267 Mika, Teofil, 267 Miller, Esther, 267 Miller, Jakob/Yacov, 267 Miller, Malka, 267 Minc, Alter, 21 Minc, Maria, 35, 172n51 Minc, Rosa, 35, 172n51 Mincberg, 65 Mincberg, Henyek, 215n59 Misztal family, 268 Mizenmacher (merchant), 172 Mizrachi Youth, 14

Mizrachi, xxiv, 13–14, 24, 32–35, 37 Młynarczyk, Jacek, viii, x, 121n76, 222n78, 253 Młynarska Street, 158–159, 161, 218 Młynarsky, Herszel, 3 Moncasz, 176n62, 176n65 Moraczewski, Jędrez, 8 Morawice, 29 Morawski, Edward Osóbka, 292 Mordkowicz, Kalman, 18 Morgenthau Committee, 7n14 Morgenthau, Henry, 9 Moskowicz, Avraham, 227n95, 284 Moszenberg (member of Judenrat), 65 Moszkowicz, Aharon, 11 Mötz, 59 Munich, 212 Municipal hospital, xxii, 107, 283, 287 Municipal market, xxii Muszberg, Yosef, 38 Mydlo, Mosze (Moniek Morris), 97n4, 116n54, 117n58, 160n8, 162n14–15, 173, 198

N

Nałkowska, Zofia, xxi Nasz Przegląd Sportowy, 40 National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne, NSZ), 223, 252–253, 274, 289 National Defense Fund (Fundusz Obrony Narodewej, FON), 21, 49 National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe, SN), 246 Nawrócka, Helena, 266 Naye Folk Tsaytung, 49 Naye Keltser Tsaytung, 39 New Zionist Organization, 18 Nida River, 172, 183 Niebelski, Hirsz, 38–39 Nisanowicz, Smuzl, 13 Nowak family, 218 Nowak, Henryk, xviii, 69 Nowak, Jakub, 2 Nowak, Jósef, xxi Nowowarszawska Street, xix, 52, 68, 97, 101–102, 165 Nowowiejska Street, xx Nowy Korczyn, 184, 226, 230, 232 Nowy Śzwiet Street, 109

O

Oberg, Karl, 57 Odrodzenie (“Rebirth,” Young Catholic Academics movement), 46 Odrodzenie, 46

Index Okenhandler, Jehoshua, 130n106 Okrzei Street, 109, 158–160, 165–166, 170 Okszeja Street, 102 Olameinu, 39 Olkusz, 15 Opatów, 18, 226 Opatowski, Mayer, 53n10 Orbach family, 69 Orbach, Abba, 200n18 Orbach, Avraham, 194n4, 203n29 Orbach, Wila, xn1 Orderman (couple), 218 Ordnungsdienst, 93–94, 97, 102–103, 106–108, 116, 119, 121, 125, 129, 132n114. See also Jewish police Orion (paper mill), 69 Orla street, 109, 142 Orpo (Ordungspolizei), 57–58, 131 Osti (SS-Ostindustrie GmbH, East Industry Company, Ltd.), 211n46 Ostland, 234 Ostrowiec, 79, 209, 235

P

Pakosz, xvi, 26, 127, 164, 165n23, 171, 202–203, 208, 214, 286 Palace Cinema, 38 Paradistal, 10n20 Partyka family, 265–266 Passirman, Yakov, 20 Pasteczko, Stanisław, 56, 90, 107 Pasternak, Mosze, 180–181 Paz, Miri, 275n5 Peasant Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie, BCh), 252 Peasants Unification Party (Związek Stronnictwa Cłopskiego, ZSCH), 41 Pelc, Jerzy Pelc, Mosze, 27–28, 43, 63–65, 71, 83–84, 88–90, 92, 107–108, 138, 270, 272 Pelc, Paula née Zavic, 63 Pelc, Yohanan (Yanusz), 33, 64n34 People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL), 241 Perel, Ben Zion, 161n10, 168n34 Peretiankowicz, Zofia, 183n92–93 Peretz, I. L., xxiii, 37 Perlman, Dr., xxiii, 37 Perlman, Mina, 38 Perlman, Moshka, 204 Peters, H., 69 Petrograd, 5 Petuch, Bolesław, 69 Pfeffer, Mosze, xix–xx, 27

Pfeffer, Yosef, 62n30 Phenomen Cinema, 38 Piaseczno Hasidim, 13 Piaski, 276 Piątek, Brunon, 284n29 Piekoszów, quarry, 69 Pierzchnica, 176 Piłsudski Immigrants House, 44n72 Piłsudski Square (Rynek Piłsudskiego), 109 Piłsudski, Józef, 4, 6–8, 23, 41, 43, 45, 64 Pińczów, 26, 63, 174, 176, 183, 185–186, 230, 264, 266–267 Pionki, 189, 206–207, 209, 215, 219–220, 223, 235, 271 Pióro, 223 Piotrkowice, 176 Piotrkowska Street, 68, 96–97, 159, 161, 162n14, 166n30, 193–194 Pirchei Agudat Yisrael, 20 Pisarz, Motek, 232–233 Piwko, Avraham, 18–19 Planty Street, 39, 119n68, 279–280, 282, 284–285 Plotni, Bruno (Baruch), 79 Po’alei Agudat Yisrael, 21–22, 24 Po’alei Tsiyyon Left, 16, 32, 40, 204 Po’alei Tsiyyon Right, 16, 32, 39–40 Po’alei Tsiyyon, xxiii, 15, 25 Pocieszke Street, xvi Podleże, 174 Pohl, Dieter, 95n2, 201n43 Pohl, Oswald, 211n46 Polish Academy of Sciences, 36n59 Polish Army Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, P.O.W.), 4 Polish Army, 1, 8, 26–27, 40, 43, 49, 64, 107, 212, 224, 237, 243, 282–283 Polish Communists (Polish Workers’ Party, Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR), 23, 241, 284, 286, 294. See also KPP Polish government-in-exile, 202, 204, 238–239, 250 Polish merchants’ association, xv Polish police (Policia Granatowa, “blue police”), 2, 5, 17, 59, 78, 94, 97, 101, 132, 174, 178, 182, 184–188, 244–245, 247, 252–253 Polish Revival Front (Front Odrodzenia Polski, FOP), 242, 244, 249 Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS) xxii–xxiii, 4, 10, 22–23, 38, 44–45, 49, 51, 204–205, 286 Polish telegraphic service (Polska Agencja Telegraficzna), 8

323

324

Index Polish underground, 238–239, 241, 243, 244n16, 295 Polplum (feather-processing plant), 12, 69 Pomerania, 81 Poniatowa, 211n46 Posluszny, Hayim, 126 Post office, 101, 105 Poznań, 56 Prąd, 46 Prague, xxiv, 83n79, 105–106, 172 Prawda, 244 Preis, H., 25 Prekerowa, Teresa, 246 Presidium ( Judenrat), 91 Prosta Street, 25 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 55 Prywolski, 172n51 Przechodnia Street, 109 Przedbórz, 233, 259 Przedmiescie Street, 165 Przemysłowa Street, 168n34 Pshigorsky, 217

R

Rabinowicz, Yakov Yitzhak of Suchedniów, xxiv, 31 Radek, Karl (Karol Sobelson), 4 Rademacher, Friedrich, 173 Radom District, x–xi, 54–57, 59–60, 62, 67, 72, 75–76, 86–87, 94, 95n2, 114, 116n54, 126, 131–133, 174, 189–192, 195, 209–211, 224–225, 234–235, 253, 268–269, 271–272 Radom, x, 22, 36, 38–39, 54, 57, 60–62, 72, 90, 92, 95n2, 107, 133–134, 163, 176, 190–191, 195, 206, 209–210, 212, 234, 268–271, 287 Radomska Street, 79, 84, 96–97, 104, 159, 167, 170 Radomsko Hasidim, 13 Radomsko, 79 Radomyśl Wielki, 63 Radoszyce Hasidim, xxiv Radoszyce, 18 Railway station, 5, 179 Rakoszinski, Mosze, xix, Rambam Charity Society, 27 Rappaport, Avraham Abeli Hacohen, xxiii, 2, 21, 30–31, 44, 52, 63, 65, 68n41, 109, 122, 167, 167n31 Rappaport, Baruch, 21–22 Rappaport’s wife, 49, 122, 167 Rataje, 268

Red Army, 189 Red Cross, 27, 87, 287 Redlich, Avraham, 230 Reichsbahnschutz, 158 Reis, Hayim, 114, 117 Reis, Issachar, 53n8, 67, 114, 169, 226, 228, 231 Reiter, Dr., 167–168, 203, 205, 218 Reizler, Yosef, 39 Reizman, Salomea (Sara), 19, 35, 172n51 Reizman, Yitzhak, 11, 15, 25, 33 Renkosinski, Dawid, 17 Ringelblum, Emmanuel, 78n69, 82n77, 83n79, 85, 109–110n37, 121n2, 240n6, 244n16, 246–248, 251, 255 Rodel, Leon, 18 Rokoszyn-Bukowka, quarry, 111 Rola-Żymierski, Michał, 283n23 Rotbard (member of Judenrat), 120 Rothman (member of Judenrat), 65 Rothman, Szlama, 51 Rotter, Hubert, 56 Röttig, Wilhelm, 58 Roy (member of Schupo), 59 Rozenberg, Dawid, 11, 19, 33 Rozenblat, Aron, 15 Rozenblum, Aron, 39 Rozenblum, Avraham, 16 Rozenblum, Eliasz, 13 Rozenbojm, Sasza, 109 Rozencholcs’ (brick factory), 69 Rozencweig, Lagerälteste, 228 Rozencwieg, Hayim, 227, 230–231, 233, 236 Rozengolc family, 60 Rozengolc, Jakob, 49 Rozenkranc, Jehiel, 20 Rozenkranc, Miriam, 168n34 Rubinek, 215n59 Rubinowicz, Dawid, 98, 115 Rubinowicz, Eliahu, 120n68, 161n12 Rubinowicz, Jerachmiel, 40 Rubinstein, Morris, 166n27, 172n49, 206n36 Ruczynów, 268 Rumpel, Matias, 59 Rusak, Antony, 35 Rüstungsinspektion, 209 Rygier, Leon, xxi Rzeczpospolita Polska, 243, 246

S

Sabat, Jan, 118 Saint Alexander Street, 34, 81

Index Sametband-Mali, Rywka, 177n68, 178, 180n77, 181n81, 181n84, 182n86 Sametband, Bluma, 181n84 Sanacja, 44–46, 49 Sandomierz, 18, 182–183, 190 Sanitation department ( Judenrat), 84, 87, 121 Sapieha, Adam Stefan, 248, 277 Sapir, Alfredo, 162n13, 202n27 Saxony, 58, 134 Schäfer, Emanuel, 51 Schatz, Dr., 128 Schechter, Esther, 3 Schild, Walter, 179 Schindler, Bruno, 103, 126, 171, 194 Schindler, Maximilian, 209–211 Schlesinger, Kurt, 102–103 Schlicht, Axel, 225, 227, 229–231, 233, 236 Schmidt, Josef, 59 Scholem Aleichem, 39 Schools, xiv, xix–xxi, xxiii, 4, 6, 10, 14, 18–19, 21, 26, 28, 33–39, 44–45, 47n81, 58, 63–64, 68, 80–81, 91, 93, 104, 110, 135–136, 172n51, 262 Schreiber, H., xx Schulman, Bernard, 208n39 Schupo, 57–59, 90, 97, 100–103, 110, 118n64, 119, 120n70, 130–132, 134, 161, 164, 168n34, 171, 174, 178, 186, 192, 195–196, 202–203, 206, 219, 269–271 Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo), 57, 131, 186, 192, 221 Security Police and SD (KdS) commander in Radom District, 126 Security Police and SS commander in Warsaw District (Der Kommandeur der Sicherpolizei und des SS fur Distrikt Warschau), 244 Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD), 57 Security Service (Wojewódzki Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, WUBP), 283–284 Sędziszów, 189 Seidel, Robert, xi, 174n56 Seidenman, Salomon, 237 Seifman, Jakob, 17 Seminarska Street, 25, 53 Sendlak, Stefan, 213n51, 219n69 Servetnik, Liliana, 90n97, 107, 108n31, 167, 168n34, 172n52 Servetnik, Oskar, 51, 107, 108n31 Serwetnik, Binyomin, 28 Shapira, Shlomo, 188

Shatz brothers, 217 Shatz, Dr., 217 Shildowska, Dorka, 200n18 Shlomei Emunei Yisrael (“Union of Faithful Jewry”), 10 Shneiderman, S. L., 291 Shor family, 263–265 Shor, Abraham, 263 Shor, Alte, 263–264 Shor, Nahum, 263 Shor, Sara, 263 Shor, Yona, 263 Shtarkman, 199n18 Sienkiewicza Street, 5, 60, 73, 135 Siennicki, Stefan, xxiv Sikorski, Władysław, 242, 250 Silberberg, Izik, 216–217, Silberberg, Yakov, 221, 221n76 Silnica River, xiii, xvii, xviii, 101–102, 159, 164, 165n23, 167 Silnica Street, 35, 165, 166n30 Singer, 102–103 Singer, Kalman, 279, 281 Sirota, Gerszon, xix Sitkowska quarry, 111 Skarżysko-Kamienna, 82, 111, 163, 175–176, 182, 187–189, 206–207, 209–210, 220, 224–226, 228, 233, 235, 271, 277 Skoretsky, Yosef, 2 Sladkowski (member of the Judenrat), 65 Sława glass works, 69 Ślichowice, quarry, 69 Śliwa, Franciszek, 69 Śliwiński, Zygmunt, 162 Słupia, Nowa, 81–82, 126 Small Ghetto, vii, 179, 193–236, 257, 260, 270, 272 Smetterling, Dr., 128 Smietanka-Kruszelnicki, Ryszard, 294n52, 295 Sobibór, 132 Social services department ( Judenrat), 87, 91 Society for Aid to the Jewish Orphanage, 27 Society for Assistance to the Poor of the Mosaic Faith, 27 Society for Hebrew culture, xxiiin20 Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej, TOZ), 27, 29, 84, 84n81, 270 Society for the Old-Age Home (founded by the Zagajski brothers), 27

325

326

Index Society for the Support of Poor Childbearers, 27 Sokolowski, Judenrat secretary, 65, 161n12 Solewicz, Eduard, 267 Solewicz, Helena, 267 Sondergericht, special court, 57 Sonderkommando Feucht, 131, 133, 158, 159n6, 162, 165, 174, 190, 271 Sosnowiec, 12, 82, 90 Soup Kitchen 1, 123 Soviet secret police, 294–295 Soviet Union, 54, 64, 73n56, 79, 94, 126, 212, 237, 243, 259, 274–275, 277, 279, 288, 294 Special Jewish defense committee, 292 Speer, Albert, 209–211 Spiegel, Gustav, 103, 194–195, 198, 201, 205–206, 218–219, 221–224, 236 Sport Tsaytung, 40 SS, 51, 54, 56–59, 67, 72, 74, 76–77, 79, 90, 94, 101, 108n31, 127, 131, 132n114, 133, 158, 162n14, 163, 167, 170–171, 174, 176, 178, 180–182, 185, 188, 191, 193, 195, 206, 209–210, 211n46, 212, 219, 225, 228–230, 233–234, 236, 244, 260, 269 St. Alexander Hospital, 284 Stalin, Josef, 289, 292, 295 Stalingrad, 205, 210–211, 213, 235 Stańczyk, Jan, 239 Starachowice, 188n105, 189, 201, 207, 209–210, 220, 235, 271 Starowarszawska Street, xix, 34, 101, 165 Staszewski, Jehiel, 62n30 Staszewski, Y., 22 Staszów, 18, 226, 229n99, 256 State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesju­ stizverwaltungen zur Aufkärung), xi, 191–192 Stawieszyce, 267 Stefania Wolman Girls’ High School, xx, 35–36 Steinberg, Dr., 167 Steiner, Paul, 69, 212 Stempian, 263 Stern, 22, 40 Sternberg, Jerzy, 184n94, 185n99 Stolarska Street, 109, 120n68, 159, 193–194 Stopnica, 181–182, 190, 226, 229n99, 263 Strawczynski brothers, 10n20 Strawczynski, Szmul, 29 Strzemien, Walentyna, 257 Stumme, Georg, 50

Subicka, Apolonia, 120n68 Suchedniów, xxiv, 15, 17–18, 26, 31, 63, 71, 81–82, 126, 149, 186–187, 188n105, 266 Supplies department ( Judenrat), 91, 101 Supreme Jewish Council, 5 Świętego Wojchiecha, Plac (St. Wojchiech’s Square), 97 Swisarczyk, Adolf, 162n13 Switzerland, 82, 83n79, 105–106, 118, 123, 202 Synagogues, xix–xx, xxii, 2–4, 14, 25–27, 34, 36, 45, 48, 52, 53n8, 68, 84, 90, 101, 110, 118, 159, 161, 164–165, 171, 176, 193, 195, 205, 253, 276, 278 Szafraniec, Władisław, 268 Szaynok, Bożena, 294 Szczanów, 78n67 Szczecin, 191 Szczekociny, 189 Szczubial, Franciszek, 253 Szczuczyn Subdistrict, 41, 297 Szein, Kalman, 169 Szeptycki, Stanisław, 3 Szeroka Street, 50, 86 Szezarik, Anshel, 62n30 Szinowloga, Guta, 266 Szledszyk, Mordechi, 188 Szmelholc, Helena, 268 Szmulewicz brothers, 202 Szmulewicz, Mosze, 49 Szmulewicz, Yitzhak, 23, 37 Szniper, Dawid, 181n84 Szpakowski, Stanisław, xix, xxii Szpilman, Ansel, 39 Szteiman, Yosef, 28 Sztern, Yosef, 130n106, 184 Sztrum, Oskar, 51 Szulsinger, Lejbush, 62n30 Szydłowska Street, 109 Szymański, Feliks, 267

T

Tanenbaum, David, 130n106 Tarabula, Leonka, 267 Tarbut (“Culture”), system, 36 Targowa Street, xvi, 161, 165, 170, 177, 193 Tarka family, 267 Tarka, Stanisława, 267 Tarnów, 63 Tauman, 27 Tauman, S., 65 Taxation department ( Judenrat), 91, 101, 125 Tchaikowski, Hella and Regina, 200n18 Technion, 33, 64

Index Tęcza, 46 Teitelbojm, 63 Tekel, Eliezer, 186n100 Tekel, Leon, 230 Tel Aviv, ix, 44n72, 128n101, 168n34, 203n29 Theater, xxii Theresienstadt, 234 Thomas, Ernst, 58, 101, 126, 131–132, 158–159, 161, 164, 167–168, 170–171, 188, 191, 194, 206 Tiszler, 205, 222 Tomaszów, 253 Tomchei Ani’im, 27 Topiol, Yosef, 183 Torat Hesed, 26 Trager, Mosze, 39 Trawniki, 131, 211n46 Treblinka, 83n79, 130, 133, 148, 162n15, 163, 167, 171–174, 179, 182–183, 185–190, 194, 198–200, 204, 257, 271–272, 287 Treiger (member of Judenrat), 65, 74, 93 Treiser, Mosze, 23 Treister, Noach, 53n10, 126 Trembacki, Berl, 52n5 Trembecki, Szaja-Shmelke, 107 Trembecki, Szmil-Zelig, 107 Trembecki, Szmul, 109 Treuhandstelle für das GG, 69 Trotsky, Leon, 8, 30 Trunk, Isaiah, 80n73, 90n99, 108 Turkow, Zigmund, 39 Tversky, Motek, 217 Twersky, Mordechai (Motele), xxiv, 31 Twersky, Mosze, xxii Twersky, Yehuda Leib, xxiv Tzeirei Agudat Yisrael, 21

U

U.S. Senate, 9 Unger, Joel, 52n5 Union of Faithful Jewry, 10, 20. See also Agudat Yisrael Union of the Home Army (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ-AK), 242 University of Warsaw, 34 Unzer Express, 39 Urbański, Krzysztof, xi, xin5–6, xivn1, 6n10, 50n1, 52n4 Użarów, 33

V

Vakshlak, Israel, 198n14 Vatican, 240, 291

Vilna, 37, 39 Volksbank (“People’s Bank”), 11–12

W

Waldman, Jehiel, 22–23 Warka, xxiv Warsaw District, 211n46, 244 Warsaw ghetto, 78n69, 243, 250, 266 Warsaw, xi, xiv, xviin6, xxii, xxv, 5, 11, 18–20, 22, 27, 29, 32n52, 38–39, 54, 79, 83, 87, 91, 93, 95n2, 130, 172–174, 181n84, 198–199, 211n46, 237, 240–241, 244, 246–247, 257, 265, 273, 280n17, 284, 287 Warszawska Street, xix, 18, 34, 52, 68, 97, 101–102, 142, 165 Warszawski (member of Judenrat), 161n12 Warszawski, Mark, 159n3 Warszawski, Meir, 168n36 Warszawski, Zelig, 63 Warthegau, 54–55, 81, 234 Wasser, Meir, 204 Wasser, Yossele, 198 Wasser, Zelig, 204, 216 Węgleszyn, 262 Wehrmacht, 50–52, 58, 76, 79, 89, 92, 102, 167n33, 191, 209–211, 213, 225, 261 Weichert, Michael, 61n28, 87, 123, 129 Weil, Shmuel Eliahu, 52n5 Weincweig, Avraham, 16 Weiner family, 12 Weiner, Jisrael, xix Weinfeld, Yosef, 228n98, 231 Weinreb, Baruch, 38 Weinreb, Hayim, 11, 19, 35 Weinreb, Mendel, 198n15 Weinreich, 216 Weinsztok, Mosze, 34 Weintraub, Natalia, 168n34 Weintraub, Szmul, 187 Weisgold, Mosze, 62n30 Wendler, Richard, 56 Wenus, Józef, 217 Werkschutze (workplace guards), 192, 212–213, 233 Wesoła Street, 36 Wielka, Kazimierza, 15 Wiener, Daniel, 60, 70, 204–205, 280–281 Wietrznia, quarry, xviii, 12 Wilner (member of Judenrat), 65 Wilner, Adolph, 2 Wilson, Woodrow, 9 Winter, Mosze Kalman, 171n46

327

328

Index Wirtz, Bernard, 130, 164n21, 171n46, 195, 197n12 Wisla, 182 Wiślica, 184–185 Wiśniówka, quarry, 73n56 Włoclawek, 56 Wlodaver, Natke, 200n18 Wodzisław, 189 Wolfowicz (couple), 268 Wolfowicz’ brother, 268 Wolhynia, 2 Wolica, 186 Wollgelertner, David, 267 Wollschläger, Erich, 67n40, 132, 158n1, 159n6, 161, 162n13, 164n20, 166n27, 192, 194n4, 197n12, 202 Wolman, Adolf, xxi Wolman-Żimnowoda, Stefania, xx–xxi, 35, 135, 172n51 Wolność i Niezawislość (“Freedom and Independence”), 274 Wonska Street, 40 Wrocieryż, 267 WVHA (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt), 211n46 Wyszyński, Stefan Cardinal, 291

Y

Yad Vashem, viii–ix, 51n3, 62n29, 135–137, 140, 146, 148–149, 151–152, 154, 257, 259, 261–263, 282n22 Yedwabne, Simha, 62n30 Yerozalimsky, Mosze Nahum, xxiii–xxiv, 30 Yoskowicz, Szmul, 100n10, 117n59, 118, 119n66, 233n119 Yurkowski brothers, 200n18

Z

Zabludski, Szlamek (Shlomo), 193n1–2, 200n22, 206n36, 208n39, 208n41, 219, 220n71, 222n77 Zagajski family, xvii, 4, 12, 24–25, 27, 29, 49, 69 Zagajski, Abraham, xvii–xviii, 172n51 Zagajski, Zwi Herszel, xxii, 24–25 Zagłada Żydów (“The Jewish Holocaust”), 251 Zagórze, quarry, 69 Zajączkowski brothers, 222 Zalcberg, Ephraim, 62n30 Zalcberg, Szaja, 51n3, 73, 75n101, 78n68, 79n70, 108n33 Zalcman, Dawid, 62n30 Zalcman, Szmul, 179 Zamkowa Street, 124, 127

Zandowski, Salomon, 38, 64 Zandowski, Zygmunt, xxi Żarki, 81 Żaryn, Jan, 294n51–52, 295 Żbikowski, Andrzej, 238n3, 240n7–8, 245–246 Ze’ev Jabotinsky Soldiers’ Alliance, 17. See also Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Żegota (Rada Pomocy Żydom, “Council to Aid Jews”), 213n51, 221n75, 245–246 Zeifman, Kuba, 230 Zeisler, Gertrude, 82, 83n79, 105–106, 112, 118, 122–124, 130 Zeisler, Max, 83n79 Zelcer, Dawid, 79, 132n114 Zelcer, Shlomo, 21 Zelcer, Szymon, 132, 173n52 Zelek, Roman, 282 Zelinger, Bernard, 84, 85n83 Zelinger, Bronek, 216 Zelinger, Salomon, 17–18 Zelinger, Zwi, 105n22, 199, 200n21, 201 Zeloni, Hayim, 33 Zemel, 198n14 Zemel, Mosze, 202n27, 219n69, 221n76 Zielniewski (Volksdeutsche), 212 Zilber, 215 Zilberberg, Joel, 263 Zilberberg, Mosze, 67n40 Zilberblat, Asher, 40 Zilbering family, 12 Zilberklang, David, 47n80 Zilberman, 204 Zilberszlag, Stanisław, 40 Zilbersztein, Esther, 20 Zilinski, Morris, 33 Zilinski, Yitzhak, 35 Zimmerman, Fritz, 69 Zimmerman, Hadassah, 116, 122n81, 166n29 Żimnowoda, Rosalia, 68 Żimnowoda, Władysław, xx Zionist Organization, 5, 7, 15n27, 32, 37 Zionist Revisionist Party, 16 Zionist union, xxiii Ziskin, Hermann, 35 Zloto, Jehuda, 17 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 286–287 Zusman, 184n96 Zygmunt I, xiii Zyskind, Binyomin, 45 Zysmanowicz, Zysman, 23 Zyto, Akiva, 219–220