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JEWISH LUBLIN DURING WW2 The Jewish town, rebuilt gradually, tightly encircled the whole castle hill. It preserved this shape till the end of the Second World War. The main street was Szeroka St. (formerly called Zydowska) with a very compact building structure of high houses. The remaining streets - Zamkowa, Podzamcze, Krawiecka - had a chaotic, usually wooden building structure with picturesque side streets and backyards. In 1940 the Nazis confiscated the library (about 22 thousand books and 10 thousand volumes of magazines) and robbed or destroyed the Academy's equipment. Presently, the building houses the Medical Academy. On the front facade there hangs a commemorative plaque which informs that: "This building, between 1930-1939, held the Jewish Rabbinical Academy Yeshivat Hachmei Lublin" The Jewish hospital was opened in 1886. It offered 56 beds; this number increased to 100 beds within following 50 years. A small synagogue and a garden were also there. In March 1942, during the ghetto's liquidation, the Nazis murdered all patients and the medical staff. On the side facade there is a commemorative plaque which reads as follows: The route of our excursion has considerably covered the boundaries of the ghetto demarcated in March 1941 with the following streets: Kowalska, Krawiecka (along the southern wing of the castle, non-existent any longer), Sienna, Kalinowszczyzna, Franciszkanska (Podzamcze at present), Unicka, Lubartowska. The timetables of trains used in the transports of Jews to the death camps were all scheduled here. The coordinator SS officer was SS-Obersturmführer Karl Mahnke. The office of the SSUPF Lublin District was located in several buildings; in addition to individual staff buildings, there were also the living quarters of the SsuPF which were opposite the Casino for the employees of Globocnik's office. Between the living quarters and the Casino-set somewhat back-there was a single-storey villa which in 1940 was the location of the Resettlement-Kdo; and later served as living quarters. Around this staff bujilding were grouped houses in which were billetted police, a barracks for Police Regt. 25, the office of the District Governor, and his living quarters.

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The staff building was a three-storey house. On the ground floor-immediately by the entrance- there was the transport squad. On the first floor--on one side-there was the administration, accounts and archive (documents) offices. Here, the chief-of-staff also had a room and an ante- room. On the second floor there was located the personnel dept. Here, Hermann Hoefle also had his living quarters in one room. Globocnik's living quarters were located in two single-storey houses (i.e., it had a ground floor and a first floor) next to one another which had been connected on the ground floor by breaking through the wall(s). On the ground floor there was the orderlies room which was permanently manned, a conference room and a dining room. On the first floor of this house were the living quarters of the SsuPF (Globocnik), as well as a small war room. On the other side lived GI's mother. Odilo himself was a very relaxed type of person. He was not a type of Prussian soldier. Odilo was a very relaxed not even a type of a soldier. You know a soldier type was a Friedrich Rainer. A special depot was set up in Lublin, in a large five-storey building which

occupied a complete city block at Chopin Strasse 17 near the city centre.

Known officially as the Erfassungslager für beschlagnahmtes Feindvermögen,

the Chopin Strasse depot came under the administration of the SS-

Standortverwaltung Lublin, headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Georg Wippern.

Valuables from camps and resettlement actions (jewelry, watches, gold fills,

paper money, foreign currency, securities, etc.) were sent there to be registered

for inventory control by WIPPERN as registrar of all valuables and transferred in

shortest time possible to Area Admin. Hq. (Jablon Castle). A central register-

card index was kept for all goods. Authorization of all requests for Chopin

merchandise were signed by Wippern before delivery was possible.

A branch of the German supply works (DAW) was established in Lublin in December 1940 . Over five thousand Jewish prisoners were employed as slave workers in the DAW enterprises at Lipowa Street Camp and Old Airfield Camp near Chelmska Street in Lublin, and in Pulawy. In March 1941 the Lublin Ghetto was officially established .

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On July 20/21 1941 Himmler visited Globocnik in Lublin and decided to enlarge and extend the SS economic enterprises in Lublin. A concentration camp was planned for up to 50,000 prisoners, and this was the initial reason for the construction of the concentration camp Lublin, better known as Majdanek. A training camp for the SS Ukrainian volunteers at Trawniki, was also part of the Aktion Reinhardt structure. As plans for Aktion Reinhardt took shape, the choice of Lublin served as a cover for Jews being transported east. Their disappearance after their extermination in the death camps could be explained by saying they had been sent eastward for forced labour in the vast expenses of the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet-Union. The main tasks imposed on Globocnik and his staff within the framework of Aktion Reinhardt were: - the overall planning of the deportations and extermination activities of the entire operation. - building the death camps. - co-ordinating the deportations of Jews from the different districts to the death camps. - killing the Jews there. - seizing the assets and valuables of the victims and handing them over to the appropriate Reich authorities. While the health of the troops was reported good during the month of June 1940, the horses were ill with chest colds. This posed several problems for the units and kept the veterinarians occupied. Reports for the month of June included only light actions, such as rounding up Jews and transferring them to labor camps. The units were also involved in operations to protect the immigrating Volksdeutsche. Besides routine duties, training for all units continued as recruits arrived replacing the older SS men. During the evening of the 21st [June 1940] a festive occasion, known as the "Sommersonnwendfeier" (mid-summer festival) took place. In the vicinity of Garwolin the Ist Squadron of the 2.SS-Totenkopf- Reiterstandarte set up a large bon-fire and opened the festivities with singing. After the first song was concluded and the fire was raging, SS-Untersturmfiihrer Heinrich Dieckmann gave a speech welcoming the guests, During the evening of the 21st a festive occasion, known as the "Sommersonnwendfeier" (mid-summer festival) took place. In the vicinity of Garwolin the Ist Squadron of the 2.SS-Totenkopf- Reiterstandarte set up a large bon-fire and opened the festivities with singing. After the first song was concluded and the fire was raging, SS-Untersturmfiihrer Heinrich Dieckmann gave a speech welcoming the guests.

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In July 1940 , the units mainly took part in evacuation and pacification operations. Many of the Poles had already been transported off to eastern areas of the General Government while others were sent to forced-labor camps in Germany. As the occupation progressed, the rules that governed the dwindling Polish population became increasingly harsh. On July I st new laws were put into effect concerning the carrying of identification papers for the general population. At first the Germans only issued these identification papers, which were to be carried by all residents. This, however, allowed the residents to roam freely throughout the country and travel from town to town. As the instances of arson and other acts of sabotage in- creased, the Germans realized that this system was unsuitable. The new laws mandated that resi- dents not only carry their papers, but they also had to be stamped upon arrival or departure from each village. This allowed the Germans to track the whereabouts and the traffic of the population. To understand the atmosphere of General Government in July 1940 as well as the attitude of the occupying German forces at this point, it is best to read a section of the war diary of the LSS- Totenkopf-Reiterstandarte translated verbatim: "There are many days when we must send out small patrols to pick up Poles that make shelter in chicken coops and wander around. Complaints from the Ethnic Germans and the Wohlhynien Germans are common and upon investigation reveal nothing. There are also increasing cases of the Ethnic Germans and the Wohlhynien Germans taking in Poles to be their servantsfor egotistical reasons. They even give them shelter and a place to stay. The enthusiasm to work and the enterprising spirit here are generally non-existent. The Ethnic Germans and the Wohlhynien Germans seem to be of the opinion that 'now we are in the Reich and everything is in order!' They ignore thefact that they are supposed to be building and working. 'Even here, after the Warthe district has been declared a Reich area, there are still towns in which Germans live and the mayors are Polish. Is this not more than a favorable situation for the Poles ? Also, with regards to the law, the Poles and Germans have equal rights. What is a punishment for the Germans is a reward for the Poles! The Poles are not used to the relatively mild punishments and they can't stand them. It is impossible, however, to bring law and order to these poor towns without contradicting the laws themselves. 'After a village is occupied, the first searches are performed at night. Every Polish residence and farmstead is searched. When we search them, the

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Poles hide themselves in sheds and barns and defend themselves adamantly with pitch-forks. Sometimes there are homeless wanderers who hide themselves in these barns without the owner knowing or without his wanting to know. Some- times they are the farmer's neighbors who are trying to avoid being taken away by the evacuation. Sometimes they are people that say that it was the farmer who forced them to stay there, although they don't appear to have any signs of oppression or starvation. It is often difficult to decide who to let stay and who to send away, and more often than not it is those that are dependents that are spared the evacuation, but only in as much as there are enough people left over to be put to work. 'No legal grounds exist to take prisoner those Poles who provide food and shelter for others. Each particular case is difficult to judge and when no decision can be made, those in question are handed over to the SD. If the occupants of a farm are evacuated, then the ownership of the farm is declared forfeited and the farm is handed over to the immigration service, which usually fills the farm with Ethnic Germans or Wohlhynien Germans on the same day.,'54

Aktion Reinhardt headquarters Located in Lublin at Pieradzkiego 17, in the former Stefan Batory college (Lublin 1942 Map). Globocnik's Headquarters as SS- und Polizeiführer of the Lublin District was located separately from the Aktion Reinhardt headquarters. A special depot was set up in Lublin to deal with the vast amounts of loot now piling up in the death camps. Known officially as the Erfassungslager für beschlagnahmtes Feindvermögen, it was located in a large five-storey building which occupied a complete city block at Chopin Strasse 17 near the city centre. The Chopin Strasse depot came under the administration of the SS-Standortverwaltung Lublin, headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Georg Wippern. Ghettos Since the early 16th Century Jews had to live in separate districts, named Ghettos. The separation was based on economic and religious reasons. During World War II the Nazis established Ghettos for the Jewish population in occupied Poland, the Soviet Union and the Baltic States. These Ghettos were not comparable with those of former times because they had a different purpose: to serve as assembly camps for the extermination camps. The Ghettos were blocked by walls or fences with barbed wire, or by buildings that were adjacent to the "outside world". Since November 1941 the police were allowed to shoot Jews found outside.

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In the Ghettos the Jews had to install a Judenrat (Jewish Board) for administration, who carried out the orders of the Germans. They were forced to settle their life behind the Ghetto walls: Jewish police, postal service, employment and housing management, food supply etc. Life in the Ghetto was horrible. Many people were crowded together in too small flats. Food and other necessary things for a normal life were in short supply. Starvation and epidemics were the order of the day. Death from starvation became normal. The death toll increased to more than 15 %. Only a minority were able to earn some money because some German companies established factories in the Ghetto. Approximately 440,000 Jews were unemployed and depended on smuggling food or donations. The Jews had to sell their valuables for food. Result of the Wannsee-Konferenz on January 20th 1942 in Berlin was the plan for the realization of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution). The extermination camp Chelmno was already under construction and the Einsatzgruppen already had killed thousands of Jews in the East. Now all Jews not needed for work, should be killed. On July 19th 1942 Heinrich Himmler gave orders to Krüger (HSSPF / Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer Krakau) and Globocnik (HSSPF Lublin) to eliminate the Jews. The Einsatz Reinhardt squad from Lublin, acting on Globocnik's orders, l ed by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle ordered the Jewish administration in the Warsaw Ghetto to select 7000 Jews per day for deportation. Every day, from July 22nd until September 12th 1942 long columns of starving victims marched to the assembling place, called Umschlagplatz . There the people were ordered to enter cattle cars, about 100 per wagon. The trains started with about 50 wagons to Treblinka every day as a shuttle service. The above was repeated in all the other major ghettos, often Jews were deported from Germany to the ghettos in Poland, and Baltic states, but only remained in the ghettos for a short time, until they were deported to death camps or concentration camps. Of course the Nazis didn't tell the Jews the destination of the transports. Expressions as "evacuation" or "resettlement to the East" were used to avoid panic among them. Nevertheless a few Jews were able to escape from Sobibor and Treblinka to tell about the real destination of the trains. Some hid below heaps of clothes from the victims, in cattle cars leaving the Treblinka death camp. Important to mention is the heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that took place in the Warsaw Ghetto from April 19th until May 16th 1943 , where Jewish resistance took place against the overwhelming might of SS , Polizei, Wehrmacht, Ukrainian and other ethnic forces. With no real chance of success the Jewish resistance fighters (organized in the ZOB,

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Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) rose up, and fought with great tenacity. The revolt was crushed in a brutal fashion by SS troops of Jürgen Stroop (SS- und Polizeiführer in Warschau). Finally nearly all buildings of the Warsaw Ghetto were raized to the ground. Nevertheless about 1000 - 2000 Jews survived, even one year later some were detected in the tunnels and resistance bunkers below streets and buildings. Before the war there was some merchant Jews what they was dealing in business with the Poles, and they had to go into the Gentile section, where the Gentile business people, the Poles, used to live. They call the Jewish section a ghetto from my time ... so if a Jew had to pass by to the outside from the Jewish community, he had to show the guard a special pass by the two small openings. And after five hundred or six hundred years later from when the chain was built, the Polish government liquidate the chain from the tower what I was talking before, so Jewish people could live on the other side. When the Nazis made the ghetto, there came out an order in 1940—all the Jews what they are living in the Polish section, they have to move to the community where the Jews was living hundreds of years ago. All Jewish people should be concentrated between the Shiroka and Kowalsky Streets, starting at the gate on the Grodzka Street. Before was about five thousand Jews living in the Jewish quarter; there the Nazis put in all the Jews from Lublin from all the streets. In the ghetto, thirty-eight thousand or forty-two thousand Jews was living there . My parents, my six sisters . . . every sister was married and had two or three or four children ... all of them had their homes in the ghetto because they lived in the Jewish community. All the people had to move to the Jewish section except the heads from the shops—they will have to live outside the Jewish community in some apartments what the SS opened on 16 Grodzka Street , because . . . you asked me why the Grodzka Street. They don't want the heads from the shops, when they have to take measurements, to take orders, to deliver some work or to take some work to the labor camps, they shouldn't mix with the general population because of cleanliness. They shouldn't catch from the ghetto . . . there'll be lice there in the ghetto or other insects. That we shouldn't be infected with diseases, we shouldn't live with the other Jews in the big ghetto. That's why they gave us the special places to live, away a couple of thousand feet. Was also another reason why I think they want us to live away from the big ghetto. Most of the time, the SS used to come in the ghetto in the nighttime to some houses, and they took out people . . . we didn't know

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every time what happened there in the ghetto because there was a gate, and we was almost separated from them. But especially the leaders from the shops, we had a chance sometimes to go in and mix with our relatives, but not to be too long there. To sleep, we had to go back. We found out that certain nights they took out some Jews—they never returned. Most of the time they took out the intelligentsia . . . doctors, lawyers, more or less what they was occupied in politics, Zionism, all kinds—they call them socialists, even Zionists they call socialists, communists, whatever names the SS want to call them. The Nazis put up signs on the houses from the shop leaders, on the Grodzka Street, that the SS should never enter in the nighttime ... to control the houses . . . the idea was not to interfere with the nighttime rest, because we have to go to work in the morning. If they sometimes came in to check in the houses, they had to have a special pass from Globocnik, the General from the SS. They gave us special houses so that they should also have us concentrated, the heads from the shops in one place, separate from the general Jewish population. (A) year and a half later in '42 when they liquidate the ghetto and get ready to put the Jews in the small ghetto outside from Lublin, at Majdan-Tatarsky, they had put SS all around the four sides of the ghetto, and they had thc people all together, so was not too much work for them to do. They put the SS with machine guns all around, and they gave the Jews in the ghetto an order to get out, and they brought them all in the nighttime to the Grodzka Street. The Grodzka Street was a very long street, maybe about a mile long, and at the other end, there was the very tall tower with the clock, where it starts the Gentile section. Before the war, thousands of Jews was living with the Gentiles to the same houses, the same streets. In August of 1940 , around the ghetto,the Nazis made a gate on the Grodzka Street, about a thousand or fifteen-hundred feet from the Shiroka Street. The gate was watched by the Jewish police in the beginning. Later, the SS start to watch who is going out . . . if somebody had a working card and they had to go out to work, so they let them out. To let them in, they had to show a pass. The Jews what they went out to work from the ghetto, they was not allowed to walk on the sidewalk. They had to walk on the middle of the road together with the horses. If they saw a German, they had to greet him to take off their hats, their caps. Sometimes if a Jew didn't see the German, and the Nazi saw that he didn't raise his cap, he stopped him, and he had to count a hundred times to raise his hat from his head, and to count loud, and if he missed one he had to count over. This was the punishment for not greeting them. Later, for any little thing, they arrest them and take them to SS headquarters on Shopena 17 , the torture place. Some of them didn't

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come out; they beat them to death, and if they came out, they was so beaten they couldn't even move to go away. (T)he report of a journalist who was in Lublin in November 1939. . . describes that because of transports from all the towns in Poland and from Germany, the Jews were packed into Lublin, from originally 40,000 to over 200,000, and people were living on the streets, in hovels under buildings, where animals were kept, in bombed-out houses, anywhere there was space. He called the ghetto a living grave of orphans and people who had lost their families.

"The congestion, the stench, the poverty, the disease and the chaos which reign in Lublin cannot be paralleled anywhere on earth. . . . Men die like flies on the thoroughfares. ... At night everything is pitch black. . . . All the wells have become polluted. . . . Cholera and typhus were already rampant when we reached Lublin. . . . Women band together and cook whatever they can gather. . . . Hundreds have not slept for weeks. . . . The devil himself could not have devised such hell. . . . Lublin is a giant concentration camp where people spend their days trying to dig their way out of a living grave."

The Yiddische Gemeinde, the Jewish community, had a soup kitchen. I could see the lines when I passed by, when they was standing to get a pot, a plate, of some soup . . . was sometimes fifty, sixty, seventy people waiting. Before they went to the houses, the pot of soup was finished. Walking they ate up the soup. Was drinkable water in the ghetto, because there was wells you could get the water from the ground, many places, except from the water from pipes. The wells was from before-when they made the city water, they left the wells. You had to go a little bit far behind the city, about a half a mile, to carry water. Was special water carriers what they carried two pails of water on their shoulders, with a wood beam made special to fit their shoulders. He sold the water; you paid for that. The trips he made a day was according to how many customers he had. There was many, many of them. This was lately the business what they could make a dollar or a zloty. . . describes that because of transports from all the towns in Poland and from Germany, the Jews were packed into Lublin, from originally 40,000 to over 200,000, and people were living on the streets, in hovels under buildings, where animals were kept, in bombed-out houses, anywhere there was space. He called the ghetto a living grave of orphans and people who had lost their families.

"The congestion, the stench, the poverty, the disease and the chaos which reign in Lublin cannot be paralleled anywhere on earth. . . . Men die like flies on the thoroughfares. ... At night everything is pitch black. . . . All the wells

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have become polluted. . . . Cholera and typhus were already rampant when we reached Lublin. . . . Women band together and cook whatever they can gather. . . . Hundreds have not slept for weeks. . . . The devil himself could not have devised such hell. . . . Lublin is a giant concentration camp where people spend their days trying to dig their way out of a living grave."

On 18th September 1939 German troops entered the town, after a short battle in the Lublin suburbs and several days of bombing. On 14th October the Jewish community received an order to pay 300,000 zlotys as contribution for the German Wehrmacht. German soldiers rounded up the Jews in the streets and forced them to work. Many were beaten or tortured. German soldiers robbed Jewish shops and apartments. On 25th October the Jewish population in Lublin was registered: 37,054 Jews lived in the town. Now mostly younger Jews and political activists left Lublin and tried to reach Soviet occupied Poland. The German civil administration, under governor Zörner in Lublin was organized on 1st November 1939 , after establishment of the "Generalgouvernement". On 9th November 1939 SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik was appointed SS- und Polizeiführer in the Lublin District. On this day the first resettlement of Jews took place in the town: In the early hours of the morning SS men surrounded the town centre and removed the Jews from their flats. Most of them lost their whole estate within a few minutes. All Jews were resettled this particular day to the Jewish Town and Old Town in Lublin. Again many of them decided to leave the City. Later in November German authorities ordered that all Jewish shops, workshops and factories should be marked with the Star of David. From December 1939 they also had to wear the "Star" in the form of armbands. In March 1941 Lublin’s governor Zörner proclaimed the establishment of a ghetto in Lublin. It comprised the oldest and poorest part of the historical Jewish district in Lublin’s Old Town. Several days before setting-up the ghetto about 14,000 Lublin Jews (most of them poor and without work) were resettled to several small towns in the Lublin district, but parts of them returned illegally. Around 40,000 Jews still lived in the town. The Camp at 7 Lipowa Street From October 1939 hundreds of L Jews worked on erection of the labour camp in Lipowa Street, and afterwards in the camp itself and in its workshops. The camp was the idea of the Police and S.S. Chief Globocnik, and was administered by the Police and S.S. Headquarters of

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the L District (see below). From July-August 1940 on the Jews worked in another camp, erected on the site of the former airfield of the aeroplane company "Plaga Laskiewicza" ; in February 1942 t his camp was also transferred to the S.S. Before the Second World War there was at Nr. 7, Lipowa Street, opposite the Catholic cemetery, a sports field of the Academic Sports Organisation of L. At the beginning of the occupation the Germans used to select groups there - first, Polish prisoners-of-war, and later Jews who had evaded forced labour and been caught. At the end of 1939, as mentioned, Globocnik set up a labour camp for Jews on this spot, under his own command. Huts were erected and workshops for tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and watchmakers, installed in them, in addition to small factories making tulle and boxes. To begin with there were only 13 "permanent" workers, inhabitants of L, and a foreman. These employees continued to live in their own dwellings in the town. From day to day Jews seized for forced labour by the Germans or sent there by the Judenrat, also arrived there. To remedy the shortage of workers the Germans also brought to the camp Jews from the vicinity of L, who were lodged in huts on the site. In January 1940 there were some 1,200 Jews working there, as well as 200 Poles serving time for illegal trading or other economic offences. From December 1939 and through 1940 thousands of Jewish prisoners-of-war who had fought in the Polish army were brought to the Lipowa Camp. At the beginning of February 1940 1,367 such prisoners arrived; from this group the S.S. took some hundreds (630 or 880, according to different sources) and ran them barefooted and half-naked through the snow and cold towards Biala Podlaska. Those who flagged on the way were fired on by machine-guns - some were killed on the spot, while the wounded were finished off with revolvers. At one of the overnight stops on the way another hundred or so were murdered. Many of the others died of cold on the way. When the group arrived at Parczew only some 300 were still alive. The Jews of the town saved these by bribing the policement with gold, but despite this were forced to send them to Biala Podlaska, and to this end hired for them horse-drawn sleighs. At the end of 1940 the workshops in Lipowa began to produce war material for the German Army, and in the middle of 1941 the camp came under its supervision. From December 1941 the camp was guarded by seven sentinels from Majdanek, and in September 1943 the Lipowa Camp was in fact a branch of Majdanek. The German camp guards, some of whom had a criminal record, maltreated the prisoners at will, and even thought up cruel ways of

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causing their death. In the spring of 1942 the Jewish prisoners in the Lipowa Camp obeyed German orders and took part in rounding up Jews in L for forced labour. On August 17th, 1942, the Germans suddenly deported hundreds of prisoners from Lipowa to Majdanek. When the shoemakers among them realised where they were going, they took knives from their workshops, attacked the guards, and succeeded in wounding and even killing some of them. The Germans the opened fire, killing some 80 souls, and cowing the others. The survivors of this incident went on to their deaths in Majdanek. At the beginning of 1943 the leaders of the prisoners in the camp told them to prepare for an uprising, as there were rumours that the camp was to be removed from Globocnik's jurisdiction and put under that of the Commandant of Majdanek. For six or seven weeks the prisoners were geared for action, but in the end the above transfer of authority did not take place. At the beginning of March 1943 the Germans arrested some of the leaders of the prisoners, including Fischer, and interrogated and tortured them. The camp at 7, Lipowa Street, was closed on November 3rd, 1943 . On their way to Majdanek the prisoners broke through the cordon of guards and began to flee, but most of them were killed on the spot. The others perished in Majdanek. On November 23rd, 1939, Jewish shops were marked with a Star of David, and a week later they were shut down and their stocks confiscated. From December 1st the Jews were obliged to display on the front and back of their garments a yellow patch in the form of a Star of David. Afterwards the rear patch was abolished, and the front patch replaced by a white armband with a blue Star of David. On March 24th, 1941 , the Governor of L District, Ernst Zerner, issued a decree ordering the immediate erection of a ghetto in the Jewish quarter of L. The boundaries of the ghetto were the corner of Kowalska and Lubartowska Streets from the east to Krawiezka Street, then along this street through Sienna Street to Kalinowszczyzna Street; from there westwards to the corner of Fransziskanska Street, along this street to the corner of Unicka Street, along this street to Lubartowska Street, and along Lubartowska Street southwards and back to Kowalska Street. Later, apparently, some streets were added to the ghetto, and its southern boundary was then Grodzka Street to the Market Place

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(Rinek). There were to be some gates in the ghetto, in Kowalska and Czyrlenicza Streets. Zerner ordered the evacuation of all Poles living in the ghetto area by April 10th, 1941 , and Jews living outside it were ordered to move into it by April 15th. A few Jews continued to live outside the ghetto, in the Aryan part of the town, by permission of the authorities. In the winter of 1941/42 a barbed-wire fence was erected around the ghetto, and on December 9th , even before this was completed, the Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto, and any transgressor faced the death penalty. And indeed, on March 4th, 1942 , eleven Jews caught on the Aryan side were executed. In the meantime a new affliction fell upon the Jews. At the end of December the Germans ordered all furs in their possession to be handed over, on pain of death. Within a few days the Germans received more than 7,800 furs, 1,200 coats, 700 sheepskins, 5,200 fur collars, as well as gloves, hats and strips of fur. Nevertheless, Odilo Globocnik declared that the amount collected was inadequate and, as a punishment, demanded on December 31st, 1941, that the Judenrat collect a large quantity of wool and woollen articles in the course of a single day. Five members of the Judenrat were taken as hostages, beaten, and held throughout the night, barefooted in the cold and snow, in the courtyard of the Lipowa Labour Camp. On January 2nd, 1942, the Judenrat handed over to the Germans 3,776 kilos of wool and woollen articles. Two days later the Germans ordered the Judenrat to supply them with a large quantity of knitware. In the meantime a new affliction fell upon the Jews. At the end of December the Germans ordered all furs in their possession to be handed over, on pain of death. Within a few days the Germans received more than 7,800 furs, 1,200 coats, 700 sheepskins, 5,200 fur collars, as well as gloves, hats and strips of fur. Nevertheless, Odilo Globocnik declared that the amount collected was inadequate and, as a punishment, demanded on December 31st, 1941 , that the Judenrat collect a large quantity of wool and woollen articles in the course of a single day. Five members of the Judenrat were taken as hostages, beaten, and held throughout the night, barefooted in the cold and snow, in the courtyard of the Lipowa Labour Camp. On January 2nd, 1942 , the Judenrat handed over to the Germans 3,776 kilos of wool and woollen articles. Two days later the Germans ordered the Judenrat to supply them with a large quantity of knitware. 1939-1940 The Nazis gave out ration cards for everybody to stay in the line for a loaf of bread for a whole night, so in the morning we should be first when they open the store. The Poles was also getting the Verpflegung cards. One evening, a Polak superintendent in a Jewish house was standing and watching the line, and he saw a Polish woman standing almost the last from the line. He took out a Jewish woman, she was first, near the door from the bakery, and he changed the place with the Polish woman.

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Schama Grajer was standing and watching this, and he went over, and he took out the Polish woman, and he put her back in the line where she stood before and put back the Jewish woman in the first place. And there start to be an exchange of words with the Polish super; a very high exchange, and they start to fight. Schama Grajer beat up the super, and a couple of minutes later, two Nazis, SS soldiers saw something is going on near the store, and they found out a Jew beat up a Polish super from German descent— a Volksdeutsch—he had parents born in Germany, but he was born in Poland. The SS start to look for Schama Grajer, and they couldn't find him. Schama Grajer had a mother and two sisters. One sister had a candy store two blocks from where the incident happened; another sister and her husband had a dance studio. The Polish guy told the two Nazis, "He has a family here," so they picked up his mother with two sisters and two brother-in-laws, and they put out a poster:. if he wouldn't show up within a couple of days, they'll kill all his family. Schama Grajer went to the Nazis, and they let free the family. The Jewish community figured the SS will kill him. After awhile we forgot the incident, and didn't hear no more about Schama Grajer. Three or four months later, we saw Schama Grajer walking on the street wearing a new suit with high boots. The Nazis let him free after he beat up a German? Jews begin to talk between them that there's something not kosher with the Schama Grajer. Later we found out he became a spy for the Nazis, and if he'll tell what they want to know about Jews, whether somebody is rich, where they live and where they are—they'll let him out. Schama Grajer started to do what he promised the Nazis, and he start to mingle around between the Jewish ghetto. To the Jews, he showed some things that he can do ... some women or girls was arrested for not wearing the armband, and he freed them. The Jewish people, when they saw he can do something to save their lives, they start to turn to him. They say he should do this and he should do that, and he became a hero between the Jewish community. November 1942 In November 1942, there were rumors the Germans would liquidate the ghetto. He called a conference from the Jewish community to the synagogue—there was there the Maran schul and Marschal schul. There came a couple hundred people, and he had a speech for them, that every Jew should bring what jewelry with the gold pieces, with the diamonds what they have, to the synagogue, and he'll bring this to the Germans, and he'll save the ghetto, because The Jews don't know what to believe; they figure, their lives are in danger, what do they need the diamonds, what do they need the jewelry? They brought a lot of jewelry and gold pieces and all kind of expensive things. And he brought everything over to the Germans. After five or six days, when the Jews wouldn't

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bring any more, or they didn't have any more to bring, the Germans decided to liquidate the ghetto. Schama Grajer went to a Jewish girl, eighteen or nineteen-years-old—a real beauty. He said, "I love you and I want to marry you." Just like that. She knows he is an elegant guy; nobody knew in the Jewish neighborhood what he did to make money from prostitutes . His whorehouse was also on the Grodzka Street between the Jewish community and the Gentile community. Most Jews didn't go much there to know him. He was still with his wife, with the madam. This girl was very scared, and she start to run from the street to her house in the same neighborhood. He found out where she lives, and he went in to see her parents. Her father, he was in Germany for twenty years and then he was sent back from Germany when Hitler sent back thousands of Jews to Poland. The father from this girl, in Yiddish, he was chazen, a cantor in a synagogue in Germany, but he didn't have a job in Lublin, but he had money. He had two or three children. Schama Grajer talked to the father. "I'm a Jewish guy; I wouldn't harm your girl. Tell her that she shouldn't be afraid of me; I wouldn't hurt her. I help Yiden; I help Jewish people—not. God forbid, to hurt them." He was playing like an angel. March 1942 Schama Grajer went back to the girl's family, and he said to the family, "I want you to give me the blessing to be your son-in-law. I want to marry your daughter." The father start to beg and cry and to talk with him. Schama Grajer said, "If you want to survive the war with your other kids and your friends and your family, you need me like I need you. I love your daughter; I'll respect her, and I'll treat her nice. You'll have a nice son-in-law." The father said, "No." He told him, "If you say no, then I'll have another way to have your daughter for a wife." The father said, "Do what you want, she is the apple of my eye. She is my life. If you take away my oldest daughter, you take away all the life from my family." Schama Grajer went over to his wife the madam, and he told her that she should leave him, or he is leaving her. He already made the preparations, even when the father said no, to marry this girl; he figured he'll find a way. He told his wife that he's marrying a decent girl, a decent Jewish girl, not a whore. The madam start to cry. "My sweetheart! What are you saying? So many years!" Schama Grajer told her, "If you'll talk too much, you'll be arrested." A couple of weeks later, they liquidated the big ghetto. The madam, his real wife, went with the whole crowd away to Majdanek concentration camp, to be liquidated. The whole family from the girl what he wants to marry her, was saved to go to the small ghetto to Majdan-Tatarsky. Schama Grajer came in to the new father-in-law, who received the nicest house in the Majdan-Tatarsky, from a big farmer. The roof of his house was not from straw, was from shingles. Schama Grajer asked him, "How do you like your new home? I told you, you have a good son-in-law." The family was still in pains. A big house, a small house, a nice house, not a

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nice house. Schama Grajer told this girl's father that he shouldn't spread stories about him through the neighborhood because "My Jewish mother lives here, my whole family lives here, I am here to help people. Don't spread false rumors about me." The father said, "I'm sure you are gentleman. I wouldn't say anything." The father hid his daughter, and she was not seen anymore. November 1943 The Gestapo Chief, Worthoff, came to the father from this girl, and he said, "Your daughter is to become Schama Grajer's wife. The wedding will be in three days. The best man will be the assistant from the Chief from the Gestapo; his name is Sturm. The Gestapo will pay for an outdoor wedding. The whole ghetto, the neighborhood, the whole city, the whole Majdan-Tatarsky is invited to the wedding." And so there was an orchestra, and a Jewish wedding with wine and champagne . . . food . . . dancing ... a rabbi.—the Nazis said he is a rabbi—he gave them chuppa gedishen, the ceremony with the rings. Fifty or sixty high-rank Nazi officers drank and saluted this couple to wish them luck. The whiskey, the vodka, the wines, the champagne—thousands of bottles were brought into the ghetto. The wedding took from ten in the morning till ten in the evening. The people had an order to participate in the wedding. Schama Grajer invited the ghetto, with the kids! The kids had a special place not to interfere with the dancing. From the Jewish families, they watched the children, there was baby-sitters . . . there was not in that time babies, there was orphans. The wedding was organized exactly in the military way what the Germans want this to look. They made a stage, thirty, forty feet high with stairs, so the whole city should not miss anything, with a chuppa, with all Jewish customs. Nobody was talking when they went home, because they was afraid to talk one to another. "Now we have the spy in the ghetto! Before we didn't see him! Now we have him and his wife, his family: we didn't know if we can trust them. Before it was a nice, Jewish, intelligent family, now you don't know. The best man was Sturm, and the leader was the Gestapo chief Worthoff." Schama Grajer and his wife had the nicest bungalow in the ghetto. He was riding around on a big German motorcycle, with a pair of boots and a leather jacket with glasses. After a couple of months, we see his wife wearing some motorcycle trousers, leather trousers, with a pair of boots with a black leather uniform, a necklace, with a leather hat. . . she was sitting on the back, holding on to him. We saw a beautiful couple ... he was a handsome guy, too, and she was a beauty, and in this uniform, she looks like a million dollars. In five or six months, she was pregnant with a big belly on the bike. The Nazis showed Schama Grajer a beautiful house with all conveniences, outside the ghetto, where a Polish family used to live. "The house is empty. You can choose any furniture you like; we'll decorate your house to your specification, to your taste." They told him, when they liquidate the small ghetto in. Majdan-Tatarsky, he and his wife will go out and live free in his house what they showed him. The Nazis took all the Jews in. Majdan-Tatarsky to the Majdanek

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concentration camp three miles away. Everybody knew it was a camp, but we didn't know how many they are killing, if they are killing, or if this was worse conditions than a labor camp or a ghetto. In the beginning, you didn't know that there are gas chambers. People came to tell us, but we didn't want to believe it's possible that this should be true. They told Schama Grajer he can go out from the ghetto, and he and his wife start to walk, and they tell him, "Don't walk, run! Schnell! Schnell to your apartment!" They both start to run, and.running they fall down with bullets in their heads. They both was lying on the ground dead, she with a big belly. However, the comparative calm that was the lot of the Jews in Majdan Tatarski did not last. On September 2nd, 1942 , the S.S. surrounded the ghetto, assembled the Jews in the square, where they selected some 1,000 persons, from whom they again took 500 women , children and old people to send to Majdanek. These were in fact exterminated on the way, near the village of Krepiec. The remainder, men, women, and young people "fit for work", were employed in various tasks. On October 25th, 1942, another action took place in the ghetto, and this time about 1,000 were sent to Majdanek, amongst them holders of work permits from the German Labour Office in L. On November 9th, 1942, the "model ghetto" of Majdan Tatarski was closed down. All its inhabitants, 2,350 in number, were taken at the double to Majdanek, where all the children, the aged, the ill and the weak, were exterminated. The younger ones were set to work. On the day of deportation the Germans executed the Chairman of the Judenrat, Dr. Alten, the Jewish Police Chief, Moniek Goldfarb, and also Shamai Grejer. They left in the abandoned ghetto some tens of Jews, who were ordered to clean the area and to collect and sort the possessions of the deportees and put them in the S.S. warehouse. On November 3rd, 1943, the S.S. and their henchmen murdered the remnants of the Jews of the L district in the camps of Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek. In Majdanek 18,400 Jews were killed on that day, among them prisoners from Lipowa 7 and the S.S. camp at the former airfield. This wave of killings was dubbed by the Germans the "Harvest Feast". The Death Camp of Majdanek Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the German authorities decided to set up near L a large camp for Soviet prisoners. In August 194 1 detainees from the Lipowa camp were sent to build the camp in the south-eastern L suburb of Majdanek, on the road to Zamosc and Chelm. In the autumn the camp was enclosed with doubly electrified barbed wire, and along its boundaries 18 watchtowers and 130 large searchlights were set up. At the

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beginning of September 1941 the first batch of S.S. arrived at the camp to form the cadre of the personnel. They brought with them experience from the camps of Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, and others. In October the first prisoners arrived - some 2,000 Soviet soldiers. They continued construction of the camp under inhuman conditions of hunger, extreme cold, filth, and disease, and were also cruelly beaten by the guards. Within five weeks of their arrival most of these prisoners were dead. On December 12th, 1941, the first group of Jews were brought to Majdanek - 150 seized during the curfew in the L ghetto (see above). By January 6th, 1942, only 17 of them were still alive, and they were released from the camp by order of the German Labour Office in L. Between February 22nd and November 9th, 1942, at least 4,000 Jews from L were murdered in Majdanek. At the beginning of 1942 Majdanek was chosen to be a concentration and death camp for "enemies of the Third Reich" and for Jews. Seven gas chambers were constructed, together with two incinerators, a large and a small, designed to cremate 1,000 corpses a day. Besides Jews and Soviet prisoners thousands of Poles from all walks of life were also imprisoned there, as well as deportees from Zamosc and its environs - chosen for settlement by ethnic Germans. There were, in addition, political and other prisoners from Western Europe and the Soviet Union. At times the number of inmates of the camp numbered 40,000; and it is estimated that half a million persons passed through Majdanek, and that 360,000 of them met their deaths there - about 40% executed on the brink of trenches, and others in the gas chambers or gas vehicles. It is likewise estimated that 130,000-200,000 Jews perished thre - 85% of them inhabitants of Poland, and the remainder from other European countries. The exact number is not known, as at Majdanek the batches of Jews were not registered upon arrival. Jewish Prisoners at Lublin Old Airport (Flughafenla ger)

The Lublin Flughafenlager was a defunct, World War One-era aircraft manufactory located on the southeastward route to Zamosc about halfway out to Majdanek. Its primary subdivisions were a Main Supply Camp, and the much larger central SS Clothing Works. The latter maintained a relatively constant population of 3,500 to 5,500 Jewish prisoners of whom 2,000 to 3,000 were women. Since summer 1942 three hangars were utilized as a sorting depot for clothing and valuables plundered from Aktion Reinhard victims. Prisoners— predominantly women— sorted articles of clothing, ie-men's, women's and children's, and then again into outer-wear and underwear, types of footwear, etc. Onhand were large crates into which gold, silver, d iamonds, pearls, eyeglass frames, watches, etc., were deposited. Disinfection of quality clothing was performed in a segregated section of the depot in special chambers, using Zyklon-B gas. These same gas chambers were utilized on occasions to murder groups of prisoners.

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Jewish Prisoners at Lublin Old Airport (Flughafenla ger)

The Lublin Flughafenlager was a defunct, World War One-era aircraft manufactory located on the southeastward route to Zamosc about halfway out to Majdanek. Its primary subdivisions were a Main Supply Camp, and the much larger central SS Clothing Works. The latter maintained a relatively constant population of 3,500 to 5,500 Jewish prisoners of whom 2,000 to 3,000 were women. Since summer 1942 three hangars were utilized as a sorting depot for clothing and valuables plundered from Aktion Reinhard victims. Prisoners— predominantly women— sorted articles of clothing, ie-men's, women's and children's, and then again into outer-wear and underwear, types of footwear, etc. Onhand were large crates into which gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, eyeglass frames, watches, etc., were deposited. Disinfection of quality clothing was performed in a segregated section of the depot in special chambers, using Zyklon-B gas. These same gas chambers were utilized on occasions to murder groups of prisoners. The Establishment of the Jewish Ghetto Police Force s (Jewish ghetto police, referred to by the Jews as the "Jewish Police"), Jewish police units established by the Germans in certain places in the areas under their occupation. A relatively short time after their establishment, the Judenrate (Jewish councils) in eastern Europe were ordered to organize these units, usually in anticipation of the ghettoization of the Jews. Whereas the Judenrat itself, although also created on German orders, often contained elements of voluntary association, the Jewish police came into being only on German orders. There was no precedent in the life of the Jewish community for the existence of a Jewish police force, and no indication that independent initiative by Jews in any way played a part in the establishment of the ghetto police. The Germans set guidelines according to which the Judenrat was to recruit the police personnel - physical fitness, military experience, and secondary or higher education. In practice, these guidelines were not always observed. Formally, the Jewish police, constituted one of the Judenrat departments, but from the very beginning many Judenrate were apprehensive about the police department's public character and the way it would function. They suspected that the Germans would have direct supervision of the police and use it for the implementation of their policies. Aware of this danger, many Judenrate sought to establish their own means of controlling the police and the standards of its behavior, and tried to attract to the police young Jews who would be trustworthy. Reasons for Joining the Police Force

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At first, some of the recruits did indeed believe that joining the police gave them an opportunity to serve the community. But there were other reasons for joining. Belonging to a protected organization provided immunity from being seized for forced labor. Police service also offered greater freedom of movement and possibilities of obtaining food. A study of the records of over one hundred Jewish police officers in the Generalgouvernement reveals that the Judenrate did not succeed in their efforts to ensure that the police had public credibility. Seventy percent of the men who served in the police force had taken no part in political and community life before the war, and some 20 percent were refugees and strangers to the ghetto population; only 10 percent had participated in community affairs in the prewar period. The Germans themselves often made sure, when the police was set up, that it would be headed by men who would blindly follow their orders. Opposition to the Jewish Police Some circles in the ghetto population who were not associated with the Judenrat regarded the Jewish police from the outset as an alien body and a potential danger to the community. In many places, youth movements and Jewish political parties did not permit their members to enlist in the police. Size and Structure of Various Police Forces The size of the Jewish police force was not fixed but depended on the size of the Jewish community. Thus, in Warsaw, the Jewish police at first numbered 2,000 in Lvov 500, in Lodz 800, in Krakow 150, and in Kovno 200. There was no uniform structure for the police units. In the large ghettos, the commanders held officer rank and the units were made up of subdivisions and district stations. The policemen were identified by the different caps they wore and by the unit's designation inscribed on their armband, the yellow badge that they, like all other Jews, had to wear. In the small ghettos where the police consisted of a few men only, no such organizational arrangements were made. Duties The duties carried out by the Jewish police can be divided into three categories: 1.Duties in response to specific German demands as conveyed to the police by the Germans, via the Judenrat. 2. Duties related to the Judenrat's activities among the Jews that were not directly related to German demands. 3.Duties related to the Jewish population's needs. The first two categories included collecting ransom payments, personal belongings and valuables, as well as taxes; fetching people for forced labor; guarding the ghetto wall or fence and the ghetto gates; escorting labor gangs who worked outside the ghetto; and as time went on, conducting random

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seizures of persons to be sent to labor camps and participating in the roundup of Jews for mass deportations. The exclusion of the Jewish population from public services and their isolation in ghettos created serious problems. In the early stage of its existence, the Jewish police attended to sanitary conditions and assisted in the distribution of food rations and aid to the needy. It also helped in the control of epidemics, and the settling of disputes - all this, of course, in addition to complying with German demands. The ghetto population appreciated the Jewish police for these public welfare activities. However, already at this stage, there were instances of corruption and misconduct among the police. As time went on, the role of the Jewish police in alleviating living conditions in the ghetto was considerably reduced. During the Mass Deportations The mass deportations to extermination camps, beginning in 1942, affected the families of the men serving in the police, their friends, acquaintances, and fellow Jews, and they had to decide whether or not to stay at their posts. Many decided to quit the force, some in an overt manner, so as to express their identification with their families and with the Jewish population as a whole. Most of the Jewish policemen who made such a decision were subsequently included in the transports that left for the extermination camps. But there were also Jewish police who stayed on their jobs up to the final phases of the ghettos' existence, submitting to German pressure and obediently following orders. At this stage the Jewish police took on a different complexion. Directly intervening in its administration, the Germans recruited new men into the force, both as officers and rank and file, who had no commitment at all to the Jewish population. Among the Jewish police personnel were many refugees with no ties to the surviving remnants of the local Jewish community, as well as men of dubious reputation. In numerous ghettos where the Judenrat was not prepared to submit blindly to German orders, it was the Jewish police who gained in strength, to the extent that it was able to control the Judenrat or simply take its place. The Jewish Police and the Ghetto Undergrounds The attitude of the Jewish police toward the ghetto underground took on three different forms: The most common relationship was one of tension. In several ghettos, such as those of Bedzin, Sosnowiec, Krakow, and Warsaw - the Jewish police tried to do away with the underground (which is not to say that all members of the police in these places took part in such efforts). In Warsaw, in August 1942, during the mass deportations, the Jewish police commander, Joseph Szerynski, was attacked by the underground and seriously wounded. His successor, Jacob Lejkin, was assassinated in October of that year, on orders of the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization; ZOB). There were instances when the Jewish police followed a policy of nonintervention in the activities of the underground that sometimes took on the form of "benign neglect."

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Belzec Forced Labor Camps The setting up of work camps for Jews from the Generalgouvernement in Belzec in 1940 was undertaken for several reasons: According to the Nazi plans, the first idea of building work camps in the Lublin district was connected with the plan to resettle all Jews from Germany and its annexed territories to the Lublin district. Another reason was Himmler's and Heydrich's idea to use the Jews for building border fortifications between the Generalgouvernement and the Soviet Union. The Jews were to be resettled from "Warthegau" and other Polish territories annexed by the "3rd Reich". The decision of using the Jews for these works was supported by SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the SS and Police commander of the Lublin district. Building the "Otto-Line" From end of May until August 1940 approximately 10,000 Jews from Lublin, Radom and Warsaw district were sent to Belzec. Many of them didn't know the conditions there. They came as volunteers, especially the men from Warsaw Ghetto because there was no work for them. A big group of Jewish workers came to Belzec during three days in August 1940. In the beginning they had to lodge in primitive conditions because of lack of space for them. After several days they were sent to 20 different subcamps which were established in Belzec (3) and its sourrondings (17). Their main duty was building fortifications at the Soviet Union border: a rampart of 140km between the rivers Bug and San. In fact, until October 1940 the "Eastern Rampart" was only 40km long (between Belzec and Dzików Stary village), 2.5m deep and 7.5m wide. The prisoners of the Belzec work camps built a 6km long part. This work was connected with the bigger plan of fortifications building, called "Fall Otto" (Case "Otto") or "The Otto Line". 35 forced labour camps were established along the "Otto Line", mainly set up in abandoned synagogues, warehouses, granaries and barns. When the first group of Lublin Jews came to Belzec, they already met Gypsies resettled from Germany (among them Sinti and Roma from Hamburg), Czechoslowakia and Poland (among the Polish Gypsies was the Polish Gypsy king Kwiek). At the same time Lublin's governor Ernst Zörner mentioned that Belzec shall be the central camp for Sinti and Roma. Their camp was on a farm at Belzec manor. Among the Jews deported from the "Reich" were veterans of World War I and even members of the Nazi party NSDAP. A group of Polish prisoners (farmers from villages near Tomaszow Lubelski) were arrested also. They were hostages, accused of having not paid the contingent for the Germans.

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In Belzec Forced Labour Camp *The conditions in the camps were horrible: The prisoners were tortured, beaten and starved. Often mothers decided to kill their babies because they had no food for them. Every day they got socalled black coffee without sugar and 300 grams of bread for breakfast. The "soup": water with smelly vegetables and old meat. For the physically hard working prisoners that was not enough of course. Only during a visit of the Swiss Red Cross the food was better for two days. When the delegation left Belzec for visiting Plazow Forced Labour Camp (near Belzec), Dolp ordered that the inmates had to get the same awful food like before. Many Sinti and Roma died because of typhus and dysentery. They were forced to work also. The number of Sinti and Roma victims is not known. Their graves are located in Belzec near the railway and the road to Jaroslaw. When the first Jewish prisoners came to Belzec, more than 1000 Sinti and Roma were transferred to Krychow Work Camp near Sobibor (before the war a work camp for Polish criminal prisoners was in Krychow). There is no clear information available about the fate of these Sinti and Roma. Probably a part of them was sent to Siedlce Ghetto and from there to Treblinka. In Belzec Jewish prisoners lived at three sites: The manor (1000 people), Kessler's Mill (500) and in the locomotive shed (1500). Outside Belzec the prisoners lived and worked in Cieszanów (about 3000), Plazów (1250) and other locations. A part of the prisoners at Cieszanów were finally sent to Dzików. The Jews worked not only for building the "Otto Line" fortifications but also had to regulate rivers and to build streets. Commander of the camps was SS-Sturmbannführer He rmann Dolp . Before his delegation to Belzec he was camp commander of the Lublin Forced Labour Camp at Lipowa Street 7. In Belzec he was assisted by SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Bartetzko w ho was commander of the Forced Labour and Transit Camp Trawniki from spring 1942. Both were very cruel and killed a lot of prisoners. The most infamous example about Dolp's cruelty: He ordered the Jews to go to the toilets only at a special time. Those who were found on the toilets before or after this time, were killed by him. Especially many prisoners having diarrhoea became his victims. Dolp was known also as the most corrupt SS man in Belzec. The prisoners who worked in the workshops had to produce clothes, shoes etc. only on Dolp's private request. Though the camps were controlled by the SS, the supply with food and clothes and the Belzec: Jews marching probably to a Labour Camp administration was managed by the Judenrat of Lublin. In Belzec the Germans established a socalled Jewish "Gremium", responsible for the organisation of the camps. All costs connected with the existence of the prisoners should be paid by the Judenräte of the towns from where the prisoners came. The "Gremium" decided how to share the food among the prisoners. After August 1940 "Gremium" was changed into "Central Camp's Council", led by Leon Zylberajch from Lublin. All members of the "Camp's Council" were released from work. About corruption among them a lot

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of informations is contained in the reports written by Lublin's Judenrat in 1940, after closing of the camps: The "Camp's Council" members pressed the prisoners to pay when they had to go to the hospital, the prisoners had to pay for better places at work etc. Finally the "Council" members plundered the food parcels sent by inmates' families. The work in Belzec and other camps was very hard. The prisoners started working at 04 or 06 hours in the morning. Because of tortures, hunger and primitive conditions (no blankets in the buildings, no possibility to change the clothes), many of them looked like skeletons after a short time. Dr. Janusz Peter, chief of Tomaszów Lubelski hospital, who still had contact with his former patients, described them as "spectres in rags". In his memoirs one can read that Germans took photos of these people as "examples of the sub-human Jewish culture in Poland". The number of victims can be estimated on 300, only in Belzec village. The work camps in Belzec and nearby villages were abandoned in October 1940. Before the liquidation of the camps, a part of the Jews had to be released because they were not able to work any more. Some of them died after release. The last transport of released people was sent to Hrubieszow in late October 1940. Until today not many people know that the Belzec work camps have been the biggest work camp complex in the Generalgouvernement in 1940. Close to the former death camp's site fragments of the "Otto Line" rampart, built by the Jewish prisoners, are still visible. According to Polish witnesses around 200 victims are buried in an old park near the manor. Many others in the forest "near Jan Woloszyn's house" (the exact location is still unknown, probably the forest opposite to the death camp, behind the furniture factory and Wirth's house). Other victims were buried on the Jewish cemetery in Tomaszow Lubelski. Belzec Forced Labor Camps The setting up of work camps for Jews from the Generalgouvernement in Belzec in 1940 was undertaken for several reasons: According to the Nazi plans, the first idea of building work camps in the Lublin district was connected with the plan to resettle all Jews from Germany and its annexed territories to the Lublin district. Another reason was Himmler's and Heydrich's idea to use the Jews for building border fortifications between the Generalgouvernement and the Soviet Union. The Jews were to be resettled from "Warthegau" and other Polish territories annexed by the "3rd Reich". The decision of using the Jews for these works was supported by SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the SS and

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Police commander of the Lublin district. Building the "Otto-Line" From end of May until August 1940 approximately 10,000 Jews from Lublin, Radom and Warsaw district were sent to Belzec. Many of them didn't know the conditions there. They came as volunteers, especially the men from Warsaw Ghetto because there was no work for them. A big group of Jewish workers came to Belzec during three days in August 1940. In the beginning they had to lodge in primitive conditions because of lack of space for them. After several days they were sent to 20 different subcamps which were established in Belzec (3) and its sourrondings (17). Their main duty was building fortifications at the Soviet Union border: a rampart of 140km between the rivers Bug and San. In fact, until October 1940 the "Eastern Rampart" was only 40km long (between Belzec and Dzików Stary village), 2.5m deep and 7.5m wide. The prisoners of the Belzec work camps built a 6km long part. This work was connected with the bigger plan of fortifications building, called "Fall Otto" (Case "Otto") or "The Otto Line". 35 forced labour camps were established along the "Otto Line", mainly set up in abandoned synagogues, warehouses, granaries and barns. When the first group of Lublin Jews came to Belzec, they already met Gypsies resettled from Germany (among them Sinti and Roma from Hamburg), Czechoslowakia and Poland (among the Polish Gypsies was the Polish Gypsy king Kwiek). At the same time Lublin's governor Ernst Zörner mentioned that Belzec shall be the central camp for Sinti and Roma. Their camp was on a farm at Belzec manor. Among the Jews deported from the "Reich" were veterans of World War I and even members of the Nazi party NSDAP. A group of Polish prisoners (farmers from villages near Tomaszow Lubelski) were arrested also. They were hostages, accused of having not paid the contingent for the Germans.

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In Belzec Forced Labour Camp *The conditions in the camps were horrible: The prisoners were tortured, beaten and starved. Often mothers decided to kill their babies because they had no food for them. Every day they got socalled black coffee without sugar and 300 grams of bread for breakfast. The "soup": water with smelly vegetables and old meat. For the physically hard working prisoners that was not enough of course. Only during a visit of the Swiss Red Cross the food was better for two days. When the delegation left Belzec for visiting Plazow Forced Labour Camp (near Belzec), Dolp ordered that the inmates had to get the same awful food like before. Many Sinti and Roma died because of typhus and dysentery. They were forced to work also. The number of Sinti and Roma victims is not known. Their graves are located in Belzec near the railway and the road to Jaroslaw. When the first Jewish prisoners came to Belzec, more than 1000 Sinti and Roma were transferred to Krychow Work Camp near Sobibor (before the war a work camp for Polish criminal prisoners was in Krychow). There is no clear information available about the fate of these Sinti and Roma. Probably a part of them was sent to Siedlce Ghetto and from there to Treblinka. In Belzec Jewish prisoners lived at three sites: The manor (1000 people), Kessler's Mill (500) and in the locomotive shed (1500). Outside Belzec the prisoners lived and worked in Cieszanów (about 3000), Plazów (1250) and other locations. A part of the prisoners at Cieszanów were finally sent to Dzików. The Jews worked not only for building the "Otto Line" fortifications but also had to regulate rivers and to build streets. Commander of the camps was SS-Sturmbannführer He rmann Dolp . Before his delegation to Belzec he was camp commander of the Lublin Forced Labour Camp at Lipowa Street 7. In Belzec he was assisted by SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Bartetzko who was commander of the Forced Labour and Transit Camp Trawniki from spring 1942. Both were very cruel and killed a lot of prisoners. The most infamous example about Dolp's cruelty: He ordered the Jews to go to the toilets only at a special time. Those who were found on the toilets before or after this time, were killed by him. Especially many prisoners having diarrhoea became his victims. Dolp was known also as the most corrupt SS man in Belzec. The prisoners who worked in the workshops had to produce clothes, shoes etc. only on Dolp's private request. Though the camps were controlled by the SS, the supply with food and clothes and the Belzec: Jews marching probably to a Labour Camp administration was managed by the Judenrat of Lublin. In Belzec the Germans established a socalled Jewish "Gremium", responsible for the organisation of the camps. All costs connected with the existence of the prisoners should be paid by the Judenräte of the towns from where the prisoners came. The "Gremium" decided how to share the food among the prisoners. After August 1940 "Gremium" was changed into "Central Camp's Council", led by Leon Zylberajch from Lublin. All members of the "Camp's Council" were released from work. About corruption among them a lot

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of informations is contained in the reports written by Lublin's Judenrat in 1940, after closing of the camps: The "Camp's Council" members pressed the prisoners to pay when they had to go to the hospital, the prisoners had to pay for better places at work etc. Finally the "Council" members plundered the food parcels sent by inmates' families. The work in Belzec and other camps was very hard. The prisoners started working at 04 or 06 hours in the morning. Because of tortures, hunger and primitive conditions (no blankets in the buildings, no possibility to change the clothes), many of them looked like skeletons after a short time. Dr. Janusz Peter, chief of Tomaszów Lubelski hospital, who still had contact with his former patients, described them as "spectres in rags". In his memoirs one can read that Germans took photos of these people as "examples of the sub-human Jewish culture in Poland". The number of victims can be estimated on 300, only in Belzec village. The work camps in Belzec and nearby villages were abandoned in October 1940. Before the liquidation of the camps, a part of the Jews had to be released because they were not able to work any more. Some of them died after release. The last transport of released people was sent to Hrubieszow in late October 1940. Until today not many people know that the Belzec work camps have been the biggest work camp complex in the Generalgouvernement in 1940. Close to the former death camp's site fragments of the "Otto Line" rampart, built by the Jewish prisoners, are still visible. According to Polish witnesses around 200 victims are buried in an old park near the manor. Many others in the forest "near Jan Woloszyn's house" (the exact location is still unknown, probably the forest opposite to the death camp, behind the furniture factory and Wirth's house). Other victims were buried on the Jewish cemetery in Tomaszow Lubelski.

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Belzec The small town of Belzec was situated along the Lublin-Zamosc-Rava Russkaya-Lvov railway line in the southeastern Lublin District. In early-1940, a labor camp was established at Belzec by the SS- and Police Leader of Lublin, Brigade-Leader Odilo Globocnik. Globocnik gave orders for thousands of Jews to be transported there from Lublin, to dig huge trenches for fortification of the nearby demarcation boundery of the Soviet and German occupation of eastern Poland. This labor camp was liquidated in autumn 1940. During the month of October 1941, three SS officers arrived in Belzec and ordered the municipality to provide 20 workmen, for the purpose of building barracks close to the side track of the railway. Soon, one barrack stood closest to the railway section, measuring 50 meters long and 12.5 meters wide. A second barrack measured 25 meters in length and 12.5 meters in width. Not distant from this was a third barrack, 12 meters long and 8 meters wide. This third barrack was divided by wooden walls into three chambers, each chamber being four meters wide, eight meters long, and two meters high. The walls were built of double boards with a vacant space between them filled with sand. The inside walls and adjacent portion of floor were coated with sheet metal. The second and third barracks were connected by a closed corridor, two meters wide, two meters high, and 10 meters long. The corridor continued to a corridor in the third barrack Each of the three chambers had a door in its northern wall. 1.80 meters high and 1.10 meters wide. These and several other doors inserted along the corridor were covered with rubber and could be opened only from the outside. Each door was built with strong boards 7.5 cm in diameter. Each door was secured on the outside with a wooden bar held by two iron hooks, sufficiently firm to withstand pressure from inside. In each chamber a water pipe was installed 10 cm above the floor. In addition, one meter above the ground in the western wall of each chamber, a water pipe was installed with an open joint turned toward the center of the room. These joints connected the pipes to one long pipe which ran under the floor. An oven was installed in each chamber, measuring 1.10 meters high, 55 cm wide and 55 cm long, weighing 250 kilograms. The same joints also connected the pipes to the oven. During the period of this construction, a cadre of Ukrainian guards had erected a dense barbed wire fence around the camp. On December 22,1941, the Polish workmen were dismissed. Jews from ghettos in the vicinity of Belzec, mainly from Lubycze-Krolewska and Male-Mosty, were then transported to the camp. Some of these Jews— skilled carpenters, smiths, and builders— continued constructing the overall camp. The management of the construction was the SS Central Building Administration (SS Zentralbauverwaltung), represented by SS Oberschaffuehrer Josef Oberhauser, a former euthanasia man. m December 1941, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Christian Wirth was appointed camp commander, and Oberhauser became Wirth's adjutant. The Belzec death camp was eventually completed by March 1942. Sobibor Sobibor was the name of a small village in a wooded area on the Chelm-Wlodawa railway line, 8 km south ofWIodawa. The Bug River, the border

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between the General-Government and the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine, was 5 km east of Sobibor. The whole area was swampy, wooded, and thinly populated. The exact location for the death camp was selected by the SS Central Building Administration in the Lublin district. The camp was built alongside the railway, west of Sobibor station, and was surrounded by a sparse pine forest. Close to the railway station buildings was a spur that was included in the camp site and was used for disembarkation of the transports. The entire camp area encompassed a rectangle 600 x 400 meters. At a later stage it was enlarged. The construction of the Sobibor camp began in March 1942, at the same time that extermination actions were beginning in Belzec. SS Ober-sturmfiihrer Richard Thomalla, from the SS Central Building Administration in Lublin, was put in charge of the construction of Sobibor. The workers employed at building the camp were local people from neighboring villages and towns. A group of eighty Jews from the ghettos in the vicinity of the camp was brought to Sobibor for construction work. A squad often Ukrainians from Trawniki arrived to guard these Jews. After completing their work, the Jews were shot.. By the beginning of April 1942, construction of the camp had fallen behind schedule. To speed things up, Globocnik appointed SS Oberstufm-fiihrer Franz Stangi commander of Sobibor. Stangi was ordered by Globocnik to travel to Wirth in Belzec for guidance and to obtain experience in preparation for the operation of Sobibor. Stangi described his visit to Belzec: I went there by car. As one arrived, one first reached Belzec railway station.... The smell was everywhere. After Stangl's arrival in Sobibor, the building of the camp was accelerated, and a second group of Jew's from ghettos in the Lublin district was brought there for construction work. The first gas chambers erected in Sobibor were in a solid brick building with a concrete foundation. They were located in the northwest part of the camp, more isolated and distant from the other parts of the camp than in Belzec. There were three gas chambers in the building, each 4x4 meters. The capacity of each chamber was about two hundred people. Each gas chamber was entered through its own separate door leading from a veranda that ran along the building. On the opposite side of the building, there was a second set of doors for removing the corpses. Outside was a shed in which the engine that supplied the carbon monoxide gas was installed. Pipes conducted the gas from the engine exhaust to the gas chambers. In the middle of April 1942, when the building of Sobibor was close to completion, experimental killings were carried out there. About 250 Jews were brought from the Krychow labor camp, which was close to Sobibor, for this purposed Wirth arrived in Sobibor to attend these experiments. With him came a chemist from the euthanasia program whose pseudonym was "Dr. [Kari] Blaurock." SS ScharfUhrer Erich Fuchs, who served in Belzec, describes the preparations and the first experimental killing in Sobibor: As ordered by Wirth, I drove an LKW [a car] to Lvov, fetched a gas motor and transported it to Sobibor. When I arrived at Sobibor, close to the railway station I saw a tract of land with a concrete construction and some other solid buildings. The Sonderkommando there were commanded by Thomalla. Other members of the SS who attended

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were F. B. Stangi, F. Schwartz, Kurt Bolender, and others. We unloaded the motor. It was a heavy Russian benzine engine (presumably a tank or tractor motor) at least 200 horsepower (V-motor, 8 cylinders, water cooled). We installed the engine on a concrete foundation and set up the connection between the exhaust and the tube. I then tested the motor. It did not work. I was able to repair the ignition and the valves, and the motor finally started running. Sobibor was surrounded by a barbed wire fence 3 meters high, which had tree branches intertwined with it in order to disguise the camp. It was divided into three distinct areas, each independently surrounded by more barbed wire. These areas were: 1. The Administrative area consisted of the Vorlager ("forward camp"; closest to.the railroad station), and Camp I, and included the railroad platform, with space for twenty freight cars, and living quarters for the German and Ukrainian staff. Camp I, which was fenced off from the rest, contained housing for Jewish prisoners and the workshops in which some of them worked. 2. The reception area, or Camp II was the place where the Jews from incoming transports were brought. Here they went through various procedures before being killed - removal of clothing, cutting of women's hair, and the confiscation of valuables. 3. The extermination area, Camp in was located in the northwest part of the camp, and the most isolated. It contained the gas chambers, burial trenches, and housing for Jewish prisoners employed there. A path, 3 to 4 meters wide and 150 meters long, led from Camp n to the extermination area. It was enclosed with barbed wire on both sides, and was camouflaged with intertwined branches to conceal the path from view. The path, or "tube", was used to herd the terrified and naked victims into the gas chambers after being processed. There was also a narrow-gauge railroad which ran from the rail platform directly to the burial trenches; it was used to transport those who arrived too ill or too weak to make it on their own, and for those who had died in transit. The gas chambers were inside a brick building. There were initially three of them, each 16 square meters in size, and each capable of holding from 160 to 180 persons. They were entered through doors on a platform in the front of the brick building, and a second door was used to remove bodies after the killing was finished. The gas, carbon monoxide, was produced by a 200 horsepower engine in a nearby shed. Burial trenches were nearby, each 50 to 60 meters long, 10 to 15 meters wide, and 5 to 7 meters deep. The initial test of the killing system occurred in mid-April, when 250 Jews, primarily women, from the Krychow labor camp, were killed while the entire SS contingent attended. Treblinka The construction of Treblinka death camp began after Belzec and Sobibor were already operational. The expertise gained in the building and in the killing operations in the other two camps were applied in the planning and Construction of Treblinka. It became the most "perfected" death camp of Operation Reinhard.'

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The Treblinka death camp was located in the northeast section of the General Government, not far from Malkinia, a town and station on the I main railway, Warsaw-Bialystok, and close to the railway Malkinia-SiedIce. lit was built in a thinly populated area near the village ofWolka Okranglik, some 4 km from Treblinka village and train station. The site chosen for the camp was wooded and naturally concealed from both the Malkinia-Kosov road to its north and the Malkinia-SiedIce railway, which ran to its west. Near the camp's southwest boundary, a rail spur connected Treblinka I station with a gravel quarry in the region that had been worked before the -.war. In the spring of 1941, the Germans decided to exploit the quarry for sraw materials for the fortifications then being constructed on the Soviet-P German line of demarcation, and in the summer of that year they established Treblinka I penal camp, to which they brought 1,000-1,200 Polish and Jewish detainees for forced labor. This camp, like the entire region, was under the authority of the Warsaw area SS and Police Leader (SSPF). In late April or early May 1942 , an SS team arrived in the Treblinka I area, toured the region, and determined the site where a death camp would I be erected.' The plan of the camp was almost identical to Sobibor, but with some improvements. The construction of the death camp began in late » May/early June 1942. The contractors were the German construction firms Sch6nbronn of Leipzig and Schmidt-Munstermann. In charge of the con-istruction of Treblinka was SS Obersturmfiihrer Richard Thomalla, who I had completed his building mission in Sobibor and had been replaced there by Stangi in April 1942. Technical assistance in the erection of the gas chambers was also made available. SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Richard Thomalla was the camp commander, for a limited time only and conducted the construction work of the extermination camp. During that time no extermination actions were carried out. Thomalla was in Treblinka for about four to eight weeks. Then Dr. Eberi arrived as camp commander. Under his direction the extermination Aktionen of the Jews began. The SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw district was responsible for the erection of the camp. Polish and Jewish prisoners from Treblinka penal camp, as well as Jews from neighboring towns, were provided for labor. Along with the building construction—including the gas chambers, barracks, and stores—work commenced on a railroad spur running from the nearby rail line into the camp; shortly thereafter, a station platform was constructed. None of the Jewish workers who were employed at the building of the camp survived. The Germans killed the Jews either by beating them or by shooting them. The SS-men often raided the huts of the Jewish workers and killed them in cold blood.... The death camp formed a rectangle, 600 x 400 meters, surrounded by two sets of fences and barbed-wire obstacles. The inner fence was 3 to.l meters high and intertwined with tree branches that hid the camp from outside view. A second fence, some 40 to 50 meters from the first, included chains of antitank obstacles ("Spanish horses") wrapped in barbed wire. The ground between the fences was

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left barren—devoid of any vegetation or possible hiding place—to facilitate observation by the guards. Fences also surrounded areas within the camp. In each comer of the camp, an 8-meters high watchtower was constructed. An additional tower was built along the southern perimeter, between the two comer towers and near the gas chambers. It was later transferred to the center of the extermination area. I The camp was divided into three zones of nearly equal size: the livifl area (Wohnlager), the reception area (Auffanglager); and the extermination Area (Totenlager). The living and reception areas were called the "Lower Camp," while the extermination area was known as the "Upper Camp." I The living area was in the northwest section of the camp. It comprised lithe living quarters for the German SS personnel and the Ukrainians, andjMier administration buildings—an office, an infirmary, stores, and work-Ishops. Unlike Sobibor, the living quarters of the SS men were concentrated in one area. Part of this area, a square 100 x 100 meters, was set off by a barbed-wire fence. It contained three barracks forming a U, where the Jewish prisoners lived, workshops where they worked, and a roll-call square. At the far side of the square were about thirty toilets covered by a straw roof. The reception area was in the southwest section of the camp and it was in that part of the camp that the transports of Jews first arrived. It included the train platform and the 300-meter railway spur. At the end of the railway spur was a wooden gate, wrapped with barbed wire intertwined with tree branches. In front of the platform was a large structure where the victims' belongings were stored. Aside from the platform and the rail spur, no {facilities or signs were to be seen that could identify the site as a train station. Near the platform, north of the storehouse, was "Railway Station Square," an open area, and past it a fenced-in area called "Transport Square" (Transportplarz) or "Undressing Square," which was entered through a gate. This gate was where the men were separated from the A women and children. Transport Square was flanked by two large hut barracks. In the left-hand barrack, the women and children undressed and deposited their money and valuables. The right-hand barrack served the men for the same purpose. South of Transport Square was "Sorting Square" (Sortierplatz), where the victims' clothing and belongings were sorted and piled up for shipment out of the camp. At one end of Sorting Square, in the southeast comer of the camp, were large ditches for burying those victims who had died in the trains on their way to the camp. The entrance gate to the camp was in the northwest section, near the railway. It was built of two wooden pillars, each decorated with a flower styled from metal and crowned by a small roof resting on the pillars. At night floodlights lit the entrance. Ukrainian guards and SS men were posted at the gate and at the guardhouse, which was close to it, twenty-four hours a "day. The entrance gate served mainly the SS and Ukrainians; transports with Jews entered the camp by train. The extermination area, or "Upper Camp," as it was called by the Ukrainians, was in the southeastern section; there the mass murders were carried out. This area was completely isolated from the rest of the camp by a fence camouflaged with branches, which prevented observation from outside. The entrances were hidden by a special screen. The upper camp was approximately 200 x 250 meters. The gas chambers were located inside the extermination area, in a massive brick

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building. There were three gas chambers initially, each 4 meters by 4 meters in size. Ten more were built between the end of August, 1942 , and the beginning of October of the same year. Upon their completion, an entire load of twenty railroad cars could be gassed at the same time -roughly 2400 victims per day. A prisoner describes the beginning of his journey to the camp: "The first transport of'deportees' left Malkinia on July 23, 1942, in the morning hours. ...It was loaded with Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.

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Jewish History in Poland during the years 1939-1945 In 1939 the Jews in Poland constituted approximately ten per cent of the total population. However, this proportion seems to be an underestimation in the light of the criteria set by Germany in the Nuremberg Laws (These laws decreed that a Jew was one born of a Jewish parent/parents or having even a single Jewish ancestor. The individual remained Jewish even if they were baptized or converted to Christianity). More than 75 per cent of the Jewish population in Poland was concentrated in urban areas whilst only 25 per cent lived in rural regions. There was, therefore, a marked concentration of Jews in these areas. The economic crisis in which the Jews in Poland found themselves was not very different from that of Christian Poles. The world financial crisis which began at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s contributed to a widespread pauperization of hundreds of thousands of families in Poland, regardless of creed or origin. Furthermore, it must be remembered that until the First World War, a large part of Poland had belonged to Tsarist Russia for 120-140 years and was underdeveloped both socially and economically. Similarly, the economic situation in Southern Poland, which had been seized by the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century and remained under Austrian jurisdiction right up to the end of the First World War, was also very unfavorable. This contributed to the emigration of poor Jewish and Polish immigrants in search of a better living. In those Polish territories which had been a part of the Russian Empire for over seven generations, the development of social and civilizing influences among both Jewish and Polish communities was quite difficult, given the cultural and educational levels that existed. In comparison with most other European countries a large part of the population lived in a state of complete backwardness. The impact of successive invaders instigated and exacerbated political conflicts between various religious and national groups, conflicts caused by religious and ideological intolerance as well as economic rivalry. The official policy of anti-Semitism, so characteristic of the last decades of Tsarist Russia, had a particularly harmful effect on the population of Poland, although it never assumed the same proportions in Poland as it did in Russia or the Ukraine. It is also characteristic that in the urban areas and among the intelligentsia, where anti-Semitism had already begun to develop before the First World War, the political climate was proRussian, while social attitudes tended towards conservatism. Nationalistic conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians, Poles and Germans, Poles and Jews, were characteristic of the difficult problems that existed in the social and political life of the Polish nation, although each conflict had its own basis and justification, with varying individual effects. It is indisputable that before 1939 anti-Semitic attitudes existed in Poland, as did political organizations with anti-Semitic programs. However, the real scope and social effect of these kinds

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of activities and attitudes, which have been both exaggerated and underplayed in various writings, is not entirely clear. A most relevant aspect seems to be the isolationist tendency of both groups, that is, an inadequate integration and lack of openness on the part of both communities, living in essence, beside one another but not together. One must also remember that Poland, and particularly her eastern territories, was an especially important center for orthodox Jews - with all the accompanying attitudes and social consequences. Polish Jews had a very strong sense of their own separate national identity as was demonstrated in the last census of 1931, when approximately 85 per cent of Jews who were Polish citizens put down Yiddish or Hebrew as their mother tongue. This attitude was distinct from the self-determination of Jews in contemporary Germany, France and England. At the outbreak of World War II Poland was tolerant of Jewish autonomy in religious, political and social life, and this included education and cultural activities. However, only a certain number of the intelligentsia and some Polish and Jewish labor activists recognized the need to oppose the stereotyped attitudes and prejudices which resulted from the differences between each group and from the mutual sense of alienation. Simultaneously with these events, a very important role was being played by many thousands of Jews in Polish academic, cultural and professional life, for they were the co-creators of what then constituted contemporary Polish civilization. The events of 1939 brought about the division of Poland, so that in terms of actual acreage the country was split almost equally between the Third Reich and the USSR. As a result, 48.4 per cent of the territory with 62.9 per cent of the total population was under German occupation, while the USSR had 51 .6 per cent of the land (after incorporating the Lithuanian Republic) together with 37.1 per cent of the total population. 61.2 per cent of Polish Jews lived under German occupation and 38.8 per cent under that of the USSR, according to the eminent statistician, Ludwig Landau, who based this estimate on pre-war statistics. In the course of 1939, however, there was a shift in the population from west to east and we can therefore assume that, at the beginning of the occupation, the number of Poles, as well as Jews, who found themselves in the eastern half of Poland was somewhat larger whilst the number in the west was smaller than shown in pre-war statistics, which were based on permanent domiciles. Throughout occupied Poland both the German and Soviet occupying authorities made every effort to differentiate between the nationalities, and different tactics were used when dealing with the various national groups. It is characteristic, however, that as early as 30 October 1939 Himmler ordered the removal, over a four-month period, of all Jews and 'any particularly undesirable Poles' from the western territories incorporated into the Reich. In real terms, by the end of February 1940 this resulted, in Warthegau alone, in the forcible removal, of 200,000 Poles and 100,000 Jews. [T]he fates of both the Polish and Jewish populations had merged.

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In accordance with the so-called 'Unternehmen Tannenberg', mass executions of Poles were carried out along the coast (Pomorze), in Great Poland (Wielkopolska) and Silesia (Slack); this meant that as early as the autumn of 1939, 50,000 people had died. In central Poland - Warsaw, Krakow, Czestochowa, Lublin and many other towns - the Germans had managed to make mass arrests within the first few weeks of occupation. The insidious arrest, on 6 September 1939, in Krakow, of 183 academics -professors and lecturers of the Jagiellonian University and the Mining Academy - had particularly severe repercussions. Twenty of them were made to pay with their lives. In December 1939 the Germans carried out two mass executions in Bochnia near Krakow and in the Wawer settlement near Warsaw; the death toll was 170. At the end of April 1940, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the removal of 20,000 Poles to concentration camps. In May 1940, the beginning of the German offensive in the west, a grand design of exterminating the Polish intelligentsia within German occupied Poland began, known as AB (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion). This extraordinary campaign of pacification was to entrap above all (according to the SS) 'the spiritual and political leaders of the Polish resistance movement.' (SS Brigadefuhrer Bruno Szreckenbach.) On 14 June 1940 the first transport of Polish political prisoners was taken to a newly opened camp in Auschwitz, which, during the next year, was inhabited almost exclusively by Poles. Amongst them were a few thousand people rounded up in the course of raids on streets and houses, while later in the summer of 1941 Soviet prisoners were also sent there. The listing, if only in a very general way, of the events which marked Hitler's policy towards the Poles seems relevant since in the same period (that is, until mid-1940) the repressive and racially discriminating measures carried out against Polish Jews branded them as a racial group (or more accurately a national religious group), but did not suggest that the entire Jewish population might be exterminated. In the face of the mass executions, the introduction of compulsory labor for Jews from the age of fourteen, the necessity to wear armbands bearing the Star of David; the limiting of free movement; the creation of the first ghettos (in Piotrkow and Lodz), fiscal pressure and the confiscation of property, did not then appear either to Poles or Jews to be a greater or less bearable hardship. It must be made clear that at this stage the Polish and Jewish communities were equally, though erroneously, confident that the war with Germany would soon be over and that victory would go to the allies. Similarly, the situation east of the demarcation line, as set down in the August and September agreements of 1939 between the Germans and the Soviets, gave no warning of the impending threat of extermination of Jewish nationals. The mass deportations of people into the depths of the USSR affected the Poles most of all, although repression did occur against prewar Jewish social and political activists who had worked in Zionist organizations as well as in the Bund. This period of the occupation is not well researched or chronicled in the annals of history. There is also a lack of accurate sociological records and statistics concerning individual national groups who became part of the administration and

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machinery of oppression set up by the new Soviet authority in the delineated territories. It is maintained in various tales and reminiscences that collaboration with Soviet authorities on the part of the Jewish proletariat against the Poles was widespread, but such stories should be treated with great caution. It certainly seems to be true, however, in the opinion of Poles living in the eastern provinces of pre-war Poland, that the fall of Poland and the tragedies which accompanied the occupation were less keenly felt by the Jewish population than they were by their Polish neighbors. Naturally such circumstances can be explained in various ways: for example, there was a section of Jews domiciled in that particular region who, although they were Polish citizens, had Russian or Jewish orthodox cultural roots. There was also a sense of relief that the rule of Nazi Germany had not spread to these areas. But above all there was perhaps a greater sympathy with communist ideology and the USSR than there had been with Poland and its pre-war political system. One also cannot discount the fact that over the ensuing months attitudes in this part of Poland developed quickly under Soviet rule. Facts, however, are always facts, and according to a great number of Poles the national minorities in eight of the provinces of eastern Poland were engaged in anti-Polish and pro-Soviet activities. With Hitler's invasion of the USSR in June 1941 and the relatively fast progress of the Nazi offensive, all the territories of pre-war Poland were soon under German rule. This included among other sections of the population, the Jews who were Polish citizens, or at least those who still remained because they had not yet been deported or had not succeeded in fleeing to the USSR at the last minute. Only small areas, the pre-war provinces of Lwow, Stanislawow and Tarnopol came within the orbit of the Government General. Other Polish provinces were now administered by a new creation: the Reichskomisariat of Ukraine and Ostland. As is well known, it was on these newly conquered territories that the systematic extermination of the Jewish population began even before the proposals for the 'final solution' were passed at the Wannsee conference a few months later. Despite the difficulties of communication, news from the eastern territories did reach central Poland, and it was reported in the Polish and the Jewish underground press, the latter being distributed in the Warsaw ghetto. Only a few weeks later, at the beginning of December 1941, the first extermination camp on Polish soil was set in motion by the Germans, situated in Chelmno beside the Ner. News of this appeared in the Polish underground press within a matter of weeks and it also reached Jewish social and political activists in the Warsaw ghetto at least; it is a fact, too, that no practical conclusions were drawn as a result. Marek Edelman described the situation in 1945: The Warsaw ghetto did not believe the news, all those who clung to life could not believe that life could be taken from them in this way, only organized youth movements which were carefully monitoring the rise of German terror accepted these events as probable and real and decided to embark on a large scale propaganda campaign which would inform the community.

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It certainly was no accident that even before the mass exterminations began in central Poland orders had been issued forbidding Jews, under threat of death, to leave their designated areas; anyone found deliberately or indirectly helping fugitives from the ghettos would also suffer the death penalty and it was further stated that an attempt to help would be 'punished in the same way as an accomplished deed'. In the wake of this order of Hans Frank, individual district chiefs and even those in the lower echelons of the Nazi administration published a series of warnings and prohibitions regarding the ever-increasing number of cases of Poles harboring and helping Jews who had escaped from the ghettos. Fischer, the Governor General of Warsaw and its outlying areas, who was formally and actively in charge of the largest Jewish community in Poland, the Warsaw ghetto, made it known in his proclamation of 10 November 1941 that the death penalty would be meted out to all who 'provide refuge or any other kind of help' to Jews in hiding. Anyone who informed the German police about Jews living outside the ghetto and anyone informing on those actively helping such Jews was rewarded commensurately. This certainly created an incentive to the criminal class but obviously did not produce the desired results, since it was not long before various warnings and directives from the Germans began to reappear, demonstrating that in spite of everything the Polish population was still helping those who were being persecuted. Thus, for example, the piece in the Lmoro Journal, an organ of the Nazis printed in the Polish language in Galicia: Unfortunately the fact remains that the inhabitants of the rural areas secretly persist in helping Jews, this disloyal attitude harms the community as a whole and thus people involved in such action. Through various illegal routes, the rural community by using all the cunning at its disposal, evades express orders, delivering foodstuffs to the local Jewish population . . . Country people must, once and for all, sever all contacts with and disassociate themselves from all Jewry, they must break the seriously anti-social habit of aiding the Jews. The year 1942 brought the destruction, staggered over various months, of the ghettos which currently existed in the Government General, large numbers of their inhabitants being sent to extermination camps in Beizec, Sobibor and Treblinka and later to Auschwitz. This was the realization of the general plan of extermination passed and accepted in Berlin in 1942. It is beyond the scope of this article to give a detailed account of the way in which the extermination of Jews progressed in various parts of Poland throughout 1942. The basic facts were already apparent on 10 December 1942 in a note written by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Polish Government in London, Edward Raczyriski, to the Allied Governments. What is relevant to the topic in hand, however, is to establish the degree, if any, to which the tragic deterioration in the situation of Jews in Poland, now threatened with mass extermination, influenced the attitude of the Polish community towards the

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victims. It is also relevant to establish the degree, if any, to which the Jews were helped either individually or collectively, what form that help took and how successful it was; what possibility there was of mutual contact and how it worked in practice; whether the problems involved in this kind of contact existed in the corporate consciousness of the Polish and Jewish communities; and if they did exist, how they were overcome. In the first months of setting up enclosed residential areas on Polish territory which would be allocated only to Jews, opinion regarding the future of the ghettos was divided. In principle, however, there was a general belief within the Jewish community that this form of isolation would not make it impossible to survive the war, even though it was coupled with oppression and exploitation. There was also the theory that survival might be possible if people paid the price of passively adapting themselves to their circumstances. It was well known throughout Poland that conditions in the poverty-stricken, disease-ridden ghettos gradually killed the physically weak and the poor, and these factors were discussed in the reports that were sent out to the Polish Government exiled in London and by the Polish underground press, which had a wide circulation. Even before the famous letter of 11 May 1942, written by the Polish Bund to the Polish Government in London, the regular waves of terror intended as preventive measures and practiced against the Poles throughout the country between 1941 and 1942, and the particularly intense campaign of terror raging in Warsaw (since here the concentration of Poles was more numerous than in any other single area), meant that people had grown accustomed to the dramatic hardships that had become a part of everyday life. Regular arrests, overflowing Gestapo prisons, the constant transportation of prisoners to various concentration camps, resulting in the Poles constituting the largest single group in each of the Nazi camps - all this took the focus of people's attention away from what was happening behind the walls of the ghettos. There exists no real research as to the level of awareness, if indeed there was any at all, within the closed ghetto communities, of the real intensity of German terror against the Poles, and especially of the carefully planned campaign to exterminate the Polish intelligentsia. In 1942 the majority of the Polish population in the urban areas of central Poland lived in conditions of abject poverty, and although one cannot compare the subsistence levels and standard of living of the people in the ghettos with that of the people living outside, nevertheless we cannot totally disregard the fact that the Polish population was totally absorbed in the day-to-day battle for the most basic means of survival. The mutual threat posed by the Germans during their military operations and the anti-German feelings of the majority of the Jewish population helped to bring the two groups closer together in some areas as early as the beginning of the military campaign. One positive experience of this was the unequivocal solidarity shown by a great number of Jews in Warsaw during the city's siege. Various orders issued by the Nazis and the initial excesses committed against the Jews

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meant that during the very first weeks of the occupation the groups of Poles who had been ill-disposed and hostile towards the Jews began to review their attitudes and even to show sympathy. This has been well chronicled by the Jews, the Poles and by the Germans. With the creation of the ghettos (and this was the intention of the occupying forces) a strong sense of grievance, a feeling of being unjustly treated, came to both Jews and Poles alike, for they had been re-housed by force. It must be remembered that within the huge Warsaw community alone 138,000 Jews were forced into the ghetto from various districts around the city, whilst 113,000 Poles were forced to leave the area assigned to them to live in so-called 'Aryan' districts. Consequently a huge number of people who fell victim to these compulsory measures felt discontented and wronged. This enforced change of domicile, like all mass activity, was undoubtedly accompanied by various abuses, including the exploitation of people's misfortunes, but generally speaking both sides were aware that they had become objects to be manipulated by the policies of the invaders. Real contact of a private nature between the Poles and the Jews existed in Poland on a large scale among the culturally integrated Jewish intelligentsia and to some extent among the richer urban dwellers, as well as among a small number of intellectuals and those involved in industry and finance. The usual situation, however, was that people simply lived side by side, certainly there was an absence of mutual contact, and particularly contact of a personal nature. The exceptions prove the rule. Among the people whom the Nazis regarded as Jews (regardless of their actual cultural or even religious status) there were those who managed to escape the ghettos created in 1940-41, but more often than not these were the people who already had personal ties with the Polish community. Amongst the fugitives from the ghettos, especially during the early days of slum creation, there was a preponderance of people who had friends in the Polish community. Since Nazi terror reigned throughout the Aryan districts, the chances of remaining successfully hidden undoubtedly depended on a fluent knowledge of the language and on having close ties with the community. In practice, therefore, such chances did not exist for people who had, for long years, been practicing very different customs in their behaviour, their dress, their manner; people who not only did not know the language or the environment but who were also deprived, by their own community, of the opportunity to adapt. In the circumstances that prevailed in Poland at that time, this affected if not the majority, then certainly a large percentage of Jews. Wanda Grosman-Jedlicka, for example, recollects: We belong, it seems, to a small group of people of Jewish origin who did not allow themselves to be confined to a ghetto. Together with my husband, at the

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end of the summer of 1940, we took the decision to change our name and embark on an illegal existence, the very moment that the German authorities in Warsaw announced that the time had come for the Jews to be forcibly resettled to specially assigned districts. I did not know then that we would have to stay in hiding for four years: when I was told that the chances of survival within the ghetto walls was greater than outside, I replied that the Germans had not built the walls merely to pull them down at a later date and courteously set all the inhabitants free. My decision turned out to have been the right one. My husband, it's true, did not survive the war - but that was not because of our particular situation - he, together with thousands of inhabitants from the Bielany district, was transported in the second week of the uprising and died in a prison camp. I survived with my two sons, staying in Warsaw or its environs. Moreover since I was now installed on the Aryan side I could help in the rescue of my more distant relatives and particularly their children, during the ghastly month of July and after. We belonged to a family who had been polonized many generations ago, we were thus fully assimilated and we were Christians. All this greatly helped our chances of survival (there were no glaring external differences, nothing to distinguish us either culturally or in matters of religion). One of the people who helped, Regina Zakrewska, writes: 'My whole family, being members of the progressive Polish intelligentsia, were friendly before the war with the Jewish intelligentsia which was more or less polonized. It is not surprising, therefore, that during the tragic period of the occupation we remained loyal to our friends, all of whom probably survived the war and the occupation because of that.' The decision not to go into the ghetto had, in each individual case, a series of economic as well as professional and family consequences. We must also remember that the idea of solidarity and the nature of one's contact with the community were interpreted in various ways. For example, one characteristic problem was that of mixed marriages between Jews and Poles. On this subject, Emanuel Ringelblum writes (in Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War): The Germans' anti-Jewish regulations were not successful in disturbing stable Polish-Jewish unions. 'Aryan' families made every effort to protect their Jewish members by securing suitable 'Aryan' papers for them or simply by hiding them or moving them to other districts and cities so as to wipe out any trace of them. It was almost axiomatic that if a Jew had Polish relatives in his family he could count on their help, even when the entire family was anti-Semitic. Apart from the personal ties already mentioned, material interests also created certain bonds that led to contact being maintained between the independent

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groups. Besides the extreme cases of abuse which took place everywhere, the ties between businessmen and industrialists often had a positive part to play. They were a contributory factor in the traffic, which the Germans declared to be illegal, of foodstuffs and other goods in which both sides were involved. The commencement of the extermination program against the Jews filled most of the population not only with horror but also with fear that a similar fate might be awaiting them. The criminal ruthlessness of the Germans towards the Jews, regardless of sex or age, was accompanied by the very same ruthlessness towards the Poles who helped them, no matter for what reasons. Research on this subject is still incomplete and it is doubtful whether it could ever be completed, but we can certainly say that many hundreds of Polish families died as a result of helping the Jews. Individual victims, therefore, can doubtlessly be counted in thousands, not hundreds. This was bound to influence people's readiness to take risks. In continuing to analyze, in any given context, the issues of help and co-operation within the concrete circumstances described here, we could pose the question (to which there probably is no answer): would any other community as a whole and in analogous circumstances be willing to go further in a wholesale sacrifice to save others? Obviously the motives for helping Jews were varied. Besides family links, the ties of friendship or professional bonds, a recurrent motive which appears in many eye-witness accounts, was simple human empathy. Christian motives amongst religious people for whom the concept of neighborly love had a deep meaning must also be taken into account, as must the feeling of solidarity with victims who had been hit even harder than the Poles themselves by the criminal activities of the invaders. Another fairly common motive for helping and hiding Jews was avarice. There is no reason to keep silent about this particular phenomenon. If we discount the cases of exploitation and abuse which took place, usually, only in extreme situations, then we have to accept that paid help was often long-lasting and successful, since in the last analysis it contributed to the saving of many lives. The poor material conditions of the Polish population, and particularly the urban population in wartime, bring into question the very possibility of giving systematic aid without having the necessary material means. In this context the material help which the Polish Government in London allocated from its budget and the sums sent, through its mediation, by Jewish organizations in the USA made a very real difference, and in fact from mid-1942 this became a critical factor. Individual organizations, whether they were political or social - that is, socialist, liberal or Catholic -gave aid within their own sphere of activity and to the best of their ability to small groups of people mainly in the big city areas such as Warsaw, Krakow and Lwow. In 1942 circumstances changed radically; the number of fugitives from the ghettos rose as a result of deportations and the Jewish underground movement

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now became more structured - all this contributed to developing and extending an institutionalized form of aid. During the summer and autumn of 1942 the groups the activities of which preceded the creation of the Council for Aid to Jews (code-named 'Zegota') were of the conviction that their paramount aim must be the saving of the greatest possible number of lives currently under threat, with particular regard to children, whilst ensuring that as far as possible these people would survive the war; secondly, they aimed to systematically and simultaneously inform and warn the governments and communities in the so-called 'Free World', the allies, about the extensive extermination of the Jews. However, in line with the general policies of the Polish underground movement, which did not envisage mass armed and open combat, it was believed that, until a realistic possibility presented itself of such a conflict being successful (perhaps in the last stages of the war) most of the money should be used to aid the Jews in keeping themselves alive rather than in arming themselves. Those among the widespread Jewish and Polish communities who thought realistically, believed in a pragmatic assessment of the possibilities, especially since the extent of the aid was inadequate anyway. The fact that it could never be adequate and that there was no real possibility of saving even a couple of hundred thousand people, not to mention millions, from a tragic fate did not, of course, bring any comfort whatsoever to the victims, nor should it soothe the consciences of passive eye-witnesses. After all, from a moral viewpoint, the first dictate of many creeds and philosophies is to sacrifice one's own life for that of a neighbor. In reality this ideal is very seldom practiced. The fight against informers was well organized, with the death sentence being meted out on a scale unknown in the occupied countries of Western Europe, but still it was impossible to stamp out this phenomenon completely, for nowhere has it ever been possible completely to ward off even the worst forms of criminal behaviour when it is commonplace. Jewish fugitives also fell victim to the informers, as did the people who aided them. There were relatively frequent instances of blackmail and extortion for material gain, often involving the most helpless victims. It was difficult to fight this type of criminality but nevertheless the fight was waged. There are no well-researched statistics at our disposal showing the exact number of Jews and gentiles who throughout Poland and in over five years of occupation fell victim to the informers and paid with their lives, or at least with their freedom and health. It must be stated, however, that the situation was generally accepted as a grave and sensitive one, hence the ruthless attitude of the Polish secret organizations and the organized militant groups within the ghettos towards the informer. Emanuel Ringelblum when stating that, 'the life of a Pole harboring a Jew is not an easy one', was motivated, among other things by the 'extreme terror' which reigned in Poland. He wrote: The best elements in our society, the most high-minded and self-sacrificing are

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being deported in droves to concentration camps or to prisons. Spying and denunciation blossoms in Poland and we can largely thank the mass of authentic and phony Volksdeutsche for this. There are arrests and raids at every turn. On the trains there are continual searches for arms and smuggled goods, it is no different on the city streets.