Jewish Ghettos in Poland

Lublin before the war was one of the premiere Jewish "Centers" of Culture and Religion: one-third of the population was Jewish, with Jewish newspapers in Yiddish, hospitals, 12 synagogues and a central Yeshiva or Rabbinal Training Institute which influenced the Jewish community so greatly that few assimilated into the Polish culture as much as other European concentrations of of Jewish citizens.¹ Lublin is significant not only for the number of Jewish citizens that lived there, but for Jewish ownership of businesses and factories which ranged up to half of all in the area. Before the war was over, it would become the site of one of the largest Jewish ghettos and slavery operations, the headquarters of Operation Reinhard and the 'capital' of the General Government which deposed the pre-war Polish government. Lublin deported most of its Jews to Mandanek and Belzec, and some to Sobibor, and to the very dreaded camp of Trawniki, a training camp for death headers and Einsatzgruppen officers. Globocnik, who headed Operation Reinhard or the complete genocide of the Jews of Poland, who was directly under Berlin's control, took office as the Polizeifuhrer or Chief of Police, allowing a great magnitude of authority in carrying out massacres in that area.

German soldiers entered Lublin in September of 1939, close to a year after Krystallnacht, encountering some resistance . Admidst bombings, property confiscation, and the enslavement and humiliation of especially prominent members of the Jewish community, the Germans took control of Lublin. Some escaped with the aid of resistance leaders, but the concentration camps which developed in that area were particularly reknown later for incarcerating members of the resistance and younger persons. By the end of October 1939, a Ghetto had been established although its formal declaration was later, and Jews were removed from their homes, all property given to the Reich and they were required to pay a large sum of money additionally to the German Army (Wehrmacht) for the war effort.

While the conditions in the Lublin Ghetto were slightly better than other Polish ghettos, conditions were crowded, and impoverished. A Judenrat or Jewish Council was established at the end of 1939, headed first by Henryk Bekker, and after Bekker's deportation Marek Alten but the leadership was really that of Shama Grajer, who was known as a cruel profiteer and collaborator with the Nazis, even selling his own people out for his own gain. The ghetto became divided between October and December of 1941, after thousands were sent to Belzec for slavery and execution. All unemployed Jews in the Ghetto were sent to Belzec.

Black market profiteering abounded in Lublin and the Ghetto, since at least earlier in the war, Jews had more freedom of movement: by 1940-1, this was erased as mass deportations begain. Of those remaining in 1941 in October, many were sent as slaves to build Majdanek which would later become a killing center. All Jews were forced to wear a yellow star armband, and were registered by the SS. Lublin Jews sent to Majdanek, were among those killed in the "Harvest Festival" Massacre of November 3, 1943, numbering approximately 18,000 of the 42,000 slaughtered. In October of 1942, 3000 were sent to Majdanek and 180 children were shot.

Of the few left in the Ghetto at the end of the war, as late as July of 1944, all were shot literally hours before the Red Army moved into Lublin at liberation. This was six months before the liberation of Auschwitz. Lublin today is a thriving town, having increased in population and being one of the few Ghetto regions to which a significant number of Jewsreturned.

¹Lublin: Deathcamps.org
²Lublin & Majdanek: USHMM; ushmm.org
³Lublin: Photos: www.zwoje.org
⁴About the Holocaust: Lublin Poland: Yad Vashem

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Today, Krakow is a town of 750,700 residents, of which today, only approximately 600 are Jewish. This once thriving Jewish haven was a world center of Arts and the Humanities, and a center for religious study: both Orthodox Judaism and Roman Catholicism have a long history of doctrinal formation and letters from this town near which the current Pope was born. With the purging of the Arts and Humanities, the ghettoization of the Jews,and massive deportation efforts, the Krakow of 60 years ago no longer exists: all that remains of its high Jewish culture are the remnants of synagogues which were once among the grandest in the world. The city that was once almost 1/3 Jewish, lost most of its population in the war, followed by mass aliyahs in 1968, as oppression by the government began again, and the few thousand left dwindled to 600 after 1978.

While we tend to see the world in black and white, Shoah presented great difficulties in applying normal plumblines of morality. The Ghetto of Krakow, one of the two largest concentrations of Jewish citizens in Poland was not an exception, and most of the issues centered around the head of the Judenrat, Rumkowski. In Warsaw, Cierniakow, a former doctor who headed the Judenrat was controversial. Rumkowski was not controversial: he was almost unaminously disliked. The reasons are substantial: according to many eyewitnesses, both close associates and citizens, he lived a lavish lifestyle himself while others suffered in bitter starvation. His self-centered lifestyle contributed to the enormous suffering in the ghetto of approximately 60,000, which had represented roughly 25% of the the 237,000 at the beginning of the war. After starvation, disease and cruel oppression under Rumkowski, partial deportations stopped and the entire clearing of the ghetto was announced. Many years later it is now known that while Rumkowski could not have utterly stopped the events that left Krakow desolate, he could have saved thousands of lives, most importantly of children, which he deliberately decided not to do. Many survivors have lived with this embitterment.^k

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The City of Kielce is located .....

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The Sewers of Lvov may not sound like the scene of a great human drama, but the events in the Ghetto of Lvov led there. At the beginning of the war, close to 1/3 of the population was Jewish: 110-150,000 out of 300,000 citizen. As the town was surrounded by German and Ukrainian Police acting as an arm of the Nazis, a few were able to escape to the sewer tunnels below ground in Lvov. Three thousand were killed, 7000 sent to Janowska and many killed later. Of the Jews who managed to escape underground many did not survive the conditions of disease, darkness, rodents, stagnant filthy air and starvation. Many died including children. After over 1 and a half years as it became safe to surface, many suffered from blindness, some permanently.At the end of the war very few Jews were left in the town.

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Nazi occupation of Tarnow began as early as 1939. Early in the occupation, Jews were humiliated and abused, many were used for slave labor. As the war progressed, those without work papers were deported, as many as 6000. In 1940, the Jews had to raise a 'penalty' payment of punitive damages to the Nazis, and the confiscation of property began, including restricted streets, but the establishment of the Ghetto formally was not until 1942. Many Jews, escaping from other ghettos and persecuted cities came to Tarnow to live, but Jews without legal residence were deported and killed. Like the Warsaw, Lvov, and Krakow Ghetto, the Tarnow Ghetto was headed by a Judenrat, and had its own Jewish police force. In June of 42 close to 14,000 were deported to Belzec, the Killing Center known for its use of mass electrocution. The Jewish cemetary was desolated See Picture on Death Camps.org. A mass killing took place at the site. Over 20,000 were killed and deported.The main destination camps were Belzec, Plaszow, and Auschwitz. Because of the smalll number of resistance fighters, there was no uprising. By 1943, there was no Tarnow Ghetto. Himmler declared with clarity the complete liquidation plans.

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Sosnowiec is not a widely known ghetto name, but the tragedy of Shoah extended there as well. The ghetto was created in 1939, when the Nazis marched in, killing over 200 and establishing their presence by arresting town officials and academics, and establishing a ghetto for the Jews in the Dabrowa Basin in the district of Srodula.^note Many of the Jews in the ghetto, knowing that Nazi occupation and deportation was imminent sought to hide their children with others. The central figures in the metaphorical, but at the same time very real story MAUS was set there. Present in the town since at least the 1890s, the Jewish population declined from 28000 before the war, to less than 700 afterward.² The Nazis forced the citizens of the ghetto into a city square where they began to process them. Those who could work or had a trade valuable to the Nazis, were given a 'blue card', which meant they would stay alive when they reached their destination. Others were not so fortunate. As with Jews all over Europe, most worldly possessions were taken from them, and they were not allowed to stay together; they were deported mostly to Auschwitz. Spiegelman, the author of MAUS and child of the survivors he describes tells the sorrowful account of a younger brother Richieu he never met. The child was put in the care of a woman to avoid deportation. When the Nazis came to get them, she poisoned herself and the children, knowing they would send them to a certain death. Long hoped for eeunions never occurred at Sosnowiec. Most of the citizens of the ghetto were deported in 1942 and 1943, after which the ghetto was liquidated.

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The City of ..... is located .....

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A teeming city of over 500,000 starving people was formed as the Nazis announced plans to segregated all the Jews of Warsaw into an area intended for no more than 40,000. The homes in the Jewish quadrant had to be sold and gentile tenants had to move 'across the line'. Once the Jews' former property had been confiscated, the Jews of Warsaw were moved into tiny quarters, often 4 or 5 families to a small apartment. There was little work in the ghetto at the beginning, and towards the end, almost none: persons sold whatever they could on the streets, hoping to survive. While the rest of Europe still had basic food, ghetto residents lived most days on less than 800 calories a day: a square of bread about the size of Rubik's Cube^Twatered soup and occasionallya portion of fat or oleo. Disease became rampant with the increase in starvation and many died. Orphanages were set up, the most famous of which was headed by Janucz Korzcak, a friend of Adam Cierniakow, the head of the Judenrat, the Jewish governing body of the Ghetto. Together, the two men did as much as they could for the children, often 'acquiring resources' from the residents of the ghetto who had more than others. Deportations began as supposed work details to Treblinka, first of the men of the ghetto, then thousands of women, and in the end, children. The dead were carried out of the ghetto daily at dawn. As word came via the young zionists that Treblinka was a death camp, (the path to which was lined with Jewish Gravestones) they urged the Judenrat to resist the Nazis, an almost impossible task. Cierniakow's greatest failing was deciding not to take action: whether he believed the Nazis or not is left to history, but the morning the work detailed called for the children, he knew he had been deceived. He died by his own hand, leaving the note, "The want me to kill the children of my people..." :He had spent his entire effort trying to do the opposite. He and Korzcak died in their defense of their charges. As the Nazis began to send the remaining ghetto residents to Auschwitz and Treblinka, the young resistance, headed by Mordecai Anielewicz took up arms and began to fight against the Nazis. For weeks they held off the Nazis deciding to die fighting rather than to fall into the hands of a deadly enemy; the death toll of the Nazis was xxxx, and almost all the freedom fighters died. One of the leaders, Yitzhak Zuckerman, escaped to Israel, and is still alive, after having led many to safety out of Warsaw. Stroop, the menacing, and mechanical head of the Nazi forces which took Warsaw after it was bombed, burned and its citizens killed and deported, carefully documented with psychotic, obsessive accuracy notes, photographs and lists of every thing that happened. As the last resistance was destroyed, Stroop wired his superiors, "The Jewish sector of Warsaw is no more". Few survived the ghetto. "The Pianist", the academy award winning film, tells the story of one fortunate musician, who was one of the few survivors. The ghetto was later bulldozed and disassembled brick by brick, by forced Jewish labor, some of which was from Auschwitz. Today a memorial stands in its place.

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Bialystok in the Northeast of Poland was home before 1942 to more than 210,000 Jews, forced to reside in a ghetto. The first persecutions were in 1942, by the Einsatzgruppen,which were a combination of forces of local police, nazi stormtroopers and even local citizens, headed ultimately by Heydrich, named 'The Butcher of Prague'. Estimates of over 31,000 male Jews were killed and buried in mass graves: women were raped and beaten and children taken from their parents. In October of 1942, the order came to liquidate the ghetto and all in the area, and by August 1943, the remaining Jews were sent to the Killing Centers of Majdanek, Treblinka & Auschwitz. A bloody ghetto uprising ensued at the end, in which resistance members fought to leave no spoil for the Germans, including factories or anything else which would help the war effort. Almost all the deported Jews were executed: Bialystok has gone down in history as one of the bloodiest and most tragic of the Ghettos.¹

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