Resistance at the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw!

 

Battle for the Warsaw Ghetto 

Report from the Jewish Workers Underground Movement

 22 June 1943 

 

What follows is an excerpt from a report by the Jewish Labour Underground of Poland, which reached the American representatives of the General Jewish Workers Union of Poland – the Bund – through underground channels via London. It is dated 22 June 1943.

 

Pre war photo of the Jewish Workers Movement

A characteristic trait of this new extermination campaign waged by the Germans against the Jews is armed resistance on the part of the Jews. During the previous wave of extermination such acts of armed resistance were seldom dared. Once in a while we would receive word about such desperate deeds from one small town or another. Now the entire situation has changed radically. The leading role is being played by the Ghetto of Warsaw.

 

The first clashes on the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto occurred from 19 until 23 January 1943. That was the beginning of the battle between the armed German Police, SS men and the Jewish Armed Resistance Organisation, which made its first appearance at that time. The January clashes were an embarrassing surprise for the Germans, and were very promising for the future – a prelude of events to come.

 

Unfortunately lack of space prevents us from describing the historic events that occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto after the January clashes with the precision and esteem that even the smallest detail deserves. This must and shall be done at some future date.

 

The fight between the Jews and Germans in April and May 1943, that which has been termed the “Battle of Ghettograd” (Ghettograd – reminiscent of the stubbornness of Stalingrad), eclipses everything that has ever occurred in the annals of the Jews or any other people. The methods and means of the fighting, forced on the belligerents by the special circumstances in the Ghetto, varied in accordance with the various phases of the Battle.

 

The heart-breaking picture of the Ghetto in flames – shrouded in smoke, the noise of machine guns, cannons, field artillery, mine explosions, the destruction of blocks of buildings, the hell that was unleashed on our people – will forever remain in our memory. No man of letters, no painter will ever be able to recreate the greatness of the events we witnessed, nor the emotions that overwhelmed us during those tragic and historic days.

 

SWIT members (Polish Underground Radio

The Battle that began on 19 April lasted about a month, however, even at the end of May there was still some resistance.

 

The backbone of the entire battle was the Jewish Armed Resistance Organisation, which led the people into the fight. The organisation is the armed body of the Co-ordinating Committee, which comprises an equal number of representatives of the Bund and the Jewish National Committee. Neither the Revisionists (a Zionist Group), nor the Agudah (religious Jews) belonged to the Jewish Armed Resistance Organisation.

 

The Revisionists organised a small “Organisation for vengeance,” of their own which ceased to exist after the second day of the Battle. Workers and youth formed the majority in the Jewish Armed Resistance Organisation. The youngest was Lusiek, thirteen years of age, a member of the Bund youth group, Skif the oldest member of the organisation was forty.

 

All the members of the resistance organisation were idealists, adherents of various political trends. Their fraternity in battle (Bundists, Chalucym, Shomrim and others) was exemplary. The general attitude of the inhabitants of the Ghetto towards the idea of resisting the Nazis changed radically from what it was a year ago.

 

It would be wrong and unjust to presume that the heroic spirit and determination of the defenders of the Ghetto was but a result of despair. Many a fighter had ample opportunity to rescue himself by leaving the Ghetto. However, the fighters were full of a noble sense of duty, a soldier’s duty, of a powerful desire to carry on the fight for honour, for human dignity.

 

They were anxious to take revenge on Fascism, on the enemy of their people, on the enemy of mankind. The precautions of the Germans bordered on cowardice. The prolonged heroic resistance of the Ghetto banished the legend of the invincibility of the German Army, showed the Polish nation its vast possibilities in resisting the Nazis and strengthened its self-reliance. The “Jewish – German War” lent strength to the splendid spirit of resistance against the Germans, with which the Polish Underground had already been marked.

 

Being perfectly aware of this situation, the Germans gave vent to their rage and fury by turning the entire Ghetto into one mass of ruins. On the fifth day of the Battle, the Jewish Armed Resistance Organisation published a manifesto addressed to the Polish Underground, and to the inhabitants of our capital, conveying greetings from the Jewish Underground fighters.

 

German soldiers shelling the Warsaw ghetto

Various sectors of the Polish Underground Labour Movement immediately responded with messages of solidarity and admiration. On the whole, the attitude of the Polish Underground towards the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto was marked with respect for the fighters and with esteem for their daring.

 

However, this attitude varied in accordance with the different viewpoints on the Jewish problem of the various parts of the Polish Underground. The capital city of Poland, as well as the entire country, seethed with excitement because of the Battle of the Ghetto.

 

During the Battle the Co-ordinating Committee of the Bund and the Jewish National Committee issued daily communiqués on the Battle, which appeared in Polish clandestine publications and were broadcast abroad by the Polish clandestine radio station Swit.

 

The result of the Battle was: several thousand Jews were killed, burnt alive, suffocated by gas and about twenty-five thousand were deported to the concentration camps of Trawniki, Poniatow, Majdanek and Lublin.

 

Only the ruins of buildings, destroyed by mines, cannons and fires remain where the Ghetto once stood. The Warsaw Ghetto is now one big cemetery. Somewhere in the catacombs hundreds and perhaps thousands of those who survived the battle are still living in agony.

 

Only two days ago, for example, a thirteen – year old boy appeared from this subterranean world with a message dated 10 June, informing us about “life” in the modern catacombs. The entire bombardment of Warsaw in 1939 caused the destruction of 75,000 homes, while the present Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto ended with the destruction of one hundred and several thousand homes.

 

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/warsawbattle.html

 

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

 

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011

     

The Testimony of Mosche (Moses) Feigenberg

Testimony 2

 

This document represents testimony of Moses Feigenberg made

as a deposition for the trial of Martin Weiss and other SS men in Germany in 1960

 

Translation from original German May 2001

[photos added to enhance the text]

 

Mosche Feigenberg

Testimony of Mosche Feigenberg

 

First name of the father: Hirsch

Address: Tel-Aviv, Sderot Ben-Zion 23, phone 26611

working place: Hospital Beer-Jaakow

Year of birth: 1909

Place of Birth: District Wilna

Profession: Urological Doctor

Family: married

Religion: Jewish

 

01.17.60, 5 pm in the apartment of the witness

 

Interrogator: 180 Sergeant Meir Warschawski

 

Through the force of article 2 (1) of the criminal-process-order I have written down the testimony of Mosche Feigenberg.

Meir Waschawski 180 Sergeant

 

I lived in the city of Wilna at the beginning of WW2 and I worked as doctor for urinary illnesses. I have lived in this city about 40 years until my emigration to Israel.

 

In September of 1941 my family and I were forced to live in the ghetto together with all Wilna Jews. I worked at the Jewish hospital in the ghetto but also as worker outside the ghetto where I cleaned railroads and chopped wood at a place called Sorok Tatari.

 

One week before the liquidation of the Wilna ghetto in September of 1943 the Nazi administration sent about 1500 Jews from the ghetto into a working camp called HKP and about 1500 Jews in another working camp called Kailis. My family and I came into the HKP camp but the Nazis liquidated both camps at the beginning of July 1944. The liquidation was carried out under the command of the SS and the SD. That happened two weeks before the liberation of the city through the Red Army.

 

Post war photo of where the HKP camp stood in Vilna

I want to remark that the two camps were located close to the city and that I worked as a Doctor in both of them. I had the opportunity to see all the actions the Gestapo and the SS carried out against the Jewish population, often with the help of the Lithuanian police. I was also there during the children’s liquidation action on March 27th 1944.

 

I see eleven pictures in front of me (the witness examines 11 pictures that were sent here from Ludwigsburg, the witness takes the picture of Heinrich Schmitz’s face). This picture reminds me of the man whose name I found out later was Heinrich Schmitz. About October 1943 a Jewish family composed of father, mother and a twelve years old daughter was caught when they tried to escape. They were brought back to the camp and hung in front of the public.

 

The whole camp population was ordered to see the execution. I remember that when the cord around the man’s neck tore, he fell down still alive. He was crying and beseeched the SS man to let him alive. But this man didn’t have mercy and he shot him instantly with his revolver.

 

The picture of Heinrich Schmitz that I see know corresponds with the identity of the man who shot the hung man. I remember that the SS man’s face was handsome and fine, it was like the face of an actor. About around the time of this incident I often heard at the HKP camp administration that the SS man who was responsible for the Jews was called also Schmitz. He himself was responsible for all kinds of actions against the Jews. I myself saw him shooting the fallen down man.

 

Martin Weiss

He looks very much alike the picture of the Heinrich Schmitz that I see now. On march 27th 1944 when I was in the HKP camp I saw the liquidation action against Jewish children that was carried out by SS and SD under the personal leadership of Martin Weiss.

 

The goal of this action was the final and absolute liquidation of all children in the camp. The scared Jews began to hide their children in different hideouts, for example in stoves, in toilets, in barrels and under beds. But the Gestapo carried out a very exact examination of all homes. With the help of axes and hammers they searched the walls and got many children. They brought them all into the backyards to load them on big cars.

 

The number of children that the Nazis brought out of the camp to send them to an unknown location was about 250. They never came back again. We were lucky enough to hide about a dozen children. I myself brought eight kids into a hideout that I prepared, including  my own twelve years old daughter whom I hid in a potato sack. Six out of the eight kids I saved during the liquidation action were brought later also to unknown locations.

 

I as the camp doctor had the right to walk in the backyards and so I was able to see the whole details of the action. I remember a woman called Zukowska who didn’t want to separate herself from her daughter. She  was lead away some meters from the backyard and shot personally by Martin Weiss. Of all the pictures here I recognize also the one that shows Max Gross whom I saw often in the ghetto as well as in the HKP camp. He participated each Sunday in the count of the forced workers during the roll call. He also participated in the children action like many other Gestapo and SS men.

 

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/feigenberg.html

 

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011

ESCAPE FROM THE BELZEC DEATH CAMP!

SAVED BY A PAIR OF HEELS
By
Julian Cohen

Incorporating the Narrative of Hanna Cohen (Szper),
Transcribed and Translated from the Polish
 

Hanna & Julian 1947

 

When the German army punched into Poland on September 1, 1939, my mother’s family still had three weeks before the Nazi conquerors would seize the ancient city of Lublin. The family had lived in Lublin and its environs for centuries. It was a large, learned, middle class family, integrated in Polish society and culture to the degree that Jews were allowed to integrate. My mother, Hanna, lived in a big old townhouse with her parents, her older brother, the customary live-in domestics, and extended family and friends dropping by at all hours of the day.

 

As the Germans were approaching, my grandmother begged my mother to flee east, to Lwow, to relative safety. Lwow had just been occupied by the Soviets, by prior understanding with Hitler. Although life under the Soviets was harsh and perilous, compared with Nazi domination it was considered the lesser of two evils.

 

Hanna, twenty-four and a teacher of German literature, was reluctant to leave, but she could not ignore her mother’s entreaties. She took the train to Lwow.

 

Her travails under the Soviets would end in July 1941, when the Germans, breaking their pact with Stalin, pushed east. Within hours of their entry into Lwow, the Germans sicced Ukrainian mobs to large-scale pogroms of Jews. Later, they decreed that all Jews must relocate to a ghetto.

 

My mother would have none of it. She decided to escape to Warsaw. On the train to Warsaw, the German Railway Police arrested her.
 

At this point, the commentator had better move aside, leaving only the translator. Those who saw the face of Chiron while being rowed across the Styx, and who swam back to the shore of memory, have a right to tell their story that cannot be usurped. They have a unique insight, too. The survivor of a holocaust possesses knowledge about the human species that the rest of us are rarely privy to, for he has seen people’s character alloys melting even at the periphery of the evil furnace, revealing their true proportions of base and noble metals.

 

————————————————————–

 

“They stopped the train and called one of them, a fat German wearing a helmet. ‘Get off the train with her now. You’ll take her on the first train back to Lwow, to the Gestapo.’

 

When we got off, I started asking that he let me go. I say to him, ‘What benefit is it to you that they kill me; I am young, what I have with me I will give you.’ And he answers, ‘I would gladly let you go, but if I do that, they will kill me too.’
 

He hugged me, this old German, and started stroking my hair. He says, ‘Child, I know one hundred percent that you will survive this war, but I will not.’ And he took me on a train to the local police headquarters. I spent the night there, in jail. In the morning, they took me away, and he accompanied me.

 

At the jail, they conducted the first interrogation: who I am. He sat to the side. There was an officer and two sergeants, and they conducted the interrogation. At a certain moment, the officer takes a carbine off a wall rack and orders one of the sergeants: ‘Take her downstairs.’ And the fat one with the helmet winks at me, so that I won’t be afraid. Then he got up, poured and gave me a glass of water. This was a man with a heart. And in the morning, he transported me to the Gestapo, and there I had a real investigation.

 

I only remember that there was a large commission. One of them walked me to the window and said, ‘You see that tree? From that tree you will hang.’ Everything was in German.

 

Then they threw me into a small cell where there were already some thirty people, Jews. Suddenly they opened the door, and threw in a young Polish woman. She cries, ‘Woe, they caught me, woe.’

 

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/belzecescape.html

 

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

 

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011

Holocaust Diaries – David Sierakowiak!

The Diary of David Sierakowiak

 

 

David Sierakowiak

David’s diary begins on 28 June 1939, just before his fifteenth birthday, and comes to an abrupt end on 15 April 1943. David himself died later in August 1943, “presumably” of tuberculosis; however, many others in the ghetto (including his sister) would have to endure another full year of torment before the ghetto’s final liquidation and the deportation of the remaining Jews to Auschwitz.

 

Although we don’t know why David stopped keeping his diary during the last four months of his life, the entries that he did write reveal the harshness and suffering the ghetto inhabitants faced almost daily. The text presents the reader with a sombre look into what it meant to exist in a community ravaged by never-ending starvation, constant fear, terrible sickness, and inevitable death.

 

In similar fashion to Anne Frank’s Diary, with which David’s diary is often compared, his writing presents events within the context of the times, and also offers the viewpoint of someone who was there when the events really happened, as seen through the eyes of a young boy desperately struggling to become a man.

 

 

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/Lodz/ds.html

 

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

 

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011

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Operational Situation Report USSR No. 63

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 63

 The Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Berlin,
August 25, 1941

48 Copies
——————-
(36th copy)

Einsatzgruppen C

Location: Novo-Ukrainka

On August 16, 1941 Einsatzkommando 6 of SIPO and the SD were located near Novo-Ukrainka. While purging the area, the Einsatzkommando group encountered a suspicious looking civilian who escaped and was pursued. In the course of that pursuit, members of the EK-6-SS Stubf, von Kuskull, SS-O-Scharf. Werner Schulz, SS-Scharfuhrer Schwarz became involved in a shooting incident with none hidden Soviet Officers. SS-O-Scharf fell in that battle.

 Five of the Soviet officers were killed. Lieutenant-General Sokolov, the commander of the XV1 Soviet armored corps, was among the Soviet Officers. S. was severely wounded in the course of the fight and was made prisoner after the other officers were killed.

 Einsatzgruppen D

 Location: Ananyev

 The solution of the Jewish question, one of the most important problems, has already been tackled, though only in a hesitant manner. Before the war, there were some 60 to 80,000 Jews in Kishniev.

 Many of them left the area when the Russian forces withdrew. When the city was occupied there were approximately 4,000 Jews as some of them had returned.

 On the initiative of the Einsatzkommando the Rumanian town commander established a Jewish ghetto in the old part of the city and this ghetto hold some 9,000 Jews at present.

 The Jews are divided into labor groups and put at the disposal of the various German and Rumanian offices for street cleaning and other work.

SS Economic & Administrative Department and the Nazi Concentration Camps

SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
- WVHA

The 
SS Economic & Administrative Department and the Nazi
Concentration camps

 

 

Himmler inspects buildings constructed by concentration camp prisoners

The SS Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA;
Economic and Administrative Main Office) was
established in March 1942, with Oswald Pohl as its
chief. It took the place of several previous
offices, including the Administrative Department (Verwaltungsamt)
of the SS Central Office (SS Hauptamt), the
Department of Budget and Buildings (Hauptamt
Haushalt und Bauten), and the Inspector of
Concentration Camps (Inspekteur der
Konzentrationslager).

 

On February 1, 1942, Himmler ordered another
reorganization, and both main offices were fused
into one large SS Economic and Administrative Main
Office (WVHA).

 

Himmler order, dated April 20th, 1939, establishing
the  [Hauptamt
Verwaltung und Wirtschaft]
“Main Office for Administration and Economy” which
would later become the WVHA:

 

Berlin,

20
April 1939

The Reich Leader SS and Chief of the German Police

August Frank

Subject: Establishment of a New Main Office.

1. With effect from 3 April 1939 the Office of the
Administrative Chief of the SS will be raised to the
status of Main Office in the Reich Leadership.

2. The new Main Office will be called: “Main Office
Administration and Economy” abbreviated: “V and W
Main Office”.

3. The Administrative and Economic Main Office is a
main office like the other Main Offices of the Reich
Leadership SS (SS Main Office, SD Main Office, Race
and Settlement Main Office, Constabulary Police [Ordnungspolizei]
Main Office, and Security Police Main Office).

4. The chief of the Administrative and Economic Main
Office in the Reich Leadership SS will at the same
time be chief of the Main Office Budget and
Buildings of the Reich Leader SS and chief of the
German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior
(Ministerialdirektor). His activities as such will
be dependent on the organization of the work of the
office. The tasks of the SD connected with politics
and intelligence service will not be affected
(Administration and Economy).

The Reich Leader SS

[Signed] H. HIMMLER

Certified true copy:

BY ORDER OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE CHIEF OF THE SS

[Signature illegible

SS Obersturmfuehrer and Adjutant

[Stamp] SS Race and Settlement Main Office

No………..19 April 1939

 

WVHA Organizational Chart (click text to enlarge)

The WVHA was organized into the following
divisions and offices:

Division A Chief: SS Brigadefuehrer and
Brigadier General of the Waffen SS Frank with
offices:

A I Budget office, Budget of the Waffen SS and
of the General SS (Reich cashier of the SS).

A II Cash and salary matters.

A III Legal office.

A IV Auditors’ office.

A V Personnel office.

Georg Loerner

Division B Chief: SS Brigadefuehrer and
Brigadier General of the Waffen SS Loerner with
offices:

 

B I Food.

B II Clothing.

B III Housing.

B IV Raw materials, price control, foreign
currencies, and purchases.

 

Hans Kammler

Division C Chief: SS Oberfuehrer Dr. Ing.
Kammler with offices:

C I General construction tasks.

C II Special construction tasks.

C III Special technical spheres.

C IV Special artistic spheres.

C V Central inspectorate for constructions.

C VI Maintenance of building and business
economy.

Division W Chief: SS Gruppenfuehrer Pohl

 

 

Read more
here:

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/WVHA.html

The
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

 

Copyright

Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010