This is the next one already modern I brought the Jewish chutzpah for the new generation of Poles from a Polish site.
Previously, there were also many fountains of Jewish lies about these events in Warsaw, which took place from April 19 to May 16, 1943.
For example, that it was the brutal suppression by the Germans of the uprising of the anti-fascist underground and resistance in
Jewish ghetto, where the Nazis rounded up Jews and abused them.
The faces of the “tortured” Jews immediately appear before your eyes.
Jewish armed resistance was an attempt by Nazi Germany to liquidate the Jewish ghetto. ----Wikipedia))))
They even made a video about how
On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising broke out. was hard to suppress by the Nazis only in early May. In 1940, at the time of the creation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, the ghetto had concluded over 440 thousand Jews, families mixed marriages... By the time of the uprising, a little more than 37 thousand people remained alive from the population of this ghetto.
Jewish video
Hirsch Glick
ANTHEM OF THE JEWISH COMBAT ORGANIZATION
Never consider your path to be your last,
The victorious star will flash in the sky,
From southern countries and countries near the northern seas
We are here together, surrounded by animals.
Where the enemy will shed even a drop of our blood,
Our courage will increase a hundredfold.
A ray of sunshine will brighten today's day,
We will destroy the enemy and the enemy's shadow,
If we don't avenge our pain,
The song will fly to descendants like a password.
The song was written by their people in blood,
A free bird does not sing like that in the sky.
With a bleeding song on my lips
We move forward with revolvers in our hands.
So never consider your path to be your last,
The victorious star will also flash in the sky.
The long-awaited hour will strike and the enemy will tremble,
We will come here, striking a firm step.
Translation from Yiddish
A. BARTGALE
High style!
:)
Cute. Yes? Downright heroic?
But what really happened?
So. We read:
Ghettos are residential zones that existed on the principles of Jewish self-government in territories controlled by the Germans, where some Jews were forcibly or voluntarily moved in order to isolate them from the non-Jewish population. The body of self-government of the ghetto was the Judenrat (Jewish council), which included the most authoritative people in the city or town. For example, in Zlochev (Lviv region), 12 people with a doctorate degree became members of the Judenrat. The Judenrat provided economic life in the ghetto, and the Jewish police kept order there.
Warsaw
In total, about 1,000 ghettos were created in Europe, in which at least a million Jews lived. In the “Handbook of camps, prisons and ghettos in the occupied territory of Ukraine (1941-1944)”, prepared by State Committee archives of Ukraine in 2000, over 300 ghettos are mentioned - this means that in Ukraine there were 300 Judenrat, each of which included 10-15 influential Jews and rabbis, and dozens, or even hundreds of Jewish policemen (in the Lvov ghetto there were 750 Jewish police officers). Why don’t Jews explore life in the ghettos of Chernivtsi, Proskurov, Kremenchug, Vinnitsa, Zhmerinka, Kamenets-Podolsky, Minsk and dozens of other cities? Is it because the myth of the “Holocaust” was born in the fevered brain of the Zionists, and it was not the Germans who terrorized ordinary Jews?
The Warsaw Ghetto, formed in 1940, is most often mentioned in the context of the “Holocaust.”
The maximum population of the ghetto reached about 0.5 million people. Jews worked under German orders both inside and outside the ghetto.
The upper layer in the ghetto consisted of successful businessmen, smugglers, owners and co-owners of enterprises, senior officials of the Judenrat, and Gestapo agents. They held lavish weddings, dressed their women in furs and gave them diamonds, restaurants and nightclubs with exquisite food and music operated for them, and thousands of liters of vodka were imported for them.
“The rich came, hung with gold and diamonds; there, at tables laden with food, “ladies” with brightly painted lips offered their services to war profiteers to the popping of champagne corks.”
This is how Vladislav Shpilman, whose book “The Pianist” formed the basis for Roman Polanski’s film of the same name, describes a cafe in the center of the ghetto.
“Graceful gentlemen and ladies sat reclining in rickshaw carriages, in expensive woolen suits in winter, in French silks and expensive hats in summer.”
There were 6 theaters, restaurants, cafes in the ghetto, but Jews had fun not only in public institutions, but also in private brothels and card clubs that appeared in almost every home...
"Group portrait of six young Jewish women sunbathing in the Warsaw Ghetto on the day they took their university entrance exams. Monday, July 6, 1942."
They eat well.
Fresh food at the market.
Transport. Rickshaw, I wonder who?
The Germans are protecting. Well-dressed and prosperous Jews are accompanied by German guards
Bribery and extortion in the Warsaw ghetto reached astronomical proportions. Members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police made fabulous profits from this. For example, in the ghetto the Germans were allowed to have only 70 bakeries, while at the same time there were another 800 underground bakeries. They used raw materials smuggled into the ghetto. The owners of such underground bakeries were subject to large bribes from their own police, Judenrat and gangsters.
Many smugglers who came across became Gestapo agents - they reported hidden gold and the activities of gangs. These were the smugglers Cohn and Geller , who took over the entire transport business inside the ghetto and, in addition, traded in smuggling on a large scale. In the summer of 1942, they were both killed by competitors. The Warsaw ghetto was a nationwide center for illegal currency transactions - the black ghetto exchange determined the dollar rate throughout the country.
Few people know about the existence of the so-called "Group 13" which included Cohn and Geller.Group 13(Polish) Grupa 13, Trzynastka, Urząd do Walki ze Spekulacją, German Groupe Treize) is the unofficial name of an organization of Jewish collaborators that operated in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II until July 1941. The organization took its name from its headquarters, which was located at 13 Leszno Street.
The group was founded in December 1940 by Gestapo agent Abram Ganzweich, a former Hashomer Hatzair member. The creation of the organization was sanctioned by the German Security Service (SD) and was directly subordinate to the Gestapo. The main stated purpose of the creation of Group 13 was to combat usury and profiteering in the Warsaw Ghetto. In fact, using their power, members of Group 13 engaged in extortion, blackmail, influenced the actions of the Judenrat and sought to penetrate the underground organizations that existed in the Warsaw Ghetto. The organization had approximately 300-400 members. Group 13 also had its own prison.
In July 1941, Group 13 was disbanded and its headquarters were absorbed into the Jewish Police. Before the organization was disbanded in the spring of 1941, Group 13 experienced a split in leadership between Abram Ganzweich on one side and Morris Cohn and Zelig Heller on the other. This split occurred as a result of the struggle for sphere of influence in the Warsaw Ghetto. After the dissolution of the organization, which occurred due to the denunciation of Morris Cohn and Zelig Heller, the majority of members former organization The Emergency Service and Ambulance Service began to operate. These organizations were created in May 1941 and soon became unofficially used for further smuggling. The horse-drawn carriage of the Warsaw Ghetto was also concentrated in the hands of former members of the organization.
In April 1942, most of the former members of Group 13 were shot by the Germans. Abram Ganzweikh and some other members of the organization were used by the Security Service to infiltrate the Jewish underground. After the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Abram Ganzweich continued to serve the Germans.
Personally, I was most struck by another fact from the life of the ghetto black exchange: one miraculously surviving Jew recalled that they traded there land plots in Palestine!
It is extremely interesting why the Jews call the cleansing of the Warsaw ghetto, which was drowning in unsanitary conditions, banditry, debauchery and corruption, an “uprising” by the Germans in April 1943?
Why are they afraid to tell the truth about who “revolted” and against whom?
After all, the German raid was provoked by heavily armed Jewish thieves, racketeers and smugglers.
Jewish militants
Jewish militants “revolted” not against the Germans at all, as the legend says, but killed their Jewish police and almost the entire Judenrat inside the ghetto, they killed theater artists, journalists - 59 out of 60 employees of the newspaper “Zhagev” (“Torch”) died at the hands of Jewish mafiosi ). They brutally took the life of one of the leaders of the ghetto, sculptor and prominent Zionist, 80-year-old Alfred Nossig. The bandits terrorized the population of the Warsaw ghetto, imposing a racketeer tax on almost everyone. Those who refused to pay, they kidnapped children or took them to their underground prisons on the street. Mila, 2 and on the territory of the Tebens enterprise - and they were brutally tortured there. Gangs of robbers took everything indiscriminately from both the poor and the rich: they took watches, jewelry from their hands, took away money, not yet worn-out clothes, and even food hidden for a rainy day. These Jewish gangs brought terror to the ghetto. Often in the silence of the night a shootout began between the gangs themselves - The Warsaw ghetto turned into a jungle: one attacked the other, at night the screams of Jews who were attacked by robbers were heard.
The bandits robbed the Judenrat treasury three times in broad daylight, taking money that was used to feed homeless children, treat typhoid patients and other social needs. They imposed an indemnity of a quarter of a million zlotys on the Judenrat, and an indemnity on the Judenrat supply department of 700 thousand zlotys. The Judenrat paid the indemnity on time, but the supply department refused. Then the Jewish gangsters kidnapped the son of the department cashier and kept him for several days, after which they received the required amount. But only after the bandits began to attack German patrols, the Germans, who had endured all these outrages for a long time, intervened and began, in their words, “a raid against thieves and bootleggers.”. Jewish police took an active part in the action - they, as people who knew the area well, greatly helped the German assault groups when combing the neighborhoods.
Not the Germans, but Jewish gangsters destroyed the ghetto, blowing up houses and setting them on fire with Molotov cocktails. Hundreds of innocent Jews died in the fire of a huge fire. The Germans tried to put out the fire, but to no avail - the bandits set fire to new buildings. That's how about unsuccessful attempt One of the militants, Aaron Carmi, tells how to mine the building: “And they never laid mines there... Three of our guys went down to the basement to blow it up. And what? They stick out there with their tongue stuck to their ass. And I’m spinning here... and it was a tragedy!”
Another militant, Kazik Ratizer, admitted many years later:
“What right did we, a small group of youth from ZOB [one of the gangs], have to decide the fate of many people? What right did we have to start a riot? This decision led to the destruction of the ghetto and the death of many people who otherwise might have remained alive...”
Alexey Tokar
(article and photo judastruth )
The Warsaw Ghetto is a residential area created by the Nazis during the occupation of Poland, where Jews were forcibly moved in order to isolate them from the non-Jewish population. During the existence of the ghetto, its population decreased from 450 thousand to 37 thousand people. The German soldier-radio operator and part-time photographer Willy Georg, while in Warsaw in 1941, managed to illegally sneak into the ghetto and shoot four films of the horror taking place, after which, upon arrest, his camera was confiscated, but the films survived until our days.
Newspaper vendor at work
After the entry of the Third Reich troops into Poland in October 1939, the occupation authorities issued an order according to which Jews were ordered to hand over cash to financial institutions. It was allowed to leave no more than 2000 zlotys per person.
Young Jewish woman in the crowd
IN public transport The Nazis put up offensive posters to incite ethnic hatred.
Street second-hand book dealers
Speaking about the reasons for the creation of the ghetto in populated areas Poland, the Nazis claimed that Jews were carriers infectious diseases, and their isolation will help protect the non-Jewish population from epidemics.
Passerby
In March 1940, a number of urban areas with a high concentration of Jewish populations were declared quarantine zones. About 113 thousand Poles were evicted from these areas and 138 thousand Jews from other places were settled in their place.
Pitchman
The decision to organize a ghetto was made on October 16, 1940 by Governor General Hans Frank. By this time, there were about 440 thousand people in the ghetto (37% of the city’s population), while the area of the ghetto was 4.5% of the area of Warsaw.
Unconscious man at a shop window
Initially, leaving the ghetto without permission was punishable by 9 months in prison. Since November 1941 it began to be used the death penalty. On November 16, the ghetto was surrounded by a wall.
Street beggar
The officially established food standards for the ghetto were designed to allow the inhabitants to die from starvation. In the second half of 1941, the food standard for Jews was 184 kilocalories.
Trade of firewood by weight
However, thanks to food products illegally supplied to the ghetto, actual consumption averaged 1,125 kilocalories per day.
Old men begging on the street
Some of the residents were employed in German production. Thus, 18 thousand Jews worked in sewing factories. The working day lasted 12 hours without weekends and holidays. Of the 110 thousand workers in the ghetto, only 27 thousand had permanent jobs.
Group of women with baskets on the street of the Warsaw ghetto
Illegal production of various goods was organized on the territory of the ghetto, the raw materials for which were supplied secretly. Products were also secretly exported for sale and exchange for food outside the ghetto. In addition to 70 legal bakeries, 800 illegal ones operated in the ghetto. The cost of illegal exports from the ghetto was estimated at 10 million zlotys per month.
An elderly Jew on the street of the Warsaw Ghetto
The corpse of a Warsaw ghetto resident lying on the sidewalk
In the ghetto there was a stratum of residents whose activities and position provided them with a relatively prosperous life (merchants, smugglers, members of the Judenrat, Gestapo agents). Most of the residents suffered from malnutrition. The situation was worse for Jews resettled from other areas of Poland. Having no connections and acquaintances, they experienced difficulties in finding income and providing for their families.
Two women selling goods on the street of the Warsaw ghetto
In the ghetto, youth was demoralized, youth gangs formed, and street children appeared.
Old man begging
Rumors circulated in the ghetto about the mass extermination of Jews in the provinces of Poland. To misinform and reassure the ghetto residents, the German newspaper Warschauer Zeitung reported that tens of thousands of Jews were building an industrial complex. In addition, new schools and shelters were allowed to open in the ghetto.
Tea party on the street
On July 22, 1942, the Judenrat was informed that all Jews, with the exception of those working in German factories, hospital workers, members of the Judenrat and their families, members of the Jewish police in the ghetto and their families, would be deported to the east. The Jewish police were ordered to ensure that 6,000 people were sent to the railway station every day. If the order was not followed, the Nazis threatened to shoot the hostages.
Shoe traders
On the same day, a meeting of participants in the underground Jewish network was held, at which those gathered decided that the residents would be sent for the purpose of resettlement in labor camps. It was decided not to resist.
Vegetable stall in the Warsaw ghetto
Every day, people were driven from the hospital building designated as the collection point to the loading dock. Physically strong men were separated and sent to labor camps. In addition, those employed at German enterprises were exempted. The rest (at least 90%) were herded 100 people into cattle cars. The Judenrat made statements denying rumors that the carriages were heading to extermination camps. The Gestapo distributed letters in which, on behalf of the residents who had left, they talked about employment in new places.
Exhausted man sitting on the sidewalk
In the early days, the police captured beggars, disabled people, and orphans. In addition, it was announced that those who voluntarily came to the collection points would be given three kilograms of bread and a kilogram of marmalade. On July 29, houses were surrounded and documents were checked; those who did not have certificates of work at German enterprises were sent to the loading dock. Those who tried to escape were shot. Lithuanian and Ukrainian collaborators also took part in these checks. By July 30, 60,000 people had been removed.
Exhausted child
Two children begging on the sidewalk in the Warsaw ghetto
On September 21, the houses of the Jewish police were surrounded, most of the police, along with their wives and children, were sent to extermination camps.
Tea party on the street of the Warsaw ghetto
Within 52 days (until September 21, 1942), about 300 thousand people were taken to Treblinka. During July, the Jewish police ensured the dispatch of 64,606 people. In August, 135 thousand people were deported, and from September 2-11 - 35,886 people. After this, between 55 and 60 thousand people remained in the ghetto.
Street sellers of wood and coal in the Warsaw ghetto
In the following months, the Jewish Combat Organization, numbering about 220-500 people, and the Jewish Fighting Union, numbering 250-450 people, took shape. The Jewish fighting organization proposed to remain in the ghetto and resist, while the Jewish Fighting Union planned to leave the ghetto and continue operations in the forests. Members of the organizations were armed primarily with pistols, homemade explosive devices and bottles with a flammable mixture.
Elderly Jews
From April 19 to May 16, 1943, an armed uprising took place in the Warsaw ghetto. The uprising was suppressed by SS troops. During the uprising, about 7,000 ghetto defenders were killed and about 6,000 were burned alive as a result of massive burning of buildings by German troops. The surviving inhabitants of the ghetto, numbering about 15,000 people, were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Group portrait of residents of the Warsaw ghetto
A passerby serves children on the street in the Warsaw ghetto
Street traffic in the Warsaw ghetto. In the foreground there is a horse-drawn hearse and a cyclist.
On October 21, 1943, the Minsk ghetto was liquidated, in which (from the beginning of the occupation of Belarus by the Nazis) almost 100 thousand Jews from Belarus and from all over Europe were killed...
For exactly three years Minsk was under occupation by Wehrmacht troops.
In the very first days, the new government imposed an “indemnity” on the Minsk Jews, taking away their jewelry and currency.
A Jewish committee ("Judenrat", as in other occupied European cities) was created, whose chairman, thanks to his knowledge German language, became Ilya Mushkin (who worked before the war as the head of one of the trusts).
In July 1941, in compliance with Hitler's "Endlösung der Judenfrage" (Jewish extermination program), the Germans began creating ghettos. The head of the SS and police of the Belorussiya district, Zenner, together with General Schenkendorf (commander of the Center) held a meeting at which they discussed the plan for the extermination of the Jews of the capital of the Byelorussian SSR, as well as Jews brought from Minsk from all over Europe.
From now on, the representative of the German command, Gorodetsky, a pathological sadist, half-German, who had previously lived in Leningrad, had unlimited rights in this area of the city.
Judenrad had no rights. He was only charged with collecting money from Jews, as well as carrying out sanitary measures (the Germans feared the outbreak of possible epidemics).
By August 1, 1941, the resettlement of all Jews into the ghetto - 80 thousand people - was completely completed. By October of the same year, their number had already exceeded 100 thousand.
In total, there were three different sections: the “Big” ghetto, the “Small” ghetto (in the area of the Molotov radio plant) and the “Sonderghetto” (just for two dozen Jews deported from the countries of Eastern, Central and Western Europe).
The perimeter of the ghetto was fenced with barbed wire and high fence. The security consisted of SS soldiers, as well as Lithuanian and Belarusian policemen.
On pain of death, all prisoners were required to wear special insignia - yellow fabric “armor” and stripes white with house numbers (on the back and chest).
Photo from Mogilev, summer 1941 -
Policemen and Germans raped girls with complete impunity, killed and robbed the inhabitants of the ghetto...
The life of the prisoners was burned by all sorts of prohibitions, violation of which was unconditionally followed by execution. The territory of the ghetto, as already mentioned, was not allowed to leave; it was forbidden to exchange food with non-Jews, wear fur, or remove identification marks, walk along sidewalks and central streets (only on pavement), enter public places, gardens... 15 meters before meeting a German, a Jew had to take off his headdress.
Several times Gorodetsky collected the so-called from the ghetto. “indemnities”: the first time 10 kilograms of gold, 2 centners of silver and 2 million rubles, the second time 50 kg of silver and gold... Representatives of the Jewish Committee also took part in this robbery under pain of death.
The usual food in the ghetto was pancakes made from potato skins, as well as lard that could be scraped off from pig skins found in the old leather factory. Those Jews who were recruited for work were given a bowl of gruel once a day.
In the photo - a column of prisoners, 1941 -
In the photo - railway forced labor, Minsk, winter 1942 -
Also - forced labor of Minsk Jews -
There was also an illegal market for the exchange of material assets through barbed wire and work columns (German officers also took part in such exchanges). The rate of this market is curious: for example, for a gold watch they gave 3 onions and one loaf of bread.
The population density was monstrous - sometimes up to a hundred people lived in two apartments! Without taking into account children, it was allocated from 1.2 to one and a half square meters per person.
Of course, unsanitary conditions, hunger and overcrowding were the causes of constant epidemics and endemic diseases.
In the photo - typical ghetto buildings -
Mass killings of prisoners (which the Germans called "actions") took place in November 1941 (more than 30 thousand people were killed), in March 1942 (up to 10 thousand Jews), in July 1942 (25 thousand) and October 1943 (when three days before the liberation of the ghetto prisoners, 22 thousand Jews brought from European countries were hastily exterminated).
Since the spring of 1942, Jewish children were killed in gas vans - gas chambers, grabbed right on the streets and stuffed into cars like this -
Numerous pogroms also took place (the most famous and bloody: in August, November 1941, January, July and December 1942) - both night and day. Popular option there were massacres during the day, when all able-bodied Jews went to forced labor...
IN historical literature there is the concept of “March 2 massacre” denoting the pogrom of March 2-3, 1942, when it was sent towards Dzerzhinsk large group prisoners. Those who did not freeze to death on the way were shot in the Putchinsky village council. On the same day, another 3.5 thousand Jews were shot west of Minsk.
Meanwhile, trucks filled with police and Germans drove into the ghetto itself, killing more than 5 thousand people, whose corpses were dumped in a quarry, on the site of which (Minsk Melnikaite Street) the memorial complex “Yama” was created in 2000 -
But the bloody events of the “March 2 Massacre” did not end there. By 10 o'clock in the morning, due to the fact that required quantity no people were found to be shot, the Germans broke into the territory orphanage, lined up all the children (from 200 to 300 along with teachers and medical staff) in a column, took them aside along Ratomsky Street and threw them into a pit...
Commissar Wilhelm Kube approached this pit -
He ordered sweets to be served to him and began to throw them into the pit for the children, who were covered alive with earth...
Gauleiter lived for more than a year until he was blown up by a time bomb. In general, this scoundrel received the nickname “lucky”, since every time he managed to elude numerous assassination attempts organized by Soviet partisans...
Photo of Cuba in Minsk, May 1943 -
At the end of the “March 2 Massacre,” the Germans also shot people returning from work in the evening...
In general, some stories from the Minsk ghetto simply make your blood run cold. For example, on December 29, 1942, Chief of Police Ribe entered the children's ward of the hospital and personally stabbed seven sick children with a knife. After which, he left the building, took off his white gloves, ate a chocolate bar and lit a cigarette...
The difference is striking with armchair worms like the ideologist of the “final solution” Himmler, who during a visit to Minsk (pictured below) began to vomit and eventually fainted when ONE Minsk Jew was shot in his presence.
In total, out of the original one hundred thousand people, by the beginning of 1943, only 6 thousand people remained alive, that is, more than 90 thousand Jews were killed!
By October 21, 1943, ALL residents of the Minsk ghetto were killed. Only 13 people survived, hiding for several months in the basement of a house on the street. Dry and released only in July 1944 (on the day of the liberation of Minsk), as well as qualified craftsmen taken by the occupiers to Germany.
Already from the first months of the ghetto’s existence, underground resistance was organized, consisting of 22 groups, uniting several hundred people and coordinated by Mikhail Gebelev
GRODNO, March 23 – Sputnik, Inna Grishuk. Every year in mid-March, Grodno remembers a black date in the history of the city. 75 years ago, in German-occupied Grodno, half of the inhabitants—the entire Jewish population—were killed and sent to death camps.
Those years were remembered for brutal murders, bloody massacres and two ghettos in the very heart of Grodno, where Grodno Jews awaited departure to death camps and crematoriums in inhumane conditions.
Half of the inhabitants were Jews
At the time the Germans arrived in Grodno, about 30 thousand Jews lived - half of the total population. Many have heard a lot about German ideology.
“Jews who escaped from occupied Poland in 1939 said that the Germans were creating ghettos to exterminate Jews. They passed through Grodno in large groups and moved east,” says historian Boris Kvyatkovsky, whose father visited the Grodno ghetto, then Auschwitz, and miraculously survived , but lost his first family.
Poorly educated people did not take all this seriously. By the beginning of the war, the Jewish population consisted of women, children, old people and men of non-conscription age who knew little about politics and refused to believe in monstrous things.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
“There was no one to explain to people what awaited them with the arrival of the Germans,” says Kwiatkowski.
The youth were taken to Polish or Soviet army, and the most active people who are members of political parties, were destroyed or sent to prison.
According to him, the majority believed that the Germans were not fighting civilians. This stereotype has remained since the First World War. This belief was also reinforced by rumors launched by the Germans at first: perhaps Jews would be sent to work.
Two ghettos
Already in the fall of 1941, two ghettos were created in Grodno, into which all Jews from Grodno and surrounding villages were resettled. Ghetto No. 1 was set up around the synagogue and in the area of modern Bolshaya Troitskaya Street, evicting local Poles and Belarusians from their homes.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
Ghetto No. 2 was located in the area of modern Antonova Street near the bus station. Approximately 10 thousand Jews were resettled here, mostly women, children, and all those disabled. They occupied all the basements, shacks, and attics.
“It was a densely populated area. The Germans created such crowded conditions. People lay on the floor, often sat shoulder to shoulder, afraid to turn around so as not to disturb their neighbor’s sleep,” the interlocutor quotes the recollections of eyewitnesses.
They said that the disease never broke out. Local doctors did everything possible to provide health education and help those who were sick.
"I couldn't admit that I was a brother"
A number of people recalled that schools were open and there was a library. A number of enterprises producing soap, starch, and syrup arose. There were sewing and shoe workshops, in which, by order of the Germans, clothes and shoes were repaired for the needs of the Wehrmacht.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
The Jews soon surrounded both ghettos with a two-meter fence and barbed wire.
Boris Maksovich recalls that during the construction of such a fence, the Germans shot his uncle without trial in front of his father.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
My father and uncle were digging holes to install fence posts. The guard constantly bullied my uncle, called him names, and covered the hard-dug soil with his boot. The uncle could not stand it and crushed the German’s skull with a shovel. He was shot on the spot.
“My father couldn’t do anything. Moreover, to admit that it was his brother - they could have been shot for that too. With great difficulty, he only asked for permission to bury the body,” says Kvyatkovsky.
The interlocutor recalls that his father was in one of the last trains was sent to Auschwitz and miraculously survived, ending up in a hospital. In peacetime, the man spoke little about that period. Boris Maksovich himself still has not decided to go to Auschwitz - it is too difficult emotionally.
Death for the Bukhara carpet
In those days, killing Jews was considered something commonplace. Actions of intimidation were constantly taking place so that people would not even have the thought of resistance. A Jew could be shot right on the street just because he looked at a German soldier or officer the wrong way.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
“Many were so shocked that someone was beaten half to death or killed that they simply lost their will, even strong men", says Kwiatkowski.
For example, during the operation of the ghetto, the ghetto commandant Wiese demanded that the Jews give him a Bukharian carpet, which they allegedly had.
A rabbi, teachers, doctors and other authoritative people were taken hostage. They threatened to shoot them. The Jews did not find the carpet; someone said that the Catholic ministers in the city had such a carpet.
“It was possible to go beyond the barbed wire that surrounded the ghetto. The question is where? The occupiers hung notices on all the posts with the text of the decree, according to which it was forbidden to help Jews - clothing, food and other support. The only punishment was death,” - says Kwiatkowski.
But life forced people to go beyond the wire - in search of food, medicine, which was smuggled into the ghetto. If the Germans discovered it, then death awaited the offender.
"Raspberries" and death trains
At the end of 1942, an operation to liquidate both ghettos began. Kvyatkovsky clarifies that there were no major actions to exterminate Jews in Grodno.
“Because they didn’t want to spoil these lands - they had to become part of East Prussia,” the interlocutor explains.
Several thousand prisoners were herded into freight cars and sent to camps. They were on the road for about three days, no one gave them food or water.
The Grodno Synagogue, which now houses the Museum of the History of the Grodno Ghetto, was a gathering point for Jews. From here they were led in large columns to the “death trains” that took them to Auschwitz and Treblinka. Usually people did not return from there.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
Many prisoners, realizing this, hid from the Germans and built hiding places - the so-called “raspberries”. But most of them were found or caught in the city. The fugitives were shot on the spot; explosive bullets were often used, which mutilated the bodies beyond recognition. Usually, after such massacres, dozens of bodies of ghetto prisoners lay for days on the streets of Grodno in snow red with blood.
Ice suit
Few managed to escape; none of them have survived to this day. People managed to escape or jump out of a moving train, and then avoid running into the Germans or the local population. There were cases when simple people Jews were handed over to the Nazis in exchange for sugar or other products.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
Grodno resident Grigory Khosid jumped out of the carriage that was traveling to Treblinka. A 17-year-old boy made his way through snow-covered fields and forests for a long time to reach the Belsky partisan detachment in the Novogrudok region.
Once he almost died: Polish youth saw Hoshida and pushed him into a covered in ice river They wanted to finish him off, but decided that he would die on his own. An hour later, the clothes turned into an ice suit, but the guy forced himself to run for a long time so as not to freeze. Good physical training and the habit of hardening and swimming in cold water, which he had been vaccinated since childhood.
500 days in the basement
The most famous in Grodno is the story of the rescue of 15-year-old Felix Zandman, who later became a world-famous scientist and engineer.
“The boy dreamed of getting rid of what was happening. But he could not find help in his father, who was broken by the horrors of the ghetto. His maternal uncle turned out to be such a support,” explains Kwiatkowski.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
When the column of Jews was being led to board the carriages, Felix and his uncle managed to escape. They reached a house in the village of Lososno. There lived the Puchalski family, which, having five children, was already hiding three Jews in the basement.
The owner said: “God himself sent you to us. We know how hard it is in the ghetto.”
Over the course of a few nights, the family expanded and deepened the basement. Only one person could lie there. The rest were squatting. They couldn't wash themselves for several months. Only on the darkest nights did they go out to get some fresh air.
The hardest thing was to feed them. Pukhalskaya explained to her neighbors that she was bargaining, which is why she bought so many products from them.
© Sputnik / Inna Grishuk
At the March of Remembrance, they remembered the “Righteous Among the Nations” - people, such as the Puchalski family, who, under threat of death, helped Jews fleeing the ghetto and hid them.
There was a case when the fugitives almost died. The Germans went around all the houses with a dog, checking whether there were hidden people - in the underground, behind a double wall. The girl took the tobacco cut up and drying on the newspaper and, as if by accident, tripped and spilled it onto the rug lying on the basement hatch. The dog lost its sense of smell and did not bark.
Now in Grodno every year there is a “March of Remembrance”, during which all victims of the Holocaust, as well as the dead inhabitants of the Grodno ghetto, are remembered. On Zamkova Street, at the entrance to ghetto No. 1, a memorial plaque was erected in memory of the 29 thousand Jews who died in the ghetto.
When my good friend, and part-time investigator in Moscow, walking through the park, showed me where, who and how the maniac Pichuzhkin (Bitsevsky maniac) killed, I felt quite uncomfortable. But I’m interested, especially since the evil is ultimately punished. However, what I experienced while walking around the Polish city of Lodz can only be described as brutal. Imagine a whole army of Bitsa maniacs that entered your city with one goal - to kill. You will all be slaughtered like sheep, rivers of blood will flow through these streets. You have no one to rely on, no one will save you, and the living will envy the dead. All these houses have seen suffering and death, and they have stood for more than 70 years in the same form in which their inhabitants left them. There are many versions of why a large part of the third largest city in Poland looks so terrible to this day. Many locals say that these apartments have a bad aura; no one wants to live here. The fact remains that in this city in 1939-1944 there was a natural hell that could only be dreamed of in the worst nightmare.
Before the war, Lodz was the most developed and wealthy city in Poland; it was one of the largest industrial centers in the country, as well as the third most important (after Warsaw and Krakow) as a cultural and political center. All this came to an end in an instant, on September 1, 1939, when the German army attacked Poland and a few days later Wehrmacht soldiers marched into Lodz. It was bad for everyone, but especially for local Jews, of whom there were about 250 thousand people in Lodz, or approximately 30% of the city’s population. Already on September 18, the Germans took away all businesses owned by Jews, including a considerable part of the city's factories, shops, hotels, and apartment buildings. From that same day, Jews were prohibited from withdrawing their funds from bank accounts. Actually, from that moment it became clear that an unenviable fate awaited the Jews and some of them left the German-occupied part of Poland and fled; who is in that part of Poland that chopped off Soviet Union(as we remember, the bilateral occupation of Poland was the result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), who went to the then still free Czechoslovakia.
Those who did not manage to escape during the first month after the Germans arrived signed their own death warrant, since on October 28, 1939, Jews were forbidden to appear in the city center and a curfew was introduced. Anyone caught on the street after seven in the evening was shot on the spot. Then things progressed: in February 1940, the forced eviction of Jews from their apartments and relocation to the northern part of the city began, where a new area was actively fenced off with stone walls, where all Jews were resettled. Needless to say about hellish conditions life in the ghetto: no heating, no water, nothing. Everything was turned off. Complete unsanitary conditions and hunger. Actually, this is why the ghetto was created, so that people would not survive the winter. However, the ghetto existed for four years before the Germans decided to completely liquidate it and send the surviving Jews to concentration camps. By this time, about a third of the 230 thousand people who lived there had died from hunger and disease. But this was in the ghetto, behind high walls.
But in other parts of Lodz, among the Poles, life still somehow glimmered. People went to work, bought food in the store (although by 1943, famine had begun among the Poles), gave birth to children, and could even leave the city. Actually, the city has changed little since then -
But behind the wall everything was completely different. Today in Lodz there is not even a hint of a ghetto wall. Only these things are in the ground, indicating where the wall went. You and I are going to a place where some 70 years ago there was only one way to get out - in the form of a corpse.
It is noteworthy that this church in the photo was inside the ghetto. Why? In many ways, this shows the attitude of the Germans towards religion in general. Even before the creation of the ghetto, the Germans turned the existing church into a police station. The Gestapo met here. But soon they transferred the Gestapo to another place (I will show it to you a little further), and here they stationed the Jewish police. Yes, yes, the Germans created a Jewish police force in the ghetto, the so-called “Judenrat,” which was responsible for maintaining order in the ghetto. The Germans preferred not to enter the perimeter unless necessary. The Jews themselves kept order, preventing any attempts to raise an uprising, or even simply express dissatisfaction. This is a separate and very sad page of Jewish history and you can read about it on the Internet, enter “Judenrat” into the search.
This big house on the right was empty for some time and it was strange, considering the terrible cramped conditions in which people lived in the ghetto. Just imagine: 230 thousand people in an area measuring 3 by 2 kilometers. So, as a result, several thousand (!) Jews brought here from Czechoslovakia were settled in this and a couple of neighboring buildings. People huddled 7-10 people in each room -
For some reason I wanted to buy some water. I went into this supermarket of the Tesco chain and only then read that in this white building, where there was a cinema before the war, the Germans settled imported Jews from Hamburg. How many people can you estimate live in this building? You will be surprised, but a lot -
All these miserable houses were packed with people, people slept everywhere, even in the toilet and in the attic. In winter it was a matter of survival; at sub-zero temperatures, only staying in a closed room close to each other could save you from frostbite. All these trees were planted after the war. In the cold winters, dying people cut down absolutely all the trees in order to somehow warm up by heating the stoves -
Pay attention to this house and street -
Now look at the photograph from 1940. Since a tram line passed through the ghetto, and Jews were not supposed to use trams, the street was closed to Jews, connecting the two parts of the ghetto with several bridges. One of them was located right next to this building -
And here is the building that caused horror among the ghetto prisoners. It was called "Red House", or "Kripo". The latter stands for criminal police, in fact Gestapo. All those who were caught trying to escape, illegal trade (an attempt to exchange watches for a loaf of bread with the Poles led to execution), or any form of disobedience ended up here. I would like to emphasize that the bulk of the Jews killed here got into this building through the Jewish police, the Judenrat, who performed a considerable part of the menial work for the Germans in controlling the ghetto -
Another building with a dark history. Until 1941 it was a market, but then the Germans closed it and turned it into a place for mass executions -
Oh, and any employee of the Russian Federal Migration Service will envy the work in this building! This is the passport and statistical office of the Lodz ghetto. Here they kept records of those who lived, died, were born, arrived, and left. In the latter case, as you understand, it was possible to leave only for Auschwitz. Imagine how the aunties from the passport offices would like to send you and me to the gas chambers so that they would not fool them with our foreign passports. And then it was easy to work: a baby was born, they didn’t inform (hoping that the child would survive and if they didn’t find out about him) - execution! It’s a passport maker’s dream, she would appropriate your property too. What a shame, damn it, these are not the right times, officials think. People in these offices don't change, I'm sure of that -
The Main Directorate of the Jewish Police and the chief commissioner, Leon Rosenblat, also sat here. He was a worthy man, honest, correct. He sent thousands of people to be slaughtered in concentration camps, hoping that he could appropriate the property taken from them for himself. It didn't work out. He was sent in 1944 after other Jews -
Here he is, the main Jewish policeman of the ghetto, on the right -
However, Rosenblatt was far from the main executioner own people. The ghetto was led by another person, Chaim Rumkowski, who initially commanded the Judenrat and only later became the de facto “mayor” of the ghetto. Like all leaders of the Judenrat, Rumkowski maneuvered between attempts to preserve the Jewish population of the ghetto and carrying out orders from the Nazis. Of course, he did not forget about his beloved self. In Israel, Rumkowski’s personality is extremely controversial, since he actively collaborated with the Nazis and handed over many Jewish underground fighters to them, and in addition, he essentially took away their housing and property from the ghetto residents and appropriated them for himself.
Rumkowski believed that the diligent work of Jews in favor of the occupation authorities would avoid the destruction of the ghetto and in every possible way attracted people to hard labor in exchange for food. In fact, Jews worked in enterprises that supplied the German army with clothing, shoes, spare parts for tanks, and so on.
In September 1942, when the Nazis ordered the handing over of Jewish children to be sent to a death camp (children and the elderly were killed first, because they could not work), Rumkowski gave a propaganda speech to the residents of the ghetto with a refrain demanding that the children be handed over in an amicable manner, threatening Otherwise, involve the Gestapo. He is trying to convince people that at the cost of the lives of children, the lives of many other ghetto prisoners can be saved. It is noteworthy that Rumkowski was eventually sent to Auschwitz along with other prisoners.
A pleasant park called Piastovsky. Today it’s nice to take a walk here and sit on a bench. It is best to sit on those benches that are visible in the photo. Sitting on them, you could watch the executions. Right here, from where I was photographing, there were gallows and every day more unfortunate people were strung up on them. Right here, yes, where the auntie and the girl just passed -
This is a ghetto detention center, where the Jewish police kept detainees. In fact, rarely did anyone manage to leave this building alive. They write that some managed to pay off. But the majority from here went to the Germans, and then there was only one path - to a concentration camp. And the building is so good, it’s strong, look, even people live in it and they installed a satellite dish to watch a lot of foreign channels -
The ghetto consisted of several hundred similar houses -
There used to be a hospital here, but I don’t know what it is now.
Notice that the streets are paved? Ever since those times -
This building with amazing graffiti is terrible for gypsies -
The fact is that the Germans allocated this and several other ghetto buildings for gypsies. The Gypsy part of the ghetto was separated from the Jewish part stone wall. About 5,000 gypsies lived here and they were all sent to a concentration camp, where they died -
When I stopped in front of this gloomy building, an elderly man suddenly approached me and asked if I was a journalist. I replied that no, but I was interested. And he told me that this place is cursed. According to him, in 1941 there was a store here. Well, you yourself understand what a store is like in a ghetto, where people were dying of hunger. Bread on cards. So, there was always a line here, day and night. And one day the Germans came here, selected 20 people from the crowd and shot them right here, in front of the entrance. This is because some Jew managed to escape from the ghetto. This is how the Germans taught people discipline and order, so that in the future they would not decide to remain silent if someone decided to flee.
Since then, according to the uncle, numerous shops and offices have opened and closed here. But the place was cursed, nothing functioned here, and in the end they decided to simply wall it up -
Friends, do you know what kind of pieces of iron are on the wall of the building? There are a lot of these on old houses -
Amazingly, the entrances have not changed at all since the war -
I'm not impressionable, but I felt uneasy. You guessed correctly, I climbed into the same damned building in which people were shot. Meanwhile, people live here. A couple of apartments are inhabited by homeless people -
And here in general there is a feeling that everything has been done to preserve the memory of the horrors down to the smallest detail. Polish children whose parents were shot for partisanship were kept in this building. The Germans sent such children here, to the ghetto, and kept the children separate from the Jews, behind a fence. But if you think that the children survived, you are mistaken. Most of them were used to pump out the blood needed by wounded Wehrmacht soldiers arriving from the eastern front.
The irony of life and fate is that now in this terrible place where the blood was pumped out of children, there is a hotel for dogs -
Most tourists... although Lodz is far from being a tourist city, and walking through the gloomy ruins in the former ghetto is of interest to absolute maniacs like me. So, most tourists are taken here, to a place called “Radegast” on the outskirts of the city. It is generally accepted that this is the most scary place in Lodz, for this is the name of the railway station, from where in last way the surviving ghetto prisoners were leaving -
The place is scary, there is no doubt about it. But life in the ghetto is no less terrible, where even before being sent to crematoriums people died of hunger, disease, executions, and torture. Many went to the concentration camp being so broken that they even felt some kind of liberation in the form of imminent death -
Last beep and off we go. On the last journey -
And this is a memorial at the station -
Next to the station there is a huge cemetery, by the way the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. It contains almost 150 thousand graves, most of which were destroyed by the Nazis, but many have survived. I’ll tell you about the cemetery in a separate article, but for now, pay attention to this mausoleum and remember the name - Poznansky. The man's name was Israel Poznansky and I will also tell you about him separately -
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