A Forgotten Voice From the Holocaust, Part 2

Regarded as traitors: Already before the war the vast majority of the Jewish population held a decidedly negative attitude towards assimilated Jews, and even more so towards converted Jews. They were regarded as traitors betraying their Jewish heritage and culture. Conversion was rarely seen as a religious statement but rather a step to advancing one's social and professional position by turning away from one's community. The privileged position of assimilated Jews in the ghetto, so prominent against the background of the predominantly very poor, traditional, Yiddish-speaking ghetto street, only intensified these negative feelings. Yet probably more painfully felt by the assimilated community was the fact that they were rejected by the Polish community, which before the war they felt themselves to be a part of. Pre-war Warsaw became the symbol of their lost pre-war life, in clear contrast to the reality of the ghetto: "an overflowing, stinking prison, where we stopped being human, where anyone can hit us and where we are nothing more than part of the despised masses." Yet Warsaw remained unobtainable. As of the assimilated teenagers from the ghetto wrote, Krakowskie Przedmieście street in the center of the capital was as far away as the Champs-Élysées or the Piazza San Marco. The only sight of Warsaw that the vast majority of ghetto inhabitants could obtain was from the top of the bridge connecting the two parts of the Warsaw Ghetto. Since people were not allowed to stop on the bridge, many crossed it numerous times in a day, just to cherish a glimpse of the other side of the wall. Even more painful was the lack of contact with Polish friends and acquaintances. Just before the ghetto was sealed off, many noted a wave of visits by their Polish friends, who "brought food parcels and what we needed even more: expressions of sympathy." After the ghetto was hermetically sealed, such visits, requiring the bribing of German, Jewish and Polish guards, became very difficult and increasingly dangerous. With no physical contact possible, the main source of information about the other side were tales and rumors, and these were mainly concerned with the spread of szmalcownictwo - a popular term for the robbery and blackmail of Jews outside the ghetto. Additionally, the comparatively good living situation of the ghetto assimilated community started to change from mid-1941. As the price of food was constantly growing while wages remained at the same level, the proportion of people in the ghetto able to live off their pre-war assets shrank. From this point onwards there was no longer a class system in the ghetto, only an overall slide towards poverty. As one of the ghetto inhabitants wrote: "Money ends, one finds some more stuff to sell. One day there will be nothing left though. This is the end. This is what awaits most, as nothing lasts forever. It is only a question of order. We are all standing in the queue." At that time a new wave of beggars, once members of affluent and prominent families, appeared on the ghetto streets. Deportations start: Despite the growing persecution and poverty, very few seemed to believe that the fate of the quarter was sealed. The Gross-Aktion, the deportation of the Warsaw ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka extermination camp, caught the ghetto unaware and unprepared. On July 22, 1942, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, the newly appointed "Resettlement Commissioner", informed Adam Czerniaków, head of the Judenrat, that the "resettlement to the East" was about to begin. Between July 22 and mid-September 1942, altogether 350,000 people were deported from the ghetto and murdered. The first to go were the poorest among the ghetto inhabitants. The assimilated Jews, with high-level positions in the official ghetto institutions or the German shops, felt assured of their safety. It soon turned out that this was an illusion. As the deportations progressed, exemption documents and passes proved to be invalid. Life and death became dependent on completely haphazard factors. Even for those who managed to leave the ghetto, that was just the beginning of their ordeal. The Hans Frank decree of Oct. 15, 1941, imposed the death penalty on those discovered outside the ghetto and also on those helping them. The excruciating cost of remaining in hiding and constant fear of denunciation transformed the greatest figures of the interwar society into distressed, bewildered paupers. For many, the pressure did not end with the end of the war. The great educator Janusz Korczak wrote in his Warsaw Ghetto diary: "Long after the war, men will not be able to look each other in the eyes without posing the question: How did it happen that you survived? How did you do it?" To no one was this statement referring more than to the so-called "victims of privilege" - policemen and members of ghetto authorities, actors in German-licensed theatres. In the eyes of the public, the stories told by the ghetto elite could not match those of the underground fighters. They were more likely to be tried for collaboration than hailed as heroes. It was only recently that the assimilated community were given their voice again, a voice, which like all of those who endured the Holocaust, deserves to be heard. Katarzyna Person This article is based on the writer's doctoral thesis submitted at Royal Holloway College, University of London Source: The Warsaw Voice