Resistance (9 page)

For Ephraim, the war ended on July 23, 1944—the day he began to search for his family, a search that went on for years. Here and there his efforts uncovered clues and fleeting hopes that someone might have survived. But these always ended in disappointment. Not one of Ephraim's close relatives had survived.

Recently, I was impressed while reading Ephraim's
Rather Die Fighting: A Memoir of World War II
, in which he offers an invaluable addition to the Holocaust literature: testament to the ways Jews first learned how to be resilient and self-reliant—and then, through cooperation with others, how to resist.

I
n August 1939, the twenty-first World Zionist Congress convened in Geneva, Switzerland. Emanuel Ringelblum (
figure 2.1
), a member of the Polish political party Poalei Zion Left, attended as an observer. When the official segments of this international gathering began to wind down, the proceedings were overcome by anxious ruminations about the impending war; the German occupation of Poland, of course, was imminent at the time of the Congress. While most of the departing participants were focused on reaching safe havens, Ringelblum, in this regard a minority, planned to return to Warsaw.

In Warsaw, Ringelblum became immersed in relief activities with refugees who started pouring into the capital on the eve of the German invasion on September 1, 1939. Swept up by the growing demands around him, he continued to refuse to follow the example of some friends who were preparing their departures. He felt morally bound to stay, promoting the welfare of the Jewish refugees who arrived from every direction.
¹
Each day brought new developments. Nonetheless, in the fall of 1939, neither Ringelblum nor anyone else had the foresight to predict the Holocaust. No one imagined the scale or speed of the German destruction of European Jewry, which started with identification, expropriation, and removal from gainful employment, and ended with isolation and annihilation. These stages were complex and overlapping, but part of an inexorable process of degradation that would lead eventually to death in the concentration camps.

FIGURE 2.1
Emanuel Ringelblum. (Courtesy Yad Vashem)

Artur Eisenbach, Ringelblum's friend and brother-in-law, had urged him to leave Poland.
²
Eisenbach and Ringelblum were both historians and shared connections and insights. Later, separated by the war, Eisenbach was convinced that German assaults against the Jewish people brought the finest out of Ringelblum, whose commitment to humanity and to the Jewish people became more firmly intertwined with his uncompromising feelings of resentment toward fascism. To Eisenbach and others, Ringelblum became a symbol of dedication and self-sacrifice.
³

From Eisenbach we learn that on the evenings of September 6 and 7, 1939, not even a week after the German invasion, friends and family gathered in the Ringelblum apartment with one overwhelming objective: to persuade their hosts to depart Warsaw, which they themselves had decided to do immediately. Their destination was the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Many Jews—an estimated 250,000 to 300,000—fled into parts of Poland that were then Soviet territories (according to the terms of the German-Soviet pact). The arguments of Eisenbach and other friends fell on deaf
ears, however. Ringelblum and his family were staying. No matter how perilous the situation became, and no matter how often those close to him urged him to move away from the German-occupied territories, Ringelblum insisted that it was his duty to remain in Poland, extending aid to as many as he could. The German occupation eventually created situations in which their needs surpassed Ringelblum's abilities to respond. Still, for the rest of his life, he never gave up trying.

Significantly, Ringelblum's outstanding work as a welfare organizer would eventually feed into his determination to collect large amounts of evidence about life and death under the German occupation of Poland. From 1940 on, this hard-working historian and activist attracted a dedicated group of writers, teachers, scholars, and social activists, all of whom were devoted to the documentation of the evolving tragedy of Polish Jewry.
⁴
Historian David Engel notes that “of all the people of occupied Europe, only the Jews in the Polish ghettos seemed to have assigned supreme values to activities directed toward the distant future.”
⁵
As a keen observer of the events in Warsaw leading to the establishment of the ghetto and after, Ringelblum wanted to study and learn from all of the individuals and groups that were a part of this unique period. Whatever groups or activities Ringelblum and his coworkers observed, they tried to broach their historical implications and significance. In the view of Ringelblum and his associates, no topic was unworthy of thorough, careful exploration. The wealth of knowledge that grew out of their labors is a unique and invaluable archive, and collectively referred to as “Oneg Shabbat,” or “the pleasure of the Sabbath.”
⁶

On September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, ordered that a “Council of Jewish Elders” be established in every Jewish community and that “as far as possible” it consist of leading figures and rabbis. This council was to be made “entirely responsible, within the meaning of the word, for the exact and prompt fulfillment of all instructions which have been or will be given.”
⁷
In other words, these Jewish Councils, or Judenrats, were special administrative bodies designed to transmit German orders.
⁸
At first, they tried to recruit prewar communal leaders to serve, but many had escaped, while others refused to become involved with the German authorities in any way. The history of the Judenrat is clouded by a number of unresolved debates.
⁹
The character and functions of these councils were perpetually in
a state of flux. At the slightest sign of independence, the Germans would execute a part or even an entire Judenrat, then immediately replace it with a new one.

With one notable exception, aside from a few women who performed clerical jobs, all these newly appointed councils consisted of men.
¹⁰
One exception was Wieliczka, a small town near Krakow. Here the initial German takeover was marked by the immediate execution of most Jewish men. Their murder traumatized the community and the remaining male survivors refused to become a part of a Judenrat. The Germans insisted, threatening reprisals. When no men responded and the threats grew, women volunteered to take their places, one of them as chair. Women had traditionally filled gaps created by the absence of men. The Wieliczka Judenrat changed in 1941 when two male refugees from Krakow took over.
¹¹

By October 1939—six weeks into the occupation—German authorities had issued special decrees making work by Jewish men mandatory. These decrees called for random and sometimes violent captures of men, many of whom were unfit for hard labor. Whenever the Germans seized rabbis, prominent intellectuals, or successful businessmen, they would assign them to the most degrading and debilitating jobs, like cleaning toilets or doing road work. These roundups made clear that men rather than women were in particular danger.
¹²
It has been estimated that two-thirds of those who fled to the Soviet-occupied territories were men.
¹³
For those Jewish men who stayed on in German-occupied Poland, assaults continued. In addition to street violence, many were forced to clear rubble, fill anti-tank ditches, shovel snow, and perform other kinds of hard labor.

A close observer of historical shifts, Ringelblum describes how these events were reflected in the lives of Jewish women under the German occupation. He notes that:

[W]omen maintain the home. The men stay home. The woman keeps pace with things that must be done. The woman is ready to follow the Germans who have power, asking for and complaining about the circumstances she doesn't approve of. Women join long lines which promise some rare and valued acquisitions. The elegant lady who used to spend hours in coffee shops has disappeared. Now, Jewish women visit official offices, trying to make sense out of current circumstances. Women's elegant hats have
also disappeared. They have been replaced by simple head scarves. When Jews must pay a visit to officials in power, daughters and mothers step in. If this is not possible, these women remain standing and waiting in the hallways. When there is an opportunity to remove heavy packages from stores and living quarters, this is done by a husband or brother. But this too is often accomplished under the watchful eyes of the wife on the opposite side of the street. Busy with many chores, women still find time to attach themselves to long lines which promise the sale of coal. Accordingly, on the city streets, one encounters many more women than men. Many Polish men have been caught for compulsory labor in Germany.
¹⁴

Less punitive, yet still degrading, were Warsaw's long bread lines, created by food shortages. Vladka Meed (
figure 2.2
) was the daughter of a haberdashery store owner. During World War I, her father had positive experiences with the German military, so when Vladka's family joined their neighbors in their shelter, her father assured them that they had nothing to fear from the Germans, that they were cultured and unlikely to harm civilians. Vladka knew that her father was more interested in reading books than in attending to his haberdashery business. In fact, she admired him for it. When the German bombs demolished parts of their store, he consoled his family; substantial quantities of materials had been salvaged and they would be fine. When the Germans occupied Warsaw, he took it in stride, not anticipating any special hardships.

FIGURE 2.2
Vladka Meed poses in Theater Square (Plac Teatralny). Vladka moved into the newly created Warsaw ghetto with her entire family in 1940. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin Miedzyrzecki Meed)

The first morning of the occupation of Warsaw, Vladka's father, Shlomo, joined a group of Poles in a bread line. It took him a few minutes to comprehend that they were screaming at him, insisting that as a Jew, he had no right to the bread. Their shouting attracted the attention of a German soldier, who pulled Shlomo out of the line and began beating him mercilessly. The experience made clear that the Germans had changed since his World War I experiences.

Ringelblum observed that from the moment Polish anti-Semites helped the Germans drive Jews away from the food lines, the “street” was where they joined forces, “for this was where both victors and collaborators found their Jewish prey.”
¹⁵

Ghettos were set up as temporary Jewish quarters, a first step to Jewish annihilation. Before the actual construction of these ghettos, Jews lacked clear-cut information about their character and purpose, and what contradictory information they heard heightened their apprehensions. Here and there among the grim reports was a hopeful note. Some claimed that future Jewish quarters would be autonomous communities with free access to the surroundings. But, on the whole, these rumors failed to calm the people.
¹⁶

Responding to the mounting tensions, Adam Czerniakow (
figure 2.3
), the newly appointed head of the Warsaw Judenrat, petitioned the German authorities to halt construction of the ghetto.
¹⁷
The Germans responded by establishing two ghettos, one in Warsaw and the second in Lodz. This was followed by a phase of intensified construction of ghettos, which eventually numbered an estimated 400.
¹⁸
Their common traits outweighed by far their differences. All ghettos were located in the most dilapidated parts of urban centers, lacking running water and electricity. Several families were assigned to one room, and the accumulation of filth led to all kinds of epidemics. Death could and did come from a variety of sources: starvation, sporadic violence, disease, and, indirectly, from forced deportations to concentration camps. Ghetto inmates were cut off from the world around them and, thus deprived of information, made decisions based on limited and subjective observations and experiences. The Judenrats, for example, were viewed by the ghetto population with suspicion. Sometimes these suspicions evolved into accusations of betrayal. In part these stemmed from the direct contact that Judenrat members had with the Germans. Probably, too, the relative advantages that the Judenrat members and their families seemed to have and the growing deprivations of the rest of the ghetto population fueled resentment. In some instances, actual corruption by some Judenrat members might have contributed to these accusations.
¹⁹