The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell. Henry R Lew
Square past Baruch Gewin’s building, Senders up to the front of the Roman Catholic Church, Szkolna with its surrounding lanes and byways, and the area surrounding the Fish Market. The devastation was so horrendous that people standing by the clock tower could suddenly see distant forests beyond the ruins.
And even though their burning homes had been surrounded by cordons of heavily armed Nazi troops, there were some Jews who miraculously managed to escape from them.
The toll of these first two days of Nazi rule was the beginning of a series of tragedies, which were to engulf Bialystoker Jewry over the next two and a quarter years.
THE NAZI COMMANDANT ORDERS THE CREATION OF A JUDENRAT.
On Sunday June 29th 1941, the Nazi Commandant of the city summoned Chief Rabbi Dr. Gedalja Rozenman and Engineer Ephraim Barasz, the last Director of the Jewish Kehilla. They were considered to be the titular heads of Bialystok’s Jewish community. At the meeting Rozenman and Barasz were ordered to form a Judenrat (Jewish Council) to which German authorities would issue directives pertaining to the Jews.
When the meeting was over Rozenman and Barasz conveyed its minutes to other Jewish leaders. A large consultative meeting was called and the following men were elected to the Judenrat : Chief Rabbi Dr. Gedalja Rozenman; Engineer Ephraim Barasz; Dov Subotnik; Mendel Kaplan; Dr. M. Katzenelson; a Mr. H. Liman from Slonim; Yaacov Goldberg, a Zionist activist; H. Glickson, the former Director of the Merchant’s Guild; Pesach Kaplan, the former Editor of the Yiddish newspaper Undzer Leben; Mordechai Chmelnik, a leader of the right-wing Labour Zionists in Bialystok; Motel Rubinstein, the Headmaster of the Mendele School and the brother-in-law of the Bundist activist Yaacov Pat; Samuel Punianski, a member of Mizrachi a religious Zionist movement; Rabbi Baruch Eliyahu Halpern, also a member of Mizrachi; Rabbi Pinje Ajzensztat; Yaacov Lifszyc, the former Chairman of the Merchant’s Guild; Abe Furman; Moshe Szwif; Issac Markus, a former Commandant of the Volunteer Fire Brigade; Abram Tyktin, the former owner of a dispatching business; Zvi Wider, the former leader of the Artisan’s Union; Pesach Chmelnicki, the former leader of the Dispatcher’s Association; and Samuel Polonski, a longtime member of the leadership of the Great Synagogue. Pesach Kaplan was also elected Secretary to the Committee.
The Committee then elected an Executive Group, which consisted of Rabbi Gedalja Rozenman, Ephraim Barasz, Dov Subotnik, H. Liman and Yaacov Goldberg. Rafael Gutman was appointed Secretary to the Executive Group. Gutman was a well-known writer of Hebrew textbooks. He and his wife had come to Bialystok as refugees in late 1939 and had decided to stay.
Chief Rabbi Dr. Gedalja Rozenman was the official Chairman of the Judenrat in name only. In practice Engineer Ephraim Barasz served as a de facto chairman. Barasz tended to be dictatorial in manner and often opposed the opinions of the other four members of the Executive. But to be fair to him he was a very decent man, extraordinarily energetic, and trying to act for the common good as he saw it.
At one of the early Judenrat meetings Mendel Kaplan suffered a heart attack and dropped dead. The news of this sent reverberations throughout the community.
THE NAZIS ISSUE CONTEMPTUOUS DIRECTIVES TO THE JUDENRAT.
From day one the Nazis issued contemptuous directives to the Judenrat. Their first directive was for thousands of Jewish slave labourers, men or women! These workers were forced to work under frightful conditions and were frequently beaten and tortured.
Another directive was that the Judenrat must supply the Nazis with certain Jewish valuables within 48 hours. Items demanded included jewellery, fur coats, leather jackets, satin covers, top grade feathery pillows and thousands of kilos of shoe leather. If they failed to meet these targets severe sanctions would be imposed.
Each day the Gestapo would seize Jews off the streets. This was supposed to be conscription for slave labour, but in reality many of these Jews were simply beaten and tortured.
The Gestapo would forcefully enter Jewish homes to confiscate valuables. Large trucks would be driven into streets which were then sealed off. These trucks would be loaded up with stolen Jewish goods. No item was sacrosanct. If it might have a value it was deemed suitable for expropriation.
MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND HUNGRY JEWS VOLUNTEERED TO WORK FOR THE NAZIS.
More than two thousand Bialystoker Jews had no means of support and were starving. Any valuables they previously owned had already been forfeited to Nazi arson and robbery. These men and women volunteered to work for the Nazis. The work was arduous and performed under the most gruelling of conditions. But such people were desperate and would perform any work for a small quantity of food. The food given them came from abandoned Soviet stores and, with a bit of luck, they sometimes managed to smuggle some of it back home. Some of these people were actually working in the stores and one such group deserves special mention. The two foremen of this particular group, Yudel Gurewich and Alter Ginsberg, the son-in-law of the well-known Bialystoker printer Meir Pruzhansky, decreed that their two hundred workers should donate one day’s rations each week to help feed the hundreds of hungry orphans in Bialystok. Thanks to this noble deed the orphans were sustained for a longer period of time.
THE NAZIS MURDER THREE HUNDRED JEWISH INTELLIGENTSIA.
Early Thursday morning July 3rd 1941, under cover of darkness, Nazi murderers closed off the following streets:- Przejarz, Grochowa, Krakowska, Dambrowski, Kupiecka, Zamenhof, Bialystoczanska, Ruzanski, Zydowska, Bronska, Gieldowa and Lipowa. The villains drew their revolvers and forced their way into Jewish homes. Their mission was to collect, beat, and forcefully drag 1000 Jewish men, aged 16-60 years, to the Municipal Square. At the square these men were humiliated. They were made to perform a leaping song and dance with their arms held high in the air.
Then two dead-drunk senior Gestapo arrived and ordered the men to fall into rows. Each man was asked what work he did prior to the war. Three hundred of them, professionals and intelligentsia, were detained. The rest were told to scoot or be shot. They scattered quickly into the darkness of the surrounding streets. Beaten and broken they dragged themselves back to their houses.
The three hundred detainees were then beaten and tortured for several hours. With the stuffing knocked out of them, they were loaded half-dead onto trucks and driven out of town. These men were never seen or heard of again. They were driven two kilometres in the direction of Wasilkow, then detoured to a field in the Pietrasze Forest, where they were machine gunned to death.
Included in among these “Thursday victims” were Dr. Yaacov Rajfer; Gutman, a lawyer from Piaskowa Street; Reuven Sklyut, who worked for Undzer Leben; Wajnszel and Orlowski, teachers at Druskin’s High School; Aron Murkis, a teacher at Zeligman’s High School; Rotsztejn, a merchant, and his son; Berel Zabludowsky; Herschel Maze, a dairy owner; Becalel Frenkl, a Maccabi sportsman and Hillek Basz, a law graduate employed as an administrative officer at the Bialystok Electric Company.
BESTIAL MURDERS OF THREE THOUSAND MORE JEWS.
Then at 5 a.m. on Saturday July 12th 1941 a similar Nazi action took place, but on a much greater scale. Large numbers of Gestapo, in more than thirty trucks, surrounded a significant part of the remaining Jewish district. By now Bialystoker Jews were accustomed to having their houses searched and their valuables plundered. Many thought this was more of the same but they were wrong.
This time the Nazis were much more sinister. They forced Jewish men out of their homes into the cordoned-off streets and loaded them onto trucks. The trucks then headed off for an unknown destination, but not for long. They drove back and forth all morning and by midday more than three thousand Jewish men and boys had been taken away. These Jews never returned, but it was not long before we learnt what happened to them.
Some Polish peasants from the district soon told us that a large number of Jewish men had been shot and buried in a field in the Pietrasze Forest. The peasants painted a gruesome picture. They told us that the earth with which the Nazis had covered the men wriggled for a while, because many of them had been buried