Warsaw ghetto photos

[wm]

The story of Klara:

Höfle had a beautiful Jewish servant, Klara, the widow of a Polish Jewish officer who had been murdered in Katyń. She had a small daughter. Klara was blond, with nothing Jewish about her. Was she Hofle’s mistress? Eventually, after the war, I received infonnation that suggested such a possibility. Höfle’s former secretary, the blond who had received me on my first visit to the Befehlsstelle, was jealous of Klara, and was waiting for an opportunity to take revenge. That moment had arrived.

Höfle and a few assistants had gone to Otwock* and a few other small towns outside Warsaw to finish off the Jews there. Handke had stayed behind in Warsaw. The secretary convinced Handke to send Klara to the Umschlagplatz. Klara was cleaning Höfle’s apartment when Handke arrived with two Ukrainians to take her and her child to the Umschlagplatz. This came as a horrifying shock to Klara, and she resisted. The Ukrainians dragged her and the child out. She was playing for time. She must have hoped that perhaps Höfle would return soon and set her free. When they reached the entrance to the house, she threw herself to the ground and hugged one of the thick iron guard rails that stand to either side of Polish entryways to prevent entering cars from damaging the walls. Klara grasped the rail with one hand while holding her little Stefcia tight with the other. The child was crying and shouting. The Ukrainians stood by uncertainly, but then Handke showed up. He grabbed Klara’s magnificent long hair and pulled with all his might. Klara screamed in pain. But she did not give up, still waiting for help that didn't come. One of the Ukrainians stepped in to help Handke by tearing Klara’s hand from the post while Handke pulled her hair. Klara was still lying on the ground. But when the Ukrainian fired a warning shot into the air, Klara gave in and went with the child to the Umschlagplatz.

I saw it all from the roof. Apparently, when Höfle came back, he screamed like a wounded beast when he heard what Handke had done to Klara.**
I saw Klara again in 1943, on the Polish side. She had managed to leap from the window of the cattle car en route to Treblinka. She was free, but her child perished at Treblinka.

Edward Reicher "W ostrym świetle dnia. Dziennik żydowskiego lekarza 1939-1945"

* the Otwock ghetto was liquidated on August 19, 1942. Calek Perechodnik, who was there at the time, noted in his wartime diary (Spowiedź - Confession) the skillful manipulation of the Ghetto's population behaviour, exactly the way how it was done in Warsaw. Höfle was a true professional in every sense of the word.
** all the Jews who worked for Höfle and his team were sent to the gas chambers on September 12, 1942 - at the very end of the Grossaktion in Warsaw, even though some of them had Höfle’s assurances given in writing that they would be spared from deportation. There were no reason for this, after all a quarter of the population of the Warsaw Ghetto was spared and not deported.

That incident gave rise to a legend of crime and punishment, this is a variation of it:

I was told that among the Żelazna 103's workers loaded into boxcars on 12.09.42 was the mistress of one of the Gestapo chiefs and her small child. After he had learned that they all were going to be deported he drove to the Umschlagplatz. He was told there they had been loaded already, he didn't have the guts to get his mistress out the sealed boxcar. He returned to Żelazna Street and there was a message there saying his single child had died in an air raid. He ran out of his office screaming it was a Jahwe vengeance. He was taken to a psycho-neurotic hospital. They were saying that but I think its a legend, although with a grain of truth. The woman didn't perish in Treblinka, she jumped out, although without the child.

from: Henryk Makower "Pamiętnik z getta warszawskiego"

Żelazna 103:

103.jpg (88.19 KiB) Viewed 3114 times

[wm]

Twenty years later, Salzburg, the public prosecution office:

Hermann Höfle was greatly changed. Twenty years had tarnished his elegant allure. He no longer looked so sleek and smooth-skinned. He had put on weight. His face was bloated and pale, his eyelids were puffy, and his eyes were dull. This fifty-one year old man, who looked much older still, now scrutinized me carefully and declared that he had never seen me before.
I told him that I had treated him for a skin disease, and pointed to the place on his scalp where he still had a scar.
“I would never have allowed a Jewish physician to treat me, but if it was a skin disease I can't rule it out . . . .”
That was his confession.

Before coming face to face with me, Hofle had read my deposition and declared it to be false. “You had no need to hide on the roof,” he said, “All you had to do was ask, and I would have issued you a safe conduct pass.”
Even though he knew that the discovery phase would be followed by a trial, he expressed no remorse. At no point did he ever admit his guilt.
“I would not be sitting here before you if I had done what you just said; in other words, if I had trusted your phony safe pass,” I replied. Hofle looked uncomfortable.
“I never killed anybody. I never heard any gunfire in the ghetto. I never saw any bodies, and I never issued any orders to have people killed.”
“I can't state that you personally killed anyone. The dirty work was carried out by your subordinates. But I do know from officers of yours who were my patients that you gave the order to kill Kohn and Heller. Besides, I was there when you ordered one of your officers to cleanse certain streets of Jews. As for shots in the ghetto, you have to have heard them, because I heard them myself from up on the roof. I also saw the bodies of those who had been murdered, even though I had a very limited field of vision, while you moved freely all over the ghetto.”
Höfle grew increasingly nervous. “I did nothing wrong to the people who worked for us at headquarters. Besides,” he added, “the Jews volunteered to go to Treblinka. They went willingly.”
He was evidently thinking of those who allowed themselves to be “bribed” with some crumbs of bread and jam.
I could barely contain my fury.
“Klara is alive, and she too will tell the truth,” I fired back at him.

Höfle’s face went crimson, and his whole body began to shake. The prosecutor broke off the confrontation, and the prison doctor was called. Höfle drew back, and looked at me wide-eyed. I never saw him again.

Edward Reicher "W ostrym świetle dnia. Dziennik żydowskiego lekarza 1939-1945"

[Cor]

nice stories about the building and his people wm.

[wm]

During the 1939 siege of Warsaw numerous spontaneously erected, makeshift barricades sprouted all over the city.
One of them, visible in the picture above, was built at intersection of Nowolipie and Smocza Streets by the Jews who lived nearby. It was built more or less in the same place where the ghetto gate, and the Stroop's group in front of it, would stand three and half years later.

The second barricade in that picture was erected under direction of sixteen year old Jew - Henryk Cukier, a freshly elected building commander at Nowolipie 53.
His family lived in an apartment there. His father, a semi-illiterate plumber was running a mom-and-pop business in the same apartment. Warsaw was expanding, the business was good. They could afford a large apartment, a maid-servant, and an out-of-the-city villa in a nice place.

This is the story of the second barricade as told by that building commander in his book Nowolipie:

Someone comes with the news that a barricade is being raised near Smocza Street. We rush to the street, filled with jealousy that others thought of it first. A visitor told them to erect one; barricades are being raised all over Warsaw. People carry pieces of old furniture on their backs, they bring boards, logs, sacks filled with sand, bed mattresses, even a colorful baby carriage, and a tricycle. I ask, “Does it mean that Warsaw will fight back?” “Yes, and the Germans will break their necks right here!”
I beat the alarm. The fight is starting! At long last. We too hurl ourselves into action. Who would think that people have so much rubbish? It seems as if everybody is consumed by frenzy, a spirit of self-destruction. People are constantly bringing something new from their apartments - only yesterday an item was essential, one could not live without it - suddenly, an
acquired object becomes a nothing, let it fly into a barricade, if only it can make the enemy stumble or help with the resistance effort.
A crow-bar bangs against the cobblestones, prying them free. We place the stones in a heap in front of our barricade of rubbish. Somebody suggests, “We need iron.” Off to the courtyard we go to break off the iron railing around the flower-bed. The landlord will go crazy if he finds out, but no one is going to ask him - nothing is sacred or proprietary today. There is only the barricade and the resistance.

A handsome lieutenant in a tight uniform steps energetically around our barricade.
“Dismantle this heap,” he orders, “it’s of no earthly use, it’s got to be completely rebuilt.” It turns out he is a sapper. He visits each barricade and offers instructions. “What you call a barricade is a barn; this one is a refuse heap; that one a manure pit that threatens the public safety of residents. Collect all odds and ends, no bed-bugs. A barricade must be clean as a whistle, suitable for a fight, not a heap of wood that the first missile’ll send up in smoke or shatter into fragments.” The lieutenant speaks metaphorically. It does not matter if the barricade is clean or not, but of what materials it is constructed. Stones and sand are necessary, and a ditch in front of the barricade.

[Ponury]

Our heroes, polish-jewish partisans from Getto 1943

[wm]

The last days of peace on Nowolipie Street:

In the fourth year, which was the last before the exit exam from the gimnazjum, we finally had to take basic cadet training. This was a mark of maturity, even more so than the red stripe on the pants required in the last year of school. When I showed up wearing the green military uniform in the yard of our apartment building, I felt my importance grow in the eyes of Łajbuś and Szmulek. My belt, in particular, was most admired - it was a true officer’s belt, wide, with a double buckle.
Right away, a few of my classmates took a number 9 tram to Ujazdowskie Avenue, where we could experience the joy of saluting staff officers. We walked together, watching for anyone with a higher rank, and from time to time one of us would cross the street to intercept a major. We would later boast about who came across a higher rank, “I had a lieutenant-colonel, so help me!” “I had a full colonel, no kidding!” I was never lucky enough to come across a general. Staff officers felt rattled - they knew that the boys were chasing after them, and their constant hand rising in a return salute made them edgy; they could not even talk to one another on their way to general headquarters.
But if one of the boys overlooked a salute, turned around to look at a girl instead of clicking his heels while coming to attention, a stern officer would spring up before him and thunder in a blaze of ribbons and stars, “Cadet, attention! Don't you know what discipline is, what the army is? March off !” No excuses worked, one could not say, “Sony, sir, I didn't see you.” A prescribed salute had to be held until a smile of approval appeared on a major’s face, followed by a brisk departure (“About face!” “Right step, march!”).

During practice, we thought least about war. War had seemed really close a year earlier, in September 1938, although Hitler’s demands then did not relate to us, but to Czechoslovakia. That conflict ended rather humiliatingly, with a treaty in Munich, following which the Polish army seized the area beyond the Olza River, which was within Czech territory. Only a few people celebrated as a result, as the success of the Polish army appeared suspect, notwithstanding many posters that showed Marshal Rydz-Śmigly in a becoming cloak, looking proudly into the horizon, with the inscription “And The Chief Ordered Us To MARCH!”
Rumors circulated about skirmishes with the Germans and seeing trains carrying wounded people into the Main Railway Station. The rumors described best the nation’s mood; they revealed whom people considered the enemy.
After September 1938, war was not much anticipated. The following May, Minister of Foreign Affairs Beck said in the Polish parliament that there was something more important than peace and finished his speech strongly with “It’s honor!” After Beck’s speech, everybody was sure that there would be no war, that it would be prevented by our decisive “No!”
So far, Hitler had experienced a string of successes without a single shot. The remilitarized Rhineland, Austria, the Sudeten mountain range - he took everything by blackmail. We believed that his tanks were made of cardboard, that his fuel supplies would not last more than two weeks, that five million German communist could hardly wait to make a revolution, that a Gennan soldier feared Polish bayonets and Polish cavalry. And that England and France...
People were singing songs, “England’s with us, France is with us, Hitler’s just a pain in the ass.” Or “A fly is swimming in the soup, pooh to Hitler, pooh to Hitler!” Or “Hitler put his ann through Hacha’s, took him for a drink. In return, the generous Hacha gave Bohemia to the fink.” A cabaret actress crowed in her monologue, mocking Hitler’s demand to grant him a “corridor” through Poland to East Prussia, “ We'll give him a Polish corridor - to paint!” We were winning the campaign of nerves and thus thought, “He wouldn't dare!”

Before Friday, September 1, 1939, everything still felt like a game of hare and hounds. In spite of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which changed the situation completely (and which everyone on Nowolipie Street understood), it was expected that the Germans would pull back at the last moment.
For three days we dug trenches on city squares, having fun doing so. I got blisters on my fingers, which upset me - it was not enough to want to help, but one needed thick skin to make it happen.
On Wednesday, mobilization posters started to go up, but something changed among the higher-ups and the posters were promptly tom down. Finally, on Thursday, a general mobilization was declared. Pursuant to the order of a neighborhood policeman, a meeting of tenants was called in the courtyard of our apartment building. People from all floors attended the meeting, many of whom had not seen each other for years, did not remember each other’s faces, and did not greet each other in passing. Now a bomb hung over all of them which invalidated the earlier division between the better and the worse tenants.
The tenants elected a clerk from the Jewish council to be the building commander. He was a scrawny man, popular mainly on account of his smiling, busty servant, Terka, who let the boys feel her up while she hung laundry to dry. I became the commander’s liaison assistant. All this was written up on the building’s bulletin board. Blackout in the evening was already mandated. The only neon sign on Nowolipie Street, above the pharmacy, was switched off. My favorite jumping deer on Marszalkowska Street, which was the trademark of the soap manufacturer Schicht, disappeared in darkness. I was on duty in front of the entrance to our building, looking for spies and saboteurs.

from Nowolipie by Józef Hen

[wm]

The crushing defeat:

it turns out that the Germans are not in a hurry to enter the city. They make conditions - they are a fickle lot. First, we have to dismantle all barricades. A policeman comes looking for the commander of our building. Luckily, not me anymore. The time for youth has passed. Solid, level-headed leaders are needed now. The rationing of bread and fat is announced and a committee will handle a fair distribution of these treasures. The policeman helps Mr. Pinchenson to fetch people to dismantle our barricade. They come, since they have to, including me, but this job is altogether different from putting the barricade up. Work drags on; those who can, clear out at the first opportunity. The barricade keeps on shrinking; it will soon reach street level. We lie down at the winner’s feet; the street is passable, although covered with splinters left over from the barricade. The crucified city is spared nothing - it has been executed and then given a goblet filled with vinegar to drink.

The Germans enter the city. They roll in on heavy, multi-wheel trucks, blond and blue-eyed, looking like propaganda photos, wearing elegant uniforms the color of sea water and steel helmets. The victorious demigods. We stand in silence. The endless line of trucks snakes from Zelazna Street, bypasses the short Nowolipie Street, and turns into Smocza Street. A soldier sitting next to each driver slips a white and red bollard out the window to signal a turn. The whirr of diesel motors, sounding like the steady thunder of artillery, the stiff figures of the soldiers - all of this exudes dangerous otherness, the incomprehensible organization of superior beings. The beasts from worlds unknown.

Terka, the former commander’s maid, runs into the building carrying a two kilogram loaf of bread. She says, happy by the attention she gets from the tenants, “It’s German.” She came from the Wola section of Warsaw, “There’s a huge crowd there! The Germans throw bread from trucks and people try to catch it. The Germans laugh at the hungry people. A few walk around with cameras and make a movie of the people grabbing for bread.”

I run up to our apartment on the four floor to look at my papers. I burn some, not many, as I have started feeling sad. On reflection, I decide to leave the rest of the papers where they are. Then I remembered my green forage cap from basic cadet training, or rather, the metal eagle emblem fastened to it. I unpin the emblem and go to the basement. They will not get my eagle! I shovel off a layer of dust and dig a hole in the floor, not a deep one because I do not want to look for my eagle too long when the time comes to retrieve it.

from Nowolipie by Józef Hen

[von thoma]

It's a dramatic image.
The poor boy is terrified.



Unlike,the little girl at left picture, seems more quiet.

[sobel]

It's a dramatic image. The poor boy is terrified. Unlike,the little girl at left picture, seems more quiet.

Perhaps, maybe at her age she didn't understand what was going on !! The full photo shows J Blosche herding civilians to an unknown fate, historical evidence shows that Blosche was a man without any mercy, compassion and had a predilection for indiscrimate brutality, are you suggesting that the little girl was spared whilst all others met their fate at his hands?

[von thoma]

are you suggesting that the little girl whilst all others met their fate at his hands?

No,no.
I only analyze their features, and the little girl she looks at me, funny.
With only her right hand raised, she probably thinks it's all a game.
I would say that image depicts only a building eviction, not an inminent departure to death.
I Hope...

[sobel]

Hi Von Thoma,

the image, does, as you say shows a building clearance, Stroop's orders were to clear the Warsaw ghetto, his subordinates, including Blosche and others were not there to provide a welfare service but to remove and destroy any remaining inhabitants, by whatever means, it seems very unlikely that they led the people into the next street and then said, "Go away and stop being a nuisance".

I re-iterate that the image of the little girl, is probably more to do with her being too young to actually understand the nature of what was happening rather than thinking that they were being invited to a kindergarten party. One has only to observe grandchildren of similar age to appreciate of how children of that age behave

regards

[wm]

I front of that building on Żelazna 103 and across the street from the hospital there was a strangely curved path through the post-Ghetto desert, it seems out of place in the regular street grid of Jewish section of Warsaw.

The city plan of Warsaw explains why. It was the only drive access to several rear buildings:

d1.jpg (70.65 KiB) Viewed 2736 times

The marked rectangular building was the famous Jewish theatre - Nowy Azazel, one of the several in the Ghetto - they replaced the forbidden for the Jews cinemas. Although it has to be said that the Warsaw Jews were always great patrons of theatre, much to the chagrin of the Polish right wing press bemoaning the relative lack of interest among the "natives".

nowy azazel.jpg (49.29 KiB) Viewed 2738 times

The informative and popular in the occupied Poland Gazeta Żydowska (The Jewish Gazette) in 1941 wrote this about its opening:

The Nowy Azazel is what this corner is called. [...] It is decorated with talent and taste. Everything shines freshly, every detail betrays the touch of a gifted interior designer, who has set the tone for this modernist Jewish theater auditorium and its decorations. Here we should recognize the self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause of that patron of Jewish art and co-director of the theater Mr. Fajerman, who has made great efforts to bring about the opening of this new Jewish theater and offer a living to a group of our actors”.

Mr Fajerman, a wealthy merchant and theatre enthusiast, provided the money and the building.
Not mentioned was Regina Judtowa, Miss Jewish District or a typical parasite and undeveloped louse according to the Gazeta Żydowska. She was one of the most notorious grey eminences of the Ghetto. A pre-war lover of a German officer, later still under his protection, she was able with ease to obtain the required German permission.

The theatre played a minor role in the unfinished 1942 German propaganda film - Das Ghetto:

[wm]

The Jewish theaters in the Warsaw Ghetto were a good way to escape reality for a while. Unfortunately the Nazis were always eager to push reality to the next level of hell.
After the Grossaktion the infamous shops, mini concentration/labor camps, were created in the Ghetto. The Nowy Azazel theatre became part of the Schultz shop and lost its mysterious name.

n72.jpg (168.09 KiB) Viewed 2986 times

Some say the pictures below were taken inside:

source: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Neumann Album

All that men were members of the local Jewish security service, the wooden structure was Shultz shop prison.

They even had a prisoner there:

na3.jpg (26.51 KiB) Viewed 2986 times

How did it feel to be a prisoner in a prison inside a prison inside a prison inside a prison...

[BillHermann]

I must say your posts are fascinating

[wm]

Thanks, Bill.

In 1939, during the siege of Warsaw, a Škoda Rapid stood in front of the theatre. It was wearing a naive, makeshift camouflage pattern - and not very useful too, it would be destroyed by a bomb a few days later.

Surprisingly, the west side of the street really looked like city outskirts, although it was more or less the heart of Warsaw.

The Stroop group would stood at the end of the street two and a half years later, a mere hundred meters behind the car.
These people below were approaching the place at the moment the picture was taken.


A cliped, color version of the picture:

skoda in color.jpg (102.69 KiB) Viewed 2843 times

The man on the left is the Polish interpreter and owner of the car, talking to some random passer-by. The men at the back of the car are Polish Americans - assistants of Julien Bryan, the photographer who at that time was making pictures of this, shown already earlier, building. The man inside - who knows...

btw, we can easily see why the building was chosen as the deportation command post despite the damage. Among the sea of the old, covered in soot from the ubiquitous coal-fired stoves tenements it must have looked out of that world...

sources: http://warsawid.blogspot.com/2013/05/um ... rapid.html, http://ksiegarnia.karta.org.pl/product. ... 50&page=1#, http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthrea ... 940&page=7