The Jews of Poland

[wm]

1939: Mr Delatycki, a vinegar factory owner from the town of Łomża, and his children.
His later fate is unknown, but the town was subjected by the Soviets to four waves of ethnic cleansing during the short post Ribbentrop-Molotov Soviet occupation - and he was a wealthy capitalist.
A photo preserved by the family of his Polish friend, himself deported to Siberia.

1941: Esther and Rywka - two Jewish girls from the village of Brzoza Królewska. Popular with locals, especially with the Polish youths, were seen as different from the other (presumably orthodox) local Jews.
A year later they and their families were arrested, and immediately executed.
A photo preserved by their neighbor.

September, 1941: Hanna Świecznik from the town of Szydłowiec, a daughter of a Jewish bakery owner - the bakery is visible in the background, with her Polish friends. Her Jewish fiancé was in a labor camp, she tried bribery to free him, and failed.
A year later, she and the rest of the 16300 Jews in Szydłowiec were brutally rounded up - only on the road to the railway station 200 were murdered, and deported to the Treblinka death camp. The photo, like the others, was donated by one of her friends, to the Shalom Foundation in Warsaw.

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The Iwry family from the town of Chełm. The mother - Tania, was a known dentist, her husband a doctor. At the beginning of the occupation, he and the other local Jewish intellectuals were summoned to the police station and executed. After that, the family was trying to fled to the Soviet occupation zone in a hired truck. Tania Iwry died, her children survived.

1937, the town of Słupca: Haja Łatte with her Polish friend.

Her wedding with Icek Koplewicz.
She most likely was gassed in the Bełżec death camp. Pictures donated by her friend.

Dana from the nearly entirely Jewish town of Działoszyce. In 1941 in a train she met a young Polish man - Tomasz Gołyska. Later they met again in Cracow, and she sent him this picture afterward.
A year later her town was surrounded by strong forces of the SS, Gendermarie, the Polish Blue Police, and the Polish Baudienst. The same day its residents were deported to the Bełżec death camp. Her fate is unknown.

[history1]

I don´t want to complain, wm, but at least you could point out the persons in the photos correctly if there are more people shown (e.g Haja Łatte, which is on the left) and mention your source.
Interesting thread!

Regards!

[wm]

The source was given: Shalom Foundation in Warsaw, the photos can be found using its portal/database Żydzi Polscy.
The not pointing out is intentional.

1931: Avraham Mordechai Alter, the Admor of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, leaving for his treatment in the spa of Karlsbard in Czechoslovakia.

He has to be protected by a police unit from his sometimes rather unreasonable followers. But the followers of the other dynasties were even more unreasonable, to the point of waging street battles against their opponents. In that case out of duty Polish policemen were hired to protect the Hasidic leaders, and Hasidic meetings.

1930: The police was needed for other reasons sometimes. Below, the Jews of Ger in pursuit of a photographer for the Polish largest daily - Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny. He tried and failed to photo their Yom Kippur rituals.

Everyone thinks it was fun, even the photographer (a Jew himself).

He was asked to leave the town.

Rabbi Avraham Mordechai managed to escape from the occupied Poland to Palestine in 1940 with his wife and four sons thanks to a large bribe.
But some of his sons stayed willingly. His eldest son, Rabbi Meir Alter, a resident of the Warsaw Ghetto, was gassed in Treblinka with all his family, as almost all of about 150 thousand Hasidim of Ger.

The majority of the Hasidic dynasties originated and flourished in Poland, including Belz(Bełz), Bobov(Bobowa), Chabad Lubavitch (Lubawicze), Ger(Góra Kalwaria), Karlin(Pińsk), Sanz Klausenberg(Nowy Sącz), Aleksander(Aleksandrów Łódzki), Amshinov(Mszczonów), Ashlag(Warszawa), Kuzmir(Kazimierz Dolny), Lizhensk(Leżajsk), and a few dozen more.

Prior to the Holocaust Ger was one of the largest and most influential dynasties in Poland, today is the largest Hasidic dynasty in Israel.

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Again Admor of Ger, and his entourage, this time taunting a photographer with his non-existent boxing skills. Those people despite their scary looks, employed by mothers to put fear of God into naughty brats, had great sense of humor it seems:

Abraham Mordechaj Alter zartuje z fotografem, przybierajac wobec kamery poze boksera.jpg (24.96 KiB) Viewed 2261 times

His arch-foe, the Admor of Aleksander, the second largest group in Poland, and his entourage in another Czechoslovak spa - Marienbad, thankfully located 30 kilometers from Karlsbad. Both groups immensely disliked each other, they say the Aleksanderists celebrated deaths of leaders of the other group with alcohol binges.

Akeidas Yitzchok walking with his sons and student in Marienbad.jpg (62.17 KiB) Viewed 2261 times

The Polish Hasidic Jews (and their less-orthodox brethren) , their behavior, especially their deep and consistent pacifism in the face of war can be seen in the 1982 Polish movie Austeria:


During the WW2, a few major Hasidic leaders fled (Ger, Belz, Satmar, Lubavitch), sometimes even misleading their followers with empty/false promises of security, but most of them didn't - frequently flatly refusing offered rescue, and shared the fate of all the Hasidim.
Rabbi Yechezkel Halstock declined an offer of help made by the local bishop, insisting he could not abandon his community to save himself.
Rabbi Avraham Dov-Ber Kahane-Shapiro returned from Switzerland to his hometown: the ship’s captain is the last to abandon the burning ship, not the first. In this time of danger, this time of trouble for Israel, my place is with my community.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, on hearing the news of the gassings at Chelmno refused to flee: a shepherd does not abandon his flock in the face of a pack of wolves. I will not seek to save my own skin and abandon my flock.
Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman returned from the US to Poland, despite numerous pleas of his supporters: a captain does not abandon his ship in a storm. My place is at the yeshivah.
Rabbis Menachem Ziemba, Samson Stockhammer and David Shapiro refused shelter offered in his own residence by the Archbishop of Warsaw: we already know that we cannot help our people, but by staying with them and by not abandoning them, we encourage them and strengthen their hopes, and this is the only encouragement we are able to give the last Jews. [..] Will we hide from the Almighty? The same G-d who is found there is found here.
Rabbi Shlomo Chanoch Rabinowitz was sent a ticket to Italy by his supporters and refused: How could I leave the Jews?.
The Trisker Rebbe: I want to be part of the fate of Polish Jewry.
Rabbi Baruch Safran: All the Jews are in trouble. Heaven forbid that any individual would say, ‘I will save my own life.’ I am with them in their suffering. So long as one Jew remains in the ghetto, I will stay with him.
Rabbi Eliyahu Lifshitz: I’m not better than they.
Rabbi Chaim’l: I went at the head of my congregation in life, I will also go with them on the last journey.
The list is very long.

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An example of the good old non-helicopter parenting. A group of friends in Aushwitz, Poland - looking as if they had been digging trenches all day.
The short Polish boy, second from the left, a mill-worker's son seems quite dissatisfied with his life. And the likely reason for that is visible on the right - the two Jewish girls, barber shop owner's daughters. They were permanently attached to him as his minders, and two girls is too much for any boy.
Judging by the background the town looked like a war zone already, despite being one of the most important centers of Jewish religious life, and that was a better part of the town. Well, that was the only town the impoverished the Great Depression citizens of Auschwitz had.
At the beginning of the war both families fled to the East, later the Poles returned, the Jews continued to the Soviet occupation zone - never to be seen again.

A Jewish family on the streets of Warsaw. The father - a lawyer, mother and two daughters.

Wielikowscy1.jpg (101.49 KiB) Viewed 2208 times

Here, the daughters and their unusually young Polish tutor (visible in both pictures) on vacation in Zaleszczyki, a famous Polish spa - thanks to its beauty and its unique semi Mediterranean climate.
Later, the Soviet regime with its usual heavy handedness would destroy the beauty of that place completely.
The fate of this family is unknown.

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Ina Benita - a pre-war stage and movie star (sixteen movies in seven years) of the first magnitude, known for her beauty and sex appeal.
During the first years of the occupation she lived off her savings, later performed in racy Warsaw’s revues. There she fell in love with a Wehrmacht officer (supposedly an Austrian, Otto Haver). and moved with him to Vienna, where they were arrested after her Jewish origin had been revealed.
He was punitively sent to the Eastern Front, and disappeared there. She bore him a son in the Pawiak Gestapo prison in Warsaw.
Released from prison in 1944 Ina was staying in her friends' apartment in the center of the city. The next day the Warsaw Uprising started, and both she and her four month child were killed in the fighting.

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The Tetlings - a Jewish family in hiding in Dzierzgów, a small village in south-central Poland. Before the war the father was a lawyer in a nearby village. They were in danger on one occasion but had been warned in time.
These and other documenting the occupation photos were made by their neighbour, fourteen at that time made - he sometimes had to risk his life for them. He writes about the Jews living there:
We liked them, the Jews were always neighborly, and helpful to the poor. Before the war there was lots of poverty in villages, you couldn't find help anywhere, only from the Jews. As the saying goes: in need only a Jew will be around.
They survived, later lived in Cracow. These pictures were made in 1943 or 1944.

[Halle]

Fascinating pictures and stories , thank you wm ..

[wm]

An Israeli woman, Holocaust survival and her grandson listening to iconic Polish hits she knows from her youth in prewar Poland.

Stefan from Lublin, a circus worker/performer, later he moved to Łuck (anexed by the USSR, later in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, a place of numerous massacres committed by the Soviets, Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists).
In 1942/1943 someone informed on him, and he was executed in his own garden.
Photos preserved by a Polish family of a woman who was his friend.

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Before the war a dancer, stage and theatrical access. After, a radio announcer, poet, satirist known as the First Lady of Polish Humor. A Holocaust survivor. She lived and performed in the Warsaw Ghetto, among others in Emmerich Kálmán's The Csárdás Princess:

On the streets there were round ups for forced labor, terror, crowds and fear. If you break the curfew you will be shot. On the stage of the theater – the enchanted world. Ball gowns, frocks, music, song, dance… Grodzieńska is a slender brunette… The dusk was falling when we left the theater. There were few people and the homeless beggars on the streets, hopeless and ignorant of the German orders; cries: a shtykale broyt [a piece of bread]. And human skeletons – dead and alive – corpses covered with newspapers held down by small stones.
from Halina Birenbaum, Hope is the last to die.

After the war she (and another famous Polish Jew - Wiera Gran) was accused by Władysław Szpilman (the well know Pianist) that they were Gestapo agents, made it with the Germans.
The response of her husband Jerzy Jurandot (a Holocaust survivor himself, poet, dramatist, songwriter) was quick and brutal. He went to the radio station where Szpilman worked, asked him to come down into the lobby and bitch slapped him in front of a large group of people:

'Mr. Jurandot, what a pleasure...'
'Is it true that you are saying that I collaborated with the Gestapo?''
'Not at all!'
'Oh, yes? So this is only for my wife.'

She died in 2010, aged 95.

grodzienska i mikrofon.jpg (36.24 KiB) Viewed 2071 times

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Regina Traube and her six children (later seven) from Lublin. She frequently visited Kazimierz Dolny - a famous Jewish settlement in Poland. Their fate is unknown.
A picture sent in by the family of a woman, who was her best friend. They met in some kind of a self-help course.

Krystyna Prajs from Warsaw and her daughter who didn't want to play because he had seen the Ghetto.
They were caught in the Hotel Polski trap, and most likely executed in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Sent in by the family which gave them shelter for a few weeks.

Dawid Gold from Pińczów, 1942. Behind him the fence of the ghetto is visible. He survived.
From the collection of a local photographer.

Natan Leszczyński and Markus Leszczyński, NCOs in the Polish Army. They were killed in the 1939 invasion of Poland.

Tonia, in 1941 she was a worker in a candy factory in Będzin. Later she was sent to the local ghetto. Her fate is unknown.
She gave this picture to her work friend as a souvenir.

[michael mills]

Benita - a pre-war stage and movie star (sixteen movies in seven years) of the first magnitude, known for her beauty and sex appeal.
During the first years of the occupation she lived off her savings, later performed in racy Warsaw’s revues. There she fell in love with a Wehrmacht officer (supposedly an Austrian, Otto Haver). and moved with him to Vienna, where they were arrested after her Jewish origin had been revealed.
He was punitively sent to the Eastern Front, and disappeared there. She bore him a son in the Pawiak Gestapo prison in Warsaw.
Released from prison in 1944 Ina was staying in her friends' apartment in the center of the city. The next day the Warsaw Uprising started, and both she and her four month child were killed in the fighting.

it is interesting that that woman, although Jewish, was not killed after being arrested, but was held in prison and then released, as late as 1944.

Are there any theories on why she was not immediately killed?

[michael mills]

After the war she (and another famous Polish Jew - Wiera Gran) was accused by Władysław Szpilman (the well know Pianist) that they were Gestapo agents, made it with the Germans.
The response of her husband Jerzy Jurandot (a Holocaust survivor himself, poet, dramatist, songwriter) was quick and brutal. He went to the radio station where Szpilman worked, asked him to come down into the lobby and bitch slapped him in front of a large group of people:

What is the truth about Grodzienska? Was she in fact a Gestapo agent?

If she was not, how did she manage to survive the Warsaw Ghetto?

[wm]

No, she wasn't. Those agents usually worked outside of the Ghetto. The population inside was regarded as submissive and not dangerous, so they were left alone. And she wasn't seen outside.

She and her husband probably had savings from the pre-war times, and were members of the Ghetto top elites anyway. Her husband was the artistic director in the best theaters there: Femina and Melody Palace, and she performed in them.

As to Benita, immediate executions were for those caught outside cities, in the country, in the rural areas. In cities, especially in Warsaw they were more cautious, frequently there was an investigation first for some reason or another. Krystyna Prajs above wasn't executed immediately either.
And she was a star, those gestapo men (many of them were actually from Silesia) most likely knew her well. Even in the Third Reich the law was different for the famous, influential and rich.
What helped was she was pregnant, and luckily for her in the last days of that prison existence women with small children were set free.