Anomie - hell is other people

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Anomie is a social condition characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.

The study below was written in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. It illustrates the condition perfectly. These are small fragments from a much larger text.
Source: The Ringelblum Archive. Warsaw Ghetto, Everyday life. The Street, July 1942.

The moral decay, the amorality, and the radical blunting of people's moral sense are - aside from hunger, poverty, and death - the most elemental plagues in the ghetto. [...]
This total disregard for moral principles, even the most basic ones, manifests itself in both private and public life, in family and professional life, as well as among one's friends and people in general.

1. Theft
From a stall, from a basket, from a suitcase, from a shop window, from a cart, from a wagon, or from a box whose contents are the merchant's entire property. Those careless enough not to hold on tightly to their briefcases, bags, or baskets full of food products are bound to lose them -an adolescent beggar will rush past them, snatch the handle out of their grip using a practiced "method," and run away. If he fails he does not run away, unless the owner is an overzealous advocate of lynching. Clearly unashamed, the attacker stops and looks into the eyes of his [would-be] victim without any embarrassment, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary.

2. Fraud
Even before the war in Jewish Warsaw there were too many, far too many, swindlers, frauds, quacks, con-men, and crooks. But nowadays having such a flair is an asset that generates a fixed income. Frauds cheat in various ways. They double-deal, take advantage of people's ignorance, spread panic.
For when panic spreads among merchants they often abandon their merchandise or do not notice an act of theft. And it's a piece of pie to steal a wallet or to empty a [merchant's] pocket in the press of a crowd. Organized gangs prowl mostly near the corner of Lesson and Solna streets, near the corner of Smocza, Paula, and Dzielna streets, and on Leszno and Okopowa streets. These thieves have no qualms. The Jewish Police are no saints either, and even though the thieves steal everything from paupers, dooming them to beggary and death by starvation. [T]heir acts of fraud deprive Jews of the rest of the moral credit they still enjoy outside the ghetto [they remain unpunished]. To the outside world these louses are clear proof that Jews are thieves and frauds. Making matters worse, their number is increasing wherever people are at a work detail, nor is there any shortage of them in public institutions. Yet some cheats are more original and ingenious than others. They falsify [well-known] companies on the market, selling trash under recognized brand names. There are thousands of such cheats in every sphere, [...] they falsify coupons. Judenrat vouchers, orders.

3. Denouncing and spying
There are legions of professional snoops in every milieu. Among the young and women. [...] Among intellectuals and the proletariat. Among German, Polish, Warsaw, Łódź, and provincial Jews. Among religious Jews and the meches. This plague has penetrated all milieux. They became engaged in this disgraceful service not only for money [...], but also because of their desire for profits and their being used to light work [...] this plague is so widespread that people distrust these poorest [...] there are also amateur denunciators who denounce out of [...] out of envy, of rivalry, of anger, or out of zealousness.

4. Blackmail
Blackmailers roam about along the ghetto walls and blackmail policemen, [...]. The latter offer them bribes without a word because they know that it is better not to mess with professional blackmailers, for they never fail to carry out their threats.
Blackmailers blackmail corrupted clerks, speculators, former officers, repatriates from Russia, and anybody whom the authorities could detain for any reason whatsoever. Many of them are members of the Order Service, operating in cooperation with the Polish police. "You've come from Lvov or Vilna? Pay up, or I'll denounce you." "You haven't registered as an officer? Pay up!" "You've entered the ghetto without a pass. Pay up!" "You've listened to the bulletin."" Pay up!" And they pay, often more than once for the same offense.

5. Corruption
Corruption is equally commonplace in the ghetto and unbelievably widespread, simply ubiquitous in all spheres of public life. Cash will buy you a Kennkarte, a Meldekarte, and an Arbeitskarte. You can buy a job and a "badge" in the police force, a position in the Judenrat, a work record, an assignment of housing, an allotment of wood, of food, along with an exemption from a camp list. A bribe will reduce your fee, tribute, or contribution. It will get you released from prison or jail. It will discontinue an investigation. It will guarantee that you do not end up in a camp as a result of a round-up. It will guarantee that they neither requisition your flat, nor delouse it, nor close the gate, nor detain you due to an unpaid contribution, tribute, or fee. This plague has mostly hit the poor - just like everything in the ghetto, for that matter. Those without money end up in camps or have to perform forced labor, leave their flat, pay.

6. Moral shamelessness
Moral shamelessness is visible and reigning supreme on the street. Beggars and paupers relieve themselves on the street: if not on Leszno Street, then on Orla Street, if not on Karmelicka Street, then in the alleys. You often see women, young or old, spread their legs, lift their skirt, and relieve themselves, shamelessly looking into the eyes of embarrassed pedestrians. Children do it very often and in a cynical way, provided that children can be cynical at all. The sight of the naked intimate body parts of beggars is commonplace too. And this exhibitionism is not accidental, because they take delight in displaying all their wounds, ulcerations, and swollen body parts.

There is no chance either that denunciators, cheats, frauds, blackmailers, traitors, speculators, spies, and profiteers'. will be embarrassed about their stench. Nowadays, nobody bothers with such luxuries as conscience, qualms, compassion, helpfulness, or kindness. You will not see any of these on the street, [...] absolutely nowhere. The war, hunger, poverty, captivity, and the ghetto have completely eradicated any customary morality.

7. Taking the law into one's own hands
Admittedly, this form of punishment is commonplace, yet at the same time it is very fluid and elusive. The police cannot and will not eradicate the common plagues, for they would have to turn half of the buildings into jails and prisons.

8. Extreme social or caste conceit
The thing is, above all, that society has split into a few dozen castes, and that if people do help one another then they do so only within the same caste. Hence, the name of the plague: caste conceit. You ignore the fact that others die of starvation, suffer from edema, or rot in prison. They are not "from your caste." Solidarity - if it still exists, then is only within your caste.

You take pity only on those closest to you - people from your family, world, or milieu. The attitude towards more distant people, strangers is usually indifferent, contemptuous, and numb. Solidarity, altruism, humanitarism, and philanthropy are obsolete terms, anachronisms, for the inhabitant of the ghetto. l am talking about the masses, because individuals do not set the tone of the street. And the street does not show such feelings at all. The phenomenon is completely plain, explicit, and striking.
You walk indifferently past the corpse of a baby, of an old man, or of a youth because it is none of your business. But when "one of your people" is caught in a round-up and is about to be sent to a camp, then "your people" immediately do everything to get him out. But nobody cares about strangers.
When the terror [...] led to the execution of one hundred Jews in the prison on Gesia Street, at the very last moment the Judenrat and the police got "their people" out - the "superior" from a more prosperous "caste."

9. Beggary
They are ready to sell their soul for the tiniest piece of bread because they have nothing to lose anyway. [...] These former human beings cannot be treated as normal social entities of whom you would expect a certain responsibility towards other people. Others have no responsibilities towards them. They separate themselves from beggars. They reject and scorn them. Consequently, the only human element left in the beggar is a simple animal craving for food. Everything else has died in him. He is "beyond good and evil." He is morally, emotionally, culturally, and socially blind. He cannot even afford a gesture of gratefulness towards the occasional hand that feeds him.

10. The complete disappearance of good manners
The street displays this the most vividly in every minor, trivial incident in our everyday co-existence and our mutual relations when we face the bleak, dismal horror of everyday life. [...]
And even if you break free from these problems and you can chase away these macabre spectres for a moment, you still have to contend with the unruliness, numbness, brutality, egoism, unkindness, dis-obligingness, hooliganism, and ruthlessness - all the time, every minute, and at every step.
Even if you avoid theft and other plagues on the street, you will not be able to walk the street in peace. Virtually anything can trigger an argument, cursing, abuse, insults, or violence. If you accidentally bump into somebody, and that often happens in a crowd, the person will immediately hurl threatening insults, affronts, and curses at you.

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The orginal document, two first pages:

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The other side, mostly Poles and Volksdeutsche.
Source:
The Ringelblum Archive. Warsaw Ghetto, Polish-Jewish relations, after February 1942

It is the officials who are by far the worst. Police officers, tax inspectors, prison wardens, officials working for power stations, gas works, the city, trams, and everyone else - they are a problem, a real plague.

They all have bottomless pockets, terrible appetites, and they turn to blackmail at every opportunity, force bribes, take the last penny out of peoples' purses. For just about anything, at just about any opportunity, they make you buy yourself out, otherwise they threaten with denunciation, protocol, arrest, court, or prison, for if a Jew stands accused, he must be convicted.

A tax official enters a shop, striking men and women in the face. If they resist, he reports them. A large bribe helps; you have to pay for getting beaten, if the beating is to be all you get. An official enters a flat and since he had to knock as many as 5 times before the door was opened, instead of with a "hello" he greets the lady of the house hitting her once in the face, hard, drawing blood. Another tax official comes into a flat of a tenant who has not paid on time and declares that he actually has the right to beat the Jew for it, but, feeling generous for the time being, he won't.

Officials and officers from the power plant, telephone company, gas works, water sewage systems, etc. simply shut off their respective utilities periodically, take their toll, and then turn them back on. And if they run out of money or have a fancy some vodka, a few days later they return and once again shut off the utilities. Or perhaps they send a colleague for decency's sake, who declares that he does not care what his predecessor did, that there is a defect, that this and that, and that it is going to cost this much. Any discussion, persuasion, or exposure is pointless, because it offends an officer [on] duty, because it is a bribery attempt, insult, attempted battery, etc. Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents, but rather routine a suffering, and everyone in the ghetto has experienced this.

There is no point even mentioning that the Jews meet with offense under any pretext, are rudely addressed, insulted, and treated like dirt. Jews are already accustomed to this, so saying: "Pay, you stinking Jew, or don't bother us" has no impact on the course of business. The worst are police officers, who, at every opportunity, mercilessly and ruthlessly rob people of their last penny.

Despite everything else, we have never known such demoralization. They beat [Jews] whenever they get a chance, with club, a fist, foot, they spit, insult and, without any scruples, inform about fabricated crimes of Jews who do not want or cannot pay a bribe. It is pointless to write about their exploits because it is also a well-known phenomenon. They are hated among the Poles as well.

They are recruited either from former policemen, informers, and spies, or from the half-Poles from the Poznan region. Therefore, it is neither the place nor the time to write about their methods, because it would not - to be honest - shed any light on Polish-Jewish relations, since Polish society also rejects them. It has to be said, though, that they are doing excellent business everyday along the walls, smuggling in partnership with Jewish policemen.

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Ghetto elites and their favourite café - Sztuka.
The Ringelblum Archive. Warsaw Ghetto, A study of kawiarnie [Cafés], no date.

Converts, educated bourgeois, and the ghetto "elite" call the tune here. Proud that they had been rich before the war, they look with contempt on the nouveau-riche profiteers.
"The people by the window had bogus bills in our bank and they did not buy them up. They were suspected of malicious bankruptcy and would have ended up in prison had it not been for the war ..." a university-educated waitress informs me with contempt.
The atmosphere of snobbery, aristocratic affectation, vanity, and fake elegance floods the room. Most clients are pre-war frequenters of the IPS, Ziemianska, Zodiak, SiM, and Europa cafés.
They keep up their spirits. They do not mingle with "commoners."

You will hear neither spoken Yiddish nor any Yiddish songs here. Their mugs show that they are particularly discontented because they have to mingle with the ghetto masses.
They want nothing to do with Jewry. Why, they never miss Sunday mass. They hate the street and being equated with the "lousy yids" with whom they have to share their fate.
Their yearnings become apparent in Sztuka. Its converted co-owner, Mrs Czarnecka, whose husband works for the Judenrat, walks proudly among the tables, making sure everything is in order. She watches over her sheep. Mrs [...] manages the cafe like an ambassador's wife supervises her parties even though the [average] check is 11 zlotys.
The waitresses are educated ladies "of quality," adequately clumsy and with adequate chutzpah. They reluctantly serve the customers and make too many mistakes on the cheques.
But the aristocracy went through a bad time some time ago in France and not so long ago in Russia, too. So their martyrdom is also sacred. Hence their sweetly suffering superior smile.

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The café. Photographs by Ludwig Knobloch. May 1941.

Its advertising leaflet promising sun, greenness, space, and air.

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from:Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście by Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak

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Splendid café.
The Ringelblum Archive. Warsaw Ghetto, A study of kawiarnie [Cafés], no date.

Gold is playing with the best jazz orchestra of the ghetto and Kagan is on the piano. Their playing is excellent, rhythmic, and breath-taking. The biggest hits of the pre-war dance floors and a few Yiddish folk songs. The atmosphere in this basement is overly erotic. [...] the melodies, the lyrics, and the dance rhythm of the songs performed by Grodzienska - during the day everything revolves around one topic. Obviously, this is the only entirely safe topic (provided that you do not offend public morals). Consequently, the most eagerly copied lyrics are those with erotic allusions.
The Negro rhythm of the wild and untamed jazz orchestra is nevertheless dissonant. It grates against the background of the slow, monotonous, and complete bleakness of everyday life. And it is shocking and creates an unnatural, sick atmosphere. It seems unreal, out of this world. This contrast is too brutal. Who needs this much obvious eroticism? As if nowadays such thoughts could indeed occupy our tormented consciousness to such an extent. But the audience gives in, bends to the rhythm, and lets itself be seduced.

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The Sztuka café again, this time without blackout and in daylight. The leaflet promised space and air, here there are. Prewar pictures from National Digital Archives.

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The conclusion of "A Study of Cafés":

What is the reaction of the street, the masses, the people? For let us be magnanimous and not mention the authorities. Nobody has vandalised any of the establishments yet. However, everybody - a beggar, poor man, pauper, and child grates their teeth when the bourgeois, having gorged themselves and spent several dozen zlotys, dare say to a beggar that they have no change or cannot spare any money, or that [beggars] should not stink up the street, etc.
But let us be honest! Such cafés exist and they have a right to exist. But this is already too much of a justification. For if the rich exist, they need to have their cafés. For if they have nowhere to go, such establishments are necessary. For if there is such general and shameless public corruption, such establishments must exist, and they are just a natural consequence of the general situation. [...]

the existence of such establishments - aside from Arizona and the quasi-brothels is not a bad thing itself. The point is that such establishments should exist not only for feasting and drinking, not only for snobs and idlers, not only for smugglers and speculators, but also for workingmen, for clerks, for employed intelligentsia, and for the proletariat. Their luxuriousness and high prices, their atmosphere and their catering of the riff-raff, make these establishments unavailable to the [social] strata listed above.

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I'd like to stress here that for everyone interested in the occupation, or the Warsaw Ghetto the Ringelblum Archive is simply mandatory, writing an article or a book without consulting it first is pointless. It can be bought relatively cheaply, considering the resources needed to decipher and transcribe it, from the bookstore of The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

Today, it's lynching, the story of Frania S., age twelve.
The Ringelblum Archive, Images from the Ghetto, no date.

It is a lucky day for a close acquaintance of mine, Frania S., age twelve. Her mommy has given her one zloty. She has been roaming about Leszno Street for two hours. She presses her nose to each grocery window. She can not decide what to buy. Some sweets, a pastry, or a roll? Finally, she makes up her mind and resolutely walks into the grocery to buy a sweet butter roll. She has made this resolute decision because such a roll is both sweet and big.
Hungry and tired, Frania greedily takes a bite on her way out. Suddenly, a starving adolescent scruff and beggar, the ghost of a lad, greedily and brutally snatches the roll that Frania has barely bitten into.

He immediately devours it, oblivious to the crowd gathering around him and hitting him with fists and walking canes. He just covers his mouth as if scared that somebody would snatch the roll from his mouth or his greedy, ever hungry stomach. He collapses onto the ground. They hit him from all sides. The boy's face is covered in blood, but he neither whimpers nor screams out in pain. Silently and without a fight, he gives in to the vengeful blows dealt by angry pedestrians, who instinctively and spontaneously punish the ragged, emaciated, homeless, and starving boy.

Dissolved in tears, Frania looks fearfully at this everyday and common-place street scene. She is not mourning the loss of her roll. She has already forgotten her dreams even though the sweet aftertaste of the saccharine roll still mingles with her bitter tears. No, she is not lamenting over the roll at all.
But the boy who wronged her even though she did not recognize him right away is her former prewar acquaintance and neighbour from Nowolipki Street. She clearly remembers his beautiful big eyes, his gentle smile, and his melodious voice, which had always fascinated her.
He was beautiful, had good grades at school, and always impressed her with everything. Yes, it is Josek Kapusta her biggest crush, whom she has never forgotten. And now he is lying miserable on the ground, having been kicked, trampled, and spat upon, abused, cursed, and insulted. With his dirty, horribly skinny naked body peeping out from his rags, and with his face deformed by hunger, freezing cold, pain, blood, dirt, and dull resignation, he looks more like a dog beaten up for disobedience than that proud, clean, handsome Josek Kapusta whom she had often dreamed about. Only these big, seemingly surprised eyes remind her of that former lad, her former friend. Everything else is alien to her. Even though just 2 years older, Josek is a grown man, almost an old man. There is nothing of the child in him now.
He jumped from angelic, idyllic childhood straight into a time of manhood, a time of defeat." Indeed, this is not a man but an animal, responsive only to its most basic instincts.

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The story, part 2:

The Jewish street witnesses such scenes several dozen times a day. This phenomenon reveals three highly important and very painful wounds [inflicted on] society: the demoralisation of children and the young; their sentencing to the torture of slow death by starvation or to freezing cold on the street; and finally the plague of street lynching. Each of these phenomena is a painful social problem unto itself. Combined, however, they make up a catastrophe, unpredictable in its consequences and difficult to recover from. These three phenomena are strongly interconnected. Hunger sentences the young to the torture of disease and death. It also warps and damages their basic moral instincts. A starving man does not know feelings other than the yearning to satisfy his hunger. The more hungry he becomes, the weaker his will and the looser his moral brakes. The hunger in the ghetto is horrible, hence the horrible demoralisation. [...]

But is it difficult to find justification for our police force, which as a rule settles all criminal cases solely through bribery. Thieves and conmen are officially requested to pay ransom under threat of being handed over to the Polish police or to the Gestapo. You can count neither on justice, nor on courts, nor on the "order service" to actually keep order, nor on the public organs' protection of private property. What can one do? Where ransom or bribe will not do, there the sad, macabre, bloody act of lynching takes place to provide satisfaction from vengeance and to satisfy people's sense of justice. Our police walk indifferently past such scenes as they will not extort anything from a beggar. So why would they trouble themselves to take him to the police station?

The best guess is the story was written in March 1942.
The first page:

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"sentencing to the torture of slow death by starvation or to freezing cold on the street"
from Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto by Emmanuel Ringelblum,‎ Jacob Sloan:

Mid-November, 1941. The first frosts have already appeared, and the populace is trembling at the prospect of cold weather. The most fearful sight is that of freezing children. Little children with bare feet, bare knees, and torn clothing, stand dumbly in the street weeping. Tonight, the 14th [of November], I heard a tot of three or four yammering. The child will probably be found frozen to death tomorrow morning, a few hours off. Early October, when the first snows fell, some seventy children were found frozen to death on the steps of ruined houses. Frozen children are becoming a general phenomenon.

The police are supposed to open a special institution for street children at 20 Nowolipie Street; meanwhile, children's bodies and crying serve as a persistent background for the Ghetto.
People cover the dead bodies of frozen children with the handsome posters designed for Children's Month, bearing the legend, "Our Children, Our Children Must Live - A Child Is the Holiest Thing." That's how people express their protest against the failure of CENTOS [the Children's Aid Society] to collect these children in a center and save them from certain death in the street.
Especially when it is known that CENTOS has collected almost a million zlotys from taxes (postal payments, bread ration cards, etc.). Children's Month is a grand success - posters (every two or three days a new one), a fortune expended in money, well-attended concerts and affairs. But it did not make an impression on the large part of Jewish society. [...]

Another ostentatious feature of the operation was the disgraceful subservience to the big money givers, to people like the president of the Jewish Council, who was crowned First Citizen of the Jewish Quarter by Dr. Wielikowski at the opening meeting. To crow such an incompetent as Czerniakow first citizen publicly requires vast courage and subservience. The same ceremony was performed at other occasions, all to find favor in the eyes of the Council president.

22/December, 1941. A terrifying, simply monstrous impression is made...[by] the wailing of children who...beg for alms, or whine that they have nowhere to sleep.
At the corner of Leszno and Karmelicka Streets, children weep bitterly at night. Although I hear this weeping every night, I cannot fall asleep until late. The couple of groschen I give them nightly cannot ease my conscience.

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Deportees.
The Ringelblum Archive, written in February 1941.

Jews from Polish cities, towns, and villages arrive day and night by train, wagon, or bus. Behind them—the homes they built over long years sparing no effort. Before them - hunger, poverty, and unemployment. The quarantine is the threshold to a new life. The large classrooms of the elementary school are grey from dirt, dust, and human odours. Dirty and hungry after their trip, they arrive and receive a mug of coffee and bread, if there is any. This is where you can see our collective misery.

This is the reason for the despair, complaints, and helplessness, which we can do nothing about. Everybody is scared. Nobody knows what to do. They are trying everything to end this nightmare. Obviously, some of them know how to profit from any human tragedy. They extort money from deportees, promising exemption from showering or from the disinfection of their belongings. Ignorance and fraud are dancing, holding hands on this infinity of human misery.
The ones sent for quarantine arrive by freight train; that is, they are the most unfortunate ones, who either did not manage to leave in time or had no money to travel individually. They are poor. All they have is a few dozen, perhaps just one dozen zlotys. The [thin] envelopes where we put their deposits prove how sorry their situation is. Legions of beggars flock into Jewish Warsaw. Even if they are not beggars now, they will be in a week.
Often only a small portion of one's salvaged property is returned to its [rightful] owner.

The activity of the Jewish Order Service is another saddening chapter. According to deportees and reports (I know that two have been filed), some [deportees] were robbed by [Jewish] policemen.
A policeman approaches a woman and takes her bundle, promising to bring it to the designated place. He then leaves with her bundle, and thus the poor woman loses everything she had managed to salvage from her home. A wagon from Łowicz was robbed by policeman because the refugees failed to pay a ransom. The individual melts away in this enormous human mass. You cannot make out individual faces in this crowd. But everybody has their own problems and complaints. Everybody has a request, one which unfortunately can-not be met. Everybody is hungry and begging for bread. Mothers ask for food for their children and for milk or sweetened water for their babies. We often have neither bread, nor milk, nor sugar.

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The Ringelblum Archive, Volume One, Warszawa 2017
The Jewish Order Service
Modern Tales by Hoffman. Stories about the Bribe Service, otherwise known as the Order Service.
After 5 August 1941.

[...]This is the time when smuggling flourished, when the district was surrounded by a wall and communication with the other side became impossible. The wealthy began to stock up, buying everything at any price. No wonder that prices went up every hour. Smugglers had no time to count their profits; they simply had no idea what to do with all that money. Top figures from the Order Service Command could not stand it; they could not watch such "social injustice" with indifference: after all, they were also directly harmed, for none other than the Order Service helped to hide the smuggling. Thus, conferences and haggling commenced, which were to determine once and for all the amount of the Order Service's share in the profits of smugglers. The negotiations were long and tedious, because smugglers, agreeing in principle with the position of the Order Service, demanded however that the latter's involvement not be limited to turning a blind eye to smuggling; they expected active cooperation. Above all, the Order Service was to take care of the wachas. Finally, an agreement was reached and a pact was signed.

It happened on the day when the Order Service ordered the first round-up of Jews for concentration camps. And so, on that first fateful night, when the Order Service was diligently rounding up the old and the young, the healthy and the sick (mostly the sick, obviously, because the healthy usually presented the relevant notes of the Issuing Bank) in the streets and houses, at the same time, to commemorate the agreement between the Order Service and the smugglers, a great feast was held at Twarda Street 15, with the high Command of the Order Service and their lady companions in attendance, as well as the most outstanding profiteers led by King Szram, using the diplomatic protocol forms (one by one). The feast with expensive liquor, exquisite food, toasts, etc., etc. lasted until the next morning, and after the party was over, senior officers of the Order Service went to Leszno Street 84 to check what kind of harvest the night had yielded.

One thing spoiled their fun slightly: in the morning, a German patrol stopped the cavalcade of rickshaws led by a slightly inebriated Colonel Szeryński accompanied by a lady friend. The colonel explained that he was returning from inspecting the camp operation. The above official ball notwithstanding, there was yet another private party held that night at a certain Mr Lederman's place at Sienna Street 43. This party lasted for two days. In terms of the amount of alcohol imbibed, the private ball surpassed the official one. Employees of the Labour Department at "Collegium" openly expressed their surprise that so many intoxicated Order Service officers had been unleashed into the city. Thus, the Order Service Command celebrated this double occasion: their lucrative agreement with profiteers and smugglers, and their first major police operation - capturing people for the camps.[...]

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The Ringelblum Archive, Volume One, Warszawa 2017
The "Thirteen"
The coronation of young Gancwajch recounted by an eyewitness of the formal ceremony taking place in the "Nowy Azazel" Theatre on 2 June 1941.

On the first day of Shavuot, in the "Nowy Azazel" Theatre, a matinee performance was held, bought by the "Thirteen." Not expecting anything bad, and with a free ticket in my hand, I went there. Here is what I saw:
12 o'clock. The theatre half-filled with civilians. Hubbub, bustling - and waiting. I hear voices: "Our boys are coming any minute now!" Indeed, reasonably on time, hundreds of feet can be heard stomping without any rhythm. From behind the door, the "Thirteen" emerges in battle formation. Leading them is a fat blond, very popular on the streets of Warsaw. Behind him, four abreast, are "the boys." In a shy voice, the blond gives a timid request-command, "Attention!" The stomping grows louder and more irregular. It's a parade. It is received by the editor and the commander. People in the courtyard offer "the boys" faint applause. "The boys" flock onto the balcony. [...] goes to the auditorium. In the VIP box, the editor, the commander, "Thirteen" officers, Mrs Gancwajch, and the heir to the throne. Everyone gets quiet. The performance begins. The first part is a revue show. Nothing of interest. Curtain. Intermission. The curtain opens for a second time. The audience watches a spectacle worthy of the gods. A table with 25 chairs behind it - a presiding board. Of course - the Editor, the heir to the throne, and Her Majesty in the middle. To the right and left of them are the leading figures of the "Thirteen" [...]

Of course, photographs were taken of the presiding board and guests. Finally, the following events unfold as the amazed audience watches: The prince confidently approaches the table and delivers a drasha in the language of his forefathers. He guarantees that he is going to be a good Jew and - he adds hesitantly - a good man. He pronounces that he is aware of his rights and responsibilities. He declares, states, promises, informs, reveals, and announces - that this and that, and he knows, and understands, and sees and appreciates, that he realizes, will try, etc. All those present are listening to the thirteen-year-old's speech with rapt attention, all of them are from the "Thirteen", after all. When he concludes his oration, he is awarded with a loud applause. [...]

When he is finished, an officer gets up. He recalls the heroic days of the editor's pioneering work in the Jewish streets, when he was alone, misunderstood, opposed, nay! - slandered! in an abominable way. He describes how the editor, with his good will - only! - and willpower - only! - overcame the resistance, and established "an Office, which is different from other institutions of the Jewish quarter in that it is," ... that "it stops certain things—and pushes forward other ones," ... that "it does, works, forms." All this the editor did out of the goodness of his heart, good intentions, his own will, or steadfast willpower. Thus, "young Sam, be a good Jew and follow in your father's footsteps". Kisses, hugs, greetings. The commander gets up. Five minutes of spontaneous ovation for the hero. Cheers: Long live the Commander! Long live the "Thirteen"! "I'm sorry, I'm no speaker. May you be, Sam, a good Jew and a good man, [...] our ranks. I am appointing you the section head at the Office to Combat Usury." Long, continuous applause. The boy stands to attention, acting as an authentic Prince of Wales. The commander sits down. Mr Bialek declares, citing numerous examples from the Bible and Jewish history that ... this is a double celebration: national and national. National I - since it is Shavuot, National II - as it is the confirmation of Gancwajch junior. "Of course - the speaker says - we never lose hope that one day we will yet be happy." [...]
When the last of the 25 speakers concluded his arguments, it was time for the exposé - as Gancwajch called his speech - of the editor. "It is too difficult to bear as much praise as I have heard here—says the editor—on one's own feeble shoulders. [...]

The speaker stops talking. 'There comes a storm of applause and cheers of "Long live the 'Thirteen'!", "Long live Gancwajch!" "We have - the speaker continues - chosen the colour green, the colour of hope."' Because we still believe that, one way or another, the dawn of freedom will come for us, that we will one day as free men plough the land imbued with the blood and sweat of our forefathers. One day, years from now, when we, gathered here, think back to our work here in the "Thirteen", we will remember it fondly for sure. The "Thirteen"—we will remember—was one of the very few shining beacons on the Jewish street during the current war.[...]

Another nice gentleman presents his argument in a different way. Shavuot - the feast of the bestowal of the Torah, Abraham—the forefather of the Jewish people, Samuel - a great Prophet of this people. And the speaker draws analogies to the present day. Forefather Abram - Abram Gancwajch, the gift of the Torah—the gift of the "Thirteen", prophet Samuel - Samuel the son! It was hysterically amusing, but it would not do to laugh, because the entire "thirteenth" milieu was listening to these elucidations in rapturous delight, as well as to other ones along similar glorious lines. [...]

A disabled war veteran declares, "I'm going to speak briefly, like a soldier. One day, after the war, perhaps we will be able to reveal how much your great father did for us, war invalids. For now, just know that you are the son of a great man." Incidentally, the last sentence regarding the greatness of the editor was repeated by all consecutive speakers in different ways.

[wm]

Today’s Face of the Rural Areas by Zofia Kossak, from Today's Face of the Rural Areas. A Reportage (Warsaw: Front Odrodzenia Polski, 1942), published in Inferno of Choices, Poles and the Holocaust (Warsaw, 2012).

[...] The general atmosphere prevailing among the rural populace is that of waiting. Waiting for what? For a breakthrough. For the Germans’ defeat followed by the day of reckoning when enemies are paid in kind and the wrongs suffered are put to right. For a moment “to let rip.” The rural populace are still unclear about how they will “let rip.” Depending on local circumstances, a sudden discharge of tension could be directed against the Germans, Volksdeutsche, displaced persons, Jews, the manor people, the mill owner, the sawmill owner, the innkeeper, the shopkeeper. This tension could oscillate in any direction. Still, the dreams of this day invariably include the notion of someone’s Liquidation.
The extreme-right and extreme-left elements are aware of this mood’s simmering in the country side. They both count on harnessing this “desire to let rip” for their own ends.
What are the rural areas’ principal ailments of this moment?
1. Schools. 2. Displaced persons. 3. Delation. 4. Poverty [...]

2. Displaced persons
In the first year of occupation the coexistence of locals and displaced persons was bearable, but of late it has deteriorated considerably. This is due to mental changes on both sides. The displaced were coping well for some time. They believed they would go back home and they were living with this hope. Yet as this conflict is drawing on – simple people have a short imagination span. Gradually, the displaced have come to yearn for stabilisation and take a present-day rather than pre-war view of life. At first, their humiliation and poverty did not depress their morale, for they were still feeling the old way. It seemed to them that, regardless their present destitution, they were commonly recognised as yesterday’s and tomorrow’s people of means. Now they have forgotten that things used to be different.
This has aggravated their anguish and their desire to do better for themselves here and now. In 1940 they would invite their hosts, on every occasion, to visit them “the next Christmas,” “the next Green Holiday” [the Pentecost], “on our patron saint’s fiesta in September.” “You’ll see, we’ll do you proud,”
they declared. By 1942 they had stopped extending invitations and they no longer mentioned their homes and farms. Instead, they have taken advantage of their knowledge of the German language and they have gone to serve... the occupying enemy. They have filled, in droves, junior positions with the local commune administration, as well as janitor and watchman jobs.
They no longer feel like beggars – not now that they have got ahead of the locals. They have come to be looked at with awe as important people who can help, or do harm.
The locals’ feelings have evolved along much the same line.
Initially, the newcomers had been regarded as victims of the war, a terrifying evidence of what war could do. They had been given a humane welcome prompted by the feeling of solidarity.
“It’s you today, it could be ourselves tomorrow...” Thereafter, the displaced were regarded as an interim phase – tiresome, costly, but not here for long. “The war will be over, they will go their own way...” However, in this third year of war this reasoning no longer applies. The arrival of the newcomers seems to have happened so long ago that their departure appears unlikely.
They have taken roots. They have come to feel at home. They have become a permanent element – competitive and taking space. The locals recognize – whether they like it or not – that the displaced are here to stay even after the war has ended, to be permanently in the way. As if this was not enough, they are at the German’s beck and call. Anxious to keep their jobs, they are “getting under the skin” of their kind-hearted hosts who once took them in. With each side reasoning this way, it is not at all surprising that the outcome is a mutual dislike that often evolves into hatred... This war has lasted too long.

3. Delation
[This is] a pestilence, disgrace, plague, curse, it renders independence work in the rural areas impossible. The same peasant woman or man who would tear a German limb from limb with their own hands will run to him bearing tales against a neighbour, teacher, priest, village chief... There is no moderation or limit to denunciating. Information laid about buried weapons, about reading an underground paper, illegal slaughter of a pig, illegal grinding of grain, theft of a tree, disrespectful remark about the Germans, somebody’s presumed membership in an underground organisation – mounds of such files accumulate on Gestapo desks. The Germans display these files without concealing their contempt: “We cannot possibly deal with all this. We handpick the choicest ones...”
What is the cause of this psychosis (for there is hardly another name for these symptoms)? It is difficult to say. Presumably, a bit of everything: the village class antagonisms referred to earlier, common envy, insensitive stupidity, a desire to appear important and, last but not least, anxiety about one’s own
security.[...]

4. Poverty
The urban population is firmly convinced that the peasants have enriched themselves fabulously during this war. Stories are circulating about grand pianos bought and trimmed to fit into peasant cottages, or of other luxury goods. Perhaps isolated cases like this did indeed happen somewhere, but on the
whole it’s high time to do away with such fairy tales. The countryside has been destroyed, like most of Poland. The countryside has become poorer, not richer. It is not the peasants who have become rich, but the smugglers and the middlemen. The peasants are milked dry by the occupying force, groaning under the compulsory delivery quotas for grain, potatoes, labour, eggs, milk, butter, fruits. No product is quota-exempt. Besides in-kind dues, there is the excessive burden of mandatory work paid for at pre-war rates, which are laughable compared with today’s price of nails or horse shoes.
The peasant has reduced his needs to a minimum, but from time to time he simply must shoe his horse, buy some kerosene, and have his boots soled or patched. Where is he to get the money for this? At the same time he knows that the “townspeople” regard him as a rich man, a “profiteering yokel” – and this fills him with bitterness.
Rather than die out amidst the universal poverty, the old antagonisms between the burghers and the peasants are growing and gaining intensity.[...]

We have already said while addressing the displaced persons’ issue that this war has been going on too long. This can be restated in connection with the Jewish issue – with the mental attitudes towards it. Initially, the peasants’ behaviour in the face of violence committed by the Germans on the Jews was human, logical and understandable. It was reflected in filling hastily the jobs and posts vacated by Jews, in educating young people in the crafts which had previously been the Jews’ exclusive domain, such as hat making or tailoring, but it also included highly Christian help for starved refugees from ghettos. “Sweet Lord Jesus! Them’s God’s creatures too,” exclaimed peasant women as they pressed a chunk of bread or some cereal into a skeleton-thin beggar’s hand. This was how things were in 1941.
By now German bestialities have dulled the peasants’ sensitivity, undermining their certainty of judgment.
No lighting strikes from the heaven to kill the murderers of children; blood does not call for revenge. Perhaps it is true, then, that the Jew is a cursed creature a crime against which goes unpunished? Regrettably, because of this belief there have been more and more cases of peasants’ active participation in the Germans’ campaign of extermination. This is a very dangerous precedent.