Resistance (15 page)

Even at the height of Germany's military success, few Jews doubted that eventually the Nazis would be defeated. Jewish existence depended on this inner conviction. The ghetto's inhabitants believed deeply that a concept based on hatred, evil, and utter brutality could not dominate the world forever. Yet it was clear to the Jews that many would be sacrificed to the enemy. But they did not know the extent of that sacrifice, foretold in a statement by Frank on August 24, 1942:

 

Concerning the tact that we are discussing, the death of 1.2. million Jews by starvation [in the General Government], there is no need to talk over any further. This is clear and if these Jews will not die by starvation, we shall have to speed up additional anti-Jewish decrees, and hope that this will actually happen.

 

In early August 1941, Frank alluded to the anticipated disappearance of Jews: "Shortly there would be no need to feed them at all, except for the 300,000 who were useful workers." One can assume that Frank was already aware of the planned annihilation of the Jews, which had begun weeks earlier in the German-controlled territories of the Soviet Union, and that he was revealing information that he had learned directly from the Führer. Until then, Frank and Fischer had spoken of the need to provide the Jews with a minimum of food and other basic necessities in order to exploit their working capacity. Similar statements were forthcoming from members of the police and the higher echelons of the local SS. Bruno Streckenbach, commander of the Security Police in the General Government, claimed in May 1940 that "the number of Jews in the General Government was likely to increase, and that it was impossible to starve them all in the long run." At that stage, the Nazis tended to provide workers with only the most essential necessities and ignore the fact that the fare allotted to nonworking Jews actually condemned them to death. From data acquired from a Polish underground source, the daily allocation of food to the various ethnic groups in 1941 assumed the following proportions: Germans, 2,613 calories; Poles, 669; Jews, 184. The same data also reveal the prices charged each group per caloric value. The Germans paid 0.3 zloty per calorie; the Poles, 2.6 zloty; and the Jews, 5.6 zloty for the same food value. Thus, even survival at a subsistence level was expensive for ghetto Jews. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that anxiety over the acquisition of food took priority over all other concerns for the ghetto inhabitants. Yet even the minute quantities and the excessive prices do not adequately reflect the severity of the situation. Outside the ghetto, an open market offered basic foods, which, though expensive—the price of food in May 1940 was ten times greater than it was before the war—was nonetheless available. Food did not enter the ghetto by ordinary, legal means. What did reach ghetto residents distributed by the Judenrat was damaged and overpriced.

Work permitted one to obtain various kinds of food, but only a very small amount of simple foodstuffs—bread and potatoes. Families suffering from constant hunger gave up the food cards that allowed them some jam, sugar, and, at times, a tiny ration of meat in order to get more potatoes and bread.

Journalists, teachers, and other professionals had to find new careers, trying their luck, for example, at selling haberdashery on street corners. The Jewish community could be divided into three categories, according to their financial resources. According to one chronicler of the ghetto, some twenty thousand formed an elite, with money and valuable possessions that could be turned into money. In their homes, one could still find enough food on the table and more stored for future use. Such people were affluent before the war; others accumulated money by large-scale smuggling of goods into the ghetto. Still others owned enterprises that continued to operate in the ghetto, both legally and illegally, and were partners to all sorts of secret dealings with the Germans and the Poles. Ghetto wheeler-dealers, who had reached this status only during their stay in the ghetto, overindulged in a life of enjoyment and excess in a devil-may-care atmosphere of "eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

Most of these families lived in comparatively spacious apartments in Chlodna Street. They wore clean clothes and were conscious of their appearance. They frequented a number of cafés, restaurants, and clubs in the ghetto. The striking gap between those who were more than sated, clean, and well dressed and those who lacked everything and went hungry was an element of ghetto reality. Two or three times a week, a newspaper called
The Jewish Paper (Gazeta Zydowska)
appeared in Polish in Cracow, addressed to the Jews of the General Government. This publication contained official announcements and cynical propaganda that the authorities wished to spread among the Jews. On the last page were advertisements for restaurants and amusement halls, while alongside these announcements, in smaller lettering, appeared the numbers of those who had died of hunger during that week. In similiar proximity, families lay near the entrances to these places of amusement, huddled together to ward off the cold, awaiting the tossing of a coin in their direction from passersby on their way to a café.

Alongside the well fed, who amounted to a small percent of the population, there were some 100,000 "in-betweens," including people who had retained some of their possessions, or who had some form of temporary work, maintained their own apartments, and had limited quantities of basic foods. The status of these "in-betweens" was measured in time. Some could hold their heads above water for many months, but eventually their possessions would dwindle and they would deteriorate to the status of the hungry masses.

The ravenous multitude numbered more than 200,000. For them, each day was a battle for a crust of bread. Every month, thousands lost their hope and strength in the struggle to survive. In appearance, they resembled human skeletons, with bones protruding in their gray and sunken faces. Spiritually, they were dead; their eyes had lost all expression or contact with reality. They were the living dead, indifferent to everything and succumbing to their fate. Many of them would sit or lie down, crowded and wrapped in rags, a silent protest against their Creator and Creation. Passersby turned away at the sight of these lost Jews because they could do nothing to help them. They may also have sensed that someday in the not so distant future they too might be in this hopeless situation. The German authorities did not consider helping them in any way but demanded that sidewalks be cleared of corpses lest they be disturbed by the sight. Actually, not a few German soldiers who visited the Jewish ghetto gazed at the bodies strewn about and viewed the horrors of the city gradually sinking into lifelessness and insensibility.

At first, the hungry and freezing cried out for help from their fellow human beings, but as their strength gave out and the uselessness of their pleas became evident, their voices slowly weakened until there was utter silence. The children were the last to quiet down, and the penetrating bitter weeping of babies and infants was like an innocent voice of accusation against the wicked and evil world. Ringelblum despairingly described his insomnia and the deafening crying of children which he could not shake.

The corpses that had been shorn of their remaining clothing were covered with paper. At dawn, the dead were loaded on wagons that brought them to mass graves on the outskirts of the large Jewish cemetery. These Jews had not only been deprived of their right to live as human beings but were even robbed of the right to die with human dignity. There was not a sign or gravestone marking their passing, no marker where the name of the departed was noted; no linkage between family members, between parents and their children. The memory of the individual was eradicated for eternity.

The major cause of these mass deaths was the typhus epidemic. Other factors, such as cold and frost, the suffocating crowdedness and melancholy, were secondary. The struggle against typhus occupied the Jews to the very limits of their strength. The many doctors in the ghetto worked in hurried succession at the sickbeds, trying to subdue the disease. Medication was not available, nor were such preventive treatments as food, warmth, and sanitary conditions. It would often occur that a doctor, instead of receiving payment for his visit, would secretly leave a coin beside the sickbed.

The Judenrat's sanitary crews, in which Jews worked under the supervision of non-Jews, battled the epidemic in their own fashion. The home of a typhus victim was shut down for a certain period while all the members of the household and their bedclothes were taken forcibly to be disinfected. In many cases, property from the home was stolen. It was doubtful whether this procedure helped to control the epidemic, and perhaps contributed to its spread. The Germans had their own way of fighting the disease. In his report of January 1941, Fischer, the governor of the Warsaw district, made the following statement:

 

The main purpose of the campaign to explain and demonstrate the dangers of typhus [flecken-typhus or spotted fever], executed in collaboration with the department of health, was to point out that the Jews are the disseminators of typhus. The principal slogan of the campaign is "The Jews—Lice—Typhus." The matter has been demonstrated and clarified to the [Polish] community with the help of 3,000 large posters, 7,000 smaller posters, and 500,000 pamphlets. The Polish press [under German patronage] and the radio have shared in the distribution of this information. In addition, the children in Polish schools have been warned of the danger every single day.

 

In the battle against hunger, food was smuggled into the ghetto from Polish sectors of the city via the wall or by more sophisticated methods. Through openings made in the wall, over the wall, by channels under the wall, or through hidden passages between the houses, smuggled goods streamed in, sometimes literally (in one instance, a stream of milk flowed through a pipe leading from the Polish side into a pitcher placed in a house within the ghetto). Not a day passed, even at the height of the expulsion, when food was not brought into the ghetto by secret means, often at the cost of many lives. Shots could be heard daily as troops fired on the smugglers, even the children. The daily loss of life did not stop the inhabitants from carrying on with their activities. They had few other choices if they were to survive. People caught in the act of smuggling were immediately replaced, much like soldiers shot during a battle.

Why did the Germans not put an end to the smuggling, which was surely in their power? In dealing with smugglers, they did not impose the usual collective punishments, nor did they murder large numbers of smugglers. Local officials may have acquiesced to the "clandestine importation of food" because, according to Czerniakow, smuggling brought in 80 percent of all the food in the ghetto. The Germans knew that cutting off the food supply completely would lead to starvation and the utter extinction of the ghetto within weeks, or at most a few months.

There were three types of smuggling. The first was well-organized wholesale smuggling, requiring cooperation between the Jews and the Poles, and an organization that employed hundreds in a disciplined and efficient hierarchical structure. Everyone knew his job; every aspect was carefully planned and carried out swiftly, from the moment that sacks of food were transferred through the wall and beyond, until the food was distributed to the consumer in the ghetto.

A second form of smuggling was carried out by some two thousand workers, who would leave the ghetto each morning in convoys to work in various places for Germans. These workers would usually smuggle items on their own person, in bags hanging from their shoulders. They would snatch small amounts of food for their families or for selling to neighbors. When such a petty smuggler was caught, what he had hidden was taken away from him and he could expect to be beaten.

The third form of smuggling was done individually, mainly by women and small children forced into smuggling by hunger and scarcity in their families. They managed to get through the gates or over the wall surreptitiously and begged on the Polish streets or tried some petty trading for a bit of food. In the writings of witnesses, considerable space is given to the description of these children who slipped over to the "other side," begged, and were given some bread by the Poles (according to some accounts, frequently by women who were known antisemites but who could not stand the sight of hungry children). Despite their own starving state, many of them did not eat the dry and tempting crusts they were given but brought them to their parents, or to their little brothers and sisters. The sacrifice of these children, many of whom were shot down like birds in flight, disturbed and moved the hearts of many of the ghetto's people. The Polish poet of Jewish origin, Henryka Lazowert, wrote this poem, "The Little Smuggler," in the ghetto:

 

Through crack and crevice, over wire tight,
With dawn, in daylight, and the dead of night,
Hungry, daring, and brave of spirit,
Sneaking, creeping shadow near it.

 

And in amidst the game, the hand of fate
touches me suddenly and I am too late,
Know I am but a mortal.
Don't wait in vain, mother,
I'll not return, like another,
To hear my voice no longer from afar,
The street's dust my grave will mar

 

For my fate is resolved.
And on my face one care is etched,
Who, my heart's own, has fetched
Your bread for the morrow.

 

Leon Berenson, a gifted defense lawyer and activist in Poland between the wars, said that liberated Poland should erect a monument to honor the unknown child, the little smuggler from the Warsaw ghetto.

Polish publications referred at times to the smuggling of food that was so essential to the life of the ghetto and to Poles' intent to assist the Jews in their plight. While the highly organized smuggling involved collaboration between the two sides, it would be inaccurate to ascribe charity as the motive for this relationship. More precisely, both Polish and Jewish managers of the large-scale smuggling operations were mainly concerned with financial success. Quite a few people on both sides of the wall succeeded in accumulating substantial fortunes through smuggling. The food brought into the ghetto was sold at prices much higher than on the "Aryan side." The principal manipulators were the clients of cafés and restaurants in the ghetto who rarely shared their accumulated wealth with the starving masses. Moreover, heads of the smuggling network preferred to bring meats, fats, and even luxury items into the ghetto which only the rich could afford, rather than potatoes and bread, which took up too much space and were less profitable. As almost all the chroniclers of the ghetto have stressed, however, whatever their motives, the smugglers nonetheless contributed to the ghetto's glimmer of life and its strength to survive.