I have been researching the Warsaw Uprising and the Ghetto in general, and although the degree of malevolence may not be of the same order or magnitude, the ghetto-ization of a population one fears,makes for some eerily similar situational similarities.
I am NOT in any way suggesting that one party actually plans to "eliminate" the other, but reading through these accounts, it's possible to change a few place names & dates, and see a thread that connects these two "modern" populations, and sad too, to see that the one-time neighbors have been cast in such a circumstance.
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Hell on earth: account of the last days of the Warsaw ghetto found
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Wednesday, 8 December 2004
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hell-on-earth-account-of-the-last-days-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-found-679907.htmlA Jewish woman hiding in a lice-infested basement while the ghetto around her was engulfed by fire documented how "hell has come to Earth" in a graphic diary of the last, desperate, weeks of the Warsaw uprising in 1943.
A Jewish woman hiding in a lice-infested basement while the ghetto around her was engulfed by fire documented how "hell has come to Earth" in a graphic diary of the last, desperate, weeks of the Warsaw uprising in 1943.
The harrowing day-to-day description of a few dozen unarmed and starving people awaiting their fate in the surrounded and overcrowded shelter is the only surviving contemporary account of life in the burning ghetto as the Nazis systematically razed it to the ground.
The diary, which ends with the poignant observation that "we are living by the day, the hour, the moment", was only recently unearthed from among the archives at the Ghetto Fighters' House, a museum in the Kibbutz Lochamei Haghettaot in northern Israel.
It begins on 24 April, just five days after some 200 starving Jewish fighters began an uprising that lasted for almost four weeks despite the overwhelming superiority of the Nazi forces determined to extinguish it.
The diary's six pages, neatly written in Polish on graph paper with a precise diagram of the packed underground refuge, describes how as food starts to run out on the ninth day of their confinement, it is decided that each person will only receive one cup of coffee and one bowl of soup a day.
On the ninth evening of their stay, the young woman says there is suddenly a "horrible explosion" from a grenade thrown into the house above them. She adds: "A deep silence fills the room. The enemy surrounds the house, looking for us. Our sole method of defence is complete and utter silence."
The following day, she marks "ten days of struggle with our bloodthirsty enemy who plans utterly to destroy us. He started the war with grenades and tanks, and ends it with setting homes on fire. We must survive and we hope we will survive. We are fighting for justice and the right to live."
Writing her last entry on 2 May, while doing guard duty at the entrance of the makeshift bunker, she describes the courage of the 45 people of all ages confined in it. "Grenades are thrown at the house. People inside behave bravely. With complete tranquility they look death in the eye."
After it was discovered in the ruins of the ghetto, the diary was given to Adolph Berman, who bequeathed it in the 1970s to the museum which is now putting it on public show. Yossi Savit, the centre's archive director, told The Jerusalem Post yesterday that the fate of the young woman, in her late teens or early twenties, was unknown but that she probably perished in the Nazi demolition of the ghetto.
By July 1942 nearly 100,000 of the 450,000 Jews who had been confined to the disease-ridden ghetto had died. Some 300,000 were deported from that summer to death camps in Poland, the large majority to Treblinka.
By the end of the uprising in 1943, most of the fighters had been killed. The diary uses the phrase "hassidim of Hitler"- borrowed from a term for strictly observant Jews, to describe the relentless zeal with which the Nazis in Warsaw are carrying out the order that "by 1945 there will not be one Jew left in Europe".
The diary says "God is silent like a sphinx, and does not answer. And you, the nations, why are you silent? It seems the end of the world has arrived."
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http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/warsaw-uprising.htmledicated to the Memory of Abrasha Blum
When the Germans occupied Warsaw in 1939, they found the Jewish political and socialworld in a state of complete chaos and disintegration. Almost all the leading personalities had left Warsaw on September 7th. The 300,000 Jews there experienced a deeper feeling of loneliness and helplessness than the others.
In such conditions it was easy for the Germans to dominate the population from the very beginning by breaking their spirit through persecutions and by evoking a state of passive submission in their midst. The experienced and devilishly refined German propaganda agencies worked ceaselessly to achieve these aims, spreading incredible--for those days--rumours which further increased the panic and derangement in Jewish life. Then, after a short period of time, the maltreatment of Jews passed the stage of an occasional punch on the nose, sadistic extractions of Jews from their homes, and chaotic nabbing of Jews in the streets for aimless work. The persecutions now became definite and systematic.
As early as November 1939, the first "exterminating" decrees were made public: the establishment of "educational" camps for the Jewish population as a whole, and the expropriation of all Jewish assets in excess of 2,000 zloty per family. Later, one after another, a multitude of prohibitive rules and ordinances appeared. Jews were forbidden to work in key industries, in government institutions, to bake bread, to earn more than 500 zloty a month (and the price of bread rose, at times, to as high as 40 zloty a pound), to buy from or sell to "Aryans", to seek comfort at "Aryan" doctors' offices, to doctor "Aryan" sick, to ride on trains and trolley-cars, to leave the city limits without special permits, to possess gold or jewelry, etc. After November 12th, 1939, every Jew twelve years of age or older was compelled to wear on his right arm a white arm-band with the blue Star of David printed on it (in certain cities, e.g. Lodz and Wloclawek, yellow signs on the back and chest).
The Jews--beaten, stepped upon, slaughtered without the slightest cause--lived in constant fear. There was only one punishment for failure to obey regulations--death--while careful obedience to the rules did not protect against a thousand more and more fantastic degradations, more and more acute persecutions, recurrent acts of terror, more far-reaching regulations. To top it all, the unwritten law of collective responsibility was being universally applied against the Jews. Thus, in the first days of November 1939, 53 male inhabitants of the 9 Nalewki Street apartment house were summarily shot for the beating of a Polish policeman by one of the tenants. This occurrence, the first case of mass punishment, intensified the feeling of panic amongst the Warsaw Jews. Their fear of the Germans now took on unequalled forms.
In this atmosphere of terror and fear, and under conditions cardinally changed, the Bund resumed--or, to be more specific continued--its political and social activities. Despite everything that was happening, there were among us, it seemed, people ready to attempt further work. First, psychological difficulties had to be overcome. For instance, a strongly depressing handicap was the feeling that one could perish instantly not as a result of any particular activities, but as a beaten and humiliated--not human being--but Jew. This conviction that one was never treated as an individual human being caused a lack of self-confidence and stunted the desire to work. These factors will perhaps best explain why our activities in the first period after the fall of Warsaw were mainly of a charitable nature, and why the first instinctive acts of armed resistance against the occupying forces occurred comparatively late and, in the beginning, in such insignificant forms. To overcome our own terrifying apathy, to force ourselves to the smallest spark of activity, to fight against our own acceptance of the generally prevailing feeling of panic--even these small tasks required truly gigantic efforts on our part.
Even during the darkest moments, the Bund did not suspend its activities for the shortest time. When the Party's Central Committee was forced to leave the city in September 1939, it had placed the responsibility of continuing the political activities of the Bund in the hands of Abrasha Blum. He, together with Szmul Zygielbojm and in cooperation with the efforts of Warsaw's mayor, Starzynski, organized Jewish detachments which took an active part in the defence of the capitai. Almost the entire editorial staff of the Folkszajtung ("The People's Gazette"--the party daily) had left. However, the publication of the Folkszajtung was continued. During the siege period, it appeared regularly, edited by comrades Abrasha Blum, Klog, Klin and others.
Public kitchens and canteens originated during the siege continued their activities after the seizure of the city. Almost all Party and Trade Union members received financial help. Immediately following the arrival of the Germans, the new Central Bureau of the Party was organized (A. Blum, L. Klog, Mrs. S. Nowogrodzka, B. Goldsztejn, S. Zygielbojm, later A. Sznajdmil ("Berek") and M. Orzech).
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