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Preface
This book tells the story about the plight of the ghetto remnants, the so-called "lucky ones". We were left behind during the extermination "actions", working in different munition and other factories that were essential for the German war machine.
My family was murdered in the death camp in Poland. Yet this book does not describe the whole scope of the horror our people suffered. I was never in those death traps, because I had chosen a secure working place long before the "actions" began. I was always opposed to being hunted for slave labor for the Nazis. Therefore I volunteered to work in a glassworks foundry in 1941 in my hometown of Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland.
In the beginning of the Nazi occupation, I used to sneak out of the ghetto to buy German newspapers. There were no other publications allowed. Nobody paid attention to me. I had a good "appearance". A group of my friends always frequented my house to read the papers and to interpret the news. We liked to read between the lines. Also some friends heard the news which we called "Yi-va news" (Yiden villen azoi), news that served only our soul. We used to read the German mouthpiece of Dr. Goebbels' Der Voelkischer Beobachter. Once the German Propaganda Minister complained bitterly about the happenings on the Russian front. He wrote: "If we were to lose this war, it would be our women's fault. They like to put excessive lipstick on, but they do not like to work. Also, the Italian soldiers are such feeble-minded sissies, that they freeze to death on the Russian front. Even during our struggle of total war, they think only of women and song".
At that time, this was an elixir for our dejected souls. When the Soviets deployed their "Katiushas" for the first time, the German war-correspondents (Propaganda Kompanie) did not know what hit them. They wrote: "It burns everything wherever it lands. We could not find a driver of those mechanized things".
It gave us temporary pleasure and satisfaction to read about their defeat at Stalingrad and the bombings of the German cities. It helped our souls immensely reading that heartening news in their own newspapers. At that time we were like caged animals, squeezed within their overwhelming power, but our minds were alert enough to subvert their propaganda about their invincibility. Despite their undisputed power, we still believed deep in our hearts, during our darkest moments, that their end would eventually come.
Later on, I was fortunate enough to become involved with the underground movement of the Coordinating Committee and the Jewish Fighting Organization (Z.O.B.) in Warsaw. I was swept away with my thoughts and deeds trying to forget the Nazi prison I was in. Day and night I breathed in fresh air from the outside world by reading the underground press. I marked some facts down on paper while they were happening and always buried them wherever and whenever I could.
I did not go back to Poland after the war because of the "little pogroms" by some Poles upon the few returning Jews from the concentration camps. Instead I went to Italy with the help of the Jewish Brigade, where I spent six and a half years. While there, I again wrote down some notes that were still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately most of them were burned in a fire that occurred in my place in Italy in 1948. I still possess some half-burned notes and articles I had written for European newspapers during my stay in Italy.
I came to Canada in December of 1951. After settling down and starting a family of my own, I wrote a 50 page manuscript in the Yiddish language about the underground movements in Piotrkow. I sent it to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1956 and it was documented with a foreword by writer Arie Shomri.
When the noted Jewish historian Dr.Joseph Kermish was asked to write a summary of our churban for the Piotrkover Yiskor Book, he quoted many facts and observations from my manuscript. Maria Migus of Paris also mentioned facts in our Yiskor Book about my involvement with the Coordinating Committee in Warsaw.
I did not think too much of it until I read Vladka's book in Yiddish On Both Sides of the Wall, where she relates an incident about her courier friend Ala Margules, whom we saved from the Nazis in 1944. Also that she brought 50,000 zlotys to me during her mission to the Piotrkover labour camp. This gave me some impetus to write. I also wanted to confirm that something out of the ordinary had been done during the Nazi occupation of Poland. We received money and moral encouragement under most difficult circumstances. No sacrifice was lacking on the part of the Jewish Coordinating Committee outside the ghetto in Warsaw in those terrible times. I have to stress my deepest appreciation for the effort of those underground leaders of the Zionist and Bund organizations outside the ghetto in Warsaw, who agreed to work together for the common cause. Their achievement was not in vain and not forgotten.
On November 15, 1943, Dr Leon Feiner (Mikolaj) issued this statement: "Our tasks now come to this--at least to keep alive the remnants who have survived... (the ghettos)--so there will be some reserve for the future and witnesses to this crime".
I still remember my mother's words when we--my younger brother and I--said goodbye a week before the main Aktion: "At least you two save yourselves if at all possible. If you succeed, take revenge for all of us."
Well, I could not and would not take revenge in the physical sense of the word. I thought I ought to write down these following facts in the form of a book, which will contradict the new-born, long distance "historians", like Professor Butz of Chicago, who dare to claim that the six million slaughtered Jews in Europe is a lie. They should not get away so easily with falsifying recent history. Let them try and bring back to life my parents, who were innocently and mercilessly murdered in Treblinka, together with hundreds of thousands of other victims of Nazism. This is a challenge. Whoever remains silent about these facts--is a liar. If Professor Butz and the like cannot deliver, this book should remain a living memorial to all murdered Jewish men, women and children.