Tuesday, March 2, 1942 should have been a beautiful Purim day in Zdunska Wola, a town about 28 miles southwest of Lodz, Poland . The day was bright and sunny but the Jews were pacing the ghetto, weighed down by dark heavy clouds.
Since Sunday, two days earlier, a gallows was being erected. No one knew exactly who was going to be hung. The Jews were restless and in turmoil. Rumors were flying until the Jews finally learned that the Gestapo chief had ordered Dr. Jacob Lemberg, the head of the Judenrat in Zdunska Wola, to deliver to him the names of ten Jews to be hanged, The hanging of these ten Jews (sons of Mordechai) were to be in retribution for the ten hanged sons of Haman.
Dr. Lemberg was a 43 year old pediatrician and internist who refused to hand over anyone and offered himself in their stead. He was fluent in German, and knew the ways of the Germans. Everyone in town respected him, both Jews and non-Jews alike. He was later to be punished for his obstinance.
On Monday Taanis Esther the Jews of Zdunska Wola had approached the authorities in Lodz to try to get them to call off the act of terror. They pledged to raise and give to the Nazis 20,000 marks or a half kilo of gold. If none of these two offers was acceptable, they offered to contribute three months’ worth of work for military purposes.
To no avail. The Jews’ offer was spurned. The preparations for the hanging continued.
Patrols marched in full uniform with helmet and bayonets. They brought rope and prepared the nooses for the gallows. No one was permitted to leave the ghetto to go to work on that Tuesday. All the men were ordered to attend and witness the execution.
Usually, about a thousand men left the Ghetto daily for work. Now they were being forced to surround the gallows and view the heart-breaking spectacle. The Einsatz Fuehrer, and other members of the Nazi organization, as well as the Schutz Polizei dressed in their uniforms joined the Jews in attendance to view and derive pleasure from the killing.
The Nazis were ensuring that the steps under the gallows could be removed quickly. Ten grave diggers were preparing the grave for the Minyan of men.
About 3000 Jews assembled at the place of execution. Promptly at 10 minutes to noon, a large truck arrived with the ten Jews to be hung.
They were:
Yaakov Bialik,
Nachum Elieh Zylberberg,
Volf Tuch,
Yechezkel Truskalaski,
Nachum Jochimowicz,
Shimon Jakubowicz
Moshe Meizler,
Shmuel Hirsh Meizler,
Leib Rogozinski,
Yaakov Mendel Shlizenger.
The relatives of these ten men began sobbing and wailing. The Jewish streets became flooded with tears.
The Kedoshim stood on the steps of the gallows, nooses round their necks. There was a deathly silence. Polish non-Jews who had not been officially permitted to be present watched from the roof-tops of surrounding houses, from their perches on top of fences, and from their seats high up on trees. They seemed to derive an evil satisfaction from the Jewish tragedy. However, they too fell silent and held their breaths in the final moments before the hangings.
A harsh voice suddenly broke the quiet calling out for “the eldest of the Jews.” Dr. Lemberg, ran forward.
One of the Kedoshim shouted: “I go to my death gladly, and hope that I will be the last victim in our city.”
Another screamed: “I am leaving a wife and four children, please take care of them. Do not let them die of starvation.”
A third screamed: “Abraham, if you survive, take revenge for this!”
Dr. Lemberg who had come forward called out in a heart-rending but strong voice what he had been forced to elocute: “The ‘powers-that-be’ have commanded that I inform you, that these people are being hung for not following instructions, and for sabotage, and that each one of us can expect the same for similar reasons.”
He then fainted.
All those present never forgot those words which became etched on their memories forever. When the command for the execution to begin was called out, the Kedoshim all shouted out “Shma Yisroel”, They never got to say the word “Echad”, because the steps under the gallows were suddenly pulled away from under their feet and they were hung.
One of the attendants walked over and announced that the ten Jews were dead. Those assembled departed but the Kedoshim were left hanging for five long hours.
The gates of the Ghetto were opened so that the German and Polish populations could view the “criminals”.
Throughout the city, outside the ghetto, huge placards listed names of those who were hung.
At the appointed time, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, Nazis came to cut the Kedoshim down from the gallows. The Sanitary Commission brought the bodies to the communal grave. No one was permitted to attend the burial nor were the dead permitted to be buried in the traditional Tallis.
Doctor Lemberg who had been revived, placed the Kedoshim in a row and numbered them.
Then he himself was shot and murdered in the Jewish cemetery that day. Hans Biebow the Butcher of Lodz himself handed him over to the executioner.
Before Pesach, the Gestapo from Lodz came to demand the 20,000 Marks or half kilo of gold that the Jews they claimed, owed them for the hanging of Purim!
Soon the Yom Tov of Shevuos was approaching. Once again the same preparations of a gallows were underway as before the Purim holiday. This time they arrested 11 people to be hung; fortunately, the eleventh person turned out to be a woman and was set free.
For this second hanging, the rules were more stringent. The hangings were to be witnessed not only by men but women and children The crowd was worried that the women might break down and become hysterical, provoking the Nazis even further. However, it turned out otherwise, because the doomed Kedoshim, through their determination and proud bearing, gave their Jewish brethren renewed courage. They climbed the stairs to the gallows, chanting from the Yom Kippur davening, causing a tremendous Kiddush Hashem as if led by a Chazzan before the Aron Kodesh. A Chassid by the name of Shlomo Zelichowski had begun singing aloud and encouraged the others to do the same.
This time the bodies did not hang for long. They were soon buried, with a Tallis placed under the body of each Kodosh in the grave.
The Polish city of Pietrkow, is situated 16 miles south of Lodz, and 35 miles from Zdunska Wola. There too, a Purim retribution for the killing of the ten sons of Haman took place..Ten Jews were to be murdered on Mach 21, 1943 which date coincided with Purim of that year.
After a mass evacuation of Jews from Piotrkow in October, 1942, only 2,000 “legal” Jews had remained in the city. This number included refugees from other cities and towns of Nazi-occupied Poland. They were crammed south of Staro-Warszawska, once the “Jewish Street” par excellence. It was surrounded by a thicket of barbed wire that turned the area allotted to Piotrkow’s remaining Jews into a cage within which the murderers would gun down their victims.
The streets on the other side of the barbed wire, which had formed part of the larger Ghetto, were lined with houses where Jews had once lived but had turned into deserted shells. With their doors agape and window frames having had their glass panes knocked out, they spread an atmosphere of stark terror with their graveyard silence.
When a truck bearing armed policemen pulled up in the front of the house at 12 Jerozolimska Street, the headquarters of the Ghetto Committee of Pietrkow, , no one even suspected that this would the beginning of terrible murders. On the contrary, the Jews believed there was hope because there were rumors that Jews from various Ghettos in Poland were about to be exchanged for German citizens living in Palestine, in Sharona, a colony founded by the Knights of Templar. This in fact had happened to Jacob Kurz, Rosenthal, and Itzkowitz who had been permitted to leave the Ghetto of Piotrkow and had arrived safely in Eretz Yisroel. Kurz, Rosenthal and Itzkowitz, had been natives of Piotrkow and had immigrated to Palestine as pioneers long before the war. They had returned to their home town to visit relatives, only to be stranded in Poland when the war broke out. Due to efforts made by friends in Eretz Yisroel, these men were eventually permitted to return there in exchange for Germans who had been living there.
The Nazis reinforced the rumor by claiming that the privilege of “repatriation” to Palestine in exchange for German citizens would be limited to ten Jews who would be able to show proof that they had graduated from an institution of higher learning.
On Purim afternoon in 1943, the Ghetto was more alive than it had been in a long time. There was unusual activity, particularly in the courtyard of the “Jewish Committee”, which had been designated as the assembly point for the “privileged few” who, it was announced, were eligible for “repatriation” to Palestine.
The first ones to arrive at the assembly point were Stanislaw Silberstein and his wife. Stanislaw was a wealthy lawyer and the son of Wilhelm Silberstein, a former president of Piotrkow’s Jewish community. When Stanislaw began to realize what the true intentions of the Nazis were regarding the “exchange” of Jews for Germans, he pulled out a vial of poison, took it and asked the others to look out for his only daughter.
The next “privileged” individual to report was Dr. Maurycy Brams. He appeared with his wife, daughter and sister-in-law, a member of the Kagan family. He had been helping his destitute fellow Jews especially since the outbreak of the war. Unlike Silberstein, Brams was in high spirits. He was sure that he was about to be sent to a country where he would not only be free and independent himself, but be in the position to help the Jews who remained in the Ghetto.
The mood of Szymek Stein, a brilliant young Jewish lawyer full of life and wit, was different. As soon as he arrived at the assembly point, he had a premonition of what the Germans were really planning to do, and tried to escape – but unfortunately it was too late.
The psychiatrist Leon Glatter was also among the “Privileged Ten” individuals who had been “selected” for the “exchange.”
The mood in the Ghetto became tense while the Jews watched the “repatriates” being shepherded into the waiting truck. The truck with the “repatriates” drove off in the direction of Sulejowska Street. They were allegedly to be taken to Radom, the capital of the district to which Piotrkow belonged during the Nazi occupation. There, they were supposed to join a large transport of “privileged” people from other Ghettos and set out together on the journey to freedom.
The following morning, the Jews were confronted with the shocking reports of blood-curdling scenes that had taken place in the Jewish cemetery the previous evening. People in the know told gruesome details about the fate that had befallen the “privileged” individuals. The Nazi hangmen had imitated the account in the Book of Esther of the execution of the ten sons of Haman – except that, to the ten Jewish victims, they had added an eleventh one.
Prominent Nazi officials of the Piotrkow district had gathered at the mass grave, which had been surrounded by gendarmes, policemen, and army officers with machine guns at the ready. They drank, made merry and even read an obscene parody of the Book of Esther before killing the “repatriates.”
Polish policemen who had been present at the cemetery later described the horrible scenes they had witnessed: how Dr. Brams had collapsed when he saw his beautiful daughter dragged to the mass grave, and how Szymek Stein had appealed to the conscience of the Nazi police chief not to take the lives of innocent human beings. But the hearts of the Germans had remained cold to his pleas. All the Nazi officer said was, “We carry out our orders.”
In order to avert any suspicion the Jews might have regarded the Germans with, the latter drove the truck all over the city until nightfall. Only when it was completely dark outside, did they finally take them quickly to the cemetery, where even the optimists in the group were no longer disillusioned.
The Megila
Iin the “Heychal Hasheymos” (Tent of the Names) in “Yad Vashem” in Jerusalem, there is a Megila in the shape of a Sefer-Torah, in which a scribe has written the names of all the Piotrkower Jews who perished in the ghetto and in the camps during the Hitler Era.
The Piotrkower Jews were the first in Europe to be entrapped in a ghetto, which was enforced by the Germans in the fall of 1939. This date is engraved on the wall in “Yad Vashem.
May Hashem avenge the blood of the Kedoshim.
Yehi Zichram Baruch.
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