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Hell is above the firmament. Some say it is behind the mountains of darkness.
– The Talmud, Tamid 84

Hell will cease, but they will not cease.
– The Talmud, Rosh Hashana 17

On the night after Shabbat Shuva, fifty people, including a few agitated youth, convened for an open meeting in the rabbi's house. Several of those in attendance were members of the Jewish police, who distinguished themselves by exemplary service and allegiance to their Jewish cause. Particularly outstanding among them were two brothers-in-law from Lodz, Asher Landau and Michael Klausner, who, when the time came, voluntarily joined their parents in the transport to Treblinka, as did another three policemen, Kuba Wolkowicz and the Rokmanns, two sons of Tzine Rokmann, the shoemaker. At this meeting, for the first time, it was publicly suggested that the transports be resisted by force. Several participants with “ultra-Orthodox” leanings – Elazar Sheinfeld, Reuven Neifeld, Avraham Moses (from Kalisz), and others – shared this view. Others took exception, arguing that it was hopeless. They included Judge Borenstein, Dr. Brahms, R. Moshe Shapira (brother of the distinguished Rabbi Meir Shapira), R. Baruch Zilbershatz, and Dov Handel. The dayan, Rabbi Moshe Temkin, adamantly pressed the case for resistance. R. Moshe Nordmann, an activist among the “ultra-Orthodox,” presented the anti-resistance argument just as strenuously, insisting on responsibility toward those who had a chance to remain alive.

Many saw only one route to salvation: a place of refuge in or outside the ghetto until the storm had passed.

The tension reached unbearable levels. Women sewed rucksacks and packed them with needed items. Men working in vital industries married young women in the hope of protecting them this way. Outside the ghetto, the Poles lined up and bought Jews' possessions for a pittance.

The whole ghetto prayed on Kol Nidrei night. The sound of crying emanated from every house. Hundreds of people gathered at the rabbi's home for the emotive prayer. The next day, Yom Kippur, the rabbi gave the Piotrkow community a farewell address before Yizkor. It was an emotional speech, evoking rivers of tears. The worshippers expressed only one wish: that a few of their number would survive to bring their names to remembrance.

Czestochowa's turn was the very next day. Messengers sent from Piotrkow returned with terrifying report. The Nazis' special “Operation Reinhardt” detail then went on to Radomsk, the last stop before Piotrkow, and carried out their premeditated mass murder of the Jews of that city. Thousands in Piotrkow were transfixed, terrified and hopeless at the news.

As the death trains passed the Kara and Hortensia plants, the martyrs of Radomsk tossed slips of paper, bearing their names and warning of the tragedy that had befallen them, to the waiting Jews of Piotrkow who worked there. The latter, knowing that their town would face this tragedy in a few days' time, were as drained of strength and incapable of clear thinking as those aboard the train.

As the agony of the Radomsk transport proceeded, the Germans gathered the Jewish residents of the villages around Piotrkow into the ghetto. Scores of farm wagons, under heavy Nazi and Polish police guard, brought Jews from Srock, Tuszyn, Wolborz, Przyglow, Sulejow, Rozprza and Kamiensk, dragging along their property, housewares, and even chickens.

At this time it was discovered that two foreign SS officers had moved into the ghetto; one was the “expert from Lublin and Radom,” Hauptsturmfuhrer Willy Blum, who had come to prepare the operation. The first of the Ukrainians who belonged to the extermination unit appeared in town on October 12, 1942.

Those employed in the vital industries, whose safety had been assured, were ordered to bring their possessions to the factories, where they would have to remain during the deportation. Thus on Tuesday, Heshvan 2, 5703 (October 13, 1942), groups of workers, escorted by squads of firemen, marched from the factories to the ghetto and back, taking leave of their loved ones, abandoning their wives and children to the mercies of the murderers. Strong men cried like babies, unwilling to return to work. Horrifying sights occurred that day. Wives, mothers, and children pushed the men into the lines that returned to the factories, hoping that keeping them alive might somehow help the deportees in their new homes “in the east.” Some of the men, however, refused to part with their families, forfeited the privilege of remaining in the mini-ghetto, and boarded the death trains together with their relatives.

On Tuesday night, the night of Heshvan 3 (October 14, 1942), Ukrainian and German SS troops surrounded and sealed the ghetto. Even before they began their work, the murderers amused themselves by firing indiscriminately into the air and at any target in the ghetto. The annihilations began at dawn.

The aktion was planned to the minutest detail. First, numbers of Jewish police passed through the ghetto streets, relying on a map prepared especially for the day's activity, and ordered the residents to present themselves in a “deportation square” on the premises of the Franciscan barracks next to the Jewish hospital. The deportation area continued on both sides of the River Strawa. Whole families, men, women, old people, children, trekked across the square with their rucksacks and their possessions, some silently, some crying bitterly. After this death march, the SS men combed the houses, looted whatever they found, and shot any living creature they encountered. These corpses were dragged to the square, as were the sick and the disabled. Rabbi Avraham Dov Englard, who was blind, and Rabbi Michael Folman were towed to the train on flatbed carts.

In the center of the square stood the commanders of the operation, headed by an SS officer, the representative of Gestapo's Jewish department, 4B4, known as Sturmbanfuhrer Feucht, who, with great cruelty, had displayed his expertise in these operations in other towns. As soon as the victims had been formed into ranks, the Nazis examined the documents of those needed for labor, since they had not presented themselves beforehand, and selected those destined for transport. The day's quota of six thousand people, enough to fill the fifty-two available cattle cars. Once the quota was filled, all the others were freed until the next transport.

In a ghostly procession, the six thousand deportees marched to the new railroad station, where they were loaded onto the black train. Fatal blows with clubs and rifle butts accompanied the parade. Another SS bodysearch was conducted next to the train. The Ukrainians were especially thorough, stripping the victims of any nice boots, wristwatches, or valuables visible to them. Finally, the people were loaded into the train, more than one hundred to a car, each car marked “Maximum load: Thirty Persons or Six Head of Cattle.” This done, the death train lurched into motion.

The tracks were lined with workers from the glass factory, including the Jews who were housed there temporarily. At dusk they saw the train on its way and saw the trembling hands groping at the window gratings, witnessed the tearful eyes peering through. The survivors retained only these scenes, and the farewell cries emanating from the cars, as last reminiscences of their loved ones, whose terrible cries still reverberated in their ears.

They observed the passing of four such trains: on Wednesday of that week, the third of Heshvan; on Friday night, the fifth; on Monday, the eighth; and on Wednesday the tenth. Each transport exterminated a quarter of the Jewish residents of Piotrkow, leaving deep gashes in the flesh of the mute witnesses of this atrocity.

The three transports were completed in an “organized” manner, except for the scores of victims who were murdered en passant by the Germans, the Ukrainians, and the Latvians in the middle of the operation. Many inhabitants of the ghetto felt a kind of relief each time a transport was sent, imagining that they would be allowed to catch their breath until the next stage. They were incapable of feeling the terror of the nightmare that was taking place before their eyes. The pent-up anticipation of the unexpected, i.e., the deportation, was more excruciating than death itself.

On the day of the last transport, as the Nazis tried to fill the fourth train, they realized that several cars remained empty. The quota of six thousand had not been met! They rushed into the small ghetto and rushed its inhabitants to the square, where the commander of the operation, the murderer Feucht, passed among the rank and selected the three hundred victims he needed. In one of the groups stood several dignitaries of Jewish Piotrkow, community leaders in the pre-Holocaust years: doctors, lawyers, teachers, several public figures who had belonged to the “council of elders,” Judge Borenstein, and finally, the town rabbi, Rabbi Lau, who, alone among them, still kept his traditional dress and beard.

The leader of the murderers noticed the rabbi gesturing with his cane and approached. “The Jews need rabbis there, too,” he shouted. As the selection began, with the murderers abusing their victims, the rabbi called on those standing near him to attack their persecutors. “Pummel them. Don't be silent witnesses to this disgrace!” This was told by Dr. Abraham Greenberg, a survivor who later lived and died in Tel-Aviv, who stood near the rabbi at the time. But the angel of death had already made his decision and assured his victory. The rabbi was dislodged from his position and, clutching a small Torah scroll, joined the last transport of Piotrkow Jews. With their departure, the ancient community of illustrious Piotrkow was no more.

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Updated 2 Nov 2006 by LA