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Suffocation in the Overcrowding

Evening fell. From the city came the echoes of frequent shots from the machine guns of the German gendarmes, meant to frighten Jews so that, God forbid, they would not slip outside the ghetto to gather some of their abandoned property. And there, meanwhile, the ravens among the Christian neighbors continued to run wild, for their hour had now come to pounce upon the abandoned dwellings of the children of the Mosaic faith and plunder them.

In the Shulhoif and in “Troytze,” the crowding had been great even in “normal” times. It had increased greatly after the bombing of the city and the burning of half of it, and afterward it grew still worse with the expulsion of the Jews from the city's main streets. And now thousands upon thousands more were pushed and packed in here, according to the living space that the heirs of Haman in our own time had allocated to the House of Israel: approximately one square meter per person, and no more.

A few people with connections and means still benefited from their money or their “pedigree,” and managed to obtain some kind of proper apartment. The mass of the people, for the time being, clung to any corner of shelter that came their way: a corner of a cellar, an attic, the entrance hall of a study house, even a rickety wooden booth exposed to the frost in the “Fish Market.” Movable belongings and bundles of “property,” including bedding, remained outside in piles, since there was no place to put them inside. Nevertheless, for the moment, some relief was felt in the soul: the local “Aryan” neighbors, with the hatred that flowed from them, were no longer seen here.

Most of those confined in the ghetto had arrived there without furniture and without wood for heating. Some had not even bedding on which to lay their heads and bodies, and not a few had no clothing except what was on their skin. Indeed, the members of the presidium of the Judenrat immediately devoted themselves to helping and finding a corner for everyone. But in order to prevent favoritism and corruption, a special “Housing Committee” was established, headed by the lawyer Y. Fürstenberg. It took up the burden willingly, and after two or three weeks not a single person remained in the ghetto without a roof over his head and over his household, even if in the unbearable crowding of two or three families together in a small room. Especially, it is told, Dr. Tzvi Belko devoted himself to this task with great energy and with the warmth of his Jewish heart.

The most difficult housing situation was in Ghetto B, in Slobodka, whose houses had lately been inhabited by Christians, after the Jews had been expelled from there two months earlier. This ghetto also extended over the nearby tiny village of Pohulanka, a center of Jew-hating thugs even before the war, who had also had a hand in the pogroms of the year 5695. Before leaving their apartments, these people now removed the doors and windows, destroyed the stoves, and damaged everything they could and had time to damage. The Housing Committee did its best to repair the houses immediately, and over time continued to repair them and somewhat improve the housing situation in both ghettos, easing the distress of the terrible crowding in them.

In terms of personal security, the situation of the Jews of the Grodno ghettos was better than that of their brethren in other places. Acts of terror and killing did indeed continue even now, but not in the form of attacks on the masses. The offices of the Judenrat, which had moved to Zamkowa Street, to the large building where the “Yavneh” school had once been located, had access from outside the ghetto fence. Germans were almost never seen inside the enclosure itself, fortunately. Nevertheless, the fear was great and oppressive.

From time to time, a series of arrests would be carried out by the authorities, under one pretext or another. At first, supposed Communists were arrested. Among the victims who fell were, among others, the two teachers Kaplansky, the French teacher, and Meltzer. Later, people were arrested for listening to radio broadcasts and passing on information — even “offenders” who had not “sinned” in this at all — and all of them were put to death in the forts in the surrounding area.

Indeed, the isolation of the Jews in the ghetto and their cutting off from what was happening around them and from the other communities, and especially from what was truly happening in the world, was one of the foundations of the strategy of destruction. For first the soul of the Jew had to be completely crushed, misled, and bewildered, so that no spirit of armed resistance would arise in him. Not without reason did the Nazis see listening to foreign broadcasts and transmitting information as an audacity of disobedience and rebellion against them.

Thus Sheiker, Borke from the Communist youth, was arrested and never returned. And in late summer 1942, the beloved and respected healer of the city, Yehiel Shafransky — a Communist underground man who never tired of extending his help to the masses and to the poor in every situation, who also obtained medicines for them and encouraged them, awakening hopes in them by bringing them good news from the fronts — was arrested.

For listening to foreign stations and passing on information from them, Dr. Brizman, director of the Judenrat health department and one of the finest activists of Jewish Grodno, was also arrested. He was beaten severely and lay ill for a long time because of his refusal to reveal in whose hands the radio receiver was located. But the enemy did not succeed in extracting a word from him.

Killings by the Germans, thirsting for Jewish blood, were a common phenomenon even now. Among other things, in the spring of 1942, Jews from the ghetto were sent to work in Ponemun, on the bank of the Niemen, where they were ordered to enter the river to bathe, and were drowned.

At the same time, the robbery of the remnants of Jewish property continued without pause.

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From time to time, orders appeared for the confiscation of objects as payment of levies, and these were accompanied by warnings that if what was required was not supplied on time, such-and-such a number of Jews would be put to death. The Judenrat was therefore forced to supply the Nazis, again and again, with everything their appetite desired. And their desire knew no satisfaction: from the best clothing and footwear and kitchen and electrical utensils, to down quilts, curtains, furniture and medical instruments, silverware, jewelry, fine perfume, and expensive alcoholic drinks.

The Judenrat's department for “confiscations” collected precise information about what was to be found in the possession of each Jew in the place, down to the pillow still fit to rest a head upon and the bed that might satisfy the robbers.

At first, officials on behalf of the aforementioned department would visit homes in the ghetto and “collect” there what seemed suitable in their eyes. But in the course of time they introduced “confiscation for stock,” against any misfortune that might come. And since, apparently, it was impossible to supervise and check what the “confiscators” handed over to the Nazi robbers and what they hid on their own plate, the public treated these agents of the Judenrat with distrust and suspicion. In the storeroom of its “confiscations” department — or, as it was called derisively by the people, the “robbery department” — there therefore accumulated a full and overflowing repository of valuables of every kind.

Beside that department, three special workshops were also established — for tailoring, shoemaking, and fine craftwork. In the last of these worked Tuvia Zamkow. Their entire occupation was to fulfill the “orders” and “wishes” of the authorities, and of the Gestapo in particular, and also to provide them with “gifts of silence.” These workshops were overloaded with work according to the greed of the tyrannical beasts.

In cooperation with the Judenrat's confiscations department, the “mediating” contacts between it and the Gestapo operated — two young men who took upon themselves this complicated and dangerous role. Their activity was wrapped in a veil of strict secrecy and aroused grave thoughts among many, especially during the testing period of the liquidation of the ghetto.

If, before the establishment of the ghetto, the Jews had been ordered to report for forced labor every morning, from now on this obligation applied only several days a week. Those of means were able to hire poor people or minors to work in their place.

The Judenrat's labor department directed its activity according to the view that prevailed in it: the more the ghetto displayed work capacity and the more specialists there were in it, the greater its chances of remaining alive. The department therefore tried to ensure that all those required for work would go out to work, in as large a number as possible.

The workplaces, some of them stable, were largely outside the ghetto, and in order to go out to them people now gathered near its gate. Various work companies were employed regularly on the railway, on roads, in construction under the special military office for that purpose, in army garages, in the tobacco factory, and the like. Everyone tried to be counted among a “good” company, one working for the army, and especially for the Gestapo, since workers for these bodies were regarded by the people of the ghetto as “safe” from the danger of destruction. But not everyone succeeded in penetrating such a company.

The wage for the hard labor done for the Nazis was negligible, and the work was accompanied by harassment, blows, and beatings.

At first, Aharon Yezerski stood at the head of the Judenrat labor department, and later — Israel Landa.

The official food ration for the inhabitants of the ghetto consisted of 200 grams of bread per day, a few potatoes, and sometimes also a little foul horsemeat. But aside from these, the head of the Judenrat, David Brawer, managed to obtain from the Germans additional quantities of food, including flour, vegetables, and even meat, and to increase the ration somewhat. It was indeed meager even now, but it was better than that of the Jews in other places.

To bring foodstuffs in from outside, not by the grace of the tormentors, under the conditions of the isolated ghetto, fenced in and guarded by the Germans all around, was possible only by way of smuggling and at mortal risk — and even this at enormously inflated prices, which only the well-to-do could afford. The concern for adding basic foods for the masses was therefore taken upon itself by the Judenrat's supply department, headed by its member Yaakov Efron.

This department tried, and succeeded, thanks to the organizational talent of its director, a man of commerce, to smuggle into the ghetto in an organized manner various essential products, including soap, matches, and the like. The department also arranged their distribution to the inhabitants at reasonable prices, in special shops, in fixed rations. This was besides the bread, which people received in the bakeries according to coupons, and to which the department supplied flour, coal, and also salt.

It also stored potatoes in the cellars of the Great Synagogue building and distributed them as well according to food cards. Workers engaged in hard labor were also allotted an additional ration of bread.

In the Grodno ghettos, therefore, despite the plans of the tormentors, it did not happen that a person died of hunger, as occurred where it occurred.

The supply department also showed blessed initiative in cultivating public gardens for growing vegetables. In Ghetto A, the old cemetery area was allocated for this purpose. In the ghetto in “Slobodka,” the broad plot opposite the Jewish orphanage was used — this was

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the former “field” of “Hechalutz” — as were the gardens near the match factory belonging to Yoselowitz. Jewish gardeners, in partnership with the Judenrat, cultivated them, and members of youth movements were employed here. For a time the authorities also permitted the cultivation of Jewish-owned gardens outside the ghetto, mainly in the “suburb” beyond the Niemen. In all these places it became possible to add some fresh vegetables to the food supply — potatoes, beets, and cabbage — whose value was great for maintaining the health of the ghetto residents.

In order also to encourage individuals to make use of every free patch of ground for growing vegetables, the Judenrat organized a six-month course in agriculture, and those participating in it were exempted from the work obligation. Indeed, residents of the ghetto, especially in Slobodka, came forward and intensively cultivated every small plot of earth near their houses, planted various vegetables, gathered them, and brought the fruits of their yield to their tables.

A very important role in the life of the ghetto was filled by the two kitchens for feeding the people. The first of them, in the building of the Great Synagogue, was established by the Judenrat already in the first months after the Germans entered the city. The second was established later, in Ghetto B, in the cellar of the match factory.

The “lunch” consisted of nourishing vegetable soup, sometimes with the addition of bones and even a small bit of meat; and in Ghetto B, of dried fish from the Russian warehouses in Kielbasin, cooked with millet. The price of the meal was very low, and for those without means it was given free of charge. For hundreds of families this was in practice their only hot “meal” of the day. Thousands would stand in line in order to receive it.

These kitchens had special value in the winter days, when hot drinking water could be obtained there, and early in the morning and in the evening even a small cup of “coffee” made from roasted barley. The kitchens received their food supplies from the Judenrat's supply department.

On what did the prisoners of the ghetto live? A large part went out every day to work outside it, most of them in military units and German enterprises. There were also those employed as skilled workers in workshops belonging to Poles. Their wages were negligible — on average, one mark per day. But some of them succeeded in taking some objects out with them for sale during their work, or for exchange for other products, in order to smuggle them back into the ghetto on their return and thereby also make profits. This smuggling involved the risk of the confiscation of what was smuggled, as well as mortal danger.

Many were employed in internal services in the ghetto itself, including in the Judenrat offices, its institutions, and its workshops, and later in the workshops and industrial enterprises that it established on an expanded scale. A certain number worked, as mentioned, in the vegetable gardens in the summer.

Very difficult was the situation of part of the intelligentsia — teachers, lawyers, and others — who now found no foothold for themselves. Schools did not exist in the Grodno ghettos. Some of them needed actual assistance, and this was given to them discreetly, as charity in secret.

Many in the ghetto lived by selling their goods, their objects, and even clothing and other articles of dress, as much as still remained in their possession. But very many were those whose source of “livelihood,” in poverty and distress, was only the social aid they received from the department designated for this purpose within the Judenrat.

There were also those in the ghetto who still had money left from earlier days. Not a few of these, especially merchants and various craftsmen, established in the ghetto, hidden from Nazi eyes, tiny private enterprises that they operated at night: bakeries, mills, flour grinders, soap-making workshops, and home factories for candies, syrup, and starch. There were bakeries that abused the flour given to them for baking bread: they would sift it and bake cakes and rolls from the finest part in order to make greater profit from them.

There also existed workshops of craftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, tinsmiths, and the like. Private shops were opened as well. Raw materials were smuggled in from outside, while electrical power was stolen from the municipal network. All products were sold at fabulous prices, and the owners of these enterprises became very wealthy, even though the Judenrat collected various taxes and levies from them and took into its hands part of their production.

Another circle that became wealthy in the ghetto was the wagon drivers, who held permits for transport outside it, including those who dealt with removing excrement from the latrines to the fields, since no sewage system existed in the enclosures. These men played a large role in smuggling food, including meat, and other products. They would hide these in an empty wagon or in concealed compartments in barrels and even in coffins. It even happened that they succeeded in smuggling live cows into the ghetto.

The wagon drivers even agreed among themselves to make “one hand,” in order to block others from engaging in their occupation. They belonged to the wealthy “elite” of the ghetto — and not only in Grodno.

Together with this stratum were also counted some of the men of the Jewish police, or militia, which had been established even before the creation of the ghetto. The source of profit for these policemen, in whose hands lay the guarding of the ghetto gate from the inside, was their contact with the guards outside, the Germans, to whom the pleasure of receiving a gift was not foreign.

These connections enabled the men of the Jewish militia not to be too strict regarding smuggling into the ghetto. There were among them those who helped their brethren as much as they could, especially the poor day laborers,

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to bring inside through the gate what they had with them. But there were not a few whose hearts were coarse toward everything and softened only upon receiving bribes, without mercy. These men also now led a way of life of revelry and drinking amid the suffering ghetto and the terrible distress around them — and thereby aroused fierce hatred against themselves.

Indeed, success did not always smile upon those returning from their day's work to the ghetto. There was no lack of German guards who would rummage through the pockets of those returning, and if they found in the corner of a garment even the smallest trifle, usually some food, they would give the “offender,” or also the “female offender,” crushing blows and lashes, in addition to confiscating what had been smuggled. But even all this was not enough to deter smuggling, since it had become in the ghetto a necessity of life without which existence was impossible.

Meanwhile, the difficult winter days passed over the Jews of Grodno, and spring arrived. It seemed that even the suffering of the ghetto, in all its manifestations, had found the strength to “adapt” and to hold out in the valley of afflictions. Signs of a resisting underground were not visible, at least outwardly, and from the war fronts there still arrived no tidings or consolations. But our Jewish brethren took comfort in the faith that Hitler and his followers too would pass away. As the people felt, so too did those who spoke in its name — now the men of the Judenrat, most of them at least.

David Brawer, a product of the German, pre-Nazi school, still had at that time a certain influence with the local authorities, including over Ostrode, the head of the Schupo — that is, the Schutzpolizei, the regular German police for maintaining public order, whose men performed guard duties at the ghetto gates. By this means Brawer succeeded not only, as has been told, in increasing the fixed food ration, but also in freeing — by bribery and by intercession — prisoners from certain death, to the point that even Poles came to his door to ask him to intervene on their behalf.

But precisely at the beginning of May, in the very blossoming of spring in nature, heavy clouds announcing horrors gathered in the sky of the ghetto. A few refugees fleeing from the inferno of Lida arrived, with stories of horror about the slaughter the murderers had carried out there against the Jews of the city. And while they were still telling this, new terrible tidings, each worse than the previous one, came one after another about Jewish towns not far from Grodno, in the “Belorussian” area, which had been burned, destroyed, and completely wiped out.

Again Jews consoled themselves: “All that is in White Russia; but here, with us in the 'Third Reich,' it is different. With us, such a thing is not possible!” Indeed, the mind could not digest the thought of the total annihilation of a people.

Brawer's heart was shaken, it is said in a note from the Bialystok ghetto that reached us — “The Destruction of the Jews of Grodno,” in the archive of Mersik, Mordechai Tenenbaum, about whom more will be said — and he resolved: it was time to do much, and to save. The way that appeared to him was the industrialization of the ghetto, and immediately.

He went to Bialystok to learn what methods were being used there to establish industrial enterprises producing for the Germans. He was impressed by the achievements of the Judenrat in Bialystok in developing industry, and returned to Grodno to follow in the footsteps of his colleague, the engineer Ephraim Barash, the head of the Judenrat there. He certainly also exchanged views with him, and today we know what they were from Barash himself, from the protocols of that Judenrat, which were discovered and recently published in Nachman Blumental's book The Way of a Judenrat, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1962:

“Our work is in the nature of preventive medicine — for once the disease comes, it will be too late to heal it. Our entire life in the ghetto is one single danger.”

And a few months later, more clearly:

“We cannot come (to the Germans) and say: 'We desire life; we have wives and children.' We have only one path: to make the ghetto an element that it would be a pity to destroy, because it brings benefit.”

The accelerated development of industrial production for the needs of the German army was assigned by the Grodno Judenrat to its department of commerce and industry. Until then, this department had been occupied mainly with supervision, chiefly fiscal, over private industry and commerce in the ghetto.

From then on, the work of industrialization served as the central axis of the Judenrat's activity, and the importance and power of the members who headed the department designated for this purpose — for craft and commerce — grew and strengthened. Beside Brawer, these men were now his decisive advisers and colleagues in every matter.

They were the head of the department, one of the leading merchants in Grodno — in sugar, in the “new market” — and one of the heads of their activists, Abraham Lifshitz, and his colleague Yaakov Efron, head of the supply department. Both displayed much initiative and energy, and large sums of money were also entrusted to their hands, intended for the necessary investments.

The enterprises they established for production, with Jewish money but with raw materials supplied by the institutions of the German army, the Wehrmacht, grew steadily and expanded. The best skilled workers were employed in them, and the wages of the workers there were also among the “better” ones, relatively speaking. They were also given additional food. But in order to be accepted as a clerk or apprentice worker in these enterprises, which were considered to provide greater personal security, one needed a special “personal connection” or an appropriate bribe.

There are many testimonies indicating that the heads of the department in question did not labor solely for the general good. The attitude of the public toward them was indeed determined in the spirit of their deeds, and also of their attitude toward it.

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The number of workshops and industrial enterprises belonging to the Judenrat, and of those employed in them, reached its peak later, during the period of the ghetto's liquidation. In those days there existed: a factory for felt shoes and boots in the “Maccabi” premises on Magistracka Street; a mechanical locksmith's workshop, in the building of the former vocational school on Peretz Street, under the management of the engineer Michael Gozhansky, for the production of equipment parts and ammunition parts; a mechanical carpentry shop; a workshop above the bathhouse on Vilna Street for hospital slippers, which were made from prisoners' clothing; as well as workshops for baskets and leather satchels; for weaving, on primitive rural looms, where mainly women were employed; a brush workshop; and other small workshops in Ghetto B for carving wooden bowls and producing other utensils.

The Judenrat also took care to train skilled workers in the various crafts required by the needs of the hour, and established an extensive network for education and vocational training for both youth and adults — in metalwork, electrical work, carpentry, sewing, and the like.

How did the Judenrat succeed, without any budget or assistance from outside or from the authorities, and under the impoverished and depleted conditions of the ghetto, in establishing and maintaining its departments, services, institutions, and all the more so its industrial and craft enterprises?

The Judenrat's finance department bore responsibility for all these concerns, and also for paying the levies and the bribes to the tormentors. It was founded, as recalled, as one of the first departments, when it became necessary to collect the enormous contribution for the invaders and to take up the burden of aid for the many who had been burned out, for the orphans, and for all the other destitute.

Yehoshua Sukhovlanski was placed at its head. He was a modest, quiet, honest activist, clean-handed and pure-hearted, a lover of human beings as human beings; formerly deputy mayor and a member of the municipal administration, and active heart and soul in various social institutions of the community. Even when, with the rise of antisemitism in Poland, he was removed from his office in the city administration, the Poles were forced, because of his rare talents, to appoint him its financial director.

A great merit now fell into his hands: to manage the economic system, lacking all precedent and all resources, of the ghetto — and more than once to save the Jewish community in Grodno from immediate destruction. He himself lived in distress and without bread, until he died of typhus and hunger.

The large expenditure items of the Judenrat were: financing the German appetite for plunder, supplying them with cash and all kinds of goods free of charge — merchandise, furs, fine new furniture, and so forth; giving very generous bribes to various officials in order to blunt the edge of decrees; tax to the German municipality and rent tax within the ghetto; payment for electricity and water for the ghetto; repair of apartments and construction of new ones to ease the terrible crowding in the enclosure; renovation of quarters for the Gestapo and of other houses in the city; investments in the construction of the ghetto workshops belonging to the craft department; the needs of the health department, which will be discussed further; sanitation needs; burial expenses; salaries for the staff of workers in the Judenrat institutions and its departments — on average, 450 people in “normal” days, including the policemen.

From where did the department draw its income? From the following items: a special property tax on the wealthy; an income tax on profit, imposed on merchants, speculators, industrialists, and the like; rent and payments for water and electricity; a general poll tax; income from ghetto enterprises, such as metalwork and shoemaking workshops, the bathhouse, vegetable gardens, and so forth.

The budget was prepared and fixed in advance and based on the greatest possible economy. During his stay in Bialystok, Brawer was even able to take pride in this and recommend that this method be followed there as well. Indeed, thanks to the “minister of finance” of the Grodno ghetto, its situation in this respect was better than in other ghettos.

The preservation of the health of those confined in the ghetto had two aspects: first, to care for their physical health under conditions of semi-starvation, crowding, and exhaustion; second, to frustrate the tormentors' plan to destroy Israel by an easy means — epidemics.

From its beginning, the Judenrat's health department, which was founded with the establishment of the ghetto and whose first director was the physician and devoted public activist Dr. Yehuda Lipnik, and after him Dr. Herman Brizman, had to cope with extremely severe problems.

Because of the unbearable crowding, lice, bedbugs, and fleas multiplied and spread in the apartments without measure. In the courtyards, heaps of garbage and rotten potato peels piled up, and the latrines overflowed. The danger of epidemics lay in wait for the ghetto.

The first typhus patients were therefore isolated, and a station was established for maintaining sanitation and eliminating nests of filth. Instruction for the public was organized, and male and female medics would visit all the houses and carry out cleanings and the purification of their residents in the municipal bathhouse, which had been left within the ghetto area. The members of this staff also distributed soap free of charge and even helped with washing.

A disinfection institute was also established, and everyone was ordered to report there to disinfect his body and clothing. To the weak and to the sick, on the recommendation of the department, additional bread was given, and sometimes also fats. Efforts were also made to clean the latrines and to remove the excrement and garbage from the dumps to outside the ghetto.

The department opened a clinic under the leadership of Dr. Brizman, and this extended medical assistance of various kinds to everyone for a small payment,

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according to the recommendation of the department of social aid — even free of charge. Among the clinic's physicians, the following should also be remembered: Dr. N. Neiman; the brothers Dr. Abraham and Dr. Yehuda Lipnik; Dr. Alexander Kaletski; Dr. Moshe Finkel; Dr. Chaim Mordechai Blumstein; Dr. Nachman Voroshilsky; Dr. Zechariah Weisberg, for X-ray examinations — his apparatus was later confiscated by the Germans — and others.

Beside the clinic, a pharmacy was also established by the pharmacist Abraham Trom-Karinski, a man of the suburb, and there was also a laboratory for tests. The clinic was heavily burdened with work.

Hospitals were also established: one in Ghetto B, and a second one for infectious diseases, in the building of the Great Synagogue, whose director was Dr. Bezalel, son of Yehoshua, Sukhovlanski.

The physicians of Grodno wrote a shining page in the story of the ghetto, in devoting themselves tirelessly to bringing help to its suffering people. The murderers' plan to destroy it through epidemics did not succeed.

The Judenrat's department of social aid continued to fulfill an honorable role in the ghetto as well, by caring for those without means, whose number grew from day to day. The department tried to ensure that the poor would be allowed to benefit without payment from the meals of the public kitchen, from medical aid, and from the bathhouse; that potatoes would be distributed to them free of charge; and that they would be exempted from paying taxes.

Great merits in this sacred work belonged to the organizer of the department, Dr. Yehuda Lipnik, and to Yitzhak Warshawski, son-in-law of Slonimski, a man of the “Nayer Mark” — that is, the “New Market.”

At the head of this department stood R. Ze'ev Wolf Berman. Under its authority were the Great Synagogue and several houses of prayer. The situation in the ghetto was not such as to help preserve the laws of religion. Work necessarily continued even on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays, including on Yom Kippur. But under the influence of the department, kosher food was also cooked in the public kitchen for the Orthodox.

The main activity of the department centered on the burial of the dead and of the many victims. At the head of the Chevra Kadisha stood R. Yaakov Lifshitz, a public activist and one of the beloved members of the community, still from the school of the “Great Charity” of the days of the First World War, and even before it. He was the brother of Rabbi David Lifshitz in the United States, may he live long, and the father of the Hebrew teacher Abraham Lifshitz, may God avenge his blood.

In December 1942, R. Wolf Berman initiated the gathering of all the Torah scrolls in the city and their concealment. In consultation with the secretary of the Judenrat, Dr. Tzvi Belko, and with the person who had been an administrator in the school system of “Tarbut,” the matter was carried out. The scrolls were hidden in the small concealed cellar beneath the Holy Ark in the Great Synagogue, together with the archive of the Judenrat from its early period.

Forty-five Torah scrolls, which were discovered without their mantles, crowns, and handles after the liberation of Grodno from the Nazis, were later collected by one of the survivors and transferred to £ódŸ. From the aforementioned hiding place of the Judenrat archive, no remnant was found.

Dr. Tzvi Belko, the Hebrew educator and respected and accepted Zionist-socialist activist, was now, as stated, the general secretary of the Judenrat and a member of its presidium. Dr. Belko regarded his role as a mission, and in this spirit he acted without deviating from it. He was devoted to the public and helped everyone in every matter, doing whatever he could to save lives, without fear. He stood at the side of the pioneering underground that was formed in the ghetto, about which more will be said. He never exploited his position for his private benefit, was approachable to every person, and was beloved as a faithful public emissary.

Beside the secretariat of the Judenrat, a department of statistics operated during the days of the ghetto. It was tasked with collecting material from all areas of the activity of the Judenrat, its departments, and its institutions. At first Dr. Belko directed the department, and afterward Arke Marder, formerly a public activist from the Bund. In time he withdrew from this role, when he learned that the Gestapo intended to use the department's material to prepare lists for sending the people of the ghetto to destruction.

The bookkeeping of the Judenrat, that is, of its finance department, had to be conducted in two systems: an internal and concealed one, as things truly were; and an official one, without recording the bribes paid to officials and other accounts that had to be hidden from the eyes of the authorities. The chief bookkeeper was Meir Belko, Zvi's brother, a veteran activist of the Zionist-socialist movement. The personality of Sukhovlanski, the director of the department, served as a guarantee that everything would be conducted irreproachably. But on Brawer's initiative, an Audit Committee was also established during the days of the ghetto, whose role was to examine all the economic and financial activity of the Judenrat.

Members of this committee were the lawyer Fürstenberg, the distinguished bookkeeper Getz, and the financial expert Abraham Broide, who after some time was appointed commander of the Jewish police in Ghetto B, after his predecessor, Natan Spokoiny, was arrested by the murderers and never returned.

Spokoiny, the son of a hotel owner in the “New Market” and formerly a work manager in Lapin's printing house, fell victim because he stood by the residents of the ghetto and helped them bring foodstuffs into it. In the end he “failed” when it was discovered that a cow had been smuggled inside the enclosure. Abraham Broide's conduct in this role was also beyond reproach.

The lawyer Fürstenberg would write down every evening,

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upon returning from his day's work in one of the Judenrat workshops, the events of the time in his diary. With the help of Abraham Broide, he wrote a monograph on the Grodno ghetto. It was even copied on a typewriter, in 240 pages, and hidden with a Polish family — but it did not reach us.

As recalled, there were no schools in the ghetto, and most of the teachers were employed in the various institutions of the Judenrat. Some of them taught private lessons or lessons for small groups of pupils. The pupils of “Tarbut” continued to study in the ghetto — to the satisfaction of their teachers — mainly Hebrew, Bible, and Jewish history, in addition to general subjects. Among the youth there were those who, after an exhausting day of labor under the supervision of the Nazi tormentors, still retained the firm will to devote themselves to their studies in the evenings.

A source of hope and courage in the ghetto was the veteran Hebrew teacher and musician Reuven Wigdorowicz, creator and conductor of the well-known popular Jewish choir in Grodno. Despite the material hardship that befell him, he continued composing melodies for children's songs, and more than once performed them before his fellow teachers, accompanied by his constant companion, his concertina. Before setting out on his final journey, he hid it, together with the folder containing the musical notes of his compositions, in a hiding place he had prepared in one of the walls of his apartment. He sealed it and plastered it over carefully, apparently hoping that he might yet return to the realm of sounds, in which he had hovered and lived all his life.

Large and rich public libraries were also established in the ghetto.

Already in October 1942, it was not hidden from certain circles among the Jews of Grodno that the area of the ghetto whose establishment was being discussed would, by all accounts, include the Shulhoif quarter, inhabited for generations only by Jews and one of the poorest districts of the city. There were therefore several individuals, among them Dr. Tzvi Belko; Abraham Lifshitz, director of the “Tarbut” elementary school; Shmuel Ginzburg, librarian of “Tarbut”; and T. Bass, who gave thought to the fate of the Jewish public libraries, the book collections in the houses of prayer, and the important private book collections of Jews in the city.

The initiators therefore decided to gather these treasures and transfer the sacred books to the Great Synagogue, and the rest — especially those in Hebrew and Yiddish — to the “Talmud Torah” building on Peretz Street.

During the period of Soviet rule in Grodno, before the Nazi invasion, all the public libraries, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had, as is known, been merged into a single municipal library. With the entry of the tormentors into the city, the director of the library, Boles³aw Cyps, a Polish teacher described as a liberal man of good temperament and far removed from hatred of Jews, was worried that the Jewish books might fall into the hands of the occupiers and be destroyed. They were therefore transferred at the time to the former community council building. Now they were taken out from there and gathered, together with the selected libraries of Noah Bass, the lawyer Yitzhak Gozhansky, the teacher Abraham Lifshitz, Dr. Rachel Gershoni, David Brawer, the teacher-engineer Reuven Gordon, Moshe Plotkin, and others, into their new place.

It should be noted that the wagon driver who helped in transferring them, Mordechai Krauze, not only refused to accept payment for his work, but was even offended that compensation had been offered to him. But when those transferring the books insisted that they could not fail to reward a hired laborer for his work, he replied: “If that is what you specifically want, let a set of machzorim for the Jewish festivals be my reward.”

With the establishment of the ghettos, the books were already in their designated place — 25,000 volumes, mainly in Hebrew and Yiddish. But besides them, additional books still remained in several apartments. A number of yeshiva students volunteered to gather them, with Nachman Milishkovsky at their head. They were supplied with a permit to leave the ghetto, and with sacks on their shoulders they transferred everything they managed to find in Hebrew letters in the houses of the city into the area of the enclosures.

The number of sacred books collected reached ten thousand. The rest — secular books — served to establish two libraries: one in Ghetto A, under the direction of Abraham Lifshitz; and the second in Slobodka, under the direction of the teacher Ze'ev Yekel. During the existence of the ghettos, thousands of their inhabitants, especially young people, therefore enjoyed reading books, and now preferred precisely the finest and most serious works, especially from classical Jewish literature.

Abraham Lifshitz, the gifted teacher, who even now taught a group of pupils Hebrew, as well as grammar and social sciences, was hungry for bread, in distress, afflicted by depression, and helpless. Yet with awe and love he served and guided the readers, among them his former pupils, with his advice and good taste in the choice of a worthy book.

Even under the rule of Nazi evil, Zionist movement activity continued to be conducted in Grodno, to a certain extent and secretly, of course, especially among the youth.

Members of “Dror–Hechalutz Hatzair,” and also of “Hashomer Hatzair” — Bronia Winicki-Klibanski relates — gathered in her home in the suburb immediately after the Nazi invasion of the city, and it was decided to act together: to try to concentrate jointly in work groups and to show an upright bearing.

Members of “Hechalutz Hatzair,” who later concentrated in Ghetto B, even established there a small kibbutz that lived a communal life. In the summer of 1942, together with members of “Hashomer Hatzair,” they cultivated part

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of the Judenrat vegetable garden, formerly “the field of Hechalutz,” near Pohulanka. In the kibbutz apartment, a month-long seminar of “Hechalutz Hatzair” was also held, for the study of the foundations and role of the movement.

And the youths of “Hashomer Hatzair,” who even during the brief earlier period of Soviet rule had not halted their activity and had continued it secretly in small groups, in order to preserve their nucleus for a better time when it would come, now also continued to meet in hiding in the ghetto. They served there as a foundation for the underground.

The young Eliyahu Tankus, one of the leaders of the movement in the place, even organized the members of his troop “Bitzaron” to saw tree roots for heating, in order to devote their wages to aid — especially medical aid — for the families of members who were in distress, relates the guide and educator Hasia Bielicka.

Activity was also conducted in the ghetto within the framework of “Hechalutz” and of “Poalei Zion–Z.S.–Hitachdut.”

A cell of “Betar” was also active and met, as will be told below.

The glorious Jewish community of Vilna, that “Jerusalem of Lithuania” close to Grodno, was among the first into whose flesh Hitler's jaws of destruction sank, to devour it and to spill like water the blood of tens of thousands of its sons. Under the guise of transfer “to work,” they were led to Ponary, near the railway line leading to Grodno, and there they were shot to death in masses, as became known only months later to their brethren who remained in the ghetto in the city.

As is known, the Nazi tormentor had plotted, from the beginning of his invasion of the region and in accordance with his evil plan for the destruction of the Jews, to break up and divide the community of Israel, and to cut off and isolate each community completely from the other, so that each would suffer and struggle in its affliction and wallow in its blood alone before the fate that the murderers had assigned to it.

Movement from city to city was forbidden to Jews, and whoever violated this prohibition forfeited his life. Poles too were allowed to travel on the roads only with a special permit for that purpose. The severe isolation, which blocked the way to any information from outside, created among the Jews a feeling of depression and orphanhood, and caused the spread of false, groundless, and confusing rumors about the fate of their brethren in the occupied territory.

In blood-soaked Jewish Vilna, the decision was formed to undertake missions to the large communities to its south: Grodno, Bialystok, and Warsaw, which the same evil hour had not yet reached in its mass dimensions. It was necessary to learn what was truly happening in them; to inform them of the catastrophe that had descended upon “Jerusalem of Lithuania” and of the deceptive tricks by which the murderers caught the victims in their trap; and also to implant in the Jews of these communities the anxiety for what was to come and to awaken them in time to daring acts of armed self-defense, since one and the same terrible fate lay in wait for the entire House of Jacob.

The matter of mustering oneself for the dangerous mission took shape in Vilna among the pioneering youth movements, whose members had gathered there from all parts of Poland already during the “Lithuanian” period, when they hoped that they would be able to escape from this city to the longed-for Land of Israel.

Daring young men, and especially young women, placed themselves at the disposal of the underground that had been formed there. Carrying their lives in their hands, they began to set out, equipped with forged “Aryan” documents, on the mission of the people.

The first swallow-emissary to arrive from Vilna in Grodno, in October 1941, was Belah Hazan-Yari, one of the activists of “Hechalutz” and “Dror.” She is now among the survivors of Auschwitz, to which she was deported after falling into the hands of the Gestapo on one of her journeys in her mission. Belah, born in Volhynia, who had also drifted with the other pioneers to “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” set out as an “Aryan” under the name “Bronka Limanowska,” to operate in Grodno as a liaison between the ghettos on the Vilna–Warsaw line. She relates:

“Regarding my departure for Grodno, to observe what was happening among its Jews, to work in the movement there and to maintain contact with Vilna — the decision was made at a meeting of the council of 'Hechalutz,' with the participation of Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff. He was born in Warsaw, a member of the center of 'Dror,' overflowing with energy, daring, initiative, and fighting strength, and the living spirit of the movement of active resistance to the Nazis. Later he became head of the Jewish Fighting Organization in Bialystok and commander of the uprising of the ghetto there, and more will be said about him.

“I left Vilna with the address of Itka Burakov, an active member of the training kibbutz of 'Hechalutz' in the place, who was now living in Grodno, her city of origin. I traveled there for the first time wearing a cross on my chest, and arrived at night.

“The next day I reached Itka. I succeeded in finding a place to live on the outskirts of the city among Belorussians, and also in obtaining work as a housemaid, and afterward as an interpreter in an interrogation office of the Gestapo.

“With Itka's help, I established in Grodno a branch of 'Dror–Hechalutz Hatzair' and a 'Hechalutz' group of fifty-six members. The activity — conversations as well as Hebrew lessons — was conducted modestly in the cellar of the Judenrat building, under the protection of Tzvi Belko. Under his leadership, members of 'Poalei Zion–Z.S.–Hitachdut,' twenty-eight activists in number, also gathered there in one of the rooms.

“At the beginning of 1942 I left for Vilna equipped with a permit that I had received on the basis of my request 'to attend the funeral of my brother, who had died' there, supposedly. This document served us from then on as a model for 'travel permits,' which we began to 'produce' ourselves in imitation of it, and with whose help we later transferred groups of women members of the movement to Bialystok.”

Upon her return to Grodno, Belah Hazan met in the German office where she worked a “Christian woman” by the name of “Krystyna Kosowska,” who requested a permit to enter the ghetto. This was Leah, Larenka, Kozibrodska, a daring liaison woman from the activists of “Freiheit” and an emissary of “Hechalutz,” who had arrived from Warsaw. She was later captured and sent to Auschwitz, where she died of typhus.

The two of them came to the Judenrat to hold a meeting with the “Hechalutz” branch and with Poalei Zion–Z.S. Afterward they left for Vilna and reported there in the ghetto: one about what was happening in Warsaw, and both about what was happening in Grodno. From Vilna they returned with the truth about Ponary in their mouths, a truth that no longer left, as before, any doubts that the tens of thousands of Jews of Jerusalem of Lithuania who had been taken to that place had indeed been murdered.

“When I told all of this matter, on the advice of the comrades, to the head of the Judenrat in Grodno,

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David Brawer,” Belah Hazan relates, “he listened to my words, but remarked that he was not inclined to believe 'such tales' told 'by girls.' Not so Dr. Belko, who wrung his hands when he heard my story and burst into bitter weeping. He also helped us obtain money to transfer comrades to Bialystok for the movement seminar that was to be held there and that was organized by Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff. I left Grodno in May 1942.”

During that period, emissaries who were members of “Hashomer Hatzair” also visited Grodno: Tova, Tosia, Altman, at the end of January 1942 — one of the activists of the Jewish Fighting Organization in Warsaw; and also Eliyahu, Adek, Boraks, one of the leaders of the Jewish organization F.P.O. that was formed in Vilna — in Yiddish, Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, meaning “United Partisan Organization.” Both brought with them reliable and detailed information about the catastrophe that had descended upon the Jews in the occupied territory, and called for active self-defense.

In December 1941, an emissary of the “Betar” movement, Yaakov Leizerowicz, arrived from Vilna in the Grodno ghetto and settled there. He was born in Grodno and educated in the “Tarbut” school there. Moshe Nots, one of the activists of this movement in Grodno, relates:

“Yaakov Leizerowicz revealed to me that he had been sent by the underground in Vilna to organize 'cells' in the Grodno ghetto for armed resistance to the Nazis, and that negotiations were being conducted about cooperation in this matter with all the youth movements. He also told of his meetings with Israel Landa, and that he was in contact with Brawer regarding demands that the Judenrat devote means to acquiring weapons for self-defense.

“I was appointed commander of a Betar cell, to which Chaim Kapulski belonged — we also used to meet in his house on Peretz Street — the two Spindler brothers and Chaim Numberg. We had to train with light weapons and jiu-jitsu, and to forge work permits for members of the underground in order to place them in desired positions. We were also assigned to take care of information links 'about what was happening,' by bringing members into the ghetto police — something with which the members of the movements were generally not comfortable. Yaakov Leizerowicz was the first who agreed to enter the Jewish ghetto police for this purpose.

“I too served in it for several weeks, as did Lubetzki. But we were soon removed from it — apparently because it became known what our role there was. Yaakov Leizerowicz knew who had been included among those designated to be sent 'to work,' that is, to deportation to the death camps, and he would warn people to leave or hide. Most of the information was supplied to us by the Jewish police officer Mishke Bloch. Leizerowicz himself later became blind, as I learned, and the Nazis abused him.”

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