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Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that know thee not, for they have eaten Jacob and wasted his dwelling. Jeremiah X, 25   by Menahem Ron

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The Holocaust

We are standing next to the open grave of masses of the Jewish people. The tragedy has not yet penetrated into our entire essence. We are mourning the entire community. We are mourning – but we are not yet able to understand the comprehensiveness of the destruction. Something was whispering: “Perhaps despite all this…” until friends from Poland came and told their stories. As they told their stories, something continued to whisper: “Perhaps despite all this…” Then the testimony came in the form of a letter from a female friend who was at the head of our movement in Poland. For years Tosia has risked her life, slinking through cracks and sneaking from ghetto to ghetto. Now she informs us that Israel is dead before her eyes. She continues her heroic struggle, but her work, as she writes, is like beating her head against a wall.

What I have said and what I will say is only a weak expression of the terrible truth. On sleepless nights, this truth stands before me in all its nakedness, and the dark reality sucks like a vampire. When a day renews itself – each day like the next – we continue to be hitched to our wagon and we follow the path of business between Merchavia and Tel Aviv, and back. Indeed, we still do not believe that the cities of our mothers and childhood have turned into cities of murder.

Rzeszow, my native city, rises up from the pyre before my eyes. Tradition testifies that it is a sister to tortured Radom. When I came as a representative of the movement to Warsaw, Kovno or Chernovitz, I used to spend day and night with Shomrim members from all strata and ages, and tell stories about one house – my childhood home – about it and what took place therein. I never tired of telling about this house, from the top to bottom, from the cellar to the attic. It was a Noah's ark and within it a whole Jewish world, with all its social classes and their different destinies. From it, Jewish immigration set out to America, and aliya to the Land of Israel. In the cellar of this house, there still was a Jew who during his youth had been a cantonist soldier who had been snatched up by the Czarist Army, and returned to us through a miracle. Efraim Hofacholk, may he rest in peace, was the guard of the “Rogatka” – the taxation boundary against liquor smugglers. This valiant old man instilled fear upon the gentiles around him. On the Seder night, fine young men would gather next to his basement window to listen to the simple but enthusiastic reading of the Haggadah, and to once again here him merge the words “Terach-avi”, “Avraham-Veavi”, “Yitzhak-Veyaakov”^[1].

Opposite him lived the jester with his seven young children. They ate to satiation from one wedding to the next, and went hungry in between. As they were immersed in hunger, they would follow after their father and sing bitter songs about the orphaned bride. In the attic lived Rubale the baker, the Bundist, as tall as a little finger. He would go out to the First of May demonstration wearing a streimel on his head. There was the Hassid who fasted every Monday and Thursday, and afflicted himself daily, to the point where he would only eat each day after 2:00 p.m. He had an only son who was a prodigy in Talmudic knowledge. My father occupied the first floor. He was a lover of Zion from before the time of Herzl, and he sustained poor people. Also on that floor was the plaster merchant who enjoyed sumptuous meals. He used to take us children during the cold of the winter, push us between his knees, and ask us to purchase cherries for him. Next door lived Reb Abba Applebaum the maskil, who was known as a miser, but who spent his last coins on travel to the libraries of Italy and Germany to search in their collections for sources for his monographs on the rabbis of Italy of the middle ages. Rabbi Elazarel was another neighbor. This rebbe, whose radiant image and silvery beard resembled the appearance of A. D. Gordon, had his Hassidim stream to him from the dark mountains of Carpatho-Rus (Transcarpathian Ruthenia). His only daughter was born to him when he was 70 years old. Every Sabbath eve, prior to Lecha Dodi, he would add in a silent emotional thank you for his daughter Chanale, and his Hassidim would listen to him with baited breath and sweet devotion.

How many historical strands met in the life in this city! In our midst there were the remnants of the ghetto, the dispute of Hassidim and Misnagdim, the wake of the Haskala, the beginnings of Zionist awakening and political emancipation, and the deliberations between Zionism, assimilationism and the Bund. There was the differentiation between the various factions of Zionism and the social classes. And with regard to the Shomer Hatzair itself – did it not send its roots out to those various strands of the preceding century^[2]? Did it not draw from Hassidism, Misnagdism (opposition to Hassidism), and Haskala – did we not fill ourselves up with this for provisions along the way as we set out for the Land?

Friends, let us arrange a Yizkor ceremony for the homes from which we came. Here is my story about one home. Was it not in homes such as these and even in cellars that we actualized the vision of wondrous emancipation from the fetters of the past? From houses

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such as these and cellars such as these the energy leaped out. From there they penetrated into the forests and arrived at the youth camps at the foothills of the Carpathians, where the pioneering dream was woven.

All of this took place and was conceived in one house and its environs. How wide were the short roads, and after so many years, how short next to them were the roads of Krakow, Warsaw and Vienna.

How is it possible that a city such as this, that whole cities such as these, were loaded upon sealed train cars, were burned in crematoria, and were annihilated with electricity within a few hours? Is our mind able to grasp this thing, can our soul conceive of it? Can there ever be comfort for our hearts? We are one of the nations that forged the human image throughout the past 2,000 years. Then an armed nation arose against us. A decade previously this nation had still voted for social democracy and Communism, and now it is performing the will of Hitler and was willing to render the bones of hundreds and thousands of our martyrs into organic fertilizer. Some said: “revenge”. And I utter the words of Bialik: “Let the blood penetrate into the dark abyss, consume in the darkness, and penetrate from there into all of the rotting institutions of the land.” I say that we are compatriots with all of those who set out to destroy the rotting institutions of the world, and to destroy this social order. This will be our revenge.

We stand before this atrocity like a wounded animal, with the back to the wall, for we are not even able to comprehend this in our soul. I recently read an article by Ilya Ehrenberg in which he quotes from a speech by Ley, one of the Nazi leaders. That wicked man states: “We must now right the wrong. During the Middle Ages we were able to put an end to “dieses wucher-volk” (this usurious nation). We could have then cut it off by its roots. Instead, we permitted it to escape to Poland. Now they are in our hands, and they will not escape again. This time, we will destroy them completely.”

This is the satanic plan.. It is carried out daily. Every day it extracts the quota of thousands of Jews and transports them to slaughter.

What can we do? We cry out and complain. Do we have anyone to complain to? We can hope that their downfall will come before the evil engulfs us completely. Some seek comfort in prayer and fasting. All we can do is a little – and there is precious little that we can do to hasten this downfall. We cannot escape from the feelings of helplessness. Whoever does not admit this is not speaking the truth to himself.

(From a speech at a meeting of the executive committee of Hakibbutz Haartzi of Hashomer Hatzair in 1943.)

Translator's Footnotes

1. A section of the Passover Haggadah. The breaks between the phrases are deliberately in the wrong place in this quote. Return
2. Referring to the 19^th century here. Return

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For death has come through our windows,
It has come into our fortresses,
To cut off children from the streets,
Young men from the squares.

(Jeremiah 9, 20)^[1]

The adage “in your blood you shall live"^[2] has accompanied our nation from the time it entered onto the stage of history. However, all the preceding bloody history pales in comparison with the horrifying extermination that was carried out by the Nazis.

Only very few of our community survived, and those that went to the furnaces commanded us to tell the story to future generations, as it says “and you shall relate to your children”^[3]. The eyes of my schoolmates, teachers, and relatives look upon me and ask: Do you not have the obligation to tell about our great suffering, and our fight for life?

We are required to relate not only about the resistance, but also about the masses that were slaughtered. To you, mighty in Torah, great in spirit, to you, my friends that stood with me in the same line and did not merit to further gaze upon the skies and the land, we dedicate these pages of our Yizkor book, so that future generations can learn about the purity of your character, your righteous lives, and on the terrible iniquity that was done to you; You, our community of Rzeszow, were the rock from which we were hewed. In you, we experienced our religious life, culture, and glorious youth immersed in enthusiastic youth movements. A city of men of spirit and workers, a city of merchants and artisans - all of you are beloved to us and holy. How did the destruction overtake you?

We will remember the Hebrew schools in which we learnt our first letter, we will remember the teachers who ingrained in us the love of the language and the Land of Israel - the cheders^[4] which inspired our youthful lives, our guides who were so full of spirit, and who told us about the Land, who themselves never merited to see it.

We, the final generation of Rzeszow Jewry, who succeeded in escaping from the claws of the Nazi beast, are commanded to erect a monument which will relate that there once was a Jewish city which was created, which struggled to survive, and now is no more.

During the course of the 500 years, the community followed the paths of morality and of a culture based on generosity, which infused the communal life. There was not one Jew who did not belong to some sort of mutual benefit or charitable organization. There was not one youth who did not participate in one of the youth movements or Hachshara^[5] camps that were located in the suburbs of the city.

Outside of Rzeszow, there were dozens of villages, where thousands of families lived traditional Jewish lives, free from any taint of assimilation, who struggled to survive for many generations in a spirit of fear of Heaven and love of fellow man. All of them were destroyed, without leaving any survivors.

Translator's Footnotes

1. This verse from the Book of Jeremiah is included in the haftorah (prophetic reading) that is read in the synagogue on the morning of Tisha Beov, the summertime fast day marking the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, as well as many other calamities that befell the Jewish people throughout the ages. Back
2. This is from a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, which describes Jewish people, poetically symbolized by a young abandoned baby found wallowing in its birth blood. This baby, which symbolizes the bloodied state of the Jewish people in Egyptian slavery, is promised that it would “live by its blood”. Traditionally, this is taken to be a reference to the two 'blood' commandments of the Paschal offering and circumcision, and this verse forms part of the liturgy of both the Passover Haggadah and the circumcision ceremony. Here, the verse is taken to be a reference to the bloody history of the Jewish people, and the amazing historical fact that the Jewish people has survived the many persecutions throughout the centuries. Back
3. A Biblical reference from the book of Exodus, referring to the commandment to relate the story of the Exodus from Egypt to one's children on the night of Passover. Back
4. 'Cheder', literally 'room', is a traditional Jewish elementary school where Jewish youth were taught the Hebrew alphabet, the Bible, and Jewish law. Back
5. 'Hachshara', literally 'preparation', refers to preparation for 'Aliya', immigration to the Land of Israel. Zionist youth movements would often set up 'hachshara' camps, where they would prepare themselves for their pioneering life in the Land of Israel. Back

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Dr. Alexander Heller

The Jews hoped that war would not break out, but my friend Dr. Schlager, a well-educated lawyer in our town and a Spinoza scholar, and I were plunged into despair. The Poles were afraid of Hitler, but they enjoyed the fact that Hitler was “solving the Jewish problem” and they would get rid of the Jews. However, the Jewish intelligentsia entertained the hope that it is unreasonable that the German government would exterminate 3.5 million Jews, men, women and children. However, when Mrs. Lipschitz (Dr. Schmleks' wife) was arrested and she was forced to pay a million zlotys to be released, even the complacent, the wealthy and the educated began to speak differently. “We are lost” - these words were said by everyone.

Before the Germans entered Rzeszów, they blew up the armament factories. The astonished Poles claimed that this was nothing but a mistake, however, the bombing of the town had caused many casualties. The Jewish hospital was filled with wounded. I did not want to leave the patients, but by order of the Polish government I left the town together with Polish doctors in an eastward direction. Terrible fear gripped the people. Masses of people fled and moved along the roads. We reached Przemyśl, but did not find any Jews there, and continued on our way to Sambor. There I was awakened in the morning with the horrifying news: the Germans had arrived. In the first two days they did not harm a person. In the third day, the Jews were recruited to clean the streets. The people of Rzeszów asked me to go to the German commander and ask for a permit for the people of Rzeszów to return to their town. “It is better to clean the streets in Rzeszów than being in Sambor”, they claimed. They hoped to get along with the authorities in Rzeszów, the town where they lived. The commander told me that it was permissible to return to Rzeszów without a permit, but only by the main road. I joined a group of Rzeszów people who returned to the town. It was September 1939. We arrived in Przeborsk and there we got on carts to continue our journey. Todt (engineering) workers ordered us to get off the carts, take off our clothes, hand over the razor blades (someone slandered about the Jews that they had slaughtered a German officer) and the money we had. The Germans distributed our money to the Polish workers, who repaired the bridge. Finally, we arrived in Rzeszów. We found the town under German occupation, with swastika flags displayed over the public buildings. I did not go to my house, but rather to “Tafer Gessl” (Garnzarska Street), in order to be in a Jewish neighborhood. I informed my wife of my arrival and she told me that it was possible to return to our apartment, where two officers from Vienna were already staying. In the afternoon, Gestapo men visited me. I gave them the watches and they left. German officers preferred to stay in wealthy Jewish homes mainly because of the ability to speak German. These families were not harassed by the Gestapo men very much. After a few days, the Germans began to capture Jews for forced labor. Despite this, the Jews began to conduct their business, as they hoped that the war would end soon. Rumors circulated that English planes had appeared in the area.

At the end of October 1939, the Germans appointed Dr. Kleinman as chairman of the Judenrat and Dr. Beno Kahana as his deputy. Dr. Kahana informed me that I and the renowned doctor in our town, Dr. Zinman (the father of the famous Hollywood film director, Fred Zinman) must show up at the Gestapo office. There we had already found many Jews. My turn came and I entered the commissar's office. He ordered me to serve as chief physician and director of health affairs for the Jewish community, and Dr. Zinman was appointed as my deputy. I decided to avoid this and travel to Przemyśl which was in Russian territory. At home I announced that I was going to Kraków. On the train I saw Tarnow Jews wearing green Star of David. Before the train arrived to Przemyśl, we got off the train and got on wagons. On the way we met Jews who had returned from there, who told us, “Merciful Jews, turn back, don't continue on your way”. But we continued on to Przemyśl and reached the bridge over the San River, where masses of Jews and Poles were waiting. The Germans beat, kicked and carved “Star of David” shape with knives into the bodies of the Jews. When we got on the bridge, a German officer ordered us to turn back, as the Russians would not accept us. We returned on the train without tickets. In Yaroslavl they began to expel Jews from the carriages, but my wife and I were lucky and we stayed on the train. At the Rzeszów station, the Gestapo people

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arrested all the men. As I was a chief physician, they allowed me and my wife to leave the station and return to our house, where we found three Gestapo men, who greeted my wife with “Jewish pig” shouts. I showed them the train tickets to the German town of Przemyśl and they let us go.

In the morning, we were woken up by a ringing doorbell. The Gestapo messengers came in and wanted to confiscate the sofas. When I told them that a German officer was living here, they apologized and left.

The Jewish hospital I was managing was confiscated and handed over to the German army. I was tasked with taking care of the sanitary conditions of sixteen thousand Jews who were then living in Rzeszów. A dysentery epidemic was raging in the town at the time, and the Germans accused me of not taking care to eradicate the disease. When the epidemic subsided, they accused me of covering up the issue. Until 1941, Jews could still be admitted to the Polish hospital, where Dr. Hinze served as director, and Dr. Drobniewicz as his deputy, both honest men who admitted Jewish patients free of charge.

On a cold day in December 1939, thousands of Jews who were kidnapped from their homes wearing only their camisoles and pajamas, were brought to our town from Kalisz. They were housed in synagogues and in the old garrison.

After the Jewish hospital was confiscated, I set up an ambulatory on Mateycho Street and used the equipment of the doctors, who had fled and left the town. Upon the occupation of the town, the Germans took doctor Dr. Jezober, the judge Dr. Kasslar, and the opera singer Horner, who were among the town's dignitaries, as hostages, and later released them for a ransom. In December 1939, I received an order from the SS police chief stationed in Kraków to check all Jews aged 16-55 to see if they were fit for work. I was so frightened that I did a childish act: I turned to the district commissioner and asked him naively, what kind of work did he refer to in his order? The officer asked me what I need. I said that I had received an order to examine the physical fitness of the Jews, but it was difficult for me to do so without an X-ray machine. He scolded me: “Do you want me to send the Jewish mob to Berlin for examination?” When I asked for permission to send special cases to the Polish hospital, he replied: “I have my responsibility, and you have yours, and if I find that you have done something wrong, I don't need to tell you what your fate will be”. And with that, he evicted me of his office.

I went to examine the health of the Jews of Rzeszów. All the Jews were ordered to register with the labor office, men and women, and I was assigned the task of checking their fitness for work. In doubtful cases, I asked for permission to send for an X-ray examination at the municipal hospital, but most of the time I received a negative answer. My friends checked and I signed. I was responsible for all errors. Every Wednesday I submitted a report to the district commissioner.

Once I was absent from my apartment for several days, and when I returned, I found an SS officer from the “Death's Skull” Battalion in my apartment. I thought it appropriate to go in and tell him not to be mistaken, that Dr. Alexander Heller is a Jew despite his German name. “It's all the fault of the Jewish government in Moscow”, he shouted. I asked him how he could say that when he himself was aware that Polish Jewish refugees were fleeing the Russian-occupied territory and returning to the German-occupied territory. And what is the logic of the Russian-German agreement which means that a Jewish government in Moscow is making an alliance with Hitler, who aspires to destroy the Jews?

The Germans renamed Rzeszów to Reichshof, and the main Jewish street, which was named after Casimir (back in the days of Austria, the Polish town administration named the Jewish Street after King Casimir, who was kind to the Jews), was changed by the Germans to Goethe Strasse. When the district officer was asked if a more suitable street name could be found for the great German poet, he replied that it was a temporary name, and that it would soon become Ghetto-Strasse (Ghetto Street). It was sarcastic, macabre German humor. And so, he once told with his cruel humor: During the Spanish Civil War, two wounded Spanish were lying next to each other in the hospital, one was “Red” and one was a fascist from Franco's men. The communist says to his fascist friend: What is the purpose of all this massacre, after all, we are members of one people, one homeland, what is the purpose of all these thousands of victims, suffering, and destruction? Yes, you are right – the fascist of Franco's men replies - this whole disaster has come upon us because of the Jews. The communist asks: How so? There are no Jews in Spain? That is what is bad in it! The fascist replies, precisely because there are no Jews in Spain, this disaster has befallen our people. They are to blame, because if there were Jews living in Spain, we would not be beating and killing you, but the Jews…

The first deportation began. In the hallway of my house, I saw a German police sergeant crying: “I have a father and a mother, a wife and children. How can I be cruel to children? The nations of the world will be right when they claim that the Germans are a barbaric people”. But that was only at first.

In 1940, the Jews still lived in their apartments and could continue their businesses. They mainly suffered from house searches and abductions for forced labor. In 1941, Jews were still able to be admitted to the General Hospital.

I was afraid that the Gestapo doctors and even Jews would report me. Once, ten female students who were working on the road and were swollen from sunstroke approached me. I gave them permission for three days of rest. Then Pablo, the new mayor, a German from Vienna, intervened and ordered a Polish doctor, Dr. Maurer, to re-examine the case. Fortunately, the Polish doctor approved my decision and gave them a five-day rest instead of the three I had approved.

At the end of 1940, a dysentery epidemic broke out in the town, which claimed many victims. This was before the establishment of the ghetto. The Jews were afraid to seek medical attention. Dysentery patients were taken from their apartments and taken to the hospital, and their families were also forced to leave their apartments for disinfection. During the disinfection, all household goods were looted. The Jews still regarded household goods, because they did not yet know about the final solution that awaited them.

There was a proposal to build barracks for the sick in a rural suburb, in Povitano. The meeting in which this proposal was discussed was attended by the district commissioner, the chief military doctor, the mayor, and myself. Everyone sat around the table and I was not given a chair; I had to stand during the meeting. The proposal to transfer the Jews to Povitano was made by the Polish municipal doctor, Dr. Niec, a well-known anti-Semite and a

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ultrarational in the town who, in view of the German cruelty, changed his attitude towards the Jews for the better. I concealed the plague as much as possible, since we did not have a bacteriological institute to investigate cases. This was dangerous, because German officers lived with wealthy Jews. Life in the town was conducted in an atmosphere of fear, abuse. From time-to-time Jews were kidnapped and sent to a labor camp in Postkov. The wealthy paid a ransom. Forced laborers were forced to dig pits up to their necks, and German soldiers poured sewage and filth over their heads.

Many of the Rzeszów men of military age fled eastward at the outbreak of war, following the call from the Polish radio, and concentrated mainly in Lviv. After they learned that the Jews of Rzeszów were not imprisoned in the ghetto and were conducting their business as usual, many of them began to return to Rzeszów from Lviv on permits sent to them by their relatives, who had received them from the Gestapo in Rzeszów. The well-known lawyer Dr. Brunfeld returned to the city with his son-in-law and daughter on a permit from the German General Headquarters, was registered with the Judenrat and was executed on the same day. The reason was that the permit was not issued by the Gestapo.

Dr. Elsner, a famous doctor in our city, died in Lviv in 1941. He wanted to return to Rzeszów, but he was not allowed to. His daughter was a violin teacher and her husband worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. He and his wife were allowed to go abroad. On the day she left, she found her house full of flowers sent by the parents of her students.

The head of the Judenrat was Attorney Kleinman, and its members were Dr. Benny Kahana, Hirschhorn, Spiro, and Landau. The members of the Judenrat collected the fines imposed on the town's Jews and determined the share of each of the town's wealthy men in the payment. Those who refused to pay were put in the basement and beaten there until they paid the quota.

Jews were required to repay all tax debts accumulated during the 20 years of Polish rule, even the debts of those who emigrated abroad. The Germans gave the Judenrat four days to collect the money, and when four thousand zlotys were missing, the commander ordered two Jewish policemen to imprison the four members of the Judenrat and they were later shot along with the policemen.

There were also heroes who did not surrender. One young man from the Heiblum family, the owner of a brick incinerator, was in contact with the Polish underground. Despite the torture, he did not tell the Gestapo anything. They broke his limbs one after the other and he died in silence.

From time to time, orders and decrees were issued against the Jews: they were not allowed to walk with moderate steps but with quick steps, they were not allowed to walk on 3rd May Street, in the Zamkova (Palace) Street. When I was once stopped on the street while talking to a doctor friend, I was fined, and I was not allowed to buy vegetables before 11 o'clock in the afternoon.

It's impossible to describe in words the horror, the cunning and deceit, the cruelty and tricks of the Germans. Even before the ghetto was established, a curfew was declared, which applied only to Jews. From 7 o'clock in the evening, Jews were not allowed to appear on the street. Once in December 1939, a girl rang the doorbell of my house at midnight, asking me to accompany her to a woman in labor. I told her that as a Jew I was not allowed to go out without permission from the Gestapo. An hour later, there was another bell rang and the girl came accompanied by a German army sergeant who asked me why I was not in a hurry to help the patient. I answered him that there was a prohibition by the Gestapo. “I will give you a certificate”, the officer replied. He did not know that without the Gestapo's approval, a certificate has no value or validity. I went to the patient and trembled with fear.

From 1940, every Jew was required to do forced labor. Those exempted from this were forced to pay a ransom to the Judenrat so that another worker would work in their place.

In 1941, it was already known that the Germans were preparing to put the Jews in the ghetto that was about to be established. In early 1941, starting in February, German regiments, equipment and ammunition trains passed through the Rzeszów roads day and night, heading for Russia.

The regiments sang a German hymn:

The Jews pass and cross
The red sea.
The waves are crushing,
And the world will be silent
One two three.

The Germans said they were heading towards the Balkans. Anyone who expressed the opinion that they were heading towards Russia was sent to the Auschwitz camp.

On June 21, 1941, a German captain from the garrison informed me that war had broken out with Russia. When I told him that, according to the course of events (German success in the West), there was a chance that the Germans would soon be in Moscow, the German said: “One more such victory and we are lost (“Weir ziegen uns zu tade”). You are indeed a good doctor, but a bad strategist. The Jews rejoiced and were happy, as they hoped that Hitler would be too busy and would not have time to think about the Jews.

Even before the outbreak of the war against Russia, the price inspector used to come to me. I would be silent and he was the only one talking the whole time. He said that most of his acquaintances in Germany were Jews, that in peacetime he was a journalist and he is ashamed to wear a German uniform. Once, he said, he was sent by the university to Italy and Russia to study the influence of the totalitarian system on education. In Russia he spoke with Krupskaya, Lenin's wife. He asked her about Lenin's attitude towards Trotsky, and she said that their relationship was friendly, although from a party perspective they were divided in opinions. Once, when he returned home, he found his books in disarray. They arrested him, later putting swastika on his clothes and silenced him.

I remember that once the Germans took the Jews out of the synagogue on Yom Kippur - on Rosh Hashanah they could still pray - and forced them to sing: what Rydze Szmigly (Polish Chief of Staff) could not do, Adolf Hitler managed to do. The Poles laughed and gloated. It was on the main street - May 3rd. Veteran German soldiers told the Poles: You are stupid, your homeland and freedom have been lost, and you are laughing. The Poles who understood the mockery were embarrassed and fell silent.

Strange relations prevailed among the Germans, in their various offices. Once, the Supreme Commander, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, came to review the situation. Various representatives were invited to a reception in his honor, but

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At that time, Dr. Ehaus, the district commissioner, began demanding the establishment of the ghetto, but the commander of the military district postponed the matter. He lived with a Jewish family in the apartment of Mrs. Greenspan, née Schnaweis, whose husband, a leather merchant, had fled the town. When the commander went on leave and a senior officer arrived in his place, a stern order arrived from the central government in Kraków to establish the ghetto. The acting commander also tried to postpone the matter, but then Dr. Ehaus intervened and demanded that the honorable officer would be transferred from Rzeszów.

Starting in June 1941, Jews were ordered to vacate their apartments to German officers and move to the designated streets in the ghetto. Fences and walls were erected around the ghetto and three entrances and gates were established: 1) Mickiewicz Street; 2) Galenzowski Street, in Freedom Square; 3) Kazimierz and Baldachowka Streets. The Jews consoled themselves with the hope that they would not be bothered as long as they stay in the ghetto: “We will be closed, they will leave us alone”. In December 1941, all the Jews left their apartments and closed themselves in the ghetto, and at the end of December 1941, the ghetto was hermetically sealed. All the Jews were ordered to wear a white armband on their sleeve. Anyone who left the ghetto or left without an armband was subject to the death penalty. It was only permissible to leave the ghetto when they were going to forced labor and only accompanied by Polish, German policemen and Jewish orderlies. Workshops for shoemakers, tailors, and upholsterers were opened in the ghetto. There were also jobs outside the ghetto. Everyone preferred to work outside the ghetto, since it was possible sometimes to buy food for the children (cheese, eggs, etc.). On the way to the ghetto and back, it was forbidden to leave the line. At the entrance to the ghetto, the Germans put up a sign: Danger! Plague! and a picture of a dead man's skull. Soldiers were forbidden to enter. The Jews' hopes that they would be left alone in the closed ghetto were in vain. Every day, Gestapo officials made visits inside the ghetto. With the establishment of the ghetto, the Jewish clinic outside the ghetto was closed, and the Judenrat was ordered to prepare a private house for hospital needs. So, we moved with the ambulatory to the ghetto area. At that time, the district commissioner, Dr. Ehaus, fell ill and I was offered to treat him as an experienced doctor. “It is better to die”, he replied, “than to be cured by a Jew”. Unfortunately, he recovered and from time to time he would go to the ghetto gate, near which the hospital stood, to check if anyone was smuggling food. He would lift the women's dresses and beat them in their butts. Once he called me and gave me the smuggled food, which he had confiscated from forced laborers, for the hospital. An interesting story: An officer's wife, who lived in my apartment, tripped in the room and broke her nose. As a Jewish doctor, I was not allowed to treat a German. I stopped the bleeding and told her that I could only treat her with the permission of the district commissioner. The commissioner did not give permission, and she had to go to the German hospital in Kraków.

The overcrowding in the ghetto was indescribable. Some families didn't have even a room for themselves. All the books were confiscated, including synagogue books, and the private books of a Jewish citizen, a Hebrew scholar, were transported to Nuremberg via Krakow.

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The Rzeszów ghetto also included Jews from nearby towns, as well as the Jews of Kalisz, who were brought to Rzeszów in December 1939. They were housed in the Rimanov Chasidic klois, the klois of Rabbi Asher Zilber, who was the chairman of the community committee. The ghetto had no bathhouse or soap.

A German-run labor office was opened in the ghetto, and the town's general cards office transferred the Jewish cards to the ghetto. Everyone tried to avoid hard labor, and they asked me to issue them sick notes.

Spring 1942. The Judenrat was summoned to the district commissioner at 6 a.m. The ghetto was in a state of panic. The commissioner read to them a letter from Heinrich Himmler, head of Reich Security, stating that every Jew must hand over their furs. Anyone who did not hand them over was subject to the death penalty. Before the members of the Judenrat could even return to the ghetto, Gestapo agents burst into the ghetto furrier and shot him. The good furs were sent to Kraków, and the poor ones remained in the warehouse to rot.

Children who saw the actions of the Gestapo cried. The fate of the children was bitter. They suffered from cold and hunger. They were shot in front of their mothers. Three-year-old children, when they saw a Gestapo man, hid in holes, until the cavalry comes.

The ghetto became overcrowded because Jews from Lanczot, Titchyn, Kolbuszow, Głogów, Sokołów, Sandyszów and Chodz were brought there. Three families lived in one room. I was sure a plague would break out.

Massacre in the woods of Głogów

In July 1942, Dr. Zinman and I were summoned to Dr. Ehaus, the district commissioner, and I was ordered to submit a list of doctors, nurses, and midwives to him. He put a green or red mark next to each name. On the list was the name of Dr. Schmelks, an orthopedist, a member of a famous rabbinical family. We were afraid of what was coming, we were depressed, but so far nothing had happened.

At that time, about 22,000 people lived in the ghetto, residents of Rzeszów along with the residents of the towns.

Days later, the Judenrat was rushed to the district commissioner, Dr. Ehaus, and Dr. Zinman and I were among them. We were standing in the hallway when he came out to meet us, accompanied by the heads of the Gestapo, police (SHOPO), and gendarmerie, and announced that the deportation of the ghetto Jews would begin tomorrow. First and foremost, those who were not working and needed assistance. Everyone was to take with them their jewelry and food for two days. The ghetto was divided into sectors, and it was forbidden to move from sector to sector, death was the penalty for such act. The Jewish orderlies were to gather the deportees in the sector between the streets of Baldachowka and Kopernik. The next day at 6 o'clock in the morning, the candidates for deportation were already lined up. After 6 o'clock, the Gestapo combed the sectors, checked and searched the houses, and anyone found there was shot on the spot.

Even before this, an order was given to return all the labor cards to the Gestapo. The workers in the factories received a stamp from the Gestapo and were exempt from the first deportation. They and their families remained in the ghetto.

The district commissioner issued an order that from now on no Jewish patients should be sent to the hospital after 6 o'clock in the afternoon. The entire building would remain free of patients. The next day, two SS men came to the hospital and found a young woman, an American citizen, suffering from tuberculosis. Her parents were in prison. The young woman did not understand German and spoke only English. They asked her if she wanted to move to her parents, to the prison. On the same day, she was killed in prison along with her parents.

The other patients were instructed to dress up in five minutes. One of the patients was paralyzed. I started crying. The other doctors, my friends, gave their parents poison to spare them the torture of the Gestapo. The patients were loaded onto cars and killed in the woods of Głogów. In my role as the ghetto doctor, I was forced to be present in the square where the victims of the deportation were gathered. The elderly were brought in first from the old people's settlement. Those destined for deportation, who had gathered in the square, were forced to exercise by jumping. Then each sat on his backpack. It was forbidden to turn the head. I saw them terrified, their eyes streaming with tears, and I had to give them first aid.

Some of the deportees were taken to rooms for body examination. There

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Deported on their last journey

The backpacks were taken from the deportees and loaded separately into the cars. There were those among us who thought that they were still considering their suffering and making it easier for them not to have to carry the luggage on the way. But the cars with the backpacks were not sent with the deportees; they were brought to the railway workers' warehouses.

At 12 o'clock the entire convoy set off on foot, accompanied by SS companies, recruited from surrounding towns, towards the Staronywa railway station. On the way, an SS man beat a woman, and her husband ran to help his wife and attacked the SS man who hit her. In response, the SS company massacred the deportees, leaving about two hundred and fifty bodies there. This was near the “Sokol” building, opposite the new post office building. In this building, young, German girls worked as clerks. Many of them, seeing this horrific scene, fainted and burst into tears. These young women were immediately returned to Germany.

This deportation covered about four thousand Jews. The Judenrat was ordered to pay the expenses for transporting the backpacks and the Jewish people did not want to pay, so the Judenrat used a ruse. It promised them that it would get the Gestapo to stamp their work cards that would exempt them from deportation. The money was collected, but the cards were not stamped and many work cards were lost.

For the burial of the bodies near the post office building, the Jews were ordered to dig pits in the cemetery and also to clean the sidewalk of clotted blood with their tongues.

One hundred and twenty people were put into each car (instead of forty). Women and children shouted “water, water”. Few Polish women brought water, but the SS men drove the Polish women away with sticks. I returned to the ghetto. It is unclear why I was ordered to be there to fulfill my duties as a doctor, since I was only allowed to bring with me a few drops of valerian and four packs of bandages.

I remember a typical case of Hitler's people. In the square where all the deportees were gathered, a woman asked a police officer to have mercy on her mother and take her to the hospital. She also asked where the gathered were being taken. The answer was: “To the Kingdom of Heaven”. The Neumann family was also there. Neumann's wife was a German from Berlin. Neumann approached the Gestapo man and told him that his wife was an Aryan German. In response, he beat him angrily and transferred her to the Aryan side. This noble woman returned to the ghetto to suffer with her husband. She would light Shabbat candles. Her brother was a high-ranking SS officer in Berlin and her uncle was the head of the Nazi Party's “winter aid”. Her husband was not deported and was put in prison and an order was received to transfer her and her children to the Aryan quarter. Her husband was later returned to the ghetto, as were her children, and she was ordered to leave Polish territory. She sent a telegram to her brother and uncle, they came, made a fuss, shouted to no avail. –

Among the first victims of Nazi cruelty were members of the Jewish intelligentsia. Lawyers were the first to be deported to the extermination camp. They were detained in the ghetto until December 1941 and from there they were transported to the crematoria. I remember the lawyer Dr. Salzman, Dr. Lecker, Mrs. Dukar-Bat the lawyer, Dr. Schlager, a philosopher who studied Spinoza, the old doctors: Dr. Hertz and Dr. Kronfeld. Dr. Zinman was sent to Belsen to the gas chambers. Among the Polish intelligentsia, there were those who expressed shock at the atrocities of the Germans and there were also those who rejoiced in their hearts that Hitler was solving the Jewish problem for them in a way that they themselves were unable to do. However, they too were afraid that after the Jews, their turn would come. Even for the Andes (a nationalist-democratic party) who were known for their anti-Semitism, fed up with the German regime, and they expected a Russian victory. The surviving Jews were saved mainly by the poor Polish people, even by families from

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the gangland one. The priests showed a sympathetic attitude towards the Jews; the judges shared in their hearts the sorrow of their Jewish friends. And the president of the court told me that he does not sleep at night because he sees before him the suffering of the Jews in the ghetto. The peasants did not pity us. There were those who took ransoms and jewelry from the Jews. Finally, they handed them over to the Germans.

Other incidents should be noted that symbolize the Germans' madness in racial hatred and their split personality. This was during the first deportation. Dr. Ehaus, the district commissioner, saw a beautiful, blond Jewish young woman in the square where the deportees were gathered and gave the order to remove her from there. He submitted her for an anthropological examination to receive a certificate that she was of Aryan origin. He had her parents executed and took her into his home as a maid. With the defeat of the German army, he fled to Vienna and took her with him. With the surrender of Germany, Dr. Ehaus committed suicide, and the young Jewish woman returned to Poland and married a Polish colonel.

During the first deportation, the Gestapo came to Mrs. Storch's house and found there a disabled child who could not walk. The mother begged them not to kill him but to kill her. They fulfilled the mother's wish - they killed the mother and her son.

The two hundred and fifty dead were buried by the cemetery wall. The Gestapo's commissar arrived to check and saw on the wall the inscription “for the sanctification of God”. He asked Lustman from the “Chevra Kadisha” what the inscription meant and he replied that he did not know. The commissar shot him and pushed his body into the mass grave. Among the two hundred and fifty dead was the judge Rabbi Yosef Reich, known as “Der Rutter Yossel”. The residents of the “old people's home” were not brought on the train. They came without backpacks and only wrapped in tallit and tefillin. They were sent straight to the Głogów Forest and there they were murdered.

Entrance to the mass grave in Głogów woods

The Jewish hospital was located in the Chasidic klois of Rimanov, founded by Reb Asher Zilber, who was the head of the congregation. The attending physician there was Dr. Hauftman, a Jew from Breslau. During the first deportation, they loaded the patients onto handcarts and brought them to the square where the Jews where gathered. On the way, they said “vidui” because they knew that this was their last journey.

The Judenrat was in the home of the Schiff brothers, famous goldsmiths in this region of the country. The Schiff family perished in Lviv. The stamps maker, Zinger, disguised himself as a Catholic priest in order to escape, but the Gestapo man recognized him, captured him, and killed him on the spot.

In the ghetto, every glimmer of hope was extinguished. Even the optimists said: “We are dead people who are still alive”.

On the first day of the deportation, the district commissioner, Dr. Ehaus, left the city for a few days. On his return, he demanded that Dr. Benny Kahana write a realistic report on what had happened and state that it had happened during his absence. He was a fierce hater of Israel. When he saw Jews wearing headbands on the street, in 1940, he said: “I must see the city without Jews once”.

All the deportees were taken to Belzec. In July, there were pauses in the deportations. These (the second, third, and fourth) were not as bloody as the first deportation in July 1942. The ghetto gradually shrank. The Jews were forced to evacuate their apartments in the ghetto street by street, the evacuated streets were annexed to the Aryan side, and the apartments were given to the Poles, in exchange for their apartments on Jageło Street, which were given to the Germans. The ghetto was divided into two. One to the right of Baldachowka and the other to the left. It was the fall of 1942; the Eastern Ghetto was under SS supervision and its German name was “Judishes Zwangs arbeits lager”.

Its first director was the SS man Bacher, a cruel and degenerate German. The “Ost Ghetto” was organized in the form of a detention camp, surrounded by barbed wire fences and lit by searchlights. Its residents had to report to the commander every day. The beds were removed from the rooms and replaced with wooden Planks. A partition was erected between the men's camp and the women's camp. Supervision of the women's camp was provided by a women's police. In the Rzeszów ghetto there were no special cases of cruelty, as in the Plaszow camp, where the ghetto residents were later transferred and liquidated. On the other hand, there were young forced laborers who worked overtime in order to save money to clothe these women, who were transferred to work from the Auschwitz camp. Commander Bacher forbade the husbands from visiting their wives, and anyone who disobeyed the order, his sentence was death. Above the eastern ghetto was established the western ghetto (“West Ghetto”), also known as the “Schmelz Ghetto”, where the elderly, children, and those unable to work were housed. This section was surrounded by barbed wire and was under the supervision of the Gestapo. The Judenrat, headed by Dr. Benny Kahana, also operated here. Families were separated: the parents in the “Ost Ghetto” and the children in the “Schmelz Ghetto”. The meaning of the word “Schmelz” is melting, a symbolic name for extermination.

On August 15, 1942, an order was issued that women along with their children must register with the Ministry of Labor, and even then, the Jews interpreted the order in an optimistic spirit, meaning that women with children would be exempt from forced labor. A transfer of children between the women began: a woman without children received a child from a woman with many children, as a kind of “Gmilut

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Chassadim”, so that she would be freed from forced labor. When the women gathered with their children for the census, they were surrounded by an SS company and sent to the extermination camp in Belzec. Two men joined them, including Dr. Zinnmann, deputy director of the hospital. I turned to the German Labor Ministry inspector, Pfeiffer, and asked him not to take my deputy away from me, but he rejected my request, claiming that doctors were needed there too. We did not know at the time where they were being sent. We collected money and paid the Poles, so they would investigate and inform us where the transport was headed. There were Poles who gave us false information, only one pharmacist, an acquaintance of mine, said that they were being sent to a soap factory, in which soap was made from the bodies of Jews. I lived among the Germans for many years, I studied with them, and I could not imagine that they were capable of doing such things. I was wrong and I remembered the Jewish Viennese writer Karl Kraus, who said “the Germans are not only a people of predictors and philosophers, they are also a people of judges and executioners”.

In the evening, when the men returned to the ghetto from work and did not find their wives, they burst into tears, and despair reigned in the camp. The Judenrat members and the orderlies threatened in the name of the Gestapo that they would destroy us all if we rebelled. The men replied, “We are ready to die”. Finally, things calmed down and the life of slavery continued until November 1942. It was the clam before a new storm, a new horror. In November, they doubled and strengthened the barbed wire fences.

It was the evening of November 15, 1942. The Judenrat announced that German war wounded from the Russian front would pass through to Baldachowka Street, and that it was forbidden to talk to the wounded. We felt that something terrible was being prepared. The Judenrat published the Gestapo decree that all residents of the ghetto must appear at the census' square with their work cards, and added that there was no need to fear deportation, because deportation was now out of the question. On November 15, 1942, when we heard about this decree, despair seized us and we could not sleep the whole night.

At 6 a.m. we appeared at the gathering yard. It was a cold winter day, snow mixed with rain, and we stood in the mud, shivering with cold. A storm shook the barbed wire fences, and crows screamed on the roofs, as if to accompany the cry of our hearts.

My wife and I also showed up in the census' square. Suddenly she told me that they want to take our children. Gestapo men in steel helmets were running around. Gestapo officer Lehman told Dr. B. Kahana that the children would be taken to the kindergarten, we believed Lehman. The gathering square was by the entrance gate to the ghetto. A long table was set up there, and around it sat the mayor, Gestapo men, the police, and clerks. First, they called out the names of the men, the husbands, they took the children with them, thinking that work cards would save them. The first one appeared, they asked him where he worked. He answered: I work near the Eastern Railway Station. They let him leave the square, and the child was left behind. They also asked the woman the same thing. The answer was: I work in a sewing factory. They let her leave the square, and the child was left behind. Many women did not want to say goodbye to their children. Even from me, the chief physician of the ghetto and the camp, who provided them with medical assistance, they took my 12-year-old daughter. Then they called my wife and asked her where she worked, and she replied that she worked in the kitchens. They returned the girl to the square. At this moment, her hair turned white. My wife fell towards me and asked me to try to save our daughter. I turned to Dr. Ehaus, the district commissioner, and told him: This is my only child, please, release my daughter, I work as a doctor, it will be a reward for my suffering”. I sobbed. But all this did not help me. I did not get to save my daughter or my wife, I lost them before the end of the war. My daughter was one of the last children whose mothers saved them by hiding them in sacks, in closets.

Grete Heller

The rest continued to work in laboratories, in workshops outside the ghetto, under German supervision. The commander of the “Ost ghetto”, Bacher, was subordinated directly to the SS commander in Kraków and not to the Reichshof authorities, and had tense relations with the local Gestapo. Once he called his Jewish orderlies and gave them an order not to let the Gestapo into the camp. When they came to the entrance gate, the guard showed them Bacher's order. The matter ended with Bacher being transferred to another place and replaced by Szofka, a man who was initially more lenient than Bacher, since he abolished the flogging punishment. When a husband visited his wife in the second camp, he did not impose the death penalty on him but a fine, and with this money

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He bought bread for the women in the “Schmelz Ghetto”. He did not instill such fear as the tyrant Bacher. The head of the Jewish orderlies was Garlick, a resident of Lodz, a former lieutenant in the Polish army. He even suggested to Szofka that when the Russians approached, he would change into a German uniform and help him escape into the woods, and then no harm would come to him. Garlick was difficult at first, but later became more pleasant. He was on good terms with Szofka, the camp commander. Szofka sometimes saved Jews because he had a certain sentiment for Rzeszów. When he moved from Rzeszów to the concentration camp in Plaszow, he made it easier for the survivors of Rzeszów. Szofka was the commander of a labor camp in Rzeszów until its liquidation in January 1944.

In the days of Commander Bacher, every Jew, including its clothes, was considered SS property. Once, during a check-up, Bacher found a Jew wearing two pairs of trousers. He ordered him to undress, lie down, and told two Jewish orderlies to flog him twenty lashes on the right and left sides of his buttocks. The orderlies beat him “with kindness”, so he ordered his orderlies to undress, and showed them how to beat. Then he brought them into the hallway and shot them. Once I was called to come to Bacher, he complained of stomach pains. “Is this a punishment from heaven for my behavior towards the Jews?” he asked. Once he gave the order to transfer my wife to the “Schmelz Ghetto”. I asked him if I could accompany my wife, because he often said that there was no need for doctors in the ghetto. The next day he returned my wife to the “Ost Ghetto”, and ordered her to work not in the kitchen but by me, in the hospital. Bacher's end was that he died in a madhouse. Szupka, who took his place, was executed by the Poles in Kraków after the defeat of the Germans.

This Szofka once told me that in the past he had murdered fourteen Jews. Before the court in Krakow, Lola Weiss (now a resident of Israel) testified against him and confirmed that she had seen him murdering Jews, however she said that he had done favors for the Jews and for her too, because he had saved her life.

I can't tell and describe everything in a row, I skip and remember and go back. The chain of the story breaks, I remember the link and attach it to the chain, although not in its place.

Let's go back to Szofka, the Poles told us about the murder of the women in Shebniya. I went to Szofka with Garlick and asked him if the rumor is true. “Don't believe the nonsense and fabrications of the Poles” – he said – “I'm ready to go and find out if the rumor is true”. He came back and announced, as a typical German, that the news was incorrect - not four hundred women were killed, but only three hundred and sixty. The commander of Shebniya did it on his own accord and he was responsible for it. He wanted to send me to the Shebniya camp, accompanied by my wife and my daughter, to serve there as the doctor of the camp and the Ukrainian garrison.

When the Jews of the ghetto learned about the massacre in Shebniya, they began to flee, so as not to be sent to Shebniya. Out of one hundred men in the company, only forty-two remained. Szofka was then reprimanded, and in order to save himself, he chose fourteen young men one day, as if to unload coal from wagons. In the afternoon, an order was given to show up for a census. Gestapo men and Ukrainian police entered the gate. Szofka called out the names of the aforementioned young men, and put them in a room which had a window to the Aryan side. The young men saw death before their eyes and fled. The Gestapo men entered the room and found no one there. So Szofka ordered the rest of the men to undress, killed fourteen of them, and sent the rest home. There were only a few of us left in the camp. My daughter saw the killed and was attacked in hysteria. After these things, Szofka passed by the rooms (at that time the remnant of the Jewish refugees was staying in one house) and also entered my room. He knew my daughter. “What are you doing, Gretchen?” he asked her, when he saw that she had turned her face away from him. The next day he came to me, in the hospital, and justified himself by saying: “I had to do it, so that the Gestapo wouldn't kill everyone. I am no longer the same old Szofka”.

To complete the story of the fourteen young men, whom the camp commander Szofka put in a room in the Zucker house, and who escaped from there through a window on the Aryan side - I should note that this was one day in September 1943, Szofka entered the room and found no one, so he came out like a madman and shouted: I will destroy you all like dogs. He ordered us to undress, kneel down. In front of me stood my wife and little daughter who was screaming, “Father, I won't give you to them”. I calmed her down. Szofka first called the shoemaker Millmeister and shot him. This shoemaker had sewn boots for Szofka's wife a few days earlier. Then he called the shoemaker's son and said to him: Lie down next to your father! And he killed him too. And so, he killed fourteen Jews before our eyes. Later I learned that some of those who escaped from the room remained alive. Others were caught after a comprehensive hunt on the Aryan side, and among them was Dr. Tunis, one of the doctors in the camp. He was killed by a Ukrainian policeman who knew him and was treated by him. Among the survivors of the fourteen escapees was Dr. Michael Shneweiss, who lives with us in Tel Aviv.

It was in the spring, I went to the Western Ghetto (Schmelz Ghetto) and I met Dr. Hoftmann, the ghetto doctor. His face was grim and he told me that a high fever was weakening his body. At night I was called to him and found him dying. He died of typhus. Until the last moment he had helped his comrades to the suffering. The plague had spread in the western ghetto and took many victims. Relatives were only allowed to accompany the dead as far as the ghetto gate; they were not allowed to continue as far as the cemetery. I was discouraged. The residents of the western ghetto were not required to work, they were only assigned cleaning duties, and were under the supervision of the Gestapo. However, the eastern ghetto was under the command of the SS, and the ghetto commander was under the direct command of the leader of the SS police.

The responsibility that fell upon me depressed me, and I was afraid that the disease might spread to the eastern ghetto as well. I turned to the commander of the eastern ghetto and suggested that he forbid the passage from the western ghetto to the eastern ghetto, because the flu had struck the prisoners in the western ghetto. I was afraid to say that it was a typhus epidemic.

In the old barracks on Lvov Street, disinfection against lice was carried out every two weeks, apparently to no avail. The situation in the camp was unbearable. Three families lived in one room, which caused filth.

The old people in the western ghetto did not work and knew that they were condemned to death. The people of the eastern ghetto worked in various professions. They were proud that they worked and hoped that they would continue to do so until the end of the war. On their sleeves they wore a W or R ribbon, which stood for Wehrmacht (Defense Force) or Ristung (Armament). Their parents lived in the West Ghetto. Also

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the doctors got sick. Only I and one other doctor remained healthy. I was afraid of a Holocaust as a result of the epidemic. So, I chose ten healthy and strong young men and took their blood for testing at the military laboratory, the result was negative. Finally, I got sick too. I lay unconscious for several days. At the beginning of the illness, I heard footsteps. They were the commander of the “Ost Ghetto” and the SS medical officer. “Are you sick too?” asks the commander. I quickly put on my white coat, said it was a flu epidemic and presented them with the certificate confirming that the result was negative. The doctor believed it was the flu. I could not continue the tests due to lack of money.

A few days later I learned that the district commissioner asked the Judenrat to come and inspect the situation in the West Ghetto, because he had heard that a typhus epidemic had broken out there. Every day there were deaths. Fortunately, he did not come himself, and in his place the town doctor, a Pole from Poznan, a decent and kind man, appeared. He also took three healthy people and sent their blood for testing, and they were found to be healthy. This doctor received a diamond as a gift from one of the Jews, one of the few pieces of jewelry that he had managed to hide. The epidemic lasted about two months. Despite the epidemic, work continued in the workshops in the Ost Ghetto. Upholsterers, tailors, and locksmiths worked inside the ghetto, and groups of young people went to work under the supervision of Jewish and Polish policemen. Between deportations, they continued to work, although they were always afraid that after the calm, a storm would break out. In the meantime, they wanted to live, and the young people and the orderlies played football, and competitions were even held between the West and the East.

In these years of calamity, some Jewish women managed to get by and live like “Aryan” women. There were cases where, as a result of informing, Jewish women with Aryan papers were caught, and in the Gestapo offices they were told that if they admitted that they were Jewish, they would not be executed, but would be sent to the ghetto. And so new families came to the ghetto from time to time with their children.

I have already mentioned that in July 1943, there were whispers in the ghetto that soon everyone would be sent to the infamous labor camp in Shebniya by Jasło. In August, an order was issued for the detainees of the “West Ghetto” to show up for a census. The entire camp was surrounded by SS companies. It should be noted that a census was conducted every day and all the prisoners were called by name. A report on the number of detainees was sent every day to the main headquarters in Kraków. In the West Ghetto were then found three hundred and eighty people instead of the four hundred who were going to be sent to Auschwitz. Then the Gestapo people came to the “Ost Ghetto” and seized twenty working people, to complete the number to four hundred and all were taken to Auschwitz, as required by the headquarters.

In August 1943, the residents of Rzeszów did not know that gas chambers had been installed in Auschwitz, but they knew that Auschwitz meant death. Among the twenty young men who were joined to the three hundred and eighty people were the best carpenters. The ghetto police officer, Garlick, turned to the SS commander and complained that they were taking away the good professionals who were needed. And he replied: We don't care.

I already mentioned that the camp commander, the SS man whose family I was caring for, wanted to transfer me to Shebniya, where I would serve as the camp doctor. My wife objected to this. I went to him at 11 at night and his requests him to leave us with the orderly and evacuation company. Szofka told me that he would take me in his car, and then the chief military doctor of the Shebniya camp came and offered me to go with him. “I have a daughter”, I told him in a whisper, so that the Gestapo men wouldn't hear. “I am only in charge of medical matters”, he answered me and allowed me to stay with the orderly and evacuation company in the Rzeszów Ghetto, and so I stayed in the “Ost Ghetto” along with eighty other people. The West Ghetto was liquidated.

In the fall of 1943, the last deportation took place and only one hundred young people from the evacuation company remained. Lotka Goldberg then escaped from the Shebniya camp and returned to the ghetto. Szofka recognized her and called her by name (he knew everyone by their names): What are you doing here, you deserve an Iron Cross, First Class, for the act of escape - and returned her to the ghetto. Bacher would certainly have killed her. Lotka escaped from the women's camp in Shebniya, where some of the women, including her mother, were killed.

The workers in the “Ost Ghetto” who were about to be sent to Shebniya were despaired too because they saw that the work tools and machines remained in the camp. They turned to the camp commander, and he ordered the work tools to be loaded onto the cars and brought to the train together with the workers. The despaired people calmed down and believed that they were going to work. The end result was that the workers from the “Ost Ghetto” were sent to Shebniya, and the people from the “West Ghetto” to Auschwitz.

The chief gravedigger at the cemetery was a man named Ozerowitz. This gravedigger buried all the victims of the Gestapo in the Jewish cemetery, including Poles who were killed by the Gestapo. One day he escaped and saved his two daughters by transporting them in a hearse. He managed to hide the girls with Christians. This gravedigger now lives in America and is a wealthy man. He testified in the trial against Maugh, the Gestapo commander in Rzeszów.

The ghetto had the inscription: “Arbeit macht Frei” - Work gives freedom - the Jews stopped believing in it long ago, everyone was struggling to live, even for a few more days.

After purges, evacuations, several “Aktziya”, the residents of Rzeszów, who initially were about twenty-two thousand people in the ghetto, crowded together in one house. This was the house of the milkman Eliezer Lev. Garlick, the commander of the orderlies, received a special Argentine passport from a Gestapo man who had befriended his wife. When the Gestapo learned of this, Garlick and his wife were summoned for questioning, and despite torture, neither of them gave up the name of the Gestapo man. Afterwards, they were both shot.

In the vicinity of Rzeszów, in Lissa Gora, there was a labor camp for five hundred Jews from all over Europe. They worked in an aircraft engine factory. With the help of one patient, we managed to get seven people, including my good friend Eisenberg, who now lives in Tel Aviv, to move to this camp. Of the remaining members of the evacuation company, who lived in Lev's house, the men were transferred to the weapons factory in Stalowa Wola and the women to the Plaszow camp, including Lola Weiss (who now lives in Tel Aviv). Of the people of the “West Ghetto”, not one remained alive.

By early January 1944, there were no Jews left in Rzeszów. The city became a “Judenrein” according to the wishes of Dr. Ehaus, the district commissioner. The ghetto's furniture was sold to the Poles and the valuables were transferred to warehouses in Kraków.

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F.M.W. Aircraft Engine Factory was a Jewish labor camp and it was affiliated with a large labor camp in Plaszow, which was a branch of the infamous Oranienburg central camp.

The factory in F.M.W. (Flugzeug Motoren Werke) was founded in 1943, and Jews from the ghetto were sent there to work, doing menial jobs, serving, etc. This place later became a quarantine camp. A high wall with three iron gates was built around the factory. When the factory became a quarantine camp, the Jews were housed in barracks and worked there together with Poles. Among the five hundred Jews in the factory, there were few Rzeszów Jews. Most of them were from all corners of occupied Europe, and only about thirty Rzeszów Jews, including me, my wife, and my daughter. The food was bad, but in the factory halls we found shelter from the great cold. It was also possible to buy food from farmers. The German factory manager openly said that the best workers were Jews. However, he was very careful not to express this opinion in the presence of the SS men.

I served as a doctor in this camp. The Jews suffered from skin diseases and festering wounds due to lack of food, and I had no antibiotics at my disposal. Every day I had to report the number of patients, but I was afraid to do so, lest they execute the patients.

The supervisors of the order were Jews and they were in good relations with the German work manager and asked him to record on the work cards that everyone was healthy and only three-four people were recorded as sick. Among the workers was a radio technician, Fritz Eisenberg, from the city of Biełsko, who currently lives in Tel Aviv, and he would listen to foreign stations and give his friends encouraging news. In this camp there was a women's barrack with about eight women in it, including my wife, my daughter, Dr. Frederica Herschdorfer, the wife of Dr. David Cohen of Tarnow, one of the founders of Hashomer Hatzair in Vienna. The women were engaged in sewing and laundry.

In July 1944, the camp commander contacted me and said that the Russian vanguard had arrived in the vicinity of Yaroslavl. The joy was mixed with fear - I was afraid that the Germans would destroy us before the Russians entered, but I was happy that the suffering would come to an end and the Germany would be punished. A few days later, German officers from the explosion squad arrived. One day, we gathered together with the orderlies and Jewish servicemen, and consulted on how to escape. The camp was surrounded by a wall and guarded by Ukrainian police. It was agreed among us that the strong young men would attack the Ukrainians and disarm them. I thought that everyone must participate in the escape, because if only some escaped, then the Germans would murder the rest. The young men promised to take the sick with them. There were those who opposed the escape, because they were sure that the Germans would know about it and then they would kill everyone. They also claimed that there were no woods nearby and no home front to protect them, because the peasants and neighbors could not be trusted. Those opposed to the escape surrounded the barracks and did not let anyone escape.

Only Fritz Eisenberg had a permit to go to work at the headquarters, and he later said that the roads and streets were full of retreating army personnel. We were expecting liberation. Every day new news arrived. It was said that the Germans were burning the archives. We were angry and concerned, and we didn't know what would happen to us. German families were rushing in panic to the train, but there were not enough cars. One night a worker came up to me and told me that he had found the iron gate open and that there was a chance to escape. It was at two in the morning. A few people started to escape, and only a few of them survived because the Polish National Underground (A.K.) caught them and executed them, because they didn't want them to fall into the hands of the Russians. That night the Poles helped Eisenberg and Rozin (both live in Tel Aviv today) escape by placing a ladder through the wall. A young man from Leipzig, the chief inspector of the camp service, reported the escape to the Gestapo security police, and within ten minutes the camp commander appeared and conducted a search and then hunted down the escapees. It was in July. The escapees were hiding in the wheat fields. This time only ten people escaped. Most of the people stayed because they were afraid of punishment. At that time, the Ukrainian police force was increased, but this time they did not take revenge on us or punish us. In those days, the wife of a German captain dared to curse the Führer Adolf Hitler for failing in his war. Two days after the escape of the ten people, the Germans obtained cars and transported all of us (about four hundred Jews) to Plaszow, the Jews were more important to them than the factory machinery. The trip to Plaszow in the vicinity of Krakow, was accompanied by Ukrainian police and took two days. At the train station, SS men were waiting for us. With dogs. There were about ten thousand prisoners in the Plaszow camp. The camp was set up on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery. At the entrance to the camp, a young Viennese camp commander, named Amon Gott, a sadistic murderer with the appearance of a movie star, stood and greeted us. Suddenly I heard a loud voice: Dr. Heller! Do you have any patients, lice, where did you study? I told him that I studied in Vienna. My friends surrounded me and out of curiosity asked me what he wanted from me. This young commander terrified everyone. He would walk around with a small gun in his hand. When he encountered a Jew walking around the camp, he would shoot him, as if he was a bird. With the defeat of Germany, he was captured and sentenced by the Poles in Kraków to be hanged. There were also Poles in the Plaszow camp; they were captured from time to time and sent to prison for days or months and then set free. The SS orderlies searched the rooms and sent us to the barracks, after all our belongings were taken from us. There was a barracks for two hundred Jewish women from Hungary, who were brought from Auschwitz half-naked.

The Plaszow camp had large workshops, and the Jews had contact with the German Schindler, a lover of Israel, who had recently visited Israel as a guest. The Jews of Kraków worked overtime to obtain money to clothe the women from Hungary, as well as to cover urgent needs. In Plaszow I also found Szofka, who was the commander of the “Ost Ghetto” in Rzeszów. He treated the prisoners of Rzeszów with a certain patience, after the murder he committed because of the escape of the fourteen young men. The camp commander Amon Gott used the scoundrels and corrupt people among the Jews to torture the prisoners. Later, he did everything to get rid of these assistants by trickery and hanged them. He used to tease his dog (Rolf) with the Jews and would call to his dog: “Mr. Rolf! Attack and bite the dog (the Jews)”. The camp doctor was a Jew, Dr. Gross, and he was hanged after the war along with the camp commander Amon Gott by a Polish court.

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Upon our arrival in Plaszow, the labor camp was transformed into a quarantine camp.

There were several other children in the camp that the women managed to transport and hide in their backpacks. Amon Gott gave the order to seize the children. The women were forced to show up for the census naked and then he sent them to Auschwitz. While the children were being taken away from their mothers, he played the German song. “Goodbye, Mother, we are going to the Kingdom of Heaven”.

The people from Rzeszów remained in Plaszow for about six weeks, but some of them were sent to Germany after only eight days. In Plaszow I stopped working as a doctor and worked on excavations. The aforementioned camp doctor, Gross, did not want to employ me in medical work.

One Saturday in August, a census was held in the camp: men separately and women separately. The census was conducted meticulously. From a distance, I saw my wife, my daughter, and Dr. Hardsdorfer. All the women were sent to Auschwitz, one hundred and twenty women in a car, without water, in stifling heat. The men remained in the camp and were joined by the Jews who had been evacuated from the weapon factory in Stalowa Wola near Rzeszów, among them Dr. Willi Kahana, an attorney in our town, and other Rzeszów people.

On Sunday, another census was held for the men and they were all sent, escorted by SS men, to the notorious Mauthausen camp in Upper Austria. There were one hundred of us in the car. The SS men checked our belongings, emptied our pockets and took everything. Our situation in the car was terrible, there was no air to breathe. Everyone was pushed into the passage between the cars, on the stairs, to catch some air. Shouts of “water” pierced the air. The guards replied: “If you will behave well, you will receive water at the nearest station”.

Every day, at least 4 dead people were taken out of the car. When they opened the door to remove the bodies, we breathed a little air. We traveled like this for four days. There was no toilet in the car. We traveled through Auschwitz in the direction of Mauthausen. It was a Russian prisoner-of-war camp from the days of World War I. On the way to the camp, we passed a stream of water, bent down to drink, drank eagerly as if it was milk. There were about eighty thousand prisoners in the Mauthausen camp, prisoners from Auschwitz were also brought there when this camp was evacuated. We were put in a barracks for disinfection and then moved to a barracks that could only accommodate five hundred people, but housed two thousand prisoners. We lay as close together as salted fish, head to foot. Policemen came to check if there was another crack, so they could let another person in. The Rzeszów people got together. Among us were Dr. Willi Kahana, Hardsdorfer, Foyer and others. Despair and hopelessness were our lot. At night, we were haunted by horrible dreams. We shouted in our sleep, “We were shot” until we lost consciousness. Among the prisoners was also a former German naval officer who was sent as punishment to the camp to serve as the barracks inspector. More than once, he stood up and shouted at us: “You stinking Hebrews, do you believe that any of you will come out alive from the camp? You will be able to see freedom through the chimney of the crematorium that stands in front of your barracks. So am I!”

The Germans took our clothes from us and for a few days we were naked. In our clothes we had papers, pictures and everything disappeared. Later we were only given a nightgown. For a few days we didn't work. Later another inspection was conducted, they searched between our teeth and also put fingers in our anus. We were brought to an underground structure, and we thought they were taking us to gas chambers. There they shaved us from head to toe, leaving a “trail” in the middle of our heads, a distinguishing mark for prisoners in the event of an escape (this trail was called the “trail of the lice”). Later they were taken to work in caves between mountains. Until 1943, it was a detention center for German prisoners, thousands died there and their bodies were thrown into the abyss. The SS murderers called these dead “paratroopers”. Few survived this hard labor. One of the Rzeszów people, Hermann Goldstein, who had a heart condition, approached an SS man and complained of pain. The SS man ordered him to approach the fence and shot him in the back. The toilet was only allowed to be used between 8 and 9, water was only given for one hour a day. You could only drink in the basement. Any dirtiness was punished with beatings. At the camp gate there was a wonderful garden and, in the barracks, there were distinguished prisoners, counterfeiters of banknotes for the Germans. There were also Schuschnigg, who was the Prime Minister of Austria, the Hungarian Count, Apony and others. A few weeks later, the group of Rzeszów people separated - I was sent to the city of Malek, where there was a branch of the Mauthausen camp. We were busy building underground buildings for factories that had been transferred from Russia and France. There we met groups of prisoners, Polish women, who had been brought from Warsaw after the suppression of the Bor Komarowski uprising. They told us that the Germans were still holding their ground in Warsaw. This news depressed us.

We arrived at the station and for the first time, cars suitable for transporting people were waiting for us. Everyone had a place to sit. Another group of Rzeszów people was sent to Gosen, where the pharmacist Hardsdorfer died in October 1944. I worked at Malek from October 1944 until April 1945 in the construction of underground warehouses.

Out of hundreds of people I was in contact with, I remember only five who are still alive, and they are Dr. Willi Kahana, Herman Foyer, a dental technician, Elowitz, and two others, all live in the United States.

When we learned that the Russians had arrived in Vienna, we were afraid that the Germans would move us west and that there would certainly be casualties during the evacuation. At that time, I was sick, and once, while I was eating lunch (potato soup), I heard an order to get dressed. We were all in our underwear and hurriedly dressed in the clothes of the deceased. The sick who could not get out of their beds were put into cars, and we were told that they had been thrown into the Danube River. A census was held and we were ordered to run forward, those who failed and fallen were pushed aside, and those who succeeded in the race were put into a special barracks. The next day we were brought to the Danube River, and by barge we were taken to the city of Linz. There we were given a quarter loaf of bread, jam and margarine and began a three-day march to Ebensee, the Mauthausen branch camp. This was in April 1945. We left our blankets on the way, because it was difficult for us to carry them with us. We arrived to a camp in the middle of the woods. We did not go to work for two days because chaos reigned. Only on the third day we were sent to work at the train station that was destroyed by English bombers, and a feeling of revenge filled our hearts when we saw the ruins. The work was difficult, we were weak and also sick, but we were afraid of being sent to the Rovir Hospital because it was, in fact, an institute for the extermination of Jews. A special hospital was intended for people of other nationalities. Nevertheless, I asked to be admitted to this hospital, because I was tired, beaten and wounded.

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I turned to a doctor, a Jewish prisoner, and asked him to admit me to the hospital. I longed for hospital treatment and was ready for any suffering.

During the march to Ebensee, anyone who could not walk was shot and thrown into the Traun River. In Linz we saw posters on the walls: “The war is not over yet”, “The main criminal against the German people, Roosevelt, is dead”. The SS men said that the war was just beginning. The road from Linz was difficult, my legs were bruised. I gave my bread to two French prisoners and continued walking, leaning on their shoulders.

As mentioned, I asked the Jewish doctor to admit me for treatment, but he told me: “You certainly don't know the meaning of Rovir”. “Just let me rest for two days” - I requested. He brought me to an SS man, who refused to admit me, despite the doctor's recommendations. In the afternoon I registered again. Another doctor warned me: “Don't you know what happens to a person in this place?” But he brought me to another SS man, and he admitted me. After a bath, they put me in the Jewish hospital (Rovir). The head of the “block” was a Viennese criminal, cruel, and he forbade any speech. Anyone who spoke here was shot. They took off our underwear and we sat naked. And here I saw a man in front of me, staring at me. The man was lying on a bunk and continued to look at me. Suddenly I heard a voice whispering: “Are you Dr. Heller, the doctor of Rzeszów?” I was afraid to answer and indicated with my eyes for a positive answer. He was a Jewish carpenter from Kalisz who had been brought to Rzeszów by the Germans. He worked for the head of the “block”, making furniture for his house. The carpenter, his name was Engel, was like an angel from heaven to me and it was he who saved me from death. He was a skilled carpenter and was liked by the supervisor. He told the supervisor that I was a famous doctor. One day while distributing soup, the supervisor attacked me angrily and shouted: Who are you? Trembling all over, I replied that I was a doctor who had studied in Vienna. He ordered me to show up in front of him in half an hour. I had no watch and could not keep track of the time. Fortunately, a young German told me the exact time. I went to the supervisor's room, knocked on the door, and said that I was showing up according to his orders. Then he ordered me to take some clothes and start working the next day in the ambulatory. It was the first day in which I was free from hardship after years of hardship, and this was thanks to the carpenter Engel from Kalisz.

It was one day before the appearance of the American army. We were ordered to show up at the census and the sick were brought in on stretchers. We were ordered to enter the tunnel, because the battle front was approaching. We learned from French prisoners that the tunnel was mined. They refused to enter the tunnel and claimed that they were ready to be sacrificed, as is customary in times of war, and did not want to enter the shelter. The German headquarters consulted and finally gave up on our entry into the tunnel and returned us to the barracks camp.

Joy broke out in the camp when a Polish prisoner announced loudly that the SS men disappeared from the watchtowers. Among us were pious Jews from Slovakia. Upon hearing this news, they went out in dances and chants echoed throughout the camp.

Calls of “Americans are coming” were heard throughout the night. I tried to calm the crowd: I was afraid of the return of the SS men and I was worried that the news of the Americans' arrival was premature. But it was impossible to stop the wild joy. Only at 6 o'clock in the morning, the first American tank appeared, with three soldiers in it. It was Saturday. People danced with joy, kissed each other enthusiastically, literally biting and pinching each other's flesh. The Slovak Chasidim sang Shabbat hymns and their faces shone with joy. They danced like madmen until they were exhausted. The SS men disappeared, including the commander of the sector and among them the doctors, Slovak Jews. The Americans asked us to return to the camp so that they could film. Among them were Jewish doctors of German origin, rabbis, and they were especially interested in the Jewish camp, which suffered the most from all.

By order of the American staff officer, all the residents of the German town of Ebensee were brought to see with their own eyes what the Germans had done. The citizens of the German city claimed that they knew nothing, and the priest apologized, saying that they had no idea what was happening in the camp. The residents of the city were ordered to clean the camp, to bathe the sick Jews, to wash the floors. The prisoners and POWs took revenge on their enemies and oppressors, captured the SS men, the Kapos, the block leaders, killed them and threw them into the crematoria. The Viennese criminal, the head of my block, was also punished.

Before leaving the camp, the SS men managed to kill hundreds of prisoners, and due to lack of time, they did not have time to cremate them and bury them in a mass grave.

The few Rzeszów people held a farewell meeting. Among us was Dr. Willi Kahana with his wife, who managed to return from Auschwitz, as well as the wife of the teeth technician.

Every government took care to return its residents. Only the Poles remained, because the Allied Supreme Commander would not let them return to their homeland which was occupied by communists. The Jews were also delayed and waited to emigrate to foreign countries and to Israel. I made efforts to return to Poland, perhaps I would find my wife and daughter there.

The Germans were exempt from all moral and conscience laws, because their government freed them from them and justified and praised every crime. Jews were forced to do all kinds of hard work for Germans in cold and hunger, and as a reward were shot or killed in the gas chambers. Thus, the Germans exterminated six million souls and destroyed thousands of communities, which had flourished for centuries, in the cruelest ways, which have no parallel in the history of civilized peoples.

I tried to tell about the years of horror as faithfully as my memory was - so that the residents of Rzeszów and the surrounding area, who were fortunate enough to be in foreign countries during the war years, would know what had happened and they would be able to remember those few who managed to stay alive and suffered together with us all the years of the Holocaust and destruction. The description is realistic and completely true. I did not exaggerate; I did not cover my words in a literary or sensationalist cloak.

These are the words of Dr. A. Heller. I wrote them down based on his stories in German during my meetings with him. He was unable to write himself, because to this day he has not been freed from the nightmare of the horrors and suffering that he endured during the five years of war.

Dr. Moshe Yaari-Wald

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