The Minsk Ghetto

The Minsk Ghetto

Jewish Minsk

Minsk, capital of the Belorussian SSR, in 1926 the Jewish population of Minsk was 53,686, by June 1941 the number had grown to 80,000, constituting one- third of the city’s population.

Only a small fraction of the Jews managed to escape from the city in the six days between the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the conquest of Minsk on 28 June 1941.

German parachutists who had been dropped east of the city intercepted thousands of Jews who were trying to flee and forced them to return. When the civil administration was set up Minsk became the headquarters of the Generalkommissar for Belorussian Wilhelm Kube.

Kube was murdered on 22 September 1943 was killed by a bomb planted under his bed, by his maid, a Soviet partisan.

On 8 July 1941, the Germans killed 100 Jews and thereafter the murder of Jews by the Germans singly or in groups, became a daily event. On 20 July 1941, an order was issued on the establishment of the ghetto.

Its area comprised thirty-four streets and alleys, as well as the Jewish cemetery, some of the streets included:

• Kollektornaia

  Wilhelm Kube

• Kolkhoznaia

• Nemiga

• Obuvnaia

• Perekopskaia

• Respublikanskaia

• Shornaia

• Zaslavskaia

Some of the lanes included:

• Kolkhoznyi

• Mebel’nyi

• Vtoroi Opanskii

• Yubileiny Square

The ghetto was surrounded by thick rows of barbed wire, watchtowers were erected and round the clock surveillance was established. A living space of 1.5 square meters was allotted for each person, with no space allotted for children. Thousands of the ghetto inhabitants lived among the ruins of destroyed or gutted houses without floors or windows. A curfew was in force from 2200 to 0500 hours.

Entrance to the Minsk Ghetto

Jews from Slutsk, Dzerzhinsk, Cherven, Uzda and other nearby places were brought into the ghetto. Married couples with one non-Jewish partner were also put into the ghetto as were their children. Altogether, 100,000 persons were rounded up and put behind the ghetto walls.

In August 1941 5,000 Jews were seized and murdered, the surviving Jews were forced to pay a ransom, to report every Sunday for roll call, and to wear a yellow badge on their back and chest, as well as white patch on their chest with their house number.

News of the killings in Minsk and other places in the East was sent to the chief of the Gestapo in Berlin, Heinrich Muller, who asked Adolf Eichmann to see him, Eichmann being the SS officer in charge of the department IV-D-4, responsible for deportations and emigrations.

Twenty years later, in a court in Jerusalem, on trial for his life, Eichmann recalled that Muller had said to him; “In Minsk they’re shooting Jews. I want you to report how it’s going.”

Warning! Sign on the Minsk Ghetto fence

Eichmann left at once, first to Bialystok and then to Minsk. At his trial he recalled how, reaching the execution site in Minsk he found that:

“There were the piles of dead people. They were shooting into the pit – it was a rather large one, so I was told, perhaps four to five times the size of this room, perhaps even six or seven times. I didn’t think much about it because I could hardly express any thoughts about it – I only saw it and that was quite enough – they were shooting into the pit and I saw a woman, her arms seemed to be at the back, and then my knees went weak and I went away.”

In July 1941 a Jewish Council (Judenrat) was established with Eliyahu Myshkin. He was the former vice-director of the Ministry of Commercial Trade. The Judenrat had seven departments:

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/minsk.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Euthanasia and the Nazi Regime!

Introduction To Nazi Euthanasia

Nazi Eugenics chart

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines euthanasia as “the action of inducing a quiet and easy death.” This grant of a “mercy death” may occur with the consent of the individual concerned, is then termed “voluntary” “euthanasia” and was the meaning originally given to the word. However, euthanasia also came to be termed “involuntary”, as for example when a patient is suffering from an incurable and painful disease, or is in a coma and is considered unlikely to regain consciousness. In such circumstances, a third party or parties may determine to put an end to the patient’s suffering.

The circumstances are, in general, that the person involved is no longer capable of making up his or her mind and/or to express his or her ultimate wish. But Nazi ““euthanasia”” was quite different in conception and practice from the dictionary definition, old or new. For it was derived, not from humanitarian or compassionate reasoning, but from pseudo-scientific theory and ruthless economic policy. The Nazis destroyed “life unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben) as they termed it, not as an act of mercy, but as part of a strategy to murder that part of the population least able to defend itself.

Nazi Propaganda Drawing

That policy was directed not only at German citizens, but at those of other eastern European countries which fell under Nazi hegemony, particularly Poland. The ““euthanasia”” programme formed an essential part of the evolving Nazi policy of extermination on a massive scale. That policy reached its apogee with the murder of the Jews, but had the programme arrived at its intended conclusion, the eventual death toll would have been immeasurably greater.

The Nazis did not create this twisted version of euthanasia. Its roots lay in a selective reading of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, and the distorted “scientific” thinking to which this gave birth. The term "eugenics", a thesis which has no scientific basis, was coined in 1881 by the British naturalist and mathematician Francis Galton. It was described as "the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding."

This took the concept of “survival of the fittest”, a fundamental element of Nazi ideology, to its logical conclusion. Eugenics developed within the larger movement of Social Darwinism, which applied Darwin's "struggle for survival" to human affairs. The fundamental tenet of the eugenics movement was that restricting the ability of “inferior” people to procreate whilst maximizing that of “superior” individuals, would benefit society. Attention was focused on the feebleminded (an inaccurate term covering everything from mental retardation to alcoholism), labelled as idiots, imbeciles, or morons. It was suggested that there existed a relationship between low intelligence and both immorality and crime.

Pro-Eugenics' Propaganda

The cause of the social problems of the time was deemed to be inherited feeblemindedness and the resulting poverty by hereditary degeneracy. It was concluded "Not all criminals are feebleminded, but all feeble-minded persons are at least potential criminals. That every feeble-minded woman is a potential prostitute would hardly be disputed by anyone." Racism too, was not far from the minds of the eugenicists. The "darker peoples of southern Europe and the Slavs of eastern Europe are less intelligent than the fair peoples of western and northern Europe" wrote one, adding that the "Negro lies at the bottom of the scale" of intelligence. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, director of the Eugenics Record Office in the United States, compared” human racial crossing with mongrelisation in the animal world" and argued that "immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Jews, were racially so different from, and genetically so inferior to, the current American population that any racial mixture would be deleterious."

The eugenics movement was international, (the world’s first professorial chair in eugenics was established in 1909 at University College London), but was particularly influential in Germany, where in his 1895 book, “The Right to Death” (Das Recht auf den Tod), Adolf Jost argued that if the state demanded the sacrifice of thousands of individuals in wartime, it had the same “right” in times of peace to demand the sacrifice of the impaired and non-productive, who were draining the state of its resources. Twenty five years later in a book entitled “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life” (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Leben), Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche proposed that “unworthy life” included not only the incurably sick, but many of the mentally ill and feebleminded, as well as retarded and deformed children. Killing such people was “an allowable, useful act.” To the eugenicists, such people appeared to have less intelligence, higher levels of antisocial behaviour, and, accordingly, less human value than worthier individuals, such as, naturally, the eugenicists themselves. They were “burdensome existences” (Ballastexistenzen).

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/index.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

The Holocaust in Norway!

The Destruction of the Norwegian Jews

Jewish Synagogue in Oslo

Between the end of the 13th century and 1814 Norway was ruled by Denmark. In 1814 the European great powers decided that Norway should enter a personal union with Sweden under the Swedish King, thereby delaying its independence until 1905. But in 1814 a wave of patriotism swept the country.

n 1814, Norway acquired its first constitution. This document was relatively liberal, but it stated that the official state religion was Lutheran Protestantism and that Jews and Jesuits were forbidden from entering the kingdom.

Of the numerous constitutional drafts drawn up before the constituent assembly, only a couple prohibited Jews from entering the country, however it was the version put forth by cleric Nicolai Wergeland that was the most virulently anti-Semitic, in his draft he wrote the following clause: "No person of the Jewish creed may enter Norway, far less settle down there".

The debate on the so-called "Jewish clause" was long and heated, however ban on Jews entering Norway was passed and was not to be lifted until 1851 after which time the Jewish population grew slowly until the early 20th century, when pogroms in Russia and the Baltic states increased the number of immigrants.

An further increase in Jewish immigration came in the 1930s, as Jews fled Nazi persecution in Germany and areas under German control. By 1941-1942 the Jewish population of Norway numbered roughly 1,000 households and approximately 2,200 individuals.

1918 copy of Nationen

The Jewish minority was primarily involved in the business sector. Norwegian Jews owned about 400 enterprises. About 40 were professionals , the remainder craftsmen and artists. Few Jews were employed in the public sector or as farmers or fishermen.

There were two main communities, in Oslo and Trondheim. In both cities the Jewish population enjoyed a lively cultural life, and the Jewish communities operated numerous religious institutions and cultural organizations that ran various educational and welfare programs.

Though the Jewish minority was small and widely dispersed, several anti-Semitic stereotypes took hold in popular literature in the early 20th century. In such books by the widely read authors Rudolf Muus and Øvre Richter Frich, Jews are described as obsessed with money and sadistic. In 1920, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in Norway under the title "The New World Emperor".

Norwegian attorney Eivind Saxlund published a pamphlet "Jøder og Gojim" ("Jews and Goyim") in 1910, which was characterized as "anti-Semitic slander" by many in the media. This characterization led Saxlund to sue for libel in 1922, (he lost the case), but earned him the admiration of the newspaper The Nationen, which praised Saxlund for fighting "our race war."

Anti-Semitic graffiti on a Jewish Shop

The country's immigration policy shifted following World War I to a far more restrictive line, and Jews were particularly singled out. The ministries of justice and foreign affairs were often at odds on the issue of Jewish immigration, but in practice the policy made it difficult for Jews to immigrate or settle in Norway.

Restrictions were justified on an economic basis, Jews would either create destructive competition for Norwegian merchants and tradesmen, or freeload on public assistance. Some were based on purely political concerns, Jews as communists and other subversive elements would create political instability, or general xenophobia against "foreign" groups. Whether the immigration policy was driven by the characterizations above, or vice versa is not clear.

Anti-Semitism climaxed when the Germans invaded Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940, in a combined attack, and despite the gallant efforts of the Norwegian, British, Polish and French forces the Germans proved too strong. Norwegian armed resistance began with the first great act of sabotage (though it lacked any military significance), with the bombing of the Lysaker Bridge linking Oslo to its airport in Fornebu.

The Norwegian King Haakon VII and his Labor government, fleeing before advancing German troops, refused to cave in to Nazi demands. In Oslo, only the followers of Vidkun Quisling (the former Defense Minister and leader of the local Nazi party, the NS), called for a capitulation to the invaders.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/norwayjews.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Holocaust-Crimes in the camps!

A Collection of Statements to the War Crimes Team at Bergen–Belsen regarding War Crimes in Prisons and Concentration Camps

Renee Erman

Barbwire fence and guard tower at Drancy

In the Matter of War Crimes and Atrocities at Drancy Prison, Paris and Auschwitz

Deposition of Renee Erman (Female) late of 80 Rue des Menilmonatre, Paris, sworn before me Captain ALFRED JAMES FOX, General List, D.A.P.M . 86 Special Investigation Section, C. M. Police.

I am 31 years of age and was arrested in Paris in April 1943 by the Germans because I was a Jewess. I was then taken to Drancy Prison in Paris and on the 20^th July 1943 I went to Auschwitz. I was transferred to Belsen on the 25^th January 1945.

Whilst at Drancy Prison there was an SS man named Brunner in charge. This man was responsible for many deaths. In my presence I have seen him beat, kick and throw stones at prisoners for no apparent reason apart from the fact that they were Jews.

I know that two prisoners at whom this man threw stones died as a result of the injuries they received. I called at the Hospital on one occasion to see some friends and I was told by them that prisoners admitted the day before, suffering from head wounds inflicted by this man, were dead. I cannot state whether they were men or women who had died. It was not an unusual occurrence to see persons severely wounded by this man’s brutality.

On arriving at Auschwitz I worked as a nurse in the experimental laboratory in Block 10. I was present on many occasions when SS Doctor Weber experimented by taking blood from women for soldiers at the front. This process was often repeated until the person became very weak.

The entrance to Block 10 at Auschwitz

He also took blood from a woman of one blood group which he injected into a woman of a different blood group. This often caused very serious illness. In one case a woman died in the laboratory due to this operation. This doctor also carried out experiments in rheumatism and I know that one woman had 45 injections the Doctor measuring the change of her heart. This made her very ill.

Persons coming into Block 10 were always the fittest and sometimes up to 300 were in this block. They were kept whilst a course of experiments was carried out and then sent away. I should state that the camp in which this experimental block was situated was a men’s camp and women were only brought there for experimental purposes.

When they left this block they were sent to Birkenau where a selection was made to find those fit for work. Most of the people who left this experimental block were not in a fit condition for work. I have been told by friends that these sick people were always sent to Block 25 which meant that they subsequently went to the gas chamber.

I also knew a Dr Schumann who experimented on young Greek girls (virgins) for sterilisation. These girls were taken to another block where they were subjected to very strong X-rays which resulted in their sexual organs being dried up.

Nazi doctor Horst Schumann

These operations did in fact sterilise these girls and many of the weaker ones died as a result of them. Those that survived were brought back in batches of 10 and 12 for inspection. They were again operated on and the female sex organs removed which resulted in their deaths in 4 or 5 days.

I did not see the actual operations performed but I did see the results as it was my duty to dress the wounds of the women. The girls who had these operations carried out on them only came to block 10 after the operation, the operations having been carried out in a different block. I saw 4 Greek girls die as a result of operations by this Doctor.

There was also an SS Doctor Wirths. He used to experiment on women between the ages of 40 and 50 who were having their menopause, apparently looking for a kind of cancer, i.e. Fibrom.

He used to take part of the womb out for examination under the microscope. The women became very ill as a result of this. I did not see any of these operations carried out but heard of them from patients who had been experimented on and nurses who were present at the operations. These operations were carried out in Block 10 but not in my part of the Block. Similar operations were carried out by Doctor Samuel a prisoner.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/warcrimesinthecamps.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Women recounting the Holocaust!

Women Record Their Accounts

of the Holocaust

Melita Maschmann

Bund Deutscher Madel Member

Melita Maschmann

“On the night of November 9 1938, the “Crystal Night” a shadow fell on our joy. Of the riots of that night I saw nothing. But in the morning I saw the wreckage of the little shops and restaurants in an alley near Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, where the inhabitants were Jews.

I was horrified at the violence that must have raged there. But didn’t we hear all the time that international Jewry was inciting the world against Germany? And now the Jews had had a frightful warning.

I expelled this episode from my mind as quickly as I could. It meant sorrow for innocent people – for what had these little men, whose little shops were destroyed, to do with international Jewish capitalism?

It was simpler not to dwell upon these things, but to plunge oneself quickly back into one’s own work.”

Emmy Bonhoeffer

Sister-in-law of German Resistance martyr Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Standing in line for vegetables or something like that I told my neighbour standing next to me that now they start to kill the Jews in the concentration camps and they even make soap out of them.

Post war photo of Emmy Bonhoeffer

And they said Frau Bonhoeffer, “if you don’t stop telling such horror stories you will end up in a concentration camp too and nobody of us can help you. It’s not true what you’re telling, you shouldn’t believe those things, you have them from the foreign broadcasts and they tell those things to make enemies for us.”

Going home I told that to my husband and he was not at all applauding to me and the very contrary he said, “My dear, sorry to say but you are absolutely idiotic what you are doing. Please understand the dictatorship is like a snake.

If you put a foot on its tail, as you do, it will bite you. You have to strike the head and you can’t do that, neither you or I can do that. The only single way is to convince the military who have the arms to do it, to convince them that they have to act, that they have to make a coup d’etat.”

Hertha Beese

Berlin Housewife and Social Democrat

In the flat underneath ours lived a Jewish family. The only reason they had not yet been persecuted and taken away was that the father was Italian and belonged to Mussolini’s party.

Household ID card for Jews in Berlin

But when we ourselves faced more and more difficulties the wife began to feel insecure and was scared that they might take her away despite the Italian connection and she therefore left.

So that there flat became empty and I begged that it should not be handed over to the landlord since we still hoped there would be a total collapse and we would be rid of our difficulties.

I looked after the empty flat and one night, it must have been around midnight, the doorbell rang. I opened and there stood in front of me a Jewish couple. This was how I began to help persecuted Jews. All of a sudden I had entered an invisible circle of people who smuggled Jews about.

As soon as one hiding place had been detected they were quickly passed on. They would always move about by night. I have never found out who it was who sent them to me in the first place. Some decent people

The problems started with the feeding of the Jewish people since they neither had food-rationing cards nor very often any money. So we in turn had to make use of friends who exchanged their smoking cards for the odd potato or bread, or a friend would come and leave a bit of food.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/women.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Evidence of the Liquidation of Sobibor

Liquidation of Sobibor Death Camp

3 SS Men Give Evidence

Official examination on 4 July 1962 at the Criminal Detention Investigation Institute in Cologne of Arthur Matthes born 11 January 1902 in Wermsdorf, district Leipzig, previously SS NCO in Treblinka, by profession senior nurse at Health and Care Institute in Bayreuth.

“Following my duties at Treblinka I arrived at the Jewish Extermination Camp at Sobibor in the autumn of 1943. At this point in time Treblinka had terminated its activities and a number of the Treblinka staff were being transferred to Sobibor. I myself was in Sobibor only a short time, namely from the autumn of 1943 until approximately Christmas of that year.

In Sobibor I was made responsible for the so-called “estate” , this comprised looking after two cows, four horses, twenty pigs and numbers of geese, chickens and rabbits. As assistants I had one Ukrainian man and several women. These were not the so-called “worker – Jews.” The Ukrainians were all volunteers.

The “estate” was in Camp ll – I was housed in one of the barracks outside the camp. The Officer – in Charge of the camp at that time was SS-Haptsturmfuhrer Gottlieb Herring.

I estimate that the then personnel comprised twenty men and twenty volunteers. Some of the buildings had already been removed – I went several times into the annihilation camp, Camp lll. The aims of the camp were known to me. From the distance I could still see one building.

I did not see any ditches or mass graves. The fencing of the whole camp was still intact as were the minefields which were being cleared by Wehrmacht experts.

Some days after my arrival in Sobibor some 100 worker- Jews were transferred there from Treblinka who were employed in the dismantling and clearing up. They were not employed by me.

In November or December of that year while I was still there, these 100 Jews were shot. One morning about 7am I saw these Jews come past where I was working being led to Camp lll.

They were dressed and lined up in several rows. I did not see who was in charge of the group. A number of the staff and of the Ukrainian volunteers were the escorts.

I was not required to participate in the executions but from my place of work I could hear the shots of the execution squad in Camp lll. In my opinion these were not salvos but single shots in Camp lll.

I also heard from colleagues during the meal time on the same day that they had shot these 100 Jews that morning. Afterwards the corpses in Camp lll were cremated – I assume this was done in an open field.”

Official examinations on 24 January and 7 November 1962 in Alotting, Bavaria of the accused Franz Suchomel – formerly SS –NCO in Treblinka, born 3 December 1903 in Krummau Czechoslovakia. At present master tailor in Alotting.

“In October 1943, a few days after the uprising in Sobibor I was called to the office in Treblinka. There I was informed by SS Officer Kurt Franz, the Camp Commandant that I was being transferred to the extermination camp at Sobibor, since a number of personnel there had fallen in the uprising.

The transfer of personnel from Treblinka to Sobibor took place in three separate groups. I was included in the first of these. Two further details arrived later.

At this time I was delighted to be leaving Treblinka. My healthy common sense told me that these worker-Jews being employed on the dismantling of the Camp would be liquidated. For understandable reasons I did not want to have anything to do with this.

With me to Sobibor came Eduard Potzinger and Hermann Sydow and two other people whose names I no longer recall. We were received in Sobibor by the Camp Commandant Franz Reichleitner and informed of our new duties. He said that the camp was being dismantled and that we had to pack the remainders of the Jewish clothes.

In this connection I remember that my immediate task was to remove the clothing of the five comrades who had lost their lives. In addition I had to sort out the personal belongings of the dead and prepare these for despatch to their families.

I know for certain that I dealt with the belongings of comrades Rudi Beckmann and Josef Wolf. I do not remember the names of the three other fallen comrades.

After my arrival in Sobibor I could find no traces of the uprising, only near the fencing by the rail track was there evidence of damage. Members of the camp staff also showed me the spots where Wolf, Stengelin and Graetschus had been killed.

I was also glad that when I arrived in Sobibor there were no Jews. Now I must amend this statement in that there were a few Jews in the camp, perhaps about twenty, who had voluntarily returned after the uprising, or had been in hiding.

In this connection I remember clearly that two Jews, a married couple from Holland were found in Camp l hidden under the floor. By way of explanation I have to say that the barracks in Sobibor were constructed on top of meter high piles to avoid the danger of flooding. The Dutch couple had loosened the floorboards and during the day hid in the space below, they were discovered because at night the barrack was used for the preparation of food.

These two Jews like all the other Sobibor Jews were killed with the Treblinka Jews to which matter I will revert in detail. In the first half of November the remaining Treblinka Jews arrived in Sobibor. I remember exactly one morning the Treblinka Jews were lined on the barrack square of Camp l.

The Jewish chief Kapo, Karl Blau, who came from Vienna stepped forward and reported to Gustav Wagner who was in charge. Then the Jews were split into groups, probably by Gustav Wagner or Karl Frenzel. Two shoemakers and six or eight tailors were allocated to me. The remaining Jews and Jewesses were put to work on the usual camp duties and on the camp dismantling operations which were taking place enormously fast.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/sobibor/sobiborliquidation.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Treblinka Survivor - Oscar Strawczinski

Oscar Strawczynski

Treblinka Survivor

Oscar (left) and brother Zygmunt

Oscar Strawczynski was born in Lodz Poland in 1906, he became a skilled and accomplished tinsmith, which saved his life in the Treblinka death camp and which also made it possible to save the life of his brother Zygmunt.

Strawczynski arrived in Treblinka from Czestochowa on the 5 October 1942, with his wife Anka, and their two children Guta and Abus and his father Yoseph and mother Malke, who all perished shortly after their arrival.

He testified at the Treblinka trial in Dusseldorf in 1964/65 of Kurt Franz, August Miete, Willi Mentz, Arthur Matthes, Otto Horn and others.

Oscar Strawczynski described conditions at the transport yard:

“The yard is full of people. On one side women and small children, and on the other side, kneeling men. In the centre armed SS men and Ukrainians and a group of about forty men with red bands on their sleeves.

These were the Jews from the “red” group. In the jargon of Treblinka they were called the “burial society.” At the head of the group was Jurek, in the past a crude wagon driver from Warsaw for whom the most despicable thing was not despicable at all… dressed elegantly – something which was not a special problem in Treblinka- with a whip in hand, which he frequently used on the Jews.”

Strawczynski's children Guta and Abus

Here Oscar Strawczynski described the sorting work he performed in Treblinka, during his testimony:

“The group to which I belonged, consisting of several hundred people, reaches the yard and begins working. On the blankets and tablecloths that are spread on the ground are piled all kinds of articles, from imported material and expensive suits to plain rags.

From the suitcases we remove notions, cosmetics, soaps, matches, medicines. It seems that there is nothing that we do not remove here in quantities- all sorts, from the most expensive tins to the few potatoes that the poor Jews brought with them.

The sorted articles are brought non-stop to the edge of the yard, where they are piled up and up. The suitcases with valuables have a special place; into them are put things made of gold, watches, rings, diamond’s. Wedding rings make up the greatest quantity of valuable articles.

There are also great quantities of foreign exchange, dollar bills and coins, pounds sterling and gold Russian coins. Polish money is gathered into large piles. From time to time some “gold-Jews” come to the yard and take suitcases full of valuables and money to their workshops and leave behind the empty suitcases that they brought with them. These are also filled up within a short time.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/strawczynski%20.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009