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Following the German invasion of Poland, the area known as the Generalgouvernement was divided into four administrative districts: Krakow, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw. After the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, a fifth district, Galicia, which had formerly been occupied by the Soviets, was added in August 1941.
A census taken at the beginning of 1940 revealed that there were about 280,000 Jews resident in the Radom district, governed by Dr. Karl Lasch, the SS and Police Fuhrer for Radom was initially SS- Brigadefuhrer Katzmann, later replaced by Oberg and then Bottcher.
The city of Radom was occupied on 8 September 1939.
Around 30,000 Jews (one third of Radom's population) fell into German hands. During the next months the Jewish community increased as several thousand Jews were sent to Radom, having been expelled from Poznan and Lodz provinces. In turn, 1,840 Radom Jews were deported to small towns in the environs.
At the IMT trial in Nuremburg, a Jewish resident of Radom, David Wajnapel, provided graphic testimony concerning conditions in the city following the German invasion:
“A few weeks after the entry of the German troops into Radom, police and SS authorities arrived. Conditions became immediately worse. The house in the Zeromski St. where their headquarters were became a menace to the entire population.
People who were walking in this street were dragged into the gateway and ill-treated by merciless beatings and by the staging of sadistic games. All SS officers, as well as the men, took part in this. Being a physician, I often had the opportunity to give medical help to seriously injured victims of the SS.”
In December 1939 a Judenrat, headed by Josef Diamant, was established, and from 1 April 1941, a Jewish Order service created, headed by Joachim Geiger, who had previously been in charge of the provision of Jewish forced labour in the city.
The Radom Judenrat also served as the main Judenrat (Oberjudenrat) for the entire Radom district. On 1 July 1940, all property of the Jews in the region was transferred to the German administrative office (Treuhandstelle), headed by Felix Weinopfel.
Beginning in August 1940, around 2,000 Jews were deported to work camps in the Lublin district, where they were engaged in the construction of the "Otto Line", a series of anti-tank ditches and fortifications on the frontier between German and Soviet occupied Poland.
Virtually all of these deportees perished. Hundreds more were sent to forced labour camps near Radom, in places such as Kruszyna, Jedlinsk, Lesiow, Dabrowa Kozlowska and Wolanow. Jews taken from Radom to the labour camp at Cieszanow would bitterly sing in Yiddish:
Work, brothers, work fast. If you don't, they'll lash your hide. |
1,500 Radom Jews were deported to the small town of Busko in December 1940, to be followed by a further 1,000 in February 1941. As a result, the apartment density in the Jewish quarter of Busko rose to 20 per room and a typhus epidemic broke out. Following the various deportations to and from the city, in the spring of 1941, shortly before the establishment of the ghettos, there were approximately 32,000 Jews in Radom.
Between March and April 1941, the Germans established two ghettos: The large ghetto in the centre of Radom contained 27,000 people and the small ghetto in the Glinice suburb about 5,000.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/radom.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 H.E.A.R.T
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