Showcase 12

Postcard from Guta Fuks from Plonsk to the Rotblat family in the Warsaw Ghetto, thrown out of the train during transport to Auschwitz

1.

“During the report period the Warsaw ghetto once again went through desperate days of anxiety, fearful expectations, and terror bordering on madness. Sleepless nights were spent watching, and days were passed in vigilant observation. It would not be much of an exaggeration to compare the ghetto to a bundle of nerves, tense as a cord, ailing from the emotions experienced and consequently oversensitive to the slightest external injury. News about constant deportations of the Jewish population to Treblinka or other execution sites and about local massacres come from every direction from Vilna, Bialystok, Sandomierz, Lvov, Opoczno, Radom, and Czestochowa. This intensifies the horrible, primeval fear seen in the eyes of all ghetto residents.”

Wiadornosci [underground periodical, edited by Oneg Shabbat members], No. 6, January 9-15, 1943

2.

“There was a strange thing going on, nobody warned those masses, hardly anybody immediately realized what the operation called resettling was aimed at. Even after three years of war, after having experienced deportations, executions, and sudden disappearances of family members and friends, people refused to accept such a possibility. They would say: ‘It’s not possible to murder hundreds of thousands of people’. Most refused to believe that it was possible and it made it hard to convince them. Today, in the autumn of 1942, we know. And perhaps this is the kind of knowledge that costs lives. [ … ]

We remember those groups walking unescorted, carrying heavy bundles. They dragged those useless pieces of luggage with sucha huge effort. The inhumane ordeal of the Umschlagplatz and the atrocious journey could only lead to death. When we finally understood that, the most staggering emotion we felt was shame at having been so naive. Most of us, raised on illusions and taught to perceive facts from the perspective of justice that relied on politics, learned slowly and unthoughtfully. For far too long, we believed that our lives had a value.”

Gustawa Jarecka, The Last Stage ot Resettlement is Death, account on the deportations from the Warsaw ghetto, penned after October 1942