Showcase 7

Candy wrapper from the Wiktoria Sweets Factory in Warsaw

1.

“Children have taken up work for various reasons. Often family pressure forced them to look for a job in the street; often, they decided to take up trade to alleviate their difficult financial situation and at least partly to eliminate the spectre of hunger and misery. Ten-year­old, twelve-year-old children have appeared on the streets with boxes of saccharine, candy, or cigarettes hanging around their necks. [ … ] Children with matches and candy have stood at the bazaar on Leszno Street, trying to help their family cope with everyday hardships.
All day long, from early morning till curfew, they have stayed in the street, regardless of rain or cold, and encouraged passers-by with their tired voices to buy goods. Their sing-song, sometimes harsh cries have conveyed their overwhelming desires to earn money, and they persistently have repeated calls such as: ‘The best confectionary for a fiver’ or ‘Exclusive saccharine, by hundreds, by the piece’, while dreaming of coming home with some money in their pockets.”

Natan Koninski, The Face of the Jewish Child, Study on the situation of children in the Warsaw Ghetto, November 1941

2.

“I know a family whose house had burned down, a man and his wife and their two children a twelve-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. The father bought some candy with his last money and sent his children out to the street to sell it. After an exhausting day, they both brought home just enough to buy half a kilogram of black bread. Those children were then at risk of contracting a cold or some illness because they stood outside in the cold, in snow and rain, while their exhausted organisms and insufficiently clothed bodies made them vulnerable to all kinds of health problems and ailments.”

Natan Koninski, The Face of the Jewish Child, Study on the situation of children in the Warsaw Gholto, November 1941

3.

“Thanks to its topographical features and the impossibility of completely isolating it from the rest of the city, the ghetto was connected with Warsaw through countless channels. Food and resources flowed into the ghetto by various routes, while products and everyday utility items flowed out. The strict, camp-like isolation of the Lodz ghetto was not achieved, and although food prices skyrocketed due to the ‘risks and costs of trade’, the ghetto was essentially supplied with all food products, even the most exquisite and rare. It would be a mistake to think that everything was in abundance and everyone in the ghetto lived in the lap of luxury. The consumption of these imports was available only to the handful who were able to pay the high prices. These things were for the ‘top ten thousand’, as an ordinary person in the ghetto would say, happy to be able to afford a day’s worth of black bread and swede. And, let us add, as the months passed things only got worse and worse. The battle for earnings was fought among gate policemen and smugglers, ‘rogues’ operating on their own, the unaffiliated, outpost workers counting on their own ability to smuggle in minor goods or on the mercy of the guards and, finally, hundreds of children, running right between the legs of Wachtmeisters, darting to grab or carrying a sack of potatoes, a bundle of carrots or beets bought with their meagre capital over on the Aryan side.”

Stefan Szpigielman, The Third Front On Great Germany’s War against the Jews of Warsaw, memoir, Warsaw