“AND THEN?...AFTER?”
“THERE IS NO THEN! THERE IS NO AFTER!”
THE JEWS OF WARSAW
If you go on a guided tour through Warsaw today you will in a sense see a city of memorials. Here is the Umschlagplatz where the thousands were herded as they were pushed into the cattle cars on the way to the notorious concentration camp Treblinka, here is a mound with its memorial and this is what is left of the Jewish Ghetto where 400,000 Jews were packed in and starved and diseased to a slow death. Here are the cemeteries, the only memory still intact, and here was the Great Synagogue, little traces of what once was … and someone from the group might ask…”and then...after?”
Warsaw…dreams ago, was warm Winter afternoons, with gentle frosts and snow – not too much frost but just enough to keep the crystal snow from melting. There were horses then and sledges, and bells that rang from the attached harnesses. Large nets covered the horses to protect the riders from the thrown up snow. Wooden cobbles lined the streets, this was the time before asphalt, and it was used to reduce the noise of the horses’ hoofs and the rushing wagons. Warsaw was streaming people rushing like fire to attend to the myriad errands. In one of the few parks of the city, the grand and spacious Krasinski Park, you could see elderly Jews dressed in their traditional black clothes, sitting on the sun drenched benches reading their Yiddish newspapers, solving the unsolvable. If you wanted to get up and walk, you could go onto Tlomackie Street and The Great Synagogue, the most imposing in all of Poland which was always packed on the High Holidays that you could hardly breathe and where “always during Kol Nidre services on Yom Kippur with air hushed before the chants, the small boys would climb the iron supporters to the ceiling, tying themselves tightly around the waist, remaining suspended throughout the services while outside in the courtyard crowds stood.” You felt stifled and hot, but no matter you were all together, lifted in the spirituality and joy. Yes, there were then over 300 synagogues in Warsaw. On Dluga street the one that bordered on Nalewki, the names even sounded musical, was the Jewish section and here was the heart of Jewish life in Warsaw. Here was not only the largest Jewish community in all of Poland, but in all of Europe. It was here in Warsaw, in the “mother-city of Israel” were 400,000 Jews lived, it was here in Warsaw the life of the Jews.
-2-
Warsaw, Warzawa in Polish, Varshe in Yiddish was established in the beginning of the fourteenth century, on a bluff on the west bank of the
Vistula. In the year 1414, there were about 20 Jewish families living there. During the following years, more Jews settled in the city, coming from various parts of the continent, but at the same time there were organized attacks to expulse the Jewish residents from the city. Still the community increased. In 1881, after the pogroms in Russia 150,000 Jews moved to Warsaw and in 1862 all restrictions to Jews in Poland were lifted. From then on – Jews played an imported role in finance and in all sections of commerce. Jews formed 52% of the persons engaged in commerce and banking. Of the 20 bankers in the city, in 1847, 17 were Jews. Yiddish was the mother tongue, and as the writer Yehiel Yeshaia Truni wrote, “In Yiddish I write about my milieu and especially my feelings for nature – Yiddish evokes for me the fragrant fields and orchards.” The population was mostly Hasidim and the main trend of Jews in Warsaw was Orthodoxy. There were great writers and playwrights and Warsaw was the main center of Hebrew literature in the world. The city boasted 50 Jewish libraries. Outstanding theaters with great actors presented the works, plays like the “Dybbuk” the play by S. Ansky 1863-1920, with the transmigration of a sinful soul from one body to another. Its success at the time was universal. And there was the play by Yitzchok Leibush Peretz 1815-1914, the Father of Yiddish Literature, “Bontsche Schveig” that was even later performed in the Ghetto. The city hummed in its aliveness.
There was great learning and great rabbis and scholars and it was here that the sons of the great learned ones of western and southern Europe sent their sons to study in the city’s yeshivas. The great Methibtha Institute headed by Rabbi Solomon Joskowicz had more than 400 students.
But there were forewarnings. A wind of hatred would soon engulf the community. On September 29, 1939 the Germans entered the city and began issuing a series of anti-Jewish measures against the Jewish population. On November 16, 1940 almost a half-million Jews were incarcerated in what was the largest “prison city” in Europe. A wall had been built earlier in the spring. The aim of the Germans was to starve the Jews. Starvation and disease set in. The minimal amount bread allocated was mixed with sawdust and potatoes. Illnesses decimated the population. There were no medicines to fight the typhus that spread. The dreaded disease was carried by lice which were everywhere. Thousands
-3-
of people were homeless. In the winter 718 out of 780 apartments had no heat. The streets were strewn with corpses. Those who were fortunate to
get work, worked ten to twelve hours a day at strenuous labor. Bands of starving children roamed the streets in search of food and began to smuggle from the “Aryan” side of the city. Despite the hardship life went on. Social welfare institutes were set up to combat the hunger and disease. Clandestine prayer services were held. Young Hasidic students continued to learn in their dire cold rooms, with little food, hiding from the Germans as they refused to join the forced work force. On each block of houses a committee of charitable work functioned and engaged in cultural and educational activities. Illegal periodicals appeared in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish. A Jewish military underground was organized. Sophisticated bunkers were built. A Jewish military underground was organized, headed by the young leader Mordecai Anielewicz.
During the first 15 months 60,000 people died of malnutrition and other diseases. On January 1941 the Germans began their deportations to Treblinka, and it was here that most of Warsaw Jews were murdered. By January 1942 there were only 40,000 Jews left in the Ghetto. On the dawn of April 19, 1943 the ghetto was surrounded by the Germans in preparations of the final liquidation. Ninety per-cent of the Jewish population had already been killed. After the initial attack the Jews in the Ghetto fought back and the Germans retreated. After three days, the Germans began to burn the houses block by block. For the next three weeks the Germans burned, bombed, and threw cannisters of poison gas into the bunkers. The bunkers had been highly technically built, two-story buildings beneath the ground, with access to the water systems of the city. It had been called “The subterranean Jewish City.” Many Jews died from the fires and suffocation, and many jumped from the burning buildings. The bunker the Germans wanted most was the one located on Mila Street 18, this was the Command Quarters. On May 8, 1943 the Germans discovered and blocked the exits of the bunker and filled it with poison gas. The leader Mordecai Anielewicz committed suicide rather than die at the hands of the Germans. On May 19, 1943, after fierce fighting and after nearly a month of rebellion Jewish Warsaw was finished. The Great Synagogue in an elaborate ceremony was blown up. In his last letter of April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz wrote, “My life’s dream has come to be. I had the privilege of seeing the Jewish defense of the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.”
-4-
Today there are about 5,000 Jews living in the city, mostly elderly also perhaps 20,000 to 50,000 hiding their Jewishness. Warsaw is now the city of monuments. The cemetery on Okopowa Street is in a sense the Jewish life today, with its carefully preserved 100,000 tombstones. Here
is buried the community that once was in addition to the mass graves of more than 100,000 of those who perished in the ghetto. There is the
memorial called the Umschlagplatz, where the children of the orphanages marched on their way to death. There is also the Warsaw Ghetto Monument which is situated on a mound the same height as the rubble of the ghetto when it was destroyed. The one synagogue that survived destruction, the Nozyk Synagogue, is where services are still held. It was funded by Zalman and Ryvka Nozyk who lived nearby at 9 Prozna Street, a wealthy couple who had no children and wanted to be remembered after their death. It was built in 1898, and in his will in 1902, Nozyk requested that the congregation was to say the prayer on all Yiskors for his wife and himself. Today the synagogue holds 300 men and 300 women. After the ghetto was destroyed, the Germans had used it as their stable for horses.
Eighty-five percent of the city was destroyed by the Germans, when it was liberated by the Russian army on January 17, 1945. Gray tenement buildings were erected and later on memorials. In 1946 and 1950 two hermetically sealed milk containers containing 40,000 pages of the most explicit documentation of life in the Ghetto by the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum who perished in the Holocaust, were uncovered from under the rubble.
This is only a partial tour and as it slowly comes to a close, the same person who at its start had asked, “and then… after?” might ask again, “and then… what happened ..after!” And there will be a space in the air, with just a whisper in the blank trees and if you listen closely enough you may hear a voice answer – “there is no then,.. there is no after.”
Stanley Mann
Copyright © 2003 by Stanley Mann
All rights reserved
“THERE IS NO THEN! THERE IS NO AFTER!”
THE JEWS OF WARSAW
If you go on a guided tour through Warsaw today you will in a sense see a city of memorials. Here is the Umschlagplatz where the thousands were herded as they were pushed into the cattle cars on the way to the notorious concentration camp Treblinka, here is a mound with its memorial and this is what is left of the Jewish Ghetto where 400,000 Jews were packed in and starved and diseased to a slow death. Here are the cemeteries, the only memory still intact, and here was the Great Synagogue, little traces of what once was … and someone from the group might ask…”and then...after?”
Warsaw…dreams ago, was warm Winter afternoons, with gentle frosts and snow – not too much frost but just enough to keep the crystal snow from melting. There were horses then and sledges, and bells that rang from the attached harnesses. Large nets covered the horses to protect the riders from the thrown up snow. Wooden cobbles lined the streets, this was the time before asphalt, and it was used to reduce the noise of the horses’ hoofs and the rushing wagons. Warsaw was streaming people rushing like fire to attend to the myriad errands. In one of the few parks of the city, the grand and spacious Krasinski Park, you could see elderly Jews dressed in their traditional black clothes, sitting on the sun drenched benches reading their Yiddish newspapers, solving the unsolvable. If you wanted to get up and walk, you could go onto Tlomackie Street and The Great Synagogue, the most imposing in all of Poland which was always packed on the High Holidays that you could hardly breathe and where “always during Kol Nidre services on Yom Kippur with air hushed before the chants, the small boys would climb the iron supporters to the ceiling, tying themselves tightly around the waist, remaining suspended throughout the services while outside in the courtyard crowds stood.” You felt stifled and hot, but no matter you were all together, lifted in the spirituality and joy. Yes, there were then over 300 synagogues in Warsaw. On Dluga street the one that bordered on Nalewki, the names even sounded musical, was the Jewish section and here was the heart of Jewish life in Warsaw. Here was not only the largest Jewish community in all of Poland, but in all of Europe. It was here in Warsaw, in the “mother-city of Israel” were 400,000 Jews lived, it was here in Warsaw the life of the Jews.
-2-
Warsaw, Warzawa in Polish, Varshe in Yiddish was established in the beginning of the fourteenth century, on a bluff on the west bank of the
Vistula. In the year 1414, there were about 20 Jewish families living there. During the following years, more Jews settled in the city, coming from various parts of the continent, but at the same time there were organized attacks to expulse the Jewish residents from the city. Still the community increased. In 1881, after the pogroms in Russia 150,000 Jews moved to Warsaw and in 1862 all restrictions to Jews in Poland were lifted. From then on – Jews played an imported role in finance and in all sections of commerce. Jews formed 52% of the persons engaged in commerce and banking. Of the 20 bankers in the city, in 1847, 17 were Jews. Yiddish was the mother tongue, and as the writer Yehiel Yeshaia Truni wrote, “In Yiddish I write about my milieu and especially my feelings for nature – Yiddish evokes for me the fragrant fields and orchards.” The population was mostly Hasidim and the main trend of Jews in Warsaw was Orthodoxy. There were great writers and playwrights and Warsaw was the main center of Hebrew literature in the world. The city boasted 50 Jewish libraries. Outstanding theaters with great actors presented the works, plays like the “Dybbuk” the play by S. Ansky 1863-1920, with the transmigration of a sinful soul from one body to another. Its success at the time was universal. And there was the play by Yitzchok Leibush Peretz 1815-1914, the Father of Yiddish Literature, “Bontsche Schveig” that was even later performed in the Ghetto. The city hummed in its aliveness.
There was great learning and great rabbis and scholars and it was here that the sons of the great learned ones of western and southern Europe sent their sons to study in the city’s yeshivas. The great Methibtha Institute headed by Rabbi Solomon Joskowicz had more than 400 students.
But there were forewarnings. A wind of hatred would soon engulf the community. On September 29, 1939 the Germans entered the city and began issuing a series of anti-Jewish measures against the Jewish population. On November 16, 1940 almost a half-million Jews were incarcerated in what was the largest “prison city” in Europe. A wall had been built earlier in the spring. The aim of the Germans was to starve the Jews. Starvation and disease set in. The minimal amount bread allocated was mixed with sawdust and potatoes. Illnesses decimated the population. There were no medicines to fight the typhus that spread. The dreaded disease was carried by lice which were everywhere. Thousands
-3-
of people were homeless. In the winter 718 out of 780 apartments had no heat. The streets were strewn with corpses. Those who were fortunate to
get work, worked ten to twelve hours a day at strenuous labor. Bands of starving children roamed the streets in search of food and began to smuggle from the “Aryan” side of the city. Despite the hardship life went on. Social welfare institutes were set up to combat the hunger and disease. Clandestine prayer services were held. Young Hasidic students continued to learn in their dire cold rooms, with little food, hiding from the Germans as they refused to join the forced work force. On each block of houses a committee of charitable work functioned and engaged in cultural and educational activities. Illegal periodicals appeared in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish. A Jewish military underground was organized. Sophisticated bunkers were built. A Jewish military underground was organized, headed by the young leader Mordecai Anielewicz.
During the first 15 months 60,000 people died of malnutrition and other diseases. On January 1941 the Germans began their deportations to Treblinka, and it was here that most of Warsaw Jews were murdered. By January 1942 there were only 40,000 Jews left in the Ghetto. On the dawn of April 19, 1943 the ghetto was surrounded by the Germans in preparations of the final liquidation. Ninety per-cent of the Jewish population had already been killed. After the initial attack the Jews in the Ghetto fought back and the Germans retreated. After three days, the Germans began to burn the houses block by block. For the next three weeks the Germans burned, bombed, and threw cannisters of poison gas into the bunkers. The bunkers had been highly technically built, two-story buildings beneath the ground, with access to the water systems of the city. It had been called “The subterranean Jewish City.” Many Jews died from the fires and suffocation, and many jumped from the burning buildings. The bunker the Germans wanted most was the one located on Mila Street 18, this was the Command Quarters. On May 8, 1943 the Germans discovered and blocked the exits of the bunker and filled it with poison gas. The leader Mordecai Anielewicz committed suicide rather than die at the hands of the Germans. On May 19, 1943, after fierce fighting and after nearly a month of rebellion Jewish Warsaw was finished. The Great Synagogue in an elaborate ceremony was blown up. In his last letter of April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz wrote, “My life’s dream has come to be. I had the privilege of seeing the Jewish defense of the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.”
-4-
Today there are about 5,000 Jews living in the city, mostly elderly also perhaps 20,000 to 50,000 hiding their Jewishness. Warsaw is now the city of monuments. The cemetery on Okopowa Street is in a sense the Jewish life today, with its carefully preserved 100,000 tombstones. Here
is buried the community that once was in addition to the mass graves of more than 100,000 of those who perished in the ghetto. There is the
memorial called the Umschlagplatz, where the children of the orphanages marched on their way to death. There is also the Warsaw Ghetto Monument which is situated on a mound the same height as the rubble of the ghetto when it was destroyed. The one synagogue that survived destruction, the Nozyk Synagogue, is where services are still held. It was funded by Zalman and Ryvka Nozyk who lived nearby at 9 Prozna Street, a wealthy couple who had no children and wanted to be remembered after their death. It was built in 1898, and in his will in 1902, Nozyk requested that the congregation was to say the prayer on all Yiskors for his wife and himself. Today the synagogue holds 300 men and 300 women. After the ghetto was destroyed, the Germans had used it as their stable for horses.
Eighty-five percent of the city was destroyed by the Germans, when it was liberated by the Russian army on January 17, 1945. Gray tenement buildings were erected and later on memorials. In 1946 and 1950 two hermetically sealed milk containers containing 40,000 pages of the most explicit documentation of life in the Ghetto by the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum who perished in the Holocaust, were uncovered from under the rubble.
This is only a partial tour and as it slowly comes to a close, the same person who at its start had asked, “and then… after?” might ask again, “and then… what happened ..after!” And there will be a space in the air, with just a whisper in the blank trees and if you listen closely enough you may hear a voice answer – “there is no then,.. there is no after.”
Stanley Mann
Copyright © 2003 by Stanley Mann
All rights reserved
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