Ghetto

W amerykańskiej  encyklopedii obozów i gett wydanej przez Muzeum Holocaustu w 2012 roku (The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945) znajdujemy opis getta w Pabianicach.

Pre-1939: Pabianice, town, Łódź województwo, Poland; 1939-1944: Kreis Lask, Regierungsbezirk  Wartheland; post- 1988: Łódź województwo, Poland.

Pabianice is located 13 kilometres  (8 miles) southwest  of Łódź. On the eve of World War II, there were approximately 9.000 Jews living in Pabianice. Units of the German army had occupied Pabianice by September, 1939.On their arrival in the town, German soldiers shot several Jews, and other Jews were made to collect the corpses and bury them. Shortly thereafter, on German orders, local inhabitants destroyed the interior of the synagogue.

In the fall off 1939, the German authorities  introduced a number of anti-Jewish measures. Jewish factories were confiscated, and several Jews were ordered flogged by other Jews for alleged disrespect to the Nazi flag. On October 21, 1939, the Landrat of Kreis Lask appointed a Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Pabianice, which consisted of the leading figures in the community. However , their tenure was short-lived.

In November 1939, the German authorities forcibly expelled Jews from the wealthier sections of town to make room for Germans. Members of the Judenrat tried to intercede, but they were arrested and sent to concentration camps, never to be heard from again.

A series of Jewish counciles were appointed and then in turn replaced in quick succession. In December 1939, the Judenrat was ordered to organize 1.000 Jews who were to be expelled from Pabianice. The Judenrat supplied these expelled people with food, clothing, and some money for the journey to Kałuszyn in District Warschau within Generalgouvernement. On arrival the local Jewish leadership there helped to find them housing. After a few months, several hundred of these Jews returned illegally to Pabianice.

In February 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in Pabianice, which was one of the first to be set up in occupied Poland. Its establishment appears to have been linked to an out break of typhus among the Jews, which was defeated with the aid of inoculations given to 3.500 Jews during 1940.

The ghetto, which consited of 109 houses, was located in the old town section of Pabianice. The Jews were required to move into the ghetto by February 21, and  according to the Lodscher Zeitung, they could bring in with them only what they could carry themselves. The ghetto was not fenced (an open ghetto), but on the border there was a large sign with a yellow Star of David on a light blue background.

The ghetto was divided into two sections by a main road, and the Jews were only permitted to cross the road during certain hours of the day. Some  Jews risked living the ilegally in search of food. Accomodation in the ghetto was allocated by the housing Office (Wohnungsamt) of the Judenrat. There was ovecrowding, an average of about one room per family.

On March 1, 1940, a unit of Jewish Police (Jὕdischer Ordnungdienst) was establisched, which by the end of the 1940 employed 34 people. Among its main tasks were securing the ghetto internally and arresting Jews who did not turn up for compulsory labor or committed other offenses. Such persons could be incarcerated in a separate prison established within the ghetto.

The German authorities ordered the establishment of a hospital in the ghetto in April, to isolate those suffering from typhus. In May 1940, resposibility for overseeing the ghetto (Judenviertel) was transfered from the Office of Landrat of Kreis Lask to the Polizeiamt (Office of Police) in Pabianice under the command of  Hans-Georg Mayer.

On the establishment of the ghetto, Jewish communal property, which lay outside its borders, was no longer to be administered  by the Jewish Council. Many of Jews in the Pabianice ghetto worked in factories and enterprises taken over by Germans. The Jewish Council was keen to make the Jews productive, such that in November 1940 more than 900 Jews were employed as tailors in various workshops, including more than 600 as new trainees.

Two of the main employers were the companies of Kelle and Gὕnther u. Schwarz, which both produced uniforms for the Wehrmacht and competed with each other. Both companies were often late in paying the Jews, but the Jews were still content to go to work, as it gave the opportunity of bartering items for food and receiving news from the outsider world.

In addition, Jews had to per form forced labor organized by the Judenrat, which included work to assist the resettlement of ethnic German into the region in the winter  of 1939-1940. Initially this work was unpaid, but from October 1, 1940, German offices began to make payments for this forced labor. Additional sums to pay the laborers were also raised from Jews who paid a levy to be excused from this work.

The Judenrat was responsible for the distribution of food rations, as well as extra support given to the needy. One of the main sources of income for Judenrat was a 10 percent tax on the income of those Jews who were employed. At the end of 1940, the Judenrat itself employed 130 people and was composed of 10 seperate department: Central Office, General Administration, Finances, Social Welfare, Health, Contracts, Economy, Labor, Court, and Audit Office.

Among the Jews that ultimatelly ended up in the Łódź ghetto, most reported that they had received enough to eat in the Pabianice ghetto, but those Jews who had returned to the ghetto ilegally after their initial flight were not registered and received no rations. In addition, there were complaints that some food rations ended up on the black market at high prices and that the Judenrat lived comfortably.

Children were educated in small groups and in a school that was established in the ghetto. After a few months, the Germans closed down the school, but schooling continued clandestinely. The Jews in Pabianice were forbidden to speak Polish , as German and Yiddish were the only permitted languages.

In December 1940, the Jewish Council in Pabianice reported that there were 9.000 Jews in the town, including 32 refugees and 420 returnees. On May 22, 1941, German Police aide by the Jewish Police arrested 231 young men and sent them to the Łódź ghetto; from there they were transfer red to forced labor camps in the area around Poznań. Of this group, about 40 people survived to the end of the war. Similar menhunts  for forced laborers continued into 1942; both men and women were sent to forced labor camps. In the winter of 1941-1942, the Germans collected winter clothing in the ghetto, and they also confiscated any hidden food stores.

Living on the margin caused some Jews to complain to the Germans that the Judenrat was responsible for the poor conditions. As a result the Gestapo arrested the Judenrat members in June 1941 and publicly executed them. It is not known who succeeded the murdered members of the Judenrat, which included Rubinstein, Landsman, and Goldblum.

By late 1941, the German began to make preparations for the subsequent deportation of the Jews of Pabianice. The Judenrat was ordered to submit lists of all ghetto inhabitants,  with the mentalny ill, disabled, and children under age 6 all listed separately.

In February 1942, the Gestapo conducted a health examination of everyone in the ghetto. All those under age 60 were tattooed with the letter „A”, the rest with a „B”. By 1942 restrictions on the movement of Jews were also intensified. At last two Jews were hanged on the orders of the Germans for being caught outsider the ghetto without permission.

On May 16, 1942, all the ghetto residents were ordered to appear in front of their houses at 4:00 P.M. The ghetto was surrounded by German Police, and all the Jews were ordered to a sports field of the company Krusche und Ender  in the center of town. The German Police searched the house, and anyone found attempting to hide was shot on the spot.

The assembled Jews had to stay all night on the sports field. The next day in the pouring rain, the group „A” was separated from „B” group, with many familie being rent asunder. Some members of the „B” group were killed on the spot, as were 150 sick and disabled Jews in the hospital.

The remainder of the „B” group, probably about 3.200 people, was then loaded into cattle trains and transported to the death camp in Chełmno.

On May 17-18, 1942, at least 3.648 Jews (these from group „A”) from Pabianice arrived in the Łódź ghetto by tram with almost no possessions. Soon after their arrival some of them were sent to forced labor camps in surrounding towns. A few of Pabianice Jews tried to escape, but most were caught with the assistance of the Jewish Police of the Łódź ghetto. Two of the Pabianice escapees, Joseph Greenboin, age 16 and Shimon Makowsky, age 45, were caught and hanged  in public in the Łódź ghetto. A smaller group of Jews remained in Pabianice for a time after the ghetto liquidation to clean up remaining property  there.

After the war, 148 surviving Jews returnem to Pabianice in 1945. They established a community kitchen and restored the cementery, bu over the following years, all the Jews left the town.

After the war the U.S. forces extradited Hans-Georg Mayer to Poland, where initially  he was sentenced to death by the regional court in Łódź for crimes in Pabianice. In 1948, his appeal saw the sentence reduced to five years imprisonment  for membership in the SS and preventing escape  attempts from the Pabianice ghetto. He was released and returned to West Germany in February 1951. Martin Dean

Autor  informacji o getcie pabianickim wyszczególnia m. in.  zbrodnie niemieckie popełnione na Żydach w Pabianicach. !939 r. – we wrześniu zastrzelono kilku Żydów  zaraz po wejściu nazistów do miasta; 1941 r. – niektórzy mieszkańcy getta poskarżyli się na trudne warunki życiowe, obarczając winą Judenrat. W rezultacie na członkach Judenratu wykonano publiczną egzekucję; 1942 r. – powieszeni zostali dwaj Żydzi schwytani poza granicami getta; policja przeszukiwała opuszczone getto, zabijając każdą ukrywającą się osobę; zamordowano pewną liczbę Żydów na boisku Krusche und Ender, zakwalifikowaną do tzw. grupy „B”; zabito 150 chorych i niepełnosprawnych w szpitalu znajdującym się na terenie getta.

Autor: Sławomir Saładaj