דן הדני

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The Life in the Ghetto 

 

The Germans were already in town. Two days later I went to school without interruption. But on November 10, 1939, the principal of the school, declared a special order. All the students stood in line. The Rector opened and announced:

According to German instructions:

           1.  Poland's Independence Day should not be celebrated the next day.

           2.  All Jewish students must leave the school immediately.

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During the gathering, it became clear to me, that in this high school, of about 1,200 students studied, of whom less than 10 students, are Jews. Most students did not think I was Jewish. When they saw me stepping out of line,  the anti-Semitism erupted in frustration. Some of my best friends, insulted, pushed me. Until that moment, they did not  know that I was Jewish.

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In the ghetto, everyone had to work. I was the first in my family to find a job. I wrote a letter to the ghetto administration, whose director was Chaim Rumkowski. For my job, I was hired as a telephone operator in a telephone exchange, in a uniform sewing factory, for the German army. The factory employed about 600 tailors.

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Then, I worked as a night shift clerk, in a straw-boot factory. In this factory, about 600 women worked in straw weaving. Another group of women sewed the straw braids to the boots. The boots were made for the German soldiers, who were on the cold Russian front.

My job was to keep an accurate record of the produce that women created. According to the registration, a salary was also paid to them.

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As a reward, I was given a week to work in a bakery, where they baked bread prepared for the weekly distribution for the ghetto residents. The public received a loaf of bread, weighing two kilos a week for a person. That was enough for a slice of bread in the morning and a slice of bread for the evening. But, working in the bakery, I could eat as much as I wanted.

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After that I worked in the ghetto finance office. For many days, I created money packages of 100 ghetto banknotes, which were received in stores for food sold to residents once a week in exchange for coupons.

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I also worked in the ghetto maintenance office. The sidewalks of the ghetto. I worked in an office, in management and testing there were teams working in the streets and getting rid of the problems that arose. This was an area of ​​the ghetto that was spacious. Several months I worked in the finance department, counting the Ghetto banknotes collected by shops which sell food products on special cards, only.

 

In the year 1943, I became sick.  I got Pleuritis, Water embracing totally the left Lung which caused, pushing the hearth to the right side. Some days, my temperature was over 40C. I was sick for almost a whole year.

 

In August 1944, the Ghetto was liquidized, people were sent to Aushwitz-Burkenau Concentration Camp.

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In the Ghetto, we did know about the existence of concentration camps or extermination camps. We did not want to know. There were some hints. Nothing was established. The Ghetto was hermetically sealed. No support from the Polish nighbours around the Ghetos.

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