48 Another observer, JosefZelkowicz, one of the ghetto chroniclers, wrote in a special note of the ‘days of nightmare’, and of the decision to allow the elderly and the children to be deported:
The sorrow becomes greater, and the torture more senseless, when one tries to think rationally. Well, an old man is an old man. If he’s lived his sixty-five years, he can convince himself, or others convince him, that he should utter something like: ‘Well, thank God, I’ve had my share of living, in joy and sorrow, weal and woe. That’s life. Probably that’s fate. And anyway, you don’t live forever. So what’s the difference if it’s a few days, you’ve got to die, sooner or later, everything’s over, that’s life.’
Maybe they can talk the old man into telling himself these things, maybe they can talk his family into telling themselves. But what about children who have only just been hatched, children who have only seen God’s world in the ghetto, for whom a cow or a chicken is just a legendary creature, who have never in their lives so much as inhaled the fragrance of a flower, laid eyes upon an orange, tasted an apple or a pear, and who are now doomed to die? 49
As the round-ups began throughout the Lodz ghetto, Jews who tried to rejoin those who were not to be deported were shot. This took place, as Josef Zelkowicz recorded in the Ghetto Chronicle, ‘right before the eyes of the assembled tenants of a building’. Zelkowicz added:
Dramatic scenes were played out in the hospitals. Escape attempts came to a bloody end. Anyone who attempted to save himself by fleeing and was spotted by the authorities had to pay for that attempt with his life. Because the operation proceeded so rapidly, the authorities gave no thought to the motives or causes for any particular act. At 38 Zgierska Street, an elderly woman from Sieradz did not understand if she had been ordered to go to the left or the right and, instead of going to a wagon, she walked over to a group of ‘remainers’. This the authorities interpreted as an escape attempt. The woman was shot to death on the spot. At 3 Zgierska Street, Rozenblum, a thirteen-year-old boy, attempted to hide in a dustbin; he was seen and shot dead. There were many such victims but evenmore numerous were cases of people who were wounded when a crowd was fired on.
Sometimes the deportees were seized and taken away so quickly that they had no time to hand over any of their ration documents. In one case, Zelkowicz recorded, ‘a wife who was resettled along with her three children took all their cards with her and her husband starved to death after five days of nothing whatever to eat.’ 50
More than seven hundred children were left in the ghetto without parents, the parents having been rounded up and sent away. 51 Often, it was the children who were seized and deported without their parents. On October 22 the Ghetto Chronicle recorded the suicide of the parents of two children who had been deported a month earlier. The forty-six-year-old Icek Dobrzynski jumped from the fifth floor of a building. His wife Fraidla, unable to find a sentry willing to shoot her at the ghetto wire, jumped from a bridge. 52 On November 1 a highly respected ghetto official, Salomon Malkes, head of the ghetto’s information department, committed suicide by jumping from a fourth floor. ‘Malkes had recently been in a severe depression’, the Ghetto Chronicle noted, ‘that dated from the deportation of his mother.’ 53
Despite the September deportations, in which 15,685 Jews were ‘resettled’, the ghetto’s survival through productive work seemed assured. There were still 88,727 Jews in the ghetto. 54 Orders were continuous: in the month following the deportations they included 5,500 decorative lampshades, and ‘several million’ toys. All were to go to Germany. ‘These products are so imaginative’, the Ghetto Chronicle noted, ‘that no one can tell that they are made largely of paper and
The sorrow becomes greater, and the torture more senseless, when one tries to think rationally. Well, an old man is an old man. If he’s lived his sixty-five years, he can convince himself, or others convince him, that he should utter something like: ‘Well, thank God, I’ve had my share of living, in joy and sorrow, weal and woe. That’s life. Probably that’s fate. And anyway, you don’t live forever. So what’s the difference if it’s a few days, you’ve got to die, sooner or later, everything’s over, that’s life.’
Maybe they can talk the old man into telling himself these things, maybe they can talk his family into telling themselves. But what about children who have only just been hatched, children who have only seen God’s world in the ghetto, for whom a cow or a chicken is just a legendary creature, who have never in their lives so much as inhaled the fragrance of a flower, laid eyes upon an orange, tasted an apple or a pear, and who are now doomed to die? 49
As the round-ups began throughout the Lodz ghetto, Jews who tried to rejoin those who were not to be deported were shot. This took place, as Josef Zelkowicz recorded in the Ghetto Chronicle, ‘right before the eyes of the assembled tenants of a building’. Zelkowicz added:
Dramatic scenes were played out in the hospitals. Escape attempts came to a bloody end. Anyone who attempted to save himself by fleeing and was spotted by the authorities had to pay for that attempt with his life. Because the operation proceeded so rapidly, the authorities gave no thought to the motives or causes for any particular act. At 38 Zgierska Street, an elderly woman from Sieradz did not understand if she had been ordered to go to the left or the right and, instead of going to a wagon, she walked over to a group of ‘remainers’. This the authorities interpreted as an escape attempt. The woman was shot to death on the spot. At 3 Zgierska Street, Rozenblum, a thirteen-year-old boy, attempted to hide in a dustbin; he was seen and shot dead. There were many such victims but evenmore numerous were cases of people who were wounded when a crowd was fired on.
Sometimes the deportees were seized and taken away so quickly that they had no time to hand over any of their ration documents. In one case, Zelkowicz recorded, ‘a wife who was resettled along with her three children took all their cards with her and her husband starved to death after five days of nothing whatever to eat.’ 50
More than seven hundred children were left in the ghetto without parents, the parents having been rounded up and sent away. 51 Often, it was the children who were seized and deported without their parents. On October 22 the Ghetto Chronicle recorded the suicide of the parents of two children who had been deported a month earlier. The forty-six-year-old Icek Dobrzynski jumped from the fifth floor of a building. His wife Fraidla, unable to find a sentry willing to shoot her at the ghetto wire, jumped from a bridge. 52 On November 1 a highly respected ghetto official, Salomon Malkes, head of the ghetto’s information department, committed suicide by jumping from a fourth floor. ‘Malkes had recently been in a severe depression’, the Ghetto Chronicle noted, ‘that dated from the deportation of his mother.’ 53
Despite the September deportations, in which 15,685 Jews were ‘resettled’, the ghetto’s survival through productive work seemed assured. There were still 88,727 Jews in the ghetto. 54 Orders were continuous: in the month following the deportations they included 5,500 decorative lampshades, and ‘several million’ toys. All were to go to Germany. ‘These products are so imaginative’, the Ghetto Chronicle noted, ‘that no one can tell that they are made largely of paper and
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