the dark ages with contempt for its brutality, yet here it is again, in full force, a lawless sadism unpolished by all the charms of religion and civilization."
Sitting at the kitchen table, she prepared small packets of food for friends in the Ghetto, thankful that no one poked through Jan's clothing or pails as he went about his regular rounds to collect kitchen scraps for the Weimar's pig farm. No doubt he enjoyed the irony of carrying food from the pig farm into the Ghetto, and if it felt a little off-color giving Jews pork, a taboo food, dietary laws had long since been waived, and everyone was grateful for protein, a scarce gift on either side of the wall.
In the beginning, neither Jews nor Poles absorbed the full tirade of racist laws or believed the grisly rumors about Jew roundups and killings. "As long as we didn't witness such events themselves, feel it with our own skin," Antonina later recalled, "we could dismiss them as otherworldly and unheard-of, only cruel gossip, or maybe a sick joke. Even when a Department of Racial Purity opened a detailed census of the city's Jewish population, it still seemed possible to attribute such madness to that famous German talent for being systematic and well organized," the wheel-spinning of bureaucrats. However, Germans, Poles, and Jews stood in three separate lines to receive bread, and rationing was calculated down to the last calorie per day, with Germans receiving 2,613 calories, Poles 669 calories, and Jews only 184 calories. In case anyone missed the point, German Governor Frank declared: "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they disappear."
Verboten! became a familiar new command, yelled by soldiers, or inked large with the wagged finger of an exclamation point on posters and in anti-Semitic newspapers like Der Stürmer . Ignoring those three syllables was punishable by death. Barked out, the word moved from fricative f to plosive b, from thin-lipped disgust to blown venom.
As warnings and humiliations increased day by day, Jews were forbidden restaurants, parks, public toilets, and even city benches. Branded with a blue star of David on a white arm-band, they were barred from railways and trams, and publicly stigmatized, brutalized, denigrated, raped, and murdered. Edicts forbade Jewish musicians from playing or singing music by non-Jewish composers, Jewish lawyers were disbarred, Jewish civil servants fired without warning or pension, Jewish teachers and travel agents dismissed. Jewish-Aryan marriages or sexual relations were illegal, Jews were forbidden to create art or attend cultural events, Jewish doctors were ordered to abandon their practices (except for a few in the Ghetto). Street names that sounded Jewish were rechristened, and Jews with Aryan-sounding first names had to replace them with "Israel" or "Sarah." Marriage licenses issued to Poles required a "Fitness to marry" certificate. Jews couldn't hire Aryans as servants. Cows couldn't be inseminated by Jewish-owned bulls, and Jews weren't allowed to raise passenger pigeons. A host of children's books, like The Poison Mushroom , promoted Nazi ideology with anti-Semitic caricatures.
For sport, soldiers hoisted orthodox Jews onto barrels and scissored off their religious beards, or taunted old men and women, sometimes ordering them to dance or be shot. Archival footage shows strangers waltzing together in the street, holding each other awkwardly, faces sour with fear, as Nazi soldiers clapped and laughed. Any Jew passing a German without bowing and doffing his cap merited a savage beating. The Nazis seized all cash and savings, and stole furniture, jewelry, books, pianos, toys, clothing, medical supplies, radios, or anything else of value. Over 100,000 people, yanked from their homes, endured chronic days of physical labor without pay, and Jewish women, as further humiliation, were forced to use their underwear as cleaning rags on floors and in toilets.
Then, on October 12, 1940, the Nazis ordered all
Sitting at the kitchen table, she prepared small packets of food for friends in the Ghetto, thankful that no one poked through Jan's clothing or pails as he went about his regular rounds to collect kitchen scraps for the Weimar's pig farm. No doubt he enjoyed the irony of carrying food from the pig farm into the Ghetto, and if it felt a little off-color giving Jews pork, a taboo food, dietary laws had long since been waived, and everyone was grateful for protein, a scarce gift on either side of the wall.
In the beginning, neither Jews nor Poles absorbed the full tirade of racist laws or believed the grisly rumors about Jew roundups and killings. "As long as we didn't witness such events themselves, feel it with our own skin," Antonina later recalled, "we could dismiss them as otherworldly and unheard-of, only cruel gossip, or maybe a sick joke. Even when a Department of Racial Purity opened a detailed census of the city's Jewish population, it still seemed possible to attribute such madness to that famous German talent for being systematic and well organized," the wheel-spinning of bureaucrats. However, Germans, Poles, and Jews stood in three separate lines to receive bread, and rationing was calculated down to the last calorie per day, with Germans receiving 2,613 calories, Poles 669 calories, and Jews only 184 calories. In case anyone missed the point, German Governor Frank declared: "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they disappear."
Verboten! became a familiar new command, yelled by soldiers, or inked large with the wagged finger of an exclamation point on posters and in anti-Semitic newspapers like Der Stürmer . Ignoring those three syllables was punishable by death. Barked out, the word moved from fricative f to plosive b, from thin-lipped disgust to blown venom.
As warnings and humiliations increased day by day, Jews were forbidden restaurants, parks, public toilets, and even city benches. Branded with a blue star of David on a white arm-band, they were barred from railways and trams, and publicly stigmatized, brutalized, denigrated, raped, and murdered. Edicts forbade Jewish musicians from playing or singing music by non-Jewish composers, Jewish lawyers were disbarred, Jewish civil servants fired without warning or pension, Jewish teachers and travel agents dismissed. Jewish-Aryan marriages or sexual relations were illegal, Jews were forbidden to create art or attend cultural events, Jewish doctors were ordered to abandon their practices (except for a few in the Ghetto). Street names that sounded Jewish were rechristened, and Jews with Aryan-sounding first names had to replace them with "Israel" or "Sarah." Marriage licenses issued to Poles required a "Fitness to marry" certificate. Jews couldn't hire Aryans as servants. Cows couldn't be inseminated by Jewish-owned bulls, and Jews weren't allowed to raise passenger pigeons. A host of children's books, like The Poison Mushroom , promoted Nazi ideology with anti-Semitic caricatures.
For sport, soldiers hoisted orthodox Jews onto barrels and scissored off their religious beards, or taunted old men and women, sometimes ordering them to dance or be shot. Archival footage shows strangers waltzing together in the street, holding each other awkwardly, faces sour with fear, as Nazi soldiers clapped and laughed. Any Jew passing a German without bowing and doffing his cap merited a savage beating. The Nazis seized all cash and savings, and stole furniture, jewelry, books, pianos, toys, clothing, medical supplies, radios, or anything else of value. Over 100,000 people, yanked from their homes, endured chronic days of physical labor without pay, and Jewish women, as further humiliation, were forced to use their underwear as cleaning rags on floors and in toilets.
Then, on October 12, 1940, the Nazis ordered all
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