Resistance and Death in the Czenstochower Ghetto (Częstochowa, Poland), edited by Liber Brener, translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund

    Resistance and Death is the first yizkor book I've read, yizkor being Hebrew for "remember." Yizkor books are books written by Jews in memory of the communities destroyed in the Holocaust, and this one was interesting to me because my grandfather spent four years in Czestochowa, Poland, during the Holocaust, working at the HASAG ammunition factory in the city. The book is really interesting as a yizkor book, since it is not academic, and it is written by someone who actually lived the experience, and is primarily concerned with documenting what they saw as a witness, and the names of people murdered. It has drawbacks because of that, but it makes it a really good primary source for the Holocaust. One difficulty with the translation from Yiddish, however, is that a lot of footnotes were missing. I'm not sure what happened there. The book has a sort of amateur, volunteer feel to its writing and translation that makes it a little difficult to follow at times, but it should be judged more as a primary source.

    Throughout the German occupation, there were a huge number of Jewish and non-Jewish collaborators. In Czestochowa, it seemed like fascist Ukrainians were a big force in the city. But Jewish collaborators were far more numerous, since the Germans made the Jews run the ghettos, at least in the early part of the occupation. The Jewish collaboration was highly variable though, and doesn't ever involve anyone ideologically in line with the Nazis. Rather, Jewish collaborators were usually prior community leaders or educated Jews who thought that collaboration was the best way for the Jewish community to survive, and didn't anticipate that they would be exterminated. Then, when extermination began, the Jewish collaborators either stopped collaborating (and were often murdered), or continued to collaborate to attempt to appease the Germans (and were still murdered). So it's really interesting to see that throughout 1940-42, Jewish policemen were an oppressive force in the ghetto who were given favorable treatment by the Nazis. The governing organization of each ghetto was known as a Judenrat, which I think translates to Jewish council.

    An early method of control during the German occupation was registering the Jews in the ghetto. The Nazis could require people to register by force, and then later used that registration as a checklist for extermination. Czetochowa's population of Jews grew in the early years of the war, since Jews were concentrated there from smaller shtetelech. In August of 1941, there were 164,567 people living in Czestochowa, and 37,667 of them were Jews. By 16 January 1942, there were 40,009 Jews in Czestochowa, but that was somewhere near the peak before extermination, mainly in Treblinka. A small number of these Jews were artisans, like my grandpa's family. Of all the Jews, in May 1942, just 1,676 were artisans, and of those, 190 were in construction with 101 in wood. The main business of Czestochowa for the Germans was the munitions factory where, as of August 1941, 1,400 men were confined in horrible conditions, forced to lie on the floor of the factory to sleep.

    Many massacres were carried out in Czestochowa, but the largest was the large liquidation that began on 22 September 1942. The active extermination of the Jews had begun at the start of 1941, and by this time, the German advance was stalled in Russia. Jewish policemen brought the news in the morning that the ghetto had been surrounded by Ukrainian Hilspolizei (auxiliary police) in the night, and that there would be a selection. It was the classic situation of dividing people left and right, with one side going to work, and the other side, the "mouths to feed," going to the gas chamber at Treblinka. The initial selection was followed by days of hunting down the Jews that didn't show up, and the Nazis took random potshots at people in windows and on balconies. The deportations following that selection continued for five weeks, until the end of October. About 41,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka or killed on the spot, and those that legally remained were those staying at their workplaces, mostly HASAG. At HASAG, 856 men and 73 women were driven into one factory room where they were guarded by armed security, with machine guns pointed into the room from the opposite factory building. They slept on the bare factory floor and had to "carry out their natural function" while still lying down, and only with permission from security. With the ghetto liquidation complete on November 1st, the remaining Jews were herded into accommodations in the poorest, smallest portion of the former ghetto on December 23rd. They received numbers, from 1 to 5185. 35 were children of policemen and doctors, still allowed to live.

    By June of 1943, it was time to purge even the small ghetto. Jews resisted from bunkers, but the Nazis killed them with grenades. It was an opportunity for the Nazis to crush the Jewish fighting organizations, and an opportunity to loot more valuables that were still hidden in the ghetto. There is a moment here where Brener writes:

The aktsia against the men ended. The lives of a group of young boys aged 12-15 whom Degenhardt wanted to send to their deaths still [hung in the balance]. Liht, the director of the ammunition factory, at the application of Bernard Kurland, declared that such young boys could be of use to him. Degenhardt filled Liht's request and gave the young boys into his jurisdiction.

I thought that was very interesting because it directly corresponds to my grandfather's experience, when he and his two brothers were rescued from execution by Director Liht. The ages would be off though- my grandpa, Richik, and Harry would have been about 14, 20, and 27 I think, but not sure.

    One of the most important aspects of the book is that Brener belonged to resistance organizations in Czestochowa, and details a lot of their efforts, and the names of those killed resisting the Nazis by sabotage and small acts of violence. The biggest obstacle was getting weapons. Dealers of weapons were untrustworthy and could charge exorbitant prices for old hunting rifles that might not even work. And worse, there were many who were just German-placed informants. The Jews of the ghetto manufactured their own grenades, what we would call IEDs today, by February of 1943. I get the idea that the Communists were the biggest resistors, as they were the only ones with the ideological commitment to driving the Germans off. The Zionists wanted to leave Europe, and there was really no other game in town ideologically. But Jews with and without ideology resisted, and sabotage was constant against the Nazis. But in June of 1943, when the small ghetto was liquidated, the Germans surrounded the headquarters of the resistance organization and showered them in bullets, throwing grenades into the tunnels. In July, most of the rest of the resistance decided to leave the city and join partisans in the forests. Work continued in the city until 15 or so January, when the workers started to get evacuated to Ravensbruck and Buchenwald, shortly before 17 January, when the Soviets took the city. 11,000 Jews were in Czestochowa in those last days, and after the evacuations, 5,200 remained for the Soviets to liberate. 1,518 were residents of the city from before the war. They would be, generally, the only ones who stayed. But even most of them would leave after the Kielce pogrom.

Miscellaneous:

• Czestochowa (spelled many different ways) was the name of the city, and Czestochowianka was a name for the textile factory that was converted into an ammunition factory- this is of interest since my grandpa would use both terms. I thought they were interchangeable, but now I know they're not.