The Germans established a ghetto in Warsaw in October 1940. All of Warsaw's Jews were required to live in the ghetto, which was sealed off from the rest of the city. Overcrowding, minimal rations, and unsanitary conditions led to disease, starvation, and the deaths of thousands of Jews each month.
These ID cards and oral histories describe individuals' experiences in Warsaw.
Roza's family moved to Warsaw in 1934. She had just begun college when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. In 1940, the Germans sealed the Warsaw ghetto, where her parents were shot during a roundup. Roza escaped and went into hiding. From her hiding place she saw the burning of the ghetto in the 1943 uprising. She had false papers stating she was a Polish Catholic (Maria Kowalczyk), and was deported by cattle train to Germany in June 1943. She worked on a farm until liberation in 1945.
Item ViewVladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Item ViewLeah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier for the underground, using false Polish papers and traveling between the Krakow ghetto and the nearby Plaszow camp. As conditions worsened, she escaped to Tarnow, but soon decided to return to Krakow. Leah also posed as a non-Jewish Pole in Czestochowa and Warsaw, and was a courier for the Jewish National Committee and the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). She fought with a Jewish unit in the Armia Ludowa (People's Army) during the Warsaw Polish uprising in 1944. Leah was liberated by Soviet forces. After the war she helped people emigrate from Poland, then moved to Israel herself before settling in the United States.
Item ViewLeah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier for the underground, using false Polish papers and traveling between the Krakow ghetto and the nearby Plaszow camp. As conditions worsened, she escaped to Tarnow, but soon decided to return to Krakow. Leah also posed as a non-Jewish Pole in Czestochowa and Warsaw, and was a courier for the Jewish National Committee and the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). She fought with a Jewish unit in the Armia Ludowa (People's Army) during the Warsaw Polish uprising in 1944. Leah was liberated by Soviet forces. After the war she helped people emigrate from Poland, then moved to Israel herself before settling in the United States.
Item ViewLike other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.
Item ViewVladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
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One of six children, Welwel was born to Jewish parents living in the predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn, 35 miles east of Warsaw. His parents were religious, and they spoke Yiddish at home. Welwel's father was a bookkeeper for a large landowner. After Welwel's father died, his mother ran a newspaper kiosk in Kaluszyn. Welwel married when he was in his twenties and moved with his wife Henia to Warsaw.
1933-39: When war broke out three months ago, many Jews left Warsaw in a mass exodus towards the east. They were mostly young and middle-aged men who were afraid that the Germans would deport them as forced labor. Welwel was scared, too, but he couldn't leave Henia and their two children, Miriam and Fiszel. Now the Germans have entered the city, and they are seizing Jews off the street for labor gangs. Welwel tries to stay inside as much as possible.
1940-43: The Jewish ghetto, situated in the heart of the Jewish quarter, was sealed off a few weeks ago. The Rzondzinski family's house on Gesia Street is in the ghetto and so is Welwel's grocery store, on Nowolipki Street. Only small quantities of food can legally be brought into the ghetto, so his stocks have shrunk. Most of his customers purchase the basic items that they are allowed on their near-starvation ration of bread, potatoes, and ersatz fat. Those of them who have the means complement their diet with black market goods.
Welwel and his family did not survive the war. They are thought to have been deported to the Treblinka killing center in the summer of 1942 or early 1943.
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Abraham was born to a Jewish family in the Polish capital of Warsaw. His grandfather owned a clothing factory and retail store, which his father managed. Abraham's family lived in a Jewish section of Warsaw and he attended a Jewish school. Warsaw's Jewish community was the largest in Europe, and made up nearly one-third of the population of the city.
1933-39: After the bombardment of Warsaw began on September 8, 1939, Abraham's family had little to eat. The stores had been reduced to rubble; they had no water or heat. Hunting for food, Abraham dodged German bombs and stole seven jars of pickles from a nearby pickle factory. For several weeks his family lived on pickles and rice. Because of a lack of water, fires from the bombing raids burned out of control. Relief came when the capital surrendered.
1940-44: By April 1943 Abraham was in the Warsaw ghetto in a walled-off forced-labor area. During the ghetto uprising he could see the flames. He couldn't believe it. To one side Abraham saw whole streets on fire. To the other he saw Poles in Warsaw's non-Jewish section preparing for Easter. When the Nazis liquidated the ghetto after the uprising, Abraham and his father were among those marched out for deportation. Poles stood on the sidewalk, eyeing the suitcases they carried, saying: "You're going to your death, after all. Leave it for us."
Abraham was deported to Majdanek and then to seven other Nazi camps, including Buchenwald. He was liberated in transit to the Dachau camp on April 30, 1945.
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Ethel was born to a Jewish family living in Warsaw. When she was 9, her family moved to the town of Mogielnica, about 40 miles southwest of Warsaw. Ethel's father spent much of his time studying religious texts. His wife managed the family liquor store. Ethel attended public school during the day and was tutored in religious studies in the evening.
1933-39: Ethel had always wanted to be a teacher. At age 14, after attending religious school in Lodz, she began to teach in the town of Kalisz, where her brother lived. There she was introduced by a matchmaker to Zalman Brokman, who first asked his rabbi and then Ethel's father for permission to marry her. In March 1939 they were married. When war began in September, Ethel returned to Mogielnica, six months pregnant.
1940-44: Ethel gave birth to a baby boy in January 1940 in Warsaw. By November, the Jews in Warsaw were confined to a ghetto. Ethel's husband traded gold pieces for food and goods. When mass deportations began in late 1942, those with sewing machines were allowed to remain in a factory to sew military garments, so Ethel's husband bought two machines. Ethel worked at the factory until it was liquidated in 1943.
In May 1943 the garment factory workers were deported to the Trawniki labor camp near Lublin. Ethel was never heard from again.
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Fela was the older of two children born to Jewish parents living in Zakroczym, a town on the Vistula River near Warsaw. Her father was a respected attorney. As a young woman, Fela worked as a hat designer in Warsaw, until she married Moshe Galek when she was in her late 20s. She moved to the nearby town of Sochocin, where her husband owned a pearl-button factory. Fela and Moshe raised four daughters.
1933-39: In 1936 the Galeks moved to Warsaw, attracted by the city's cultural life. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Moshe proposed escaping to Palestine. Although Fela was an avid Zionist, she resisted the idea because she was hesitant to begin a new life someplace else. Warsaw fell to the Germans on September 28, 1939; by December, Fela and her family were already wearing the required armbands that marked them as Jews.
1940-43: The Galeks were forced into the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940. The family lived in a room in a house where several other families lived. Food was scarce, and days were passed sitting in the house, talking. The family survived the mass deportations of 1942, but was seized in the final roundups of April 1943 just before the ghetto was destroyed.
During the roundup, Fela and Moshe were separated from their children, placed in a line with other older adults, and summarily executed.
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