Ghetto Post of the Holocaust Era

Postal history is the study of the movement of the mail. We can learn about postal systems through rates, censorship, mailing directions, travel time, and routes. When there is access to the message on the card or letter, we have another aspect of history to aid us in our study. The four postal cards discussed in this article provide an insight into the postal system between the U.S.S.R. and Nazi-occupied Poland. From them we also get a feeling of ghetto life in general and specifically, a feel for the ghetto postal system. The ghetto was an innovation of the Nazis to subjugate the Jews. After occupation, the Nazis established ghettos in each town or village. These ghettos were usually located in the poor section of the town and walled off from the rest of the population. Life within the ghetto was very difficult and often dangerous.

After each ghetto was created, the Nazis established a Judenrat (Jewish Council). The Judenrat consisted of prominent individuals in the community who were responsible for running the day-to-day activities of the ghetto. “The Judenrat concept,” as described by Isaiah Trunk, “was conceived by the Nazis, not as an instrument for organizing life in the ghettos or for strengthening the structure of the ghetto, but the opposite; as an instrument which, in their hands, would help them in general, to realize their plans concerning the Jewish population in the occupied territories and, in particular, to exterminate the Jewish people.”

Read more

The Ghetto Mail Man: Warsaw Ghetto

The letter carrier’s lot is an unhappy one. He rises at five in the morning and works till nine, ten in the evening and in spite of that, he receives no weekly wage, but gets paid by the piece—six groszy per letter, and after subtracting all taxes and contributions to “social insurance” from which he, as a Jew, cannot benefit according to the canons of the occupation authorities, but for which he enjoys the privilege of paying, there hardly remains five groszy net. The delivery of one hundred, even one hundred and fifty letters a day nets him a ridiculous sum, when a loaf of black bread costs between 22 and 24 groszy ….

This is the life of a ghetto postman in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. This was penned by Perez Opacynziki, a talented Yiddish writer, in an essay “The Ghetto Post Man” for the Oneg Shabbat archives. He was a post man by need and a writer by profession. In this article, I use excerpts from his observations and combine them with what we know about the postal system of the ghetto. This provides unique insight into the ghetto postal system with commentary from within.

The Oneg Shabbat group was composed of writers, teachers, and observers who gathered every Friday night (thus the name Oneg Shabbat “Sabbath pleasure”) under the tutelage of historian Emmanuel Ringelbum, to record life and death in the ghetto for posterity. These observations, diaries, notes, and stories were gathered and placed in four milk cans and buried before the ghetto was destroyed. Three of the four milk cans were recovered after the war and now give us insight into life in the Warsaw ghetto.

Read more

Judenfrage: The “Jewish Problem”

The cover in Figure 1 relates a very fascinating chapter in the Jewish involvement in World War II. It tells us of family separation, migration, involuntary transport, and and evidence of the Nazi “Final Solution.”

Arnold Cohn, the sender of this card, came from the city of Hamburg and served in the German army during World War I, like many of his Jewish countrymen. Unlike many Jews who stayed when the Nazis came to power, he relocated to Denmark. This destination proved to be temporary, as Hitler’s conquest spread to all of Central Europe. When the Nazis invaded Denmark, he was forced to flee again, this time to Sweden.

Arnold’s brother Simon was not so lucky. He lived in Frankfurt and was involuntarily transported to Theresienstadt, a walled city that served a unique purpose, on Sept. 15, 1942. During 1942 the Nazis moved many thousands of German and Austrian Jews east to the Polish ghettos and also to Theresienstadt.

Theresienstadt was the “model ghetto” established by the Nazis to appease many different groups. The Nazis announced that all German Army veterans of World War I, government officials, and the elderly could buy apartments in Theresienstadt by signing over their property to the Nazis; of course those who did so received nothing. To the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia the Nazis announced that Theresienstadt was the city set aside for the Jews of the region to live and work.

Families arriving in Theresienstadt were kept together, and the ghetto was fixed up to serve as a model community to show off to the International Red Cross. Also, work was provided for many of the residents, giving the impression of a normal town. In actuality, Theresienstadt was just a temporary stopover on the way to Auschwitz and the other death camps of the east.

Read more

The Kreh Brothers:
Succoth in the Polish Ghettos

On September 8 and 9, 1939, the Nazi army invaded Poland, and within the month they occupied the country. This began Hitler’s attempted destruction of the Jewish people and the ultimate destruction of a unique way of life that existed in Eastern Europe. Within that first month of occupation, the Jews of Poland celebrated the first High Holy Days. They met on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with uncertainty and a maze of Nazi decrees.

Rabbi Shimon Huberband, who perished in Treblinka in August 1942, described this first Rosh Hashanah:

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah (Wednesday), a notice was issued that Jews were required to keep their shops and businesses open on the Shabbat and all Jewish holidays…On Rosh Hashanah 5700, close to 20 Jews gather in synagogue. The rabbi didn’t attend, the cantor didn’t lead the prayers, and the length of the service was shortened… Germans were proceeding from house to house… they took… all their possessions and dealt murderous blows. (p. 66)

This first celebration of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur under the Nazis was not just difficult, it was deadly, and being Jewish under the Nazis would continue to prove dangerous and being observant, near impossible. Emanuel Ringelbum comments in his Oneg Shabbat journal about the Yom Tovim 1940:”A Jew who prayed poorly on Rosh Hashanah, when asked why, he replied the prayer matches the year (sic)…” (p. 66).

Read more

Post Card from Auschwitz

Auschwitz, the largest and most notorious concentration camps, was established by the Nazis during the Second World War. The name alone is synonymous with genocide and extermination. Located near the town of Oswiecim, Poland, it grew into a vast complex of 3 main camps and over 70 sub camps.

From the camp’s establishment in May 1940 to January 1945, when most surviving Auschwitz prisoners were marched off by their German captors and Soviet troops liberated the camp, approximately 405,000 prisoners of both sexes, from nearly every European country were registered, assigned serial numbers, and incarcerated there. Almost 1.5 million people lost their lives at the camp.

Auschwitz 1 was “primarily a concentration camp serving a penal function”: it housed political prisoners, Poles, homosexuals, and a few Jews. The forced labor camp of the Auschwitz complex, it held between 13 to 16 thousand prisoners at any one time. In barrack 10, doctors conducted pseudo-scientific research on infants, twins, and dwarfs, and performed forced sterilizations, castrations, and hypothermia experiments.

Auschwitz 2, or Birkenau, contained the gas chambers and the crematorium. From spring 1942 until fall 1944, the operation designated to annihilate European Jews functioned almost without ceasing as transport trains delivered Jews from Nazi-occupied countries. This is the camp where most of the Jews were sent. The camp held up to 100,000 prisoners at one time and had 4 gas chambers and a crematorium to dispose of the bodies. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Jews were sent to their death here.

Auschwitz 3, called Monowitz or Buna, was a forced-labor camp set up in the spring of 1942 for IG Farben Chemical Works which produced synthetic rubber and liquid fuel. They used slave labor, paying the Nazis for the use of these prisoners to produce their products.

Within Birkenau, the administrative offices operated and ran the camp. They were the heart of the camp administration, controlling all aspects of the camp and its functions. The offices were divided into 6 administrative divisions:

Read more