October 27, 1942, would turn into a warm, sunny autumn day in southern Poland,1 a day whose natural beauty would stand in stark contrast to the manmade horrors that played out on the streets of Wierzbnik. But it was still dark when Wierzbnikers got their first confirmation that this was the day of the Aktion that would liquidate their ghetto and destroy their community. Those up first that morning were workers who tried to leave the ghetto in order to begin their 7 a.m. shift at one of the factories. Invariably they encountered unknown armed and uniformed men blocking the streets out of the ghetto; they were told to return home or go directly to the marketplace or rynek.2 It was clear that the ghetto was surrounded.
A number of people attempted unsuccessfully to slip through the cordon and were shot.3 At least six people did escape the ghetto that morning, however. From his window, Pinchas Heldstein saw Judenrat member Moshe Birenzweig in the street early in the morning. When Birenzweig confirmed that the ghetto was surrounded, Heldstein took his wife and three daughters through backyard gardens to a Polish family, where he left them in hiding. Trusting in his own usefulness to the Germans as a bootmaker, he then reported to his place of work. The German in charge accompanied him back to the marketplace, however, since any Jew found outside the ghetto was liable to be shot on sight.4 Eighteen-year-old Chaim Wolgroch had earlier escaped from Warsaw to Starachowice, where he briefly hid in a Catholic mission devoted to the conversion of Jews. When he declined conversion, he had to leave and went into the Wierzbnik ghetto. This morning, he made his way back to the mission, but when still faced with the requirement of conversion in order to stay, he went to the marketplace.5 Fifteen-year-old Mania Isser, whose fearful father had earlier torn up her false papers, took off her armband and put on a Polish scarf. This time, without telling her parents, she slipped out of the ghetto around 4 a.m., when it was still dark. On the outskirts of the city, she hid in a woodshed, from which she could hear the screams and shots coming from the ghetto.6
Most Jews in the Wierzbnik ghetto first learned of the impending Aktion from the Jewish police. Nathan Gelbard, the only surviving ghetto policeman who gave a postwar account, testified: “On the morning of that day, I went through the houses with the other members of the Jewish Ordnungsdienst [Order Service], in order to inform people that they had to present themselves on the market place for resettlement.”7 And indeed, many survivors confirm that they first heard the summons to the marketplace from the Jewish police, not from the Germans or their auxiliaries.8 When Syma Dawidowicz attempted to hide and was discovered by a Jewish policeman, he bluntly warned her that the SS would conduct a subsequent search and shoot anyone still found in an apartment.9 Apparently at least some Polish municipal police were involved in this stage of the roundup as well, for the daughter of the head of the Judenrat remembers that as soon as her father had left their apartment, the Polish police commandant Chmielewski and two other Polish policemen arrived at the door and warned her family to leave for the marketplace within five minutes.10
The order to depart for the marketplace immediately, accompanied by the warning that noncompliers would be shot, posed an excruciating dilemma to those Wierzbnikers who lived in extended families with elderly parents who were either immobile or simply unwilling to leave their homes. In the Mincberg household, Riwka’s grandfather, Moses Pinchas Lichtenstein, one of the four brothers who had founded the veneer and plywood factory in Wierzbnik, was too ill and weak to stand up, much less run to the marketplace. According to one account, with considerable effort she persuaded her mother not to remain with him; in another account, she pulled her mother outside “forcefully.” In either case, they left him behind alone in his bed.11 Moshe Kumec had been beaten so badly in an earlier encounter with German police that he could not rise from his bed and was left behind.12 Witnesses from six other families also reported having left one or two grandparents behind when they departed for the marketplace. In all these cases, the surviving family members later learned from the burial commando that the elderly and sick people they had left behind had been found shot in their beds.13
Others did not have to wait to have their worst fears confirmed. They saw the killing of elderly family members firsthand, as the impatient ghetto-clearers murdered those whose immobility threatened to slow the Aktion. The Winograd family had not yet left their apartment when German policemen broke in and dragged the grandmother, Gitl Winograd, into the courtyard, where they shot her in front of the family. Then they chased the rest of them onto the street.14 Rywka Slomowicz’s grandmother refused to leave her family home. “She preferred to die in this place rather than to be deported.” An “SS man” obliged.15 Regina Crujecki’s fifty-year-old father was killed in their apartment before her eyes.16 Szajndla Herblum’s two aunts and uncles, who lived next door, were shot down on the doorstep of their apartment because they were unable to leave quickly enough.17 Rachmil Najman saw his aunt and uncle gunned down on the front step as well.18 Chuna Grynbaum’s uncle, dressed and praying, was shot on the spot.19
As people rushed onto the streets and streamed toward the marketplace, the air was filled with the sounds of banging on doors, the repeated call of “Raus, raus,” screams, and shooting. The ghetto-clearers hurried people along with whips, dogs, and shots into the air, as Jews were “chased” and “driven” to the rynek.20 Once again, those whose immobility was deemed a hindrance to the swift completion of the Aktion were marked for immediate murder. These killings now took place in full daylight, not in the dark or early dawn, and before many assembled witnesses on or near the marketplace, not in individual apartments and courtyards. Varying accounts of the same event thus increasingly appear in the postwar testimonies.
Two killing sites in particular were mentioned in numerous testimonies. One major road in the ghetto, the Kolejowa, ran from the train station past the Judenrat building and parallel to the length of the marketplace, from which it was separated by one row of buildings. Providing a passageway through this row of buildings to the marketplace and serving as a shortcut was a series of steps up to a narrow corridor or covered alleyway. As Jews streamed up the Kolejowa past the Judenrat, a cluster of ghetto-clearers was stationed by and on the stairway. Here a number of Jews, especially those who appeared elderly and slow-moving, were pulled out of the crowd and shot.21 As the Wierzbnik Jews assembled on the marketplace, the killing shifted to a gateway and courtyard of a building that had belonged to the Korenwasser family. Jews were pulled out of the lines of five that were being formed on the marketplace, led to the gateway, and shot either out of sight in the courtyard or sometimes even in full view while still in the entryway.22
In addition to the elderly, the physically handicapped were especially victimized that morning. Rachmil Najman’s neighbor, a polio victim with a lame foot and hand, was shot on his doorstep.23 Adam Kogut’s uncle, Pinchas Gottlieb, partially paralyzed on one side, could move only slowly with the help of a crutch. He was shot in the narrow corridor between Kolejowa and the marketplace.24 The watchmaker Moshe Najman, who moved awkwardly due to a shortened leg, was shot outside his home.25 The first dead person in the street that Abramek Naiman saw on the way back to his house, after he had been turned back from going to work, was apparently crippled.26 Even those who, despite their handicap, made it to the marketplace were not spared. A man with one leg,27 a man with a pronounced limp,28 and a man with a heavily bandaged foot29 were all shot there.
Amid all the havoc and slaughter, three killings in particular remained prominently lodged in the memories of numerous survivors. Many people specifically remembered the shooting of Shlomo “Szkop” Zagdanski, a teacher at the Jewish school, as he entered the marketplace at one corner.30 Even more vividly, people remembered the killing of the Biederman couple. Elegantly dressed in their best Shabbath clothes (and he particularly conspicuous in his white prayer shawl), the elderly and frail couple ever so slowly made their way up the street to the marketplace before they were intercepted by their killers and shot.31 But accounts differed as to exactly where—at the corner of the marketplace or at the entryway to the courtyard off the marketplace—and by whom they were killed.
The third killing mentioned in numerous accounts was that of a young woman, Esther Manela. According to her sister, Esther “had repeatedly said beforehand, that under no circumstances would she go into the camp.” As the family reached the steps leading to the marketplace, Esther said she had left something in the apartment and turned back. “A short time later we heard a shot from our apartment.”32 If one accepts the sister’s account as the most reliable, then none of the other survivors actually witnessed her killing. But the story of a young woman who clearly had a good chance of being selected for labor and who nonetheless refused to go to the marketplace stuck in many people’s memories and was included in their accounts as a story they had heard from others.33 There was also a tendency to incorporate such hearsay into presumed memory. One person claimed to have seen Esther’s body on the street.34 Another related a heroic account of Esther’s death on the marketplace. “Esther Manela was standing not far from me. She stepped out of the row and went to police chief Walther Becker. I heard how she said to Becker that she did not want to go to the camp. Becker ordered her to step back into line. She did not do that. Becker drew his pistol and then shot her.”35 In yet another heroic account, the site of Esther’s defiance and death shifted to the waiting train. There she refused to mount the freight car, stating that she preferred to die in her hometown. She was promptly shot by a German, and her dying words were, “I beat you.”36
In addition to general references to indiscriminate mass killing both during the roundup and on the marketplace—such as, “People fell like leaves from a tree”37—numerous other individual killings were described by different individual witnesses as well.38 The systematic killing of the elderly, the handicapped, and those who did not follow orders was clearly standard operating procedure for the ghetto-clearers. Although the exact number of Jews killed during the Aktion that day cannot be ascertained with certainty, some approximation can be made. According to Leib Herblum, a survivor of the “cleanup commando” that was charged with burying the dead, he and his comrades dug “two graves, a separate one for the men and one for the women” in the Jewish cemetery. On the first day, they counted the bodies of twenty-six men and twenty-two women. Over the next few days, other bodies were brought for burial. In the end, he simply lost count. “Too numerous were the victims I was ordered to bury….”39 According to Jerahmiel Singer, writing for the community memory book, forty-two “old and sick” people who had remained in their homes had been killed there.40 Another survivor placed the number of Jews killed on the marketplace at thirty-six.41 A number of others gave a rough total of around sixty.42 Given the traumatic nature of that day, it is perhaps surprising that so few other witnesses offered only modestly higher, probably somewhat exaggerated estimates.43
The identity of the killers can also be ascertained only approximately. There is quite persuasive testimony that the Jewish ghetto police played an initial role in summoning Jews to the marketplace. And Nathan Gelbard, the surviving Jewish policeman, likewise testified that they played a role on the marketplace in keeping order. “My task was limited to watching out that people remained standing in the column.”44 A number of survivors also testified to the presence of Polish police, either in surrounding the ghetto or keeping order on the marketplace.45 But no one suggested that either the Jewish or the Polish police were involved in killing. There was also agreement on the presence of the factory security force or Werkschutz, composed of Ukrainians “whom we knew.” They would play a key role in herding those selected as workers from the marketplace to one of the labor camps but not in the roundup and killing.46 They were dressed in dark blue uniforms.47
The German Gendarmerie, the Schupo, and Becker’s Security Police, who were normally stationed in Starachowice, were certainly present that day.48 But crucial additional manpower for the roundup and killing of Wierzbnik Jews were “other people”49 whose precise identity was unknown but who had been “sent only for this purpose.”50 Though referred to as Ukrainians in some testimonies, in the more discerning testimonies they were thought—because of their “language”—to be “probably” either Latvian or Lithuanian,51 “in any case from the Baltic.”52 The other distinguishing memory held by survivors about these strangers was that they were “drunk,” a practice that no doubt helped them to carry out the “dirty work” that the Germans assigned to them.53
Survivor memories in this regard are consistent with the conclusions reached by German judicial investigations of other ghetto-clearing operations in the General Government, which established a common pattern of employing outside itinerant units of Eastern European auxiliaries as a crucial component of manpower. These auxiliaries were euphemistically referred to by the Nazis as Hiwis (short for Hilfswilligen or “volunteers”). For the most part, the Hiwis had been recruited out of prisoner-of-war camps and trained at a special SS facility in the town of Trawniki in the Lublin district. This training center provided such manpower not only for itinerant ghetto-clearing units but also for the guard detachments of the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. By ethnic origin, the Trawniki men were Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Volksdeutsche. For the obvious reason of common language, the Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians were organized into separate units. Volksdeutsche or ethnic Germans, who knew the relevant language of the rank and file, usually served as noncommissioned officers. But the judicial investigation of the Trawniki camp staff examined the dispatch of Trawniki men as ghetto-clearers only for the Lublin district and the Warsaw ghetto, not for the Radom district.54
Various individual investigations of ghetto liquidations in the Radom district confirmed the existence of a notorious, itinerant Judenvernichtungsbatallion or “Jewish destruction battalion,” made up of Eastern European auxiliaries and commanded by Hauptsturmführer Adolf Feucht and his assistant, Sturmscharführer Walter Schildt. But these investigations did not confirm either the unit’s ethnic makeup or its Trawniki origins. In different investigations, the Hiwis in this unit were identified variously as Latvians, Lithuanians, and/or Ukrainians, or more generically as Baltic or “ethnically alien” (fremdvölkischen) auxiliaries.55 According to Untersturmführer Erich Kapke, who commanded detachments of this unit in various ghetto-clearing actions in the Radom district, the manpower was both Ukrainian and Baltic in origin.56
If not even the ethnic origin, to say nothing of the individual identities, of the Hiwis sent to clear the Wierzbnik ghetto can be precisely established, command responsibility for the ghetto-clearing operation was no mystery to the Jews of Wierzbnik gathered on the marketplace that morning. Other postwar investigations of ghetto-clearing operations in the Radom district once again established a common pattern, in which the SS staff in Radom scheduled the sequence of operations and coordinated the arrival of outside manpower and trains, but the actual on-the-spot conduct of the ghetto-clearing was placed in the hands of those with the most expertise in local conditions.57 In the case of Wierzbnik, this was Walther Becker. The pretrial investigation of Walther Becker, initiated by the Central Agency for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg and then taken over by the Office of the State Prosecutor in Hamburg, led to the large collection of eyewitness testimonies in the 1960s that constitute one of the major sources for this study.
There was virtual unanimity among the survivors about several aspects of Becker’s appearance and role that day. First, they agreed that he was present. Indeed, from the testimony it is clear that he was the single most conspicuous and consistently recognized German there.58 Virtually everyone described the same vivid image of Becker running around with a drawn pistol in one hand and a whip or club in the other. Furthermore, most witnesses testified that he was obviously the man in command. He ran around giving orders, and others went to him for instructions. No one saw him taking instructions from anyone else.59 As one survivor put it, Becker was “the man of the day.”60
Numerous witnesses went even further and described him as a man possessed or run amok. Especially to those on the Judenrat, who had earlier perceived Becker as a corrupt rather than a sadistic German and thus cultivated him through gifts, this came as a great surprise. The daughter of the head of the Judenrat noted: “Before the resettlement I had not thought that Becker could behave so wildly…. We had even placed a certain hope in him. Specifically he frequently came to the Judenrat and had himself presented with gifts, especially from Wolfowicz, so that one could assume he would attempt to spare us from resettlement.”61 Wolfowicz’s niece affirmed that previously Becker had made “a calm impression” but not on the day of the Aktion.62
Time and again, survivors resorted to the same images and vocabulary in trying to capture Becker’s dominant and terrifying presence and absolutely frenetic behavior on the marketplace that day. He “ran” or “raced back and forth like a mad man.”63 (lief/rannte wie ein Verrückter hin und her). He made an “excited” or “wild impression.”64 (erregten/ wilden Eindruck). He ran about “like an animal,” “a wild animal,” or “a tiger.”65
Some witnesses provided very general testimony, devoid of specific details, that they saw Becker beating with his whip and shooting with his pistol. Several described instances of beating quite specifically. Mendel Mincberg, son of the head of the Judenrat, had to run the gauntlet past Becker to reach the marketplace. “I saw exactly that it was Becker who struck me. As a result of this blow I almost fell to the ground, but my brother supported me. I forced myself to run further, because it was clear to me that I would be shot if I fell down.”66 Another man testified: “On this day Becker carried a leather whip, in which a lead or in any case a metal ball was braided into the end, and which was about 1 or 1.2 meters long…. I saw that he struck my friend standing next to me—Godel Kadiszewicz—over the head. My friend suffered a wound that bled so severely that afterwards his clothing was entirely soaked with blood…. I remember that for many days after this blow with the whip Kadiszewicz cried all night long like a little child.”67
More important, no fewer than twenty-eight witnesses testified to particular shootings by Becker in which he killed one or more people. Some of these killings had multiple witnesses. Five identified Becker as the killer of the elderly Biederman couple.68 Three identified him as the killer of the Jewish schoolteacher, Shlomo “Szkop” Zagdanski.69 Three testified to Becker’s beating to the ground and killing an old man on the steps leading up from Kolejowa to the marketplace.70 Two testified that he killed a man named Henoch Kaufman.71 None of the other descriptions of alleged Becker killings converged to provide multiple testimonies of the same event, however. And some of the accusations, such as the claim by two witnesses that they saw Becker shoot Esther Manela on the marketplace, are contradicted by other, more persuasive testimony. And just one witness testified to seeing Becker grab a small child by the feet and smash its head against the wall next to the courtyard entrance off the marketplace.72 Given that this is an archetypal Holocaust image, which poses a greater likelihood of being incorporated into memory later, and that despite Becker’s notoriety no other witness remembers what surely would have been the single most horrifying and indelible scene on the marketplace that day, this particular accusation cannot be deemed credible either.
The testimony about Walther Becker demonstrates the possibility but also the problems in writing history from postwar testimony. In light of the overwhelming consensus among the witnesses, there can be no reasonable doubt that Walther Becker was present at and in tactical command of the ghetto-clearing operation in Wierzbnik on October 27, 1942. There can be no reasonable doubt that he played a tremendously active and zealous, not reticent or minimal, role in discharging his duties. There can be little if any doubt that he personally beat and shot people that day as well. But each particular act of beating and murder for which there were multiple accounts was remembered and described somewhat differently by each witness. And in some cases, the testimonies against Becker were either uncorroborated or contradicted by other testimonies. These uncorroborated and contradicted accusations suggest the possibility that at least some of the witnesses, frustrated at being unable to identify the many anonymous perpetrators who killed that day, may have tended to name the notorious Becker by default.
The Jews who crowded onto the marketplace stayed together as families. As the roundup was completed in the packed marketplace, the Germans conducted a series of selections. First, the men with work cards were called out and sent to the so-called long side or south side of the marketplace. Next, women with work cards were likewise summoned. The Germans then conducted three further selections. They inspected those who answered the call for work-card holders and sent back those whom they deemed too young or unfit. They scoured the rows of five into which the nonselected Jews had been formed to take out anyone who looked young and healthy enough to work, even if they did not have a work card. Finally, they grabbed additional Jews to compose a “cleanup commando” that would remain in the ghetto for the next several months rather than being sent immediately to the work camps for factory labor. The remaining Jews were marched to a sidetrack of the rail line and packed into waiting train cars.
As a result of the Aktion in Wierzbnik, the Germans sent approximately 1,600 Jews—1,200 men and 400 women—to work camps and deported nearly 4,000 Jews to the gas chambers of Treblinka.73 The fact that more than 25 percent of the Jews rounded up in Wierzbnik were not sent immediately to their deaths stands in sharp contrast to the fate of other communities in the Radom district, where the deportation rate during ghetto-liquidation actions routinely stood at 90 to 95 percent.74 This is one of several crucial contingent factors that accounts for the unusual cluster of Wierzbnik survivors upon whose postwar testimonies this study is based. What was seared into the memories of the survivors, of course, was not that more than 25 percent of the community had survived but that these selections posed terrible choices, ruthlessly tore apart virtually every family, and left many survivors with never-healed feelings of loss and guilt.
Goldie Szachter Kalib, who was already in hiding and not present at the marketplace that day, nonetheless described the scene based on what she subsequently learned from others about the selections that day.
What chaos ensued! What confusion! Sounds of shouting and crying were heard coming from all directions, as people with and without workers’ cards struggled, competed, shoved, and pushed with all their strength in a desperate effort to land in the group selected for work. Germans were shouting orders, cursing, and beating and shooting Jews who failed to jump quickly enough to their commands. Families cried for mercy as they were torn apart…. young children were torn from their young parents to be condemned. Heartbreaking good-byes were heard and seen everywhere. In some families, quarrels erupted over which parent should go with the children. For the most part, mothers chose to go with their beloved offspring. Many men fought their way into the lines of the workers, abandoning wives and children, but there were others who chose to go along with their wives and children…. many in the workers’ lines who had abandoned their families began to feel pangs of guilt. How could they in good conscience have spared their own lives while allowing their dear ones to go to their deaths? On the other hand, what would they have accomplished by not having saved their own lives? Could they have prevented the slaughter of their loved ones? Of course not…. Then why torture oneself with self-inflicting blame? Yet despite all logic, such feelings of self-reproach and guilt haunted many and deepened their agony even more.75
One survivor succinctly summed up the “choiceless choices”76 that so many faced that day: “Many people were given the option, either to go into the camp and thereby abandon their children or remain together with their children in the great mass on the market place.”77 Another survivor related the staggering tragedy of a family of six—husband and wife, two teenage children, and two infants—faced with such a choice. The parents and older children all had work cards. During the selection, the parents sent their teenage children over to join the workers. The parents then left their infants to join their teenagers among the workers. In the meantime, the teenagers had left the workers to rejoin their family. In the end, all four children were deported and the parents were taken to the work camps, “alive” but in “hell.”78 Such horrific stories could be narrated about others, but survivors telling their own stories of the selection had simply reached the human limit as to what was possible to remember and tell about the tragedy of such “choiceless choices.” Such a narrative was simply too unbearable, and they usually adopted one of three narrative models, each of which neutralized the role of agonizing choice on their own part in the tragedy of separation. I do not mean to imply that the public memories of the survivors are untrue in this case, but rather that repressed and secret memories play a greater role in affecting what and how much can be told about the experiences of this particular day than for any other aspect of the Starachowice testimonies.
One such narrative model employed brief, matter-of-fact description, usually in the passive voice, in which the Jews were without agency and simply acted upon. Once at the marketplace, “the men capable of work were immediately separated from the rest.”79 “After some time a kind of selection was carried out, in which they sought out the younger and stronger people and sent them over to the other side of the market place.”80 “Some people were summoned and placed with the workers…. In that way our family was separated.”81 One survivor “lost contact” with her mother and three sisters, who were sent to Treblinka.82 Another said that his family was “separated” because some were chased to the right and others to the left. “We just sort of parted, separated by force. They were screaming something, I was screaming something.”83 And finally: “After some time I suddenly found myself, without being able to say how it came about, in the rows of those selected for work in the factories.”84
A second model was a narrative of resistance to separation overcome by force. According to Mendel Mincberg, “After some time the possessors of work cards were requested to step out. But only a portion of the people complied.” Thus, Schwertner had to go through the columns, choosing the young and strong regardless of whether they had work cards.85 The community memory book provides the same scenario: “People with work permits refused to part from their dear ones, relinquishing thereby voluntarily the opportunity to be exempt from expulsion, but the Germans took them by force….”86
Many individual narratives follow this scenario of thwarted self-sacrifice. Abraham Rosenwald was planning to flee with his mother when a German “tore me out of the line in which I stood and sent me with drawn pistol to the workers.”87 Syma Dawidowicz “had no work card and also wanted to go with my parents, because I saw no hope of survival.” But a German placed her with the workers “against my will” because she was young and strong.88 Chaja Weisblum had a job at the lumberyard, and her supervisor tried to persuade her to join the workers. “Because I had both of my children with me, I could not bring myself to go with the other lumber yard workers.” But Becker appeared, struck her with his whip, and had one of his Ukrainians take her to the other side. “I wanted to return to my children, but was prevented by force.”89 Szmul Erlichson was chosen for work but “I did not want to be separated from my wife and my two children, as well as my parents.” Thus, he asked if he could take his wife and children with him over to the workers’ side. “I was simply sent over to the others with a kick of the foot.”90 Natan Wajchendler heard the call for those with work cards: “My father held me back and said to me, that we—that is he and I—should stay with my mother.” But an SS man beckoned him out, clubbed him over the head, and sent him to the workers.91 Abraham Frymerman did not step out when those holding work cards were “ordered” to do so, because “I did not want to separate from my wife. However, I was pulled out of line by a SS man who struck me with a club.”92
The third separation narrative is that of other family members rejecting the offer of family solidarity for the sake of individual survival. When Beniek Zukerman heard the call for work-card holders, “my sister and I at first wanted to remain with our family. But my father persuaded us to comply with the order. He thought that we might then perhaps remain alive….”93 Pesia Kumec said that when women with work cards were summoned, “My mother pushed my sister and me out of the line.”94 Peretz Cymerman said he wanted to stay with the family but his father told him to go to work. “We kissed goodbye. That’s it.”95 Nacha Baum’s parents had purchased work cards for her and her brothers. Thus, when the selection began, “my parents pushed me to go.”96 Chil Leibgott said that when the Germans called for workers, “I really didn’t want to go,” but his father “actually pushed me out from the line.”97 Rosha Kogut likewise said her mother “pushed her out” when the selection began.98
Some narratives combined the elements of familial urging with German force. Tauba Wolfowicz was already employed at the factory but did not want to leave her family when work-card holders were summoned. “I wanted to stay with my mother. But she could not bear that.” Thus, she “announced that I had a work card, and I was led away by the collar by a Latvian.”99 Toba Steiman told how, when she tried to stay with her parents, her father “pushed her away” and told her to stay alive. Then someone grabbed her, beat her on the head, and shoved her into the workers’ group.100 Chemia Reichzeig related that when the workers were told to step out, “My wife said go, go, she pushed me.” The Germans saw this, grabbed him by the collar, and sent him to the workers.101 Dvora Rubenstein was standing in line with her parents when her husband, accompanied by a German, came and pointed her out. The German struck her, and her parents begged her to step out and save herself, since she had successfully hidden her child, who would need her later.102 Icek Guterman and his mother were on the factory night shift, but his father and three sisters were sent to the marketplace. His father had been a business partner of Judenrat member Moshe Biren zweig, who asked Becker to place him with the workers. When his father rejected Becker’s offer, the latter became infuriated. “You Jew, I get gold and diamonds for bringing over people and I tell you to go and you do not want to go.” Becker pulled his pistol, but one of Icek’s sisters pushed her father out of line and he crossed over. Guterman added that, having lost three daughters on the marketplace while the parents survived, “My father could never talk about it and my mother could never talk about it. There was not a day they did not remember what had happened. It was very difficult for them to live.”103
Gender clearly had considerable impact on the selection to and composition of the workers’ group. As we have seen, even prior to the liquidation of the ghetto, Schwertner—although willing to sell seats in his trucks to both men and women to take them to Starachowice—was more inclined to provide work permits to men than to women. And witnesses tell of only one man—Rabbi Rabinowicz—whose work permit was not honored on the marketplace, but there are numerous accounts of women who had their work cards rejected.104 According to one male witness (who was separated from his wife and three children that day), women with work cards—unlike men—were not forced to join the workers’ group if they had children.105 But two female witnesses were emphatic that women were also forcibly torn from their children.106 The collected testimonies of that day suggest three conclusions. First, men selected for work outnumbered women by a large margin—around 1,200 to 400. When families were separated, those fated for deportation were overwhelmingly mothers and their young children and the elderly. Second, there was no single, uniform German policy concerning women with children, and the fate of individual mothers was often decided by the selector they encountered.107 Third, at least on some occasions Jewish mothers themselves made the fateful decision as to whether they would remain with their younger children.
One witness went to the marketplace with his wife, son, and daughter. Having worked at the sawmill, he was chosen to join that group of workers. But his son was not, “because he was at that time still too young.” The son, left by his father, nevertheless managed to slip into another group of workers, saved himself, and was eventually reunited with his father. The fate of the women in the family was quite different. “My wife had also been designated for work in the saw mill. Because in this case she would have had to leave our daughter alone, she refused to go to the camp. My wife and daughter were then sent to Treblinka.”108
The tailor Rachmil Chaiton had already been promised that the skilled craftsmen like himself would remain with their entire families—in his case, a wife and child. Thus, when the call for those with work cards went out, he approached Becker on the marketplace for permission to take his wife and child with him. Becker said he could take his wife but not “the little shit” (die kleine Scheisse), indicating the child. “We naturally did not want to separate from our child. I was forced to join the row of Jews chosen for work, while my wife remained with the child and…was deported.”109
Much rarer is the story of a mother who chose to separate from her children in order to survive. In one account, a survivor went to the marketplace with one of his sisters, who had a work card but also a four-year-old child. In order to join the women workers’ group, she persuaded her child to join her mother, another sister, and two young nieces. The little girl screamed at first but calmed down when she saw her cousins. A brother and one sister joined the workers. The mother, second sister, and three children were all sent to Treblinka.110
A frantic desire to be among the workers, even when it involved heartbreaking separation from family, was not absent that day, even though subsequent narratives of reluctance overcome only by brute force or familial urging are understandably more prevalent among the testimonies. Fully consistent with the flood of desperate refugees into Wierzbnik and the “witches’ dance” for work permits, one survivor admitted candidly: “On the market place itself everyone had very great fear, and each wanted to be in the rows of those who were selected for work, because it appeared to those affected as salvation.”111 Thus, another standard narrative among the survivor testimonies is that of making it successfully into the ranks of the workers. These accounts are cast, however, less as stories of separation and tragedy—leaving family behind on the marketplace—and more as stories of survival and triumph, of outwitting the Germans in order to rejoin their families.
Goldie Szachter’s father had arranged for the entire immediate family to work on the night shift precisely in order to increase their chances of avoiding the roundup and selection altogether. But her thirteen-year-old sister, Rachela, had balked at going to work that particular night, and her father had stayed with her. They were both caught in the roundup the next morning. Her father would not let Rachela depart for the marketplace with her aunts and their small children. Instead, he held back and arrived at the marketplace alone with his daughter. He instructed her that when those with work cards were called out and he had to leave her, she must do everything in her power to sneak over and join the workers. This she managed to do after several attempts, and several women then hid her between them.112 Although Rachela’s immediate family remained intact that day, through her father’s perspicacity and her ingenuity, ten members of the extended family were lost, including the aunts and nieces she did not join on the marketplace.113
Chaim Wajchendler was only thirteen years old but had a work card. When work-card holders were summoned, Chaim crossed over to the other side of the marketplace but was intercepted by Schwertner, who asked him his age. Chaim gave the improbable answer of sixteen. Fortunately for Chaim, Moshe Birenzweig was nearby, and Schwertner asked him for confirmation. Birenzweig vouched for both his age and his ability as a worker, and Schwertner let him pass. Subsequently, Chaim could see Schwertner ripping up the work cards of other boys his age and size and sending them back. Schwertner also scanned the line of workers as if he was having second thoughts about Chaim, who hid in a doorway out of Schwertner’s sight. Though he lost his mother, sister, and younger brother that day, he was able to join his father and older brother in the camps.114
On the marketplace, twelve-year-old Michulek Baranek’s parents were selected for work, but Michulek’s card was ripped up. He and his ten-year-old brother were left with their grandparents. As the mass of Jews moved from the marketplace toward the rail line, Michulek decided to attempt an escape. He gave his water bottle (with a double bottom containing coins) to his younger brother, threw away his coat, and, on the last corner before they reached the train, just walked away, hoping he would not be noticed. He hid in now-empty Jewish houses until dark and then stole into the sawmill and lumberyard, where he was reunited with his mother.115
In the memories of the survivors concerning the desperate attempt to cross over to be with the workers, the fates of two individuals in particular are mentioned in multiple testimonies. The first is that of Rabbi Rabinowicz. He had procured work cards for himself and his children, and several of his daughters were working the night shift and thus were spared the scene on the marketplace. When the rabbi answered the summons for possessors of work cards, he was intercepted and, despite his work card, he was turned back. His wife, however, who had no work card, was selected for work.116 According to one witness, it was Becker himself who sent the rabbi back.117 According to another witness, the rabbi was also struck on the head by a Ukrainian auxiliary.118
When men with work cards were first summoned, Abramek Naiman and his father joined the column of workers. When the women with work cards were summoned, however, Abramek’s mother, Stefa, was turned back, her work card notwithstanding. When she then tried to sneak over to the column of women workers, Becker spotted her. He knocked her to the ground, beat her with his whip, and then set a dog on her. Before he and his father were marched away, Abramek saw her limp body being carried by Jewish police and placed on a pile of corpses at the end of the marketplace. But his mother was in fact still alive. She washed off the blood from her wounds in the nearby well, managed on her next attempt to join the column of women workers, and was eventually reunited with her family in the camp.119 The terrible scene of Becker beating her and the dog tearing at her was apparently so grotesque, even among the other horrors of the marketplace, that it was described and Stefa Naiman identified by name in no fewer than four other testimonies given decades later.120
We have no direct testimony about the fate of the nearly 4,000 Wierzbnik Jews who were not selected for work but instead were loaded onto the waiting cattle cars that day. There was not one single survivor from this group. We do know that many of them were robbed of their possessions either on the marketplace or as they were pushed into the cattle cars.121 And, like all other transports from the Radom district, the train carried them to Treblinka, where they were murdered in gas chambers immediately upon arrival.122