I was of the opinion that regardless of what was going on in the world, every individual ought to and needs to live normally, work, earn a livelihood, and so forth.
—Calel Perechodnik1
This desire to live normally was strong in Jewish tradition. Through centuries of anti-Semitism, Jews had learned to conduct their lives under a dark cloud. Persecution might be just around the corner, but there was still work to be done, children to educate, holidays to observe. There was life to be lived.
In the first days of the ghetto, Jews expected to survive Nazi oppression, using the same stubborn endurance that had served them in the past. They soon realized that the old methods would not work with this relentless new enemy.
Hardship was the basic reality of the ghetto. People crowded together, seven or eight to a one-room apartment without heat or indoor plumbing. Disease and starvation made death rates soar. In the Lodz ghetto, 8,200 Jews died in 1940, the first full year of German occupation. By 1942, there were 13,000 deaths in just the first seven months.2
In the grimy streets of the Warsaw ghetto, with death everywhere around, a young beggar sang a song. Over and over, he repeated the words in his clear child’s voice: “I’m not giving up my ration . . . card/there . . . are better times a-coming.”3 Passersby nodded in knowing sympathy and threw coins at his feet. “Giving up your ration card” was ghetto slang for dying. With his simple lyric, the threadbare young singer offered a message of hope and defiance.
The Nazis set up the rationing system; the Jewish councils administered it in their respective ghettos. The daily allotment in most ghettos amounted to two or three slices of bread and a bowl of watery soup per person. This food wasn’t free; people had to buy their allotments at the going rate.
In some ghettos, they also had to pay a tax on the ration card itself. The Lublin Judenrat charged ten groszy (pennies) for each food card issued. In Warsaw, the tax was one zloty per month, but Adam Czerniakow arranged exemptions for 150,000 of the poorest people in the ghetto. The Jewish councils used this tax money to set up soup kitchens for those who could not afford to buy food anywhere else. Destitute Jews sometimes traded a ten-day ration card for a single meal at one of these soup kitchens.
According to a 1941 survey, poor Jews in the Warsaw ghetto clung to life on as little as 600 to 800 calories per day for months at a time. Council employees, Jewish police, and workers in “essential” industries received larger allotments.
“Everything revolves around bread and death,” claims an old Jewish proverb. That was never more true, or more literal, than in the ghetto. Desperate people held off reporting deaths so they could use the dead person’s ration card as long as possible. This tactic was so widespread that it could distort mortality figures, as noted in the Lodz chronicle for July 31, 1942, when cards were issued:
Today 95 deaths were registered. That figure, so high in relation to the number of deaths that have been occurring in recent days, is eloquent testimony to the populace’s making every last possible use of the ration cards belonging to the deceased. It should be realized that today bread was issued for an eight-day period, and that until yesterday one could obtain a ten-day allotment of food. This is a sad but nonetheless telling sign of life in the ghetto.4
The problem got worse over time. Old people collapsed in the streets. Children with hollow eyes begged bread from passing strangers. People who had managed to hang on to some of their assets sold or bartered them to buy unrationed food from outside the ghetto. In Kovno, starving Jews went to the wire fence to barter for food with Lithuanians on the “Aryan” side. Jews caught gate-trading, as it was called, could be executed on the spot.
Malnutrition, overcrowding, and lack of public sanitation spawned epidemics of contagious diseases. People endured slow starvation only to die from typhus, tuberculosis, or some other opportunistic infection. There was no cure for these epidemic diseases; ghetto doctors could do little more than ease their patients’ passing. Every outbreak worked to the advantage of the Nazis; Jews are carriers of deadly disease, they would say to the Aryans. Don’t pity them, don’t mingle with them or trade with them; they are shut off in ghettos for your protection.
The Nazis had been laying the groundwork for this approach since Hitler came to power. In 1935, a respected German physician had compared Jews with the organism that causes tuberculosis: “There is a resemblance between Jews and tubercle bacilli: nearly everyone harbors tubercle bacilli, and nearly every people of the earth harbors the Jews; furthermore, an infection can only be cured with difficulty.”5
Typhus, a deadly disease spread by body lice, swept the Warsaw ghetto in 1941, with 300 cases reported for the month of October alone. In the face of rampant disease, the Nazis launched a massive “public education” program aimed at the Gentile population. In a report to his superiors in Berlin, Warsaw district governor Ludwig Fischer made the thrust of the program clear: “The main purpose of the campaign to explain . . . the dangers of typhus . . . was to point out that the Jews are the disseminators of typhus. The principal slogan of the campaign is ‘The Jews - Lice - Typhus.’”6
This simplistic propaganda worked because it was, in a very limited sense, true. There was a typhus epidemic among the Jews. The Nazis produced the conditions that led to it, and withheld the sanitation measures to prevent it and the medicines to treat it. Then they loudly announced this “proof” that Jews were dangerous carriers of disease.
Fascism is a one-party dictatorship in which the state controls every part of life. There is private ownership of property, but the government controls how that property is used. In Germany, the Nazis set up vast bureaucracies, with a department of this, a bureau of that, and a detailed set of rules for everything.
In the ghettos, the Nazis went out of their way to issue absurdly restrictive, even conflicting, directives. Basically, any time Jews walked down the street they were probably in violation of some edict from the authorities. A sampling of directives from the Kovno ghetto shows how petty these endless rules became:
Order No. 1 of the Governor of Kovno, dated July 28, 1941, stated that:
Some time later, Jews were forbidden to walk with their hands in their pockets, go to the public market before 10:00 A.M., own furs, or have small electrical appliances in their homes. The rules just kept coming, one after another, each more ridiculous than the one before it.
Regulations systematically isolated and impoverished the Jews, while giving zealous Nazis an excuse for cruelty. For example, many ghettos required male Jews to remove their hats when encountering a German soldier. In Lublin, the authorities posted notices forbidding Jews to salute in just this fashion. Soldiers with nothing better to do used this regulation to torment passing Jews. “Some . . . people who fail to salute . . . are being beaten,” explained Emmanuel Ringelblum. “Those who do take their hats off are dragged over to the nearest poster and shown that they were not supposed to.”8
In the midst of this horror and pain, Jews struggled to hold on to their essential humanity and even their hope for the future. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the many educational projects arranged in the ghettos. Jewish parents believed their children should go to school, no matter how hard life might be.
Just three days after the sealing of the Vilna ghetto, a group of teachers got together to create a school. With the help of their students, they cleaned out rubble, repaired walls, and scavenged for usable materials to create classrooms. By ordinary standards, these classrooms were very crude. Students sat on the floor because they had no chairs and huddled together for warmth against the bitter Polish winter. Still, they studied and learned; the makeshift school system grew.
Some Jewish councils set up ghetto vocational schools, hoping that economically useful skills would give Jewish young people a better chance of survival. In Warsaw, Adam Czerniakow sought permission for a vocational education program before the ghetto was even created. The German authorities granted his request on August 18, 1940. Three days later, the first courses opened for enrollment. At the time, Czerniakow truly believed he had found a way to save Jewish lives.
Arranging for academic or religious education was more difficult than setting up vocational schools. The German authorities often gave permission for schools and then later withdrew it with little or no explanation. Not to be outdone, teachers and students found ways to meet in secret.
Teachers conducted primary classes in their homes under the guise of “day care.” Just about any institution that served children could be used for educational programs, from refugee homes and orphan asylums to public kitchens. The Nazis apparently failed to notice the large number of unemployed teachers who flocked to such places.
“Jewish children learn in secret,” wrote Chaim Kaplan. “We are allowed to feed, direct, and train them; but to educate them is forbidden. . . . In times of danger the children learn to hide their books. Jewish children are clever . . . they hide their books . . . between their trousers and their stomachs, then button their . . . coats. This is a tried-and-true method.”9
In the harsh world of the ghetto, concerts, plays, and even street entertainments gave people a few precious moments of enjoyment. For a time, they could forget Nazis, ration cards, and forced labor brigades. For a time, they could feel normal again.
In the Kovno ghetto, the Nazi administration refused to allow a full-time orchestra on the grounds that it would take participants away from more important work. Instead, a handful of musicians assigned to the Jewish police started an informal “police orchestra.” Soon the group was performing regularly, and every musician who moved to the ghetto was recruited into the force. The Nazis did not seem to notice how many policemen were rehearsing music rather than patrolling the streets.
Every ghetto had its “street singers.” Some were panhandlers, hoping to attract a few small coins. Others were first-rate performers down on their luck. In his chronicle of the Lodz ghetto, Lucjan Dobroszycki tells of a street performer named Jankele Herszkowicz who became a star of sorts with his song “Rumkowski, Chaim,” which was about the ghetto’s leader. He was able to earn a living for several months by performing that song and once even received a gift of money from Rumkowski himself. Another time, the ghetto “troubadour” received a package of matzoh (unleavened bread eaten during Passover) from Rumkowski when he was performing his song in front of a store visited by Rumkowski before the holidays.10
The Lodz House of Culture was constantly busy, staging weekly concerts by world-class musicians, such as symphony conductor Theodor Ryder and pianist Leopold Birkenfeld. Chaim Rumkowski issued instructions that all newly arrived musicians, singers, actors, and painters register so their talents could be utilized in the community. The Warsaw ghetto had similar public concerts, along with five professional theater companies that sold out every performance.
In Vilna, the opening of a theater triggered opposition from many residents of the ghetto. Stage plays and other public entertainments seemed out of place in a community where so many had died or were dying. Opponents of the theater circulated a black-bordered handbill through the ghetto: “One does not present shows in cemeteries.”11
Perhaps not, replied the theater people, but one doesn’t quit living while yet alive either. On January 18, 1942, the ghetto theater presented its first performance to an audience of councilmen, policemen, and their families. The program was restrained and dignified, in keeping with the seriousness of the times. The theater eventually won acceptance, and was well-attended until the ghetto’s last, tragic days.
Simchas (“joyous events”) have always played an important role in Jewish life, marking the passage of time and the changing of the seasons. In the ghetto, one never knew about the next year, so it was important to celebrate to the full in the here and now. People marked birthdays, anniversaries and weddings, finding some measure of joy in the small landmarks of life.
When longtime widower Chaim Rumkowski announced that he planned to get married, everyone in the ghetto wanted to know who she was, how they met, where they would have the ceremony, and what the bride would wear. Never mind that Rumkowski was hardly a popular leader. He was colorful and famous. For many people, that was enough.
“Probably no wireless telegraph in the world ever functioned as efficiently and swiftly . . . as the ghetto’s ‘whispering telegraph,’” gushed a contributor to the Lodz ghetto chronicle. The news traveled by word of mouth on the streets, in the lines, in the stores . . . in a matter of seconds it was all over town.”12
Rumkowski’s bride, Regina Weinberger, was an attorney nearly thirty years his junior. They were married in a small ceremony at the groom’s apartment. For Rumkowski to take such a bold, life-affirming step gave the people new hope for their own survival.
Like personal occasions, religious holidays played a vital role in strengthening people to face the daily challenges of survival. Many Jewish holidays have a theme of liberation from tyranny or deliverance from destruction, messages that the ghettos needed to hear. Hanukkah commemorates the legendary Maccabees and their fight for religious freedom in 168 B.C.; Passover tells of Moses leading his people out of slavery in Egypt. Both are luminous, joyous, yet ultimately reverent.
Purim has a different kind of joy; playful at times, even rowdy. It centers around the biblical story of Esther, the beautiful queen who outwitted the wicked Haman and foiled his plot to kill all the Jews of Persia. This rollicking celebration of danger averted and enemies destroyed had special meaning for Jews living in the shadow of Nazi terror.
Even under the Nazi shadow, the Jews of the Kovno ghetto managed to put together a memorable Purim celebration. The Nazis tried to ruin it by declaring a day of mourning for their fallen war heroes. In recognition of this solemn occasion, the Nazis banned all public displays of rejoicing or merrymaking.
The Jews of the Kovno ghetto decided to ignore that order. The children had spent weeks rehearsing a play; the women had scraped together ingredients for the traditional pastries known as Hamantaschen (“Haman’s ears”); everything was ready. The Jews gathered at a hall deep in the ghetto, where the Germans weren’t likely to notice them.
The children put on their play for an audience of misty-eyed parents and ghetto dignitaries. Avraham Tory described this brave performance in his journal:
A boy named Reuben mounted the stage; he [wore] royal robes, with a crown on his head. . . . ‘I am King Ahasuerus,’ [he said] and seated himself on the throne. Then [came] Shulamit—a pretty . . . six-year-old . . . wearing a pink dress and a jewel-studded crown. . . . This, of course, was Queen Esther in full splendor. She bowed to King Ahasuerus and to the audience. Then the other members of the troupe mounted the stage. . . . Little charming Shulamit, leading all the dancers, was the audience’s favorite.13
Everyone had a fine time. The audience cheered Esther and her elderly protector Mordecai. They booed lustily and whirled their greigers (noisemakers) whenever Haman appeared. After the program, people shared the meager refreshments and made small talk. A hundred Jewish children ran free, laughing, teasing, chasing, occasionally shoving; in other words, acting like ordinary children. German orders notwithstanding, the people of Kovno transformed that particular Purim into one of those all-too-brief moments of brightness that helped to make ghetto life more bearable.