We drive into Otwock. A faint smoke rising up above scarce young pine trees tells us the way. It is coming from the still-smoldering remains of a house that has been demolished by a bomb. In the house next door sits a Jewish woman, her wig askew, hungrily eating up fish swimming in melted butter. […] The door to her flat is riddled with shrapnel. A shock wave has swept through the house. […] The Jewish woman’s son says that yesterday, on the first day of the war, which he did not know had been declared, at nine in the morning a powerful shock knocked him out of his bed. The shrapnel that made these holes in the front door flew up at an angle. He rushed outside. There was a house burning in front of him. People were jumping out of the windows. In the window of a flat owned by the director of the municipal institute for mentally handicapped Jewish children, he saw a teenage girl, one of the wards, holding a two-year-old child. She dropped the child straight to the hands of the father waiting below, but did not manage to jump out herself and disappeared as the floor collapsed beneath her feet. She lies buried beneath the wreckage.
And that orphanage? Big eyes look at me with mute despair. Follow me. I follow my mournful guide. He leans over some pit as we go. His mute gesture indicates something that I cannot quite discern. After a while I notice that it is the charred body of a boy. The tibia juts upwards, piercing the skin of his arm. The chest is open, the ribs stick out, as if it was a quarter of veal. The inside of the chest reveals pink, underdone meat. Ten steps further there is an orphans’ asylum. It is situated in an old sprawling wooden house. The blast force of the bomb dropped over here was immense. We enter the corridor that has survived. The walls are red with blood. The teacher’s eyes mirror the horror as he recalls how he rushed outside and saw the children’s little corpses as well as some children who survived and were trying to hide in the thickets. The last child was crawling on its elbows into the bushes, dragging its crushed little legs along the ground.
Shortly after that air raid, two German planes were shot down just outside Otwock. One of them burned. Only one pilot’s legs in elegant shoes survived the flames, as did his manicured hand and diamond ring. May he be informed in the next world that he aimed well: ten children were killed, twenty-five were injured. The other pilot was captured alive. I suggested that he should be made to put on a full uniform, adorned with all his orders, and follow the ten little coffins to the cemetery. On his own. He had been dropping bombs over a tranquil summer resort which had no military targets, at nine twenty, on Friday, on the first of September, on the first day of the war.
Melchior Wańkowicz, Tragedia pierwszego dnia, „Gazeta Samorządowa”, R. III, Nr 9(25), 1993, ss. 1,12
To us children, the beginning of it all was rather idyllic. The sound of the bombs falling over Warsaw died down considerably before it reached Otwock. Yellow sand from the newly-dug air raid shelters served as a wonderful playground, and we were encouraged to play outside in the warm, colorful autumn. […]
With winter came change. The winter of 1940 seemed to be on the side of the invaders, aiding in their torments of those who already ailed. That winter we exchanged our library for coal and potatoes (back then books were still valued on the market). The wooden walls of our house were coated with a thin layer of ice throughout the winter. Beds were placed far from the walls which emanated a chill. The perpetual cold was soon accompanied by constant hunger. […] Still, out of all the wartime winters, that first one was the best. We were still together, unaware of what awaited us.
Relacja Marii Weczer-Tau, Archiwum Yad Vashem
Summer went by and November arrived, when announcements appeared that starting in December 1940 ghettos would be established for Jews. Jews would be able to take with them all their possessions, they were promised a Judenrat as well as their own police force, and there was mention of the possibility of leaving the ghetto and moving about the Polish neighborhood daily, with the exception of Sundays.
Practically all were taken in by such promises, and only a small percentage of Jews did not go to the ghetto. Even Jewish women – wives of Poles – went with their children to live in the ghetto. It was so easy to get in there, but there was no exit! […]
The ghetto at first looked innocent enough. It was not fenced in, it was possible to leave it, the area was sufficiently large, and there was no shortage of apartments or food. Slowly, however, it was fenced in, and it was forbidden for Jews to leave the ghetto under penalty of death. At first this decree was only on paper.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 8
The ghetto was divided into three neighborhoods from the outset: 1) the so-called „little town”, inhabited only by Jews, 2) the „middle” ghetto that was linked with the „little town” by a passage across the railway tracks, 3) the „resort district”, with two sanatoria, i.e. the „Zofiówka” mental hospital and „Brijus” for patients with lung disease. This latter district could be reached via the Aryan district – walking in the middle of Reymonta Street (Jews were not allowed to use the pavement) one could get to the „middle” ghetto. In the „resort ghetto” Jews were allowed by the Germans to run luxury guest houses in which Jewish magnates would hold lavish banquets – allegedly in order to collect money that would help maintain the „Zofiówka” patients who were in appalling condition. […] Due to the specific lay of the land, no part of the ghetto was fenced in hermetically – there were palings or rolls of barbed wire instead. Special routes were marked out, however, and were to be used by the Jews. These had to be strictly respected under threat of death.
Relacja Racheli Horowitz, Archiwum Yad Vashem
The establishment of a ghetto in Otwock brought about a real social revolution in that resort town. Both the rich and the poor were all crammed into the squalid wooden “summer houses,” robbed of all they had. We started to live together in one small room – my mother, the three of us, and our grandpa, Meir Wecer, with his second wife.
It became more and more difficult for my mother to find work, even the worst kind, that might give us some food. My grandfather and his wife, an elderly couple, would barter the remainder of their modest possessions for food. The greater part was appropriated by the Germans. We felt hungry more and more often.
Relacja Marii Weczer-Tau, Archiwum Yad Vashem
Life in the ghetto [at first] was peculiar enough; there was no lack of anything, and for money one could get everything. From Russia came ample food packages from relatives. A rich person lived, dressed, ate, and drank, not afraid of being shipped to camp. One could always be ransomned for money. At the same time, the poor swelled up and died from hunger or disease as others looked on. [..] The majority walked by as if it were part of a daily occurrence.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 9
A starvation diet of rationed, clay-like bread, illnesses, deportations of people into the unknown, instances of execution at the slightest provocation – that was the ghetto reality. And every day was dominated by fear: what next? My grandfather exchanged whatever he could for bread; the house was emptied even of bed sheets. Hunger made him half-deranged, and he would hide from us even the beggarly piece of bread that we managed to obtain. Clothes, things, and even money were of no value in the ghetto. What counted were flour, potatoes, salt and fatback.
We would suck acacia flowers or eat white goosefoot leaves to deceive our hunger.
The autumn [of 1941] greeted us with frosty mornings and nights. My shoes fell apart. It was more and more dangerous to move around on the Aryan side, especially barefoot. It was late November. The snow falling overnight would no longer melt during the day. My feet were now covered with wounds. […] It was about the time when one could already see people swollen with hunger lying on the streets.
Saszka [a boy of about 3-4 years old, the brother of Miriam, who was then about 11-12] also began to look like the other ghetto children: swollen belly, grey skin, arms and legs as thin as sticks. His big, blue eyes seemed to be half the size of his face. One day, after a long absence, I sneaked in to see him. In front of the veranda stood a small boy who looked like a little old man and ate grass. He did not move a muscle when he saw me but he stirred when he saw bread.
Relacja Marii Weczer-Tau, Archiwum Yad Vashem
My little daughter often sneaked out of the house and went to the Poles to beg. It was cold, I did not have anything to feed our stove. I would walk in the wood and bark the trees. We all lived in abject poverty in the Otwock ghetto. There were plenty of beggars – both adults and children. […] People died of hunger in the streets and there were corpses everywhere. I entered some flat once. A woman’s corpse was lying on the threshold, and on the bed I found the dead bodies of two children. The boy was about 5 and the girl about 3 years old. Two skeletons with tightly drawn skin, their arms and legs as flimsy as matchsticks. […] A phantom woman opened the door of another flat. I asked why they did not inform the [Jewish] council so that somebody could clear away the corpses, to which she replied that she was not strong enough to go there. And besides, they would soon meet the same fate. She pointed to her father who lay dying in his bed. […]
A committee was formed to help save Jewish children. The synagogue served as an asylum for the children. I joined the women from the committee and we carted the children to the asylum, as most of them were unable to make the journey on foot, so weak were their bodies. Once I picked up a child from the bed. […] The child was very weak and could not stand up on its own. The child’s legs bent like reeds. It is hard to describe the poverty, hunger and dirt in the ghetto.
Julia Orzechowska-Biederman, Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego
Then a severe winter came. Cards for paltry rations were distributed. Special kitchens run by a group of women served food to children and the poor. Those women’s mission was to make sure that the food collected from private citizens was distributed equitably among the children; that the food was put into the cauldron, and that the cauldron was completely emptied. I was one of those women and it was my idea that whoever was on duty had to buy a loaf of bread with her own money to cut into small pieces and add to each portion of soup.
Relacja Guty Kucyk-Nakrycz z d. Kac, Archiwum Yad Vashem
The large bazaar area was divided into Jewish and Polish sections, and a gate was erected beside the bazaar on Karczewska Street and Bazaarowa Street to divide the Jewish section from the Polish, non-Jewish side. […] After my first successful venture out of the ghetto, I tried to sneak out again beneath the gate that divided the sections, but I was caught and beaten with a rubber bat by the Jewish ghetto police who guarded the crossing. […]
Hunger, combined with sickness [typhus], began to decimate the Jewish population of Otwock. Death was all around and funerals were a common sight. Carts with the deceased continually moved along Karczewska Street, crossing the gate beside the bazaar. This was a tragic irony – while living Jews were forbidden under threat of death to leave the enclosed ghetto, even for very important reasons, dead Jews were allowed to be carried out to the cemetery that was situated on a sandy dune near the little town of Karczew.
Marian Domański, Fleeing from the Hunter, The Azrieli Foundation 2010, pp. 11, 15
[Spring/Summer 1941] At the same time not a day passes that several Jews are not killed for leaving the ghetto. They are killed on the spot, without a trial, buried in the fields. Now one rarely leaves the ghetto; fear strikes deeply in the human heart. The Germans, for reasons best known to themselves, are offering the Jews a visual lesson that leaving the ghetto may be punished with instant death.
An intelligent and fardighted Jew has to ask himself the question, And what threatens those remaining in the ghetto? Perhaps also a death sentence? Unfortunately, such a question no one has posed to himself – no, not me either.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 12-13.
April 1942. […] The Germans have demanded four hundred men for labor. They say it is for Karczew, but could it be for Treblinka? […] From where does one take four hundred men for labor? Everyone says, „I can’t go because I work for the police.” „I am in the Judenrat.”, „I have a brother in the police.” „I can’t go because I run a business.” „I won’t go because I can afford to give one thousand złoty to the police.” […] The policemen seize people day and night. They seize them, release them; it is a brisk business. Finally, four hundred men are sent to Karczew.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 13-14
Wednesday, August 19. […] It is seven in the morning […], from Warsaw Street, come in turn a heavy truck and, following it, a limousine of SS officers. Shots are heard from all sides; the ghetto is already surrounded.
The first victim is Dr. Gliksmanova, who lives near the Warsaw crossing point. A pleasant, good looking mother of two children. She went out on the street with the intention of showing the Ukrainian her certificate that she was a dentist for the general population and for the Jewish police in particular. As she held out her certificate with a pleasant smile, she was shot in the head and fell lifeless.
O lucky woman! You died at the moment when you least expected it, unaware that together with you were sentenced to death your beautiful small children.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 32
That day I went to Otwock but I could not reach the ghetto as it was surrounded by soldiers. I heard shots. I started to ask what the shots meant. The passers-by told me that the ghetto was being liquidated. I came closer for a better view of what was happening. But it was dangerous, so I remained on the Aryan side. I noticed that there was shooting also outside of the ghetto because some people managed to force their way through the barbed wire and the Germans were shooting at them. I noticed many wounded Jews who were lying on the pavement moaning with pain, but nobody was allowed to go near them. I saw people dying with my own eyes.
Relacja Józefa Łysika, Archiwum Yad Vashem
No one can think. The whistles of the Jewish policemen, the shots of the Ukrainians, the corpses of familiar people underfoot. Helmeted German officers, with silvery shields on their chests, resemble some demigods, in contrast with the destitute, humble crowd of Jews, with baggage on their shoulders, small children in hand, and a terrible fear in their hearts.
[…] Although everyone obeys and marches in even rows, shots ring out constantly. The Ukrainians are shooting most readily at young people, at beautiful girls. If they meet the old, the crippled, the paralyzed – they leave them „in peace” [they ask their family to take them to the square].
I saw a young woman whose legs were paralyzed. With tears in her face she was asking for a bullet – in vain. The family had to drag her from the end of town to the square, and from there she went to the wagon. I also saw a young woman, a minute earlier bubbling over with life and health – I saw her in the moment a Ukrainian with a shovel quartered her living flesh. He had no more bullets, grabbed a shovel by the handle, and struck at the living flesh between her breasts until he just cut her in half.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 34-35
How did the Germans behave during the liquidation of the Zofiówka psychiatric hospital? The patients were herded along in their oversized hospital gowns, holding the flaps in their hands. They went to „slaughter,” shouting out phrases such as „green pigeons on their heads,” „where is grandma,” „we’ve been overcome by burning heat,” etc. Some of them ran away, while some had to dig graves and would jump up to hit the Germans. One of them smashed a German’s skull. […] While they dug, the patients would sprinkle themselves with sand, lay down and refuse to dig, or hang their arms around the Germans’ shoulders [in supplication]. They were killing them one by one, but the sick still did their own thing.
Anonymous, Jewish Historical Institute Archives
There is supposed to arrive shortly a wagon of planks for the carpentry shop. With their own hands Jews are preparing a place near the railway siding. They cut wood, fence in the area with barbed wire so that the boards will not be stolen. Everybody works with fervor and with best hope for the future.
The place is ready. But there is a small difference. The Jews hope that the place is for the purpose of loading the boards from the wagons, but the Germans know for sure that the place is for the purpose of taking all the Jews and loading them onto the wagons.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 20-21
On a sideways track stood a very long train. Its wagons blocked my view of the familiar square. The first and the last wagons were passenger carriages. The rest were freight wagons, all numbered with chalk from one to fifty. The small, elongated windows of each wagon had zigzags of new barbed wire stretched across them. In the little windows I noticed thin arms with hands which tried with great effort to hang on to the inside frames. […] The locomotive gave out a sharp and short whistle and after a while the train moved slowly, soundlessly, several meters and then halted. Again, as soon as one wagon was loaded, they would start loading the next one. [Half of the wagons were still empty.] […] When it became dark [bonfires were lit around the train. They were guarded by sentries so that no one could draw near. This was rather prudent, as] those locked in the wagons could keep silent no longer. A flood of words came, but one was chosen over all others, and they repeated it through these wired windows. At first, it was murmured uncertainly, then more clearly, and finally they began to call it loud. It sounded like a monotonous splash, one plain word: «Water»!
Edmund Wierciński, Gałązka akacji, „Twórczość”, R. 3, Z. 1
In the night, [after the liquidation of the ghetto], the hooting sirens of the fire brigade summoned us to go out and help. We drive along Bazarowa Street and Staszyca Street until we reach Szkolna Street to the ghetto. […] As we drive, I can see the aftermath of the Ukrainians’ and Lithuanians’ work: windows and shutters flung open, various household utensils and furniture thrown onto the pavement, the silence of fear and mourning, no one around, a night of terror.
The following day is the same story: houses and apartments plundered, hunting for Jews who had hidden the day before. I walk into the courtyard between our houses. In the former garden one can see the remains of ditches dug to take shelter from the air raids. Suddenly, I notice a pair of human hands sticking out of the ground. At the opposite end of the garden is a lavatory. Its door is riddled with bullet holes, which makes me peer inside. And I see a dead girl I used to know – Szulman, 13 years old. I run around the rooms of both houses and discover another four bodies. I know them all – they are the lodgers. Then a couple of Jews wearing Ghetto Polizei uniforms arriveand load the bodies onto a cart. […] Soon after they leave, a familiar ten-year-old girl appears in the courtyard and runs from behind the brick wall towards me. She is the sister of the girl killed in the lavatory. She kisses my hand and begs for help, weeping. I hid her and asked her to calm down and wait for me to return. I promised to bring her some water and something to eat. We knew each other, so she trusted that I would do so. But when I had been in the building again for a bit, she slipped out of her hiding place and ran in the direction of the crossing point guarded by the sentries. She ducked under the barrier and kept on running. The sentries were waiting for this. One of them aimed his rifle on her and took a shot that killed her instantly. He ordered for her body to be loaded into the cart. This is how Łajka Szulman died. I didn’t have time to feed her or give her anything to drink. She couldn’t stand the pressure any longer and chose death.
Relacja Czesława Wałachowskiego, zbiory Muzeum Ziemi Otwockiej.
My friends wake me after two hours of sleepless dozing. Rise up, slave, take a shovel, bury the corpses. Be brisk and alert so there isn’t any trace left of German barbarism. You have to bury [over] one thousand bodies [today, people killed during the action, briskly slaves, to work!]
Fortunately, we don’t have to dig pits because Jews were forced to prepare them ahead of time. They thought, it’s true, that they were preparing air raid shelters; later on women threw trash into them and poured in dirty water. Now it is enough to drag over the corpses, throw them into the channel, fill it with sand to ground level, and it’s finished. There is no need to search the pockets. The Germans did that. They even took from the corpses the gold crowns from their teeth.
There is no need to proceed with the Jewish ritual. The bodies are not washed or wrapped in white sheets or placed in coffins; no one marks the place of burial or recites prayers for the repose of of dead souls. It’s all unnecessary. These are not people being buried, only Jews.
We work in silence. In one pit lies the corpse o fan unknown woman; we throw on her the body of my friend Mulik Noj and on top of him the body of the thief „Fiolek”. Quickly we throw sand over them.
The Poles stand beyond the fencing on Szkolna Street and look. Do they look at us as gravediggers. Do they perhaps want to express compassion? Do they maybe want to jeer at us? Perhaps they wander why we do this, why we didn’t run away from this cursed town. Who knows?
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 54-55
We hid in the attic of a villa on Warszawska Street for the first two days after the liquidation of the ghetto began. We could hear the soldiers, or ruffians rather, entering the apartments below. They found a woman sick in bed, shot her and left. The woman was badly wounded and moaned for the entire day and night until she eventually fell silent. She must have died.
[…]
I was in an abandoned villa together with my mother-in-law and a couple of other people. I met my cousin and her children there. Her husband and son were out looking for a place to hide. Her most fervent wish was to be shot by the Germans first, so that she did not have to witness her children being shot. Because the Germans would usually shoot the children before their mothers’ eyes. It was a sincere prayer of a Jewish mother in those days.
Relacja Guty Kucyk-Nakrycz z d. Kac, Archiwum Yad Vashem
His wife and children were shot before his eyes. He stood there in his tallit, motionless, petrified, confessing his sins in a whisper, waiting for death. Then all of a sudden a Nazi who was in charge of the executions flew at him, ripping the tallit off of him and shouting: „If you are so saintly, I’ll give you five more minutes to pray about who should die – you or me.”
There was no miracle.
Ita Kalisz, Cadykowy dwór niegdyś w Polsce, Warszawa 2009, s.103
[This was how Icchak Kalisz died. He was Symcha-Bunem’s grandson, the last tzaddik of the Warka (Vurke) Hassidic dynasty. Their court had been in Otwock since the 1880s.]
The caretaker told us the story. A huge pit was dug in the villa’s garden, then everyone was ordered to go down and everyone was killed – the children, Tola, Mr. and Mrs. Osowiecki. They are buried in that pit, in that tomb next to the villa. They were shot on the spot.
Relacja Frumy Lewkowicz z d. Dembowicz [The account refers to the death of the children and guardians from the „Centos” orphanage for Jewish children.]
Although I look down at my feet, I still stumble in the dark over corpses – I don’t know and I don’t want to know if these are friends or strangers. I cannot look at smashed heads and pools of blood.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 53
But I could not avoid walking into the ghetto, for which you had to have strong nerves. Empty streets and empty apartments, broken windowpanes, open doors, air raid shelters covered carelessly with sand, where human bones chewed over by dogs or picked at by birds protruded. In the streets there fluttered in all directions feathers from bedding, old ration cards, photographs, and identity cards. In the apartments remained only old, sacred Jewish books. Except for that, everything has been picked over: broken chairs, the worst rags, cracked pots, even clothes hangers. Every object had found a fan among the Poles, who dragged their loot day and night. Later on when there was nothing left to steal, they even began to take old Hebrew volumes, probably for waste paper. Tefillin were much desired by makers of gaiters for their own products.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 90
[The villa formerly called „Maria”, located between Samorządowa Street, Kościuszki Street and Reymonta Street, housed the ghetto police station.]
At night, before the executions, we, the Jewish policemen, watched over our Jewish brothers. […] Should I describe those nights? […] I see a small square before arrest. It is fenced in by a screen, and there are several hundred people crammed together on the ground. Men, women, and children, they all sit together, all close or distant friends from their earliest years. […]
All of us spent the nights crying. The condemned cried; we, their overseers, cried. Some wailed loudly, reminded God of all their good deeds, displayed their small children, and asked God if he had no pity even on these creatures.
Others scorned God and laughed at those Jews who wore talesim, sang psalms, and recited prayers for the dead the whole night.
Still others, in a fit of insanity, laughed at themselves, remembering their efforts and hardships to live better, to gain wealth, to build one more house in Otwock….
On all sides, In the dark of the night, I saw the shadows of people crying, cuddling the children to their breasts. […] I did not see children from two to ten years who cried loudly. For the most part they huddled with their parents, did not grimace, did not demand food.
Was it the spirit of resignation or the wisdom of the old that they absorbed? Were these children or hundred-year-old dwarfs?
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 73-74
[After the liquidation of the ghetto] mass executions belonged to the daily order. Every few days, when several hundred arrested people were assembled, ten gendarmes would arrive assisted by the Polish police. Before that, Jewish workers were brought out of [the Karczew labor camp.] They prepared large, common graves, most often near Reymont Street. They buried there about two thousand people. They also buried people near the sanitarium „Marpe” in Otwock.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 72-73
Jews push themselves at the gate [of the Jewish police station]; they want to go as quickly as possible to the place of execution. […] They’re practically running; they throw themselves on the ground to let the bullet of salvation reach them and quiet their aching hearts. For them death is a deliverance. Others delay; they want to be the last ones to go.
I nonetheless saw how executions took place; almost all of them followed the same pattern. From morning on Jewish laborers from [the camp in Karczew] dug a massive grave. In front of the pit they left some sand. An embankment rose up, to which [ten Jews were brought]. The people lay down on their stomachs so that the neck was higher than the head. At that moment, ten gendarmes who up to that moment had been in the background, on command from one of them, turned, took aim – and a salvo fell. […] After each salvo, Jewish workers who stood in the back searched the pockets and then quickly threw into the pit the still-warm corpses. The place was cleared. The next ten could approach. Of course, this was done before the eyes of successive groups of ten of the condemned. And also before the eyes of the Jewish workers. More than one of them threw into the pit with his own hands the now-cold remains of his wife or children.
In the meantime, tens after tens of Jews go to their deaths. They go passively, slowly, clinging to each other, wives to husbands, older children holding onto their mother’s dress, small children carried in arms. Every inch of ground is moistened with tears, tears of pain, tears of fear, tears of resignation, but never tears of revolt.
The Germans stand calmly, fan themselves with helmets; they are sweating – the days are so warm and humid. They do their own „work” automatically. Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire! What’s the difference whether it is at the head of an old man, or younger one, or a small child? Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire!
I remember the death of Mokotowska and her sister-in-law. […] Holding hands, [these young, beautiful women] were marching in the direction of the place of execution. […] They walked faster. The last fifty feet they began to run. They ran to the embankment, kissed each other almost in flight, and threw themselves on the ground, still holding hands. Aim! Fire! Brains scattered, their hands clenched in their last convulsions. Not being able to separate them, the workers threw both bodies together into the pit.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 77-79
In the meantime, our ghetto no longer exists officially. The last „inhabitants” [Jewish policemen] have to clean up by themselves all traces of Jewish life. They tell us to dismantle the barrier. [the policemen left Otwock five weeks after the Aktion] We remember our conversations in times when the ghetto was being set up. We used to say that this would be how it would look after the war. The barrier would be removed; Jews would dance in the street and celebrate their regained freedom. Such an end of the ghetto as that of today no one expected. The times of the prophets have gone, never to return.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, p. 95
[November 1942] The next morning I started work, supervising [fifteen] workers doing demolition of the house on Kupiecka Street. Once this was the busiest street in the ghetto. Now I did not recognize either the street or any other place. […] Whole streets disappeared. In places where life had recently pulsated, where people had played, cried, worked, and rested – now, except for ruins, there was nothing. Jews perished, Jewish homes perished, the entire land fell into a tomb.
For those few Jews who survived, this was a terrible sight. Everyone remembered where he had lived or where his family had lived. Among the workers [was the owner’s grandson, who had to tear down with his own hands a house built by his ancestors], a house that could have stood another hundred years.
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?, Boulder 1996, pp. 125-126
Suddenly I was overcome by an urge to see for one last time my hometown, Otwock. […] Before leaving the country forever, I could not help my reaction. I had to say goodbye to the ruins of my lost world.
[…] I arrived at midday at the familiar Otwock train station. Before the war, a long row of droshky, their drivers mostly Jewish, waited on the square in front of the station, ready to take travellers to the different hotels (called pensionaty) of the resort city.
Now the square was nearly empty, with only two or three droshky and a single taxicab waiting in rain for passengers. I passed them silently and turned to the road leading to the former Jewish area below the railway tracks and the central bazaar.
[…] I approached the house where I had lived – a long, two-storey brick building formerly occupied by close to 20 Jewish families. In the front were the stores or shops; behind and on the upper floor, the living quarters. A vaulted gate led into the spacious courtyard that teemed with lively, noisy children in the summertime. I entered the yard and was stricken by the surrounding emptiness and silence. A few of the dwellings were somehow renovated and occupied, the rest were empty, with broken or nailed boards on the windows and doors.
I continued further on Yoselewicza Street and was again amazed at the unbelievable destruction. Most of the Jewish houses, among them some two- and three-storey structures, had been taken apart and cleared to the ground, leaving several open spaces, with grass already sprouting. I wondered why so many good houses levelled to the ground. People could at least have moved in and made use of them.
On a nearby side lane I approached the ruins of the Otwock mikvah, the ritual bath-house. Beside it stood a remnant of a small synagogue – Reindorf’s Shul, it was called. The four walls of the shul were still intact, with recognizable outlines of the folk paintings on the walls – various biblical animals and a huge mythical leviathan in centre.
[…] The other much larger synagogue of this Jewish quarter, on nearby Kupietzka Street, was used for worship until the ghetto was liquidated. It was then burned or taken apart together with all the houses on the street.
Symcha Symchowicz, A final goodbye to my lost world, „The Canadian Jewish News”, 24.09.1998
I have never been able to erase Poland or Otwock from my memory, although I have not spoken with anybody about it for all those years. I needed so much time to change my attitude towards what had happened in Poland. There are good and bad people everywhere, regardless of their nationality or faith. We visited Otwock in 1990 and I managed to find my piece of inherited land in Śródborów. There was not much there – the whole place was neglected, with one shabby building and the fence taken to pieces. I applied to the city council to reclaim that land. The legal proceedings took four years. I regained the land in 1994. I fenced it in and invested in it to make the place look decent. Today there are four buildings there: a pharmacy, a little minimarket, a restaurant, and a dwelling house. This is how the history of the Orensztajn family came full circle.
Marek Oren, an unpublished account from the author’s private collection
Translation: Renata Senktas
