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The great
deportation from Warsaw began on Wednesday, July 22, 1942. Posters
in the ghetto streets spelled out the deportation procedure and
listed the persons who were to report: 70,000 of the 380,000 Jews in
the ghetto. The first deportees were the most unfortunate and
defenseless inhabitants-refugees, the elderly, and the homeless. The
ghetto was panic-stricken; no one could say where the deportees were
being taken. The chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, Adam Czerniakow,
committed suicide the next day, rather than cooperate in the
deportation.
In the
first stage of the deportation, which lasted until the end of July,
it was the duty of the Jewish police to meet the transport quota.
When the quota was not filled, Germans and their assistants raided
the ghetto alleys and abducted men indiscriminately. In the second
phase, from July 31 until August 14, the Germans and their
accomplices conducted the Aktion, and uncontrolled mass expulsion
became rife. The entire physical structure of the ghetto
disintegrated after this phase, as streets and quarters of the
ghetto shriveled. In the third phase, from August 15 until September
6, the deportation took on the appearance of a general liquidation.
The final phase began on the night of September 6, when all Jews in
the ghetto were ordered to gather on several streets. A Selektion
was held there, which only 35,000 Jews-less than one-tenth of the
original ghetto population-passed. Another 25,000 went into hiding. |
