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In late May
1942, Samuel Zygelbojm, a Bund leader and one of two Jewish
representatives to the Polish government-in-exile in London,
obtained a thorough report about the murder being perpetrated
against Polish Jewry (the Bund Report). He spared no effort in
disseminating such reports and in prompting the Allies to take
action in the matter, foremost with respect to rescue. Reports on
the murder of European Jewry continued to flow in, and as they
accumulated, his attempts to make the Allies respond became more and
more frequent and desperate. He was gripped with helplessness.
Zygelbojm’s
last letters, to the Polish Bund’s office in the United States and
to his brother in Australia, speak with despair of the futility of
his rescue efforts; he states in them that he "belongs to those
who are over there." On May 12, 1943, when word came of the
liquidation of the last Jews of Warsaw-among them his wife, Manya,
and his 16-year-old son, Tuvia-Zygelbojm put an end to his life. In
farewell letters addressed to the president of the Polish Republic,
Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, and to the Prime Minister of the Polish
government-in-exile, Wladyslaw Sikorski, Zygelbojm wrote:
Responsibility
for the murder of the entire Jewish population of Poland lies
primarily with the murderers themselves, but indirectly humanity as
a whole is responsible, all the Allied nations and their governments
who to date have done nothing to stop the crime from going on....
The Polish government did much to rouse world opinion, but it was
not convincing enough.... I cannot keep quiet, I cannot live, while
the remnants of the Jewish people in Poland, who sent me here, are
being destroyed. My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto have died a
hero’s death in the final battle, with a weapon in their hands. I
did not have the honor to fall like them. But I belong to them and
to their grave-their mass grave. May my death be a resounding cry of
protest, against the indifference withwhich the world looks at the
destruction of the Jewish world, looks on and does nothing to stop
it. I know that a human life is of little value nowadays, but since
I did not succeed in accomplishing anything while I was alive, I
hope that my death will shock those who have been indifferent, shock
them into action in this very moment, which may be the last moment
for the remnants of Polish Jewry. |
