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Smuggling
began at the very moment that the Jewish area of residence was
established; its inhabitants were forced to live on 180 grams
[6½ oz.] of bread a day, 220 grams of sugar a month, 1 kg.
[2.2 lbs.] jam and ½ kg. of honey, etc. It was calculated
that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10
percent of normal requirements. If one had wanted really to
restrict oneself to the official rations then the entire
population of the ghetto would have had to die of hunger in a
very short time....
The
German authorities did everything to seal off the ghetto
hermetically and not allow in a single gram of food. A wall
was put up around the ghetto on all sides that did not leave a
single millimeter of open space....
They
fixed barbed wire and broken glass to the top of the wall.
When that failed to help, the Judenrat was ordered to make the
wall higher, at the expense of the Jews, of course....
Several
kids of guards were appointed for the walls and the passages
through them; the categories [of guards] were constantly being
changed and their numbers increased. The walls were guarded by
the gendarmerie together with the Polish police; at the ghetto
wall there were gendarmerie posts, Polish police and Jewish
police... The victims of the smuggling were mainly Jews, but
they were not lacking either among the Aryans [Poles].
Auerswald, too, employed sharply repressive measures to stop
the smuggling. Several times smugglers were shot at the
central lock-up on Gesiowka* Street. Once there was a
veritable slaughter (100 persons were shot near Warsaw). Among
the Jewish victims of the smuggling there were tens of Jewish
children between 5 and 6 years old, whom the German killers
shot in great numbers near the passages and at the walls....
And
despite that, without paying attention to the victims, the
smuggling never stopped for a moment. When the street was
still slippery with the blood that had been spilled, other
[smugglers] already set out, as soon as the
"candles"** had signaled that the way was clear, to
carry on with the work....
The
smuggling took place a) through the walls, b) through the
gates, c) through underground tunnels, d) through sewers, and
e) through houses on the borders....
Ringelblum,
II, pp. 274-277.
*
The reference is to the Jewish prison in the Warsaw ghetto
which was called "Gesiowka."
**
Smugglers look-outs. |
