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The
name derives from the word "shmalts" (chicken
fat). These people used to approach their victims with the
words "Give me [money] for shmalts" a kind of
euphemism for their ugly trade. This was a terrible plague for
the Jews who lived on the Aryan side. Apart from the deadly
fear of the men of the Gestapo, the SS men and other Angels of
Destruction, whom it was possible to recognize from afar,
there was another form of inquisition which lay in ambush for
these latter-day Marranos. It came in the person of the scum
of Polish humanity, who made a business for themselves of
Jewish lives. These "shmaltsovnikes" ["shmalts
people"] were organized in whole gangs; hundreds busied
themselves with this ugly occupation: to look for, recognize
and catch those unfortunates who escaped from the ghetto and
lived with Aryan documents, forced to live the life of genuine
Catholics. The "shmaltsovnikes" sucked the
last drops from them, and if they did not [pay] they handed
them over to the bestial Germans....
This
scum recruited itself from various strata of the population:
former schoolmates could usually recognize the Jewish comrades
with whom they had studied together at school or university;
neighbors recognized Jews who had lived together with them in
one courtyard or one house; merchants, traders, shopkeepers
recognized those Jews who handed over, "sold" their
businesses and apartments to them when they were forced to
move away into the ghetto; Polish policemen and officials who
knew the Jews well from before [the war]
"recognized" them now, armed with all the powers of
the new rulers and always at their service; and many others.
All of these blackmailed the wretched Jews who were condemned
to death, and held the sword of the Angel of Death over their
heads at all times.
This
was a many-branched organization spread over the whole city
section by section. Each group watched the victims in their
quarter; they waited at the gates of the ghetto searching with
greedy eyes for suspicious [passersby] in the street, the
tramway or the train they pursued their every step, and ruined
and embittered the life of such a one. Once they laid hold on
such a victim it was not easy for him to escape from their
clutches....
We
appealed many times to the organizations of the Polish
Underground and demanded that they take steps against the
"shmaltsovnikes," that they should treat
them, too, as common agents and Nazi collaborators, whom they
punished with death. The Underground Press often published
reports from the organizations concerning the trials of
persons who worked with the Germans, helping them in one way
or another; there were reports of death sentences carried out
on such persons. Warnings were printed several times against
the actions of the "shmaltsovnikes" against
Jews; but there was not a single trial of any such person, and
they suffered no penalty. The Polish Underground, with its
wide network of organizations, did not consider it to be its
task, it paid no attention to our warnings and demands that
they take up the fight against the "shmaltsovnikes"
as part of their program....
B.
Goldstein, Finf yor in Varshever geto, New York, 1947,
pp. 369-372. (English version: B. Goldstein, Five Years in
the Warsaw Ghetto, New York, 1961.)
*
Extract from a book of reminiscences by Bernard Goldstein, one
of the leading activists in the Bund in the Warsaw
Underground. |
