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Ghettos


 

  The Warsaw Ghetto

Introduction to the Ghettos of the Holocaust

 

  Jewish Ghettos

  The Judenrat

  Judenrat Leaders

  Prominent Jews

 

 

 

      

Interview with Dr Franz Grassler  -Deputy to Dr Auerswald

 Nazi Commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto  

 

  Interview with Claude Lanzmann

 

 

 

You don’t remember those days?

 

Not much. I recall more clearly my pre-war mountaineering trips than the entire war period and those days in Warsaw. All, in all, those were bad times. It’s a fact we tend to forget, thank god, the bad times more easily than the good. The bad times are repressed.

 

I’ll help you remember. In Warsaw you were Dr Auerswald’s deputy

 

Yes

 

Dr Auerswald was…..

 

Commissar of the Jewish district of Warsaw

 

Dr Grassler, this is Czerniakow’s diary. You’re mentioned in it

 

It’s been printed, it exists?

 

He kept a diary that was recently published. He wrote on July 7 1941 ….

 

July 7 1941? That’s the first time I’ve relearned a date. May I take notes? After all, it interests me too. So in July I was already there!

 

He wrote on July 7 1941 …. morning at the Community, that is at the Jewish Council headquarters and later with Auerswald, Schlosser…

 

Schlosser was….. and Grassler on routine matters. That’s the first time…..

 

that my name is mentioned?

 

Yes, but there were three of us. Schlosser was in the economics department. I think he had to do with economics.

 

And the second time was on July 22

 

Germans and civilians outside the Warsaw Ghetto

He wrote every day?

 

Yes, every day. It’s quite amazing…..

 

That the diary was saved. It’s amazing that it was saved.

 

Did you go into the ghetto?

 

Seldom. When I had to visit Czerniakow

 

What were the conditions like?

 

Awful. Yes, appalling. I never went back when I saw what it was like. Unless I had to. In the whole period I think I only went once or twice. We at the Commission tried to maintain the ghetto for its labour force, and especially to prevent epidemics, like typhus. That was the big danger.

 

Yes. Can you tell us about typhus?

 

I’m not a doctor. I only know that typhus is a very dangerous epidemic that wipes people out like the plague, and that it cant be confined to a ghetto. If typhus had broken out – I don’t think it did, but there was fear that it might – it would have hit the Poles and the Germans.

 

Why was there typhus in the ghetto?

 

I don’t know if there was, but there was a danger, because of the famine. People didn’t get enough to eat. That’s what was so awful. We at the Commission did our best to feed the ghetto, so it wouldn’t become an incubator of epidemics.

 

Aside from humanitarian factors, that’s what mattered. If typhus had broken out – and it didn’t – it wouldn’t have stopped at the ghetto.

 

Czerniakow also wrote that one of the reasons the ghetto was walled –in was because of this German fear.

 

Yes, absolutely! Fear of typhus.

 

He says Germans always associated Jews with typhus

 

Maybe. I’m not sure if there were grounds for it. But imagine that mass of people packed in the ghetto. There weren’t only the Warsaw Jews, but others who came later. The danger kept on growing.

 

The Germans had a policy on the Warsaw ghetto. What was that policy?

 

You’re asking more than I know. The policy that wound up with extermination, the “final solution” – we knew nothing about it, of course. Our job was to maintain the ghetto and try to preserve the Jews as a work force.

 

The Commissariats goal in fact, was very different from the one that later led to extermination.

 

Yes, but do you know how many people died in the ghetto each month in 1941?

 

I don’t know now, if I ever knew.

 

But you did know. There are exact figures.

 

I probably knew…

 

Yes. Five thousand a month

 

Five thousand a month? Yes, well…………

 

That’s a lot

 

That’s a lot, of course. But there were far too many people in the ghetto. That was it.

 

Far too many

 

Far too many

 

Entrance to the Warsaw Ghetto at Nalewki street

My question is philosophical. What does a ghetto mean, in your opinion?

 

History is full of ghettos going back centuries, for all I know. Persecution of the Jews wasn’t a German invention, and it didn’t start with World War II.

 

The Poles persecuted them too.

 

But a ghetto like Warsaw’s, in a great capital, in the heart of the city…..

 

That was unusual

 

You say you wanted to maintain the ghetto?

 

Our mission wasn’t to annihilate the ghetto, but to keep it alive, to maintain it.

 

What does “alive” mean in such conditions?

 

That was the problem. That was the whole problem.

 

But people were dying in the streets. There were bodies everywhere?

 

Exactly. That was the paradox.

 

You see it as a paradox?

 

I’m sure of it.

 

Why? Can you explain?

 

No

 

Why not?

 

Explain what? But the fact is…..

 

That wasn’t maintaining! Jews were being exterminated daily in the ghetto wrote …..

 

To maintain it properly we’d have needed more substantial rations and less crowding.

 

Why weren’t the rations more humane? Why weren’t they? That was a German decision wasn’t it?

 

There was no real decision to starve the ghetto. The big decision to exterminate came much later.

 

That’s right, later. In 1942

 

Precisely

 

A year later

 

Just so

 

Our mission, as I recall it, was to manage the ghetto, and naturally with those inadequate rations and the over-crowding, a high, even excessive death rate was inevitable.

 

Yes. What does “maintain” the ghetto mean in such conditions, the food, sanitation, etcetera?

 

Czerniakow letter

What could the Jews do against such measures?

 

They couldn’t do anything

 

Why did Czerniakow commit suicide?

 

Because he realised there was no future for the ghetto. He probably saw before I did that the Jews would be killed. I suppose the Jews already had their excellent secret services. They were too well informed, better than we were.

 

Think so?

 

Yes I do.

 

The Jews knew more than you?

 

I’m convinced of it

 

It’s hard to believe

 

The German administration was never informed of what would happen to the Jews

 

When was the first deportation to Treblinka?

 

Before Auerswald’s suicide, I think

 

Auerswald’s

 

I mean Czerniakow’s sorry

 

July 22

 

Those are dates…. So the deportations began July 22 1942

 

Yes

 

To Treblinka

 

And Czerniakow killed himself July 23

 

Yes, that is the next day. So, that was it, he’d realised that his idea – it was his idea , I think – of working in good faith with the Germans, in the Jews’ best interests- he’d realised this idea, this dream, was destroyed.

 

That the idea was a dream

 

Yes. And when the dream faded, he took the logical way out.

 

Did you think this idea of a ghetto was a good one?

 

A sort of self-management

 

That’s right

 

A mini-state?

 

It worked well

 

Announcement by the Jewish Police to report at Umschlagplatz for resettlement dated July 29, 1942

But it was self-management for death, wasn’t it?

 

We know that now. But at the time….

 

Even then!

No

 

Czerniakow wrote: “Were puppets, we have no power.”

 

Yes

 

“No power.”

 

Sure……. that was…

 

You Germans were the overlords

 

Yes

 

The overlords. The masters

 

Obviously

 

Czerniakow was merely a tool

 

Yes, but a good tool. Jewish self-management worked well, I can tell you.

 

It worked well for three years 1941, 1942, 1943 … two and a half years. And in the end….

 

In the end…..

 

Worked well, for what? To what end?

 

For self-preservation

 

No! For death!

 

Yes, but……..

 

Self –management, self-preservation for death!

 

That’s easy to say now

 

You’ve admitted the conditions were inhuman. Atrocious…. horrible!

 

Yes

 

So it was clear even then…..

 

No! Extermination wasn’t clear. Now we see the results

 

Extermination isn’t so simple. One step was taken, then another, and another, and another.

 

Yes

 

But to understand the process, one must ………….

 

I repeat extermination did not take place in the ghetto, not at first. Only with the evacuations

 

Evacuations?

 

The evacuations to Treblinka. The ghetto could have been wiped out with weapons, as was finally done after the rebellion. After I’d left. But at the start…. Mr Lanzmann, this is getting us nowhere. We’re reaching no new conclusions.

 

View of Zelazna and Chlodna Streets in the Warsaw Ghetto

I don’t think we can

 

I didn’t know then what I know now.

 

You weren’t a nonentity

 

But I was

 

You were important

 

You overestimate my role

 

No. You were second to the commissioner of the Warsaw “Jewish district.”

 

But no power

 

It was something. You were part of the vast German power structure

 

Correct. But a small part. You overestimate the authority of a deputy of twenty-eight then.

 

You were thirty

 

Twenty –eight

 

At thirty you were mature

 

Yes, but for a lawyer who got his degree at twenty-seven, it’s just a beginning.

 

You had a doctorate

 

The title proves nothing.

 

Did Auerswald have one too?

 

No. But the title’s irrelevant

 

Doctor of Law…. What did you do after the war?

 

I was with a mountaineering publishing house. I wrote and published mountain guide books. I published a mountain climbers’ magazine.

 

Is climbing your main interest?

 

Yes

 

The mountains, the air……….

 

Yes

 

The sun, the pure air…….

 

Not like the ghetto air

 

 


 

Sources:

 

Shoah – An Oral History of the Holocaust – The Complete Text of the Film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann. Pantheon Books New York 1985

Extract from Krakauer Zeitung – Holocaust Historical Society

Ghetto Fighters House

Stanislaw Adler - In the Warsaw Ghetto -

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright Chris Webb H.E.A.R.T 2009

 

 

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