In the beginning, people didn’t usually tell. I didn’t even tell my children. When I was in Poland, my son said: ‘Well, now you can tell me’. So we sat together in the evenings and I told him. He says: ‘Mum, never in my life could I have thought that you lived through something like…

Ruins everywhere. There were no houses at all, only one wall of the Maharshal synagogue was left. I looked for where our house had been, where we lived. But there was nothing, rubble. And so I walked around. I cried. – Ewa Eisenkeit, born 1919 Lublin, recorded 2010. Ruins of the Maharshal Synagogue on the…

Painting by Wacław Kołodziejczyk entitled ‘General view of the death camp in Bełżec’. Property: St. Mary Queen of Poland Parish in Bełżec. On 28 April 1943, the last Jews were driven out of Izbica and taken to Sobibór. My parents were taken to the gas chamber there and I was taken to work. There was…

Auction of items belonging to Jews from Lörrach before their deportation to France on 22 October 1940. Photo: Gustav Kühner. Stadtarchiv Lörrach, StaLö 2.43.7. . The Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, 25.11.1941, section 3, legalized the confiscation of property from German Jews deported to the East. Theft was an integral part of the…

We always deluded ourselves that we were not being killed – we were being persecuted, but not killed. It seems to me that the whole story was actually that we did not believe until the last moment that we were all doomed to die. Maybe we did not want to believe. – Adam Adams, born…

In October 1939, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, ordered the Polish and Jewish populations to be deported eastward from the annexed areas to the General Government. On 15 October 1941, mass deportations from Germany started. Deportations also began from other European countries. German Jews from Hanau boarding a deportation train on 30 May 1942.…

Life was hard in the ghetto. We lived with 10 people in one big room with my mother’s family. We lived almost on the verge of starvation. In the beginning there were parts of the ghetto that were not fenced in and you could go out, although it was forbidden. But later they closed it…

After 1 September 1939, about 60% of Polish Jews lived under German occupation. They suffered persecution at the hands of the Wehrmacht and civil authorities. Soldiers, inspired by antisemitic propaganda, degraded, humiliated and brutally mistreated the Jews.The defeat of the Polish army also led to the imprisonment of about 60,000 Jewish prisoners of war. They…

Bombed building at 46 Krakowskie Przedmieście, corner of T. Kosciuszki Street, 1939. Author: Ludwik Hartwig. Marek Pluta Collection. 9 September 1939 was completely calm, and suddenly all hell began. The planes were coming. My mother was standing in line for bread at the time. Someone shouted that they were our planes, others that they were…

The market square in Józefów Biłgorajski in 1906, postcard. Izbica was a poor town, predominantly orthodox Jews. There was one synagogue and small prayer houses. There were cobblestones in the town square. Every Wednesday the peasants came to the market. There was traffic, cows, horses, vegetables, whatever was available. There were three oil mills and…

‘Aktion Reinhardt’ is a crucial but little-known chapter of the Holocaust. It was part of the Nazi plan to murder the European Jews, seize their property and acquire space ‘in the East’ for German settlements. After Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, millions of Polish citizens became victims of a ruthless occupation. From the…