Stanisław Żemis
“Łuków - Ghetto and Surroundings”

Łuków, 27th October 1942

I feel that we are at the edge of nervous endurance, let alone hunger, cold, lack of clothing and footwear. German criminals turned out to be masters when it comes to finding and executing the most terrible crimes. If, before the war, one dissolved the most magnificent fantasy, Al Capones’ or the most criminal types’ fantasy, they would not invent it yet what we have to look at now, what we are forced to face.

You waited for the end of the war, together with the end of the crime. But the fourth year has begun, with no end in sight, and the crimes are growing and growing. I consider it necessary to grab a pen and record in the form of a chronicle, record bare facts without embellishments, without additions, as I will see them, as I will hear them from eyewitnesses. I’m far from a literary style, I want to take notes, record material for future writers, for scientists. German crimes will undoubtedly be the subject of deeper interests.

Perhaps I’m doing this too late, there are not many days left for me to write, perhaps there will not be much left of us, Poles, so the more we need to write. I just want to justify, or rather explain, because I know that it will not excuse me enough, why I am writing so late. Just as an optimist and a believer in humanity, I didn’t believe that germans1) could be so cruel. Thousands of victims were falling, I explained: no wonder, they can’t loose too far, they have to protect themselves – I did not believe that there could be a plan to destroy entire nations. Auschwitz, Oranienburg, and Dachau seemed to me something a bit worse than our Kostek-Biernacki with his Bereza2), but justified by war. Today I lost this faith. Today I’m convinced of German criminality and that’s why I grab a pen.

Here, when I’m writing, one of crimes is being committed. The Germans are doing so-called “Entjudung of the town”. From yesterday until now we can hear a continuous shooting (it’s 9 pm). The whole action looks as follows. First we heard about the Warsaw ghetto, about Bełżec, about Treblinka, about Lublin, we heard about it from a distance. The numbers of the extincted were 100, 200 thousand. We had the Jews walking freely, there was no ghetto here, there was only a Jewish quarter, but the Jews could walk freely. In summer, they were forbidden to move away from their place of residence. A Jew met outside the town was simply killed. This was followed by more serious actions, so, in the town of Międzyrzec Podlaski some drunken policeman shot a dozen or so Jews. A fur collection action was started. The Jews gave too little. Expeditions came and over a dozen Jews were killed in each town. In March this year 47 people, men and women, were killed in Łuków. On 30th April 49 people were killed. Several people were killed in the village of Stok, just for fun. One was murdered because he dared to be taller than a gendarme.

At the beginning of September about 20,000 people were taken away from the town of Siedlce, 1,000 of whom were killed while being caught and loaded on the train. People were telling horrible things about what was happening there. I just can’t write it, it’s too horrible. These messages are indirect. It was not long before the train for our Jews arrived in Łuków. People say that this time the Jews were able to buy out themselves for 10 kg of gold. It seems possible to me, but it was not the only reason for not being exported. A more serious reason for not taking them out at that time was the fact that there was no closed ghetto, that the Jews lived all over the town and that the event would fail. The fact is that the train left empty to Międzyrzec where it was loaded with around 10,000 local Jews. The Jews of Łuków received a month of life, a life in constant expectation of  terrible death. In the middle of September the establishment of the ghetto was ordered. The Jewish quarter was begun to be fenced and the Jews from all over the town were gathered there. The crime came on Monday, 5th October 1942. A train arrived at night, gendarmes, the latvians, ukrainians, and Polish policemen arrived in cars. They drank all night and at dawn surrounded the town and the ghetto. They began to break into Jewish homes, all the Jews encountered were dragged out and they were driven to the marketplace in Międzyrzecka street. About 4,000 people were gathered there. You can imagine what kind of gathering it was, by a band of drunken criminals. As a result, about 500 people were killed on that day. Not always a bullet in the head was the only way of murder. Throwing children from the floor to the pavement, killing by kicking, here were popular methods. The whole action lasted two days. The loaded train left. In the next two days similar transports from Parczew and Dęblin passed through Łuków. The Jews from Łuków, who still were pulled out from various hideouts, were added to those transports.

A strange attitude of the Jews, no resistance, no rebellion, no act of despair. They walked like cattle to slaughter. The only thing they’ve got to do was hide; they made the most ingenious hiding places, for example in heating furnaces, in bakery ovens, under floors, under basements, behind double walls, in attics, on roofs, over toilets. In this way many of them, even entire families, managed to hide. However, when someone was found in such a hideout, they were killed on the spot, they were not even allowed to leave. These hides had their own tragic side. Mothers hid in there with babies or small children who couldn’t stand in such burrows and cried soon. This exposed the entire group to danger, then children were strangled or thrown out for the sake of gendarmes. Several dozen children reportedly died in this way. Mothers, think how terrible it must have been  to keep and strangle your own children with your own hands!

For me, the tragedy was even more appalling due to the fact that not only the germans and Ukrainian or Latvian myrmidons had wallowed in this crime, that our beloved police was involved too, because it is known that they were animals, but the Poles took part in it – volunteer civilians, so the “catchers” from the Arbeitsamt3) and occasional amateurs.

Various companies, especially German ones, saved some of the Jews from the marketplace and took them to work in their factories, the rest went to Treblinka. On the way many people tried to escape by jumping out of the running train. I don’t know anything about those victims. However, about 2-3 thousand Jews hid in Łuków. They were loot for other Gestapo officers and gendarmes. On Thursday morning we were watching the Jews taken away for work, for two weeks they were left at large. The ghetto was reduced to a few blocks. The remaining Jews were rushed as a fire brigade to take away Jewish property. All the German offices were furnished, the mayor Pietroń4) loaded the entire shed with Jewish equipment, the rest was carried out by the other bastards. The heart was sinking as you were walking along the Jewish houses, breathing with deadness and desolation. The doors and windows were torn, everything inside was ruined.

The rest of the Jews were driven in the decreased ghetto. The Jews from the nearby settlements: Kock, Wojcieszków, Adamów, Stanin, Tuchowicz, Trzebieszów, were brought to Łuków, and yesterday, in the evening of 26th [October], a new game began. The shooting lasted all night, weakened during the day, and now [they] were probably loaded onto the train, because we can hear the series of gunshots from there, and one writing those words is just being tossed.

In the morning I left for the town – I look – Jewish policemen are carrying all carts full of corpses. One of the teachers passing the marketplace, where the Jews were driven once again, says: “I can’t say how many of them were there, a whole crowd of about 1/4 kilometer radius sat on the ground, and machine guns set around and exposed towards the crowd are rattling when one of the Jews tries to move”. “I’m going down the street and I’m coming, unaware, across a dead body of a 10-12-year-old child”.

(At the moment cars are roaring behind the window, probably the executioners are coming back from work).

At the end of last week in the village of Krzywda they took 150 Jews, put them in a row, ordered them to undress, set clothes aside, lie down on the ground, face to the ground, and killed everyone. The corpses laid there for a few days.

In the village of Oszczepalin, commune Wojcieszków, lived one Jewish family. They were brought out to the forest and were all slaughtered.

In the village of Trzebieszów, on Monday, local peasants, as a civil guard, who were watching against bandit assaults at night, were ordered to capture all the Jews in Trzebieszów and deliver them to Łuków. The whole village was surrounded and the hunting began. The Jews were dragged out, caught in fields and meadows, taken to the school, where the commune office was temporarily housed, and kept there all night. At this time, what was not plundered from Jewish property, was taken to the school. The furniture was terribly looted, burnt in front of the Jews. Carts appointed by the communes drove them to Łuków. Of course, for each of these carts unfortunate passengers had to pay (a terrible salvo) 80 zlotys.

May you, bastards, never digest this penny! (second salvo). Thus, in the telegra (third salvo) phic way, the tragedy of the Jews from Łuków looks like. Who has a bit of heart, they will not forget these people till the end of lives. They were ghosts, those shadows tormenting at the sight of every non-Jew and bowing in front of each uniform or a better-dressed passerby. Unfortunately, those are dying testimonies of German crime.

And what’s next... The shots are still thundering, and our hyenas are chatting what to steal after the Jews. The corpses of the Jews haven’t cooled down yet, and there are flowing already applications for Jewish houses, shops, workshops or a piece of land left over.

Oh, the land, sacred land, go apart and swallow all of us!

Łuków, 8th November 1942

In the first round-up of the Jews in Łuków a family or a couple of Jewish families hid behind an additional wall built in the apartment (the Wenger family). A sick child was among them. It was crying. Afraid of being betrayed, a father took the child, carried it out in the street and put it down. Someone found the child, probably gendarmes, and gave it to the other Jews. After the raid the child was recognized and returned to its parents, they still must hide, the father takes the child to the field, leaves it there. After three days he went to see what happened to it. The child was still alive. The father escaped without going out to see to it anymore.

Before the first round-up the local rabbi of Łuków gathered the Jews and delivered to them a speech in this spirit: “God will call us in a moment, be prepared for this”, and blessed them. On the second day there was a round-up, the rabbi dressed in a mortal robe, said good-bye to his family and prayed. When gendarmes came, he went with them in front of the house and said he wouldn’t go further, and he didn’t go. His corpse was found next to the house.

In these days two peasants who hid the Jews in their barns were taken from Karczew.

On 5th November I’m passing through the village of Siedliska. I’m getting in a cooperative shop. The peasants are buying scythes. A saleswoman says: “They will be useful for today’s raid”. I’m asking for what a raid. “For the Jews”. I asked: “How much do they pay for a caught Jew” – embarrassing silence – so I keep saying that “for Christ they paid 30 pieces of silver, demand to be paid the same”. Nobody answered me. I heard the answer passing through the forest, in the salvos of the raid’s machine guns.

Maybe I’m blaspheming, maybe I should be happy that I left this forest safe and sound.

In the village of Burzec a dashing guard suggested: “If the village pays me 1,000 zlotys, I will deliver these Jews”.

Three days later I learned that six Jews had dug out a shelter in the woods of Burzec. A manor forester betrayed them.

Łuków, 8th November [19]42

Yesterday, for the third time, the Jews were taken away from Łuków. This time I had to eyewitness this crime. I intended to go to Trzebieszów, I left the house. At the marketplace I met a crowd of the Jews packed into one group surrounded by the ukrainians. Single shots showed that they guarded their victims well. A cold, windy, foggy day. The Jews were kept there all day. The crowd was escorted to the train station in the early twilight. The road led through our streets, right next to our house. I was digging a garden when I heard dense shots, screams, I went to the street, where was already an enormous procession of 2-3 thousand walking people packed and crammed together. A crowd of men, women and children of all ages and babies on the hands of fathers and mothers. On both sides a strong escort of the ukrainians with rifles ready to fire. Every Jew trying to detach himself was killed on the spot.

Here are some pictures. A mother and a daughter walk in the procession and they are dragging behind a powerless 5-6-year-old boy, it’s hard for them, they stop behind the crowd. The urging ukrainian shots the child down. It falls onto the street, the mother and daughter run away in horror. In a moment the child lifts on his hands and screams. The mother hesitated, wants to turn back, the bandit ukrainian reloads the rifle, aims but does not shoot. A scream: “Finish off”. The other guards came, shouted: “Czto ty zdiełał, sukinsyn”5), they took his rifle and gave him another one. They grabbed the child’s arms and pulled it behind its mother.

At the same time, a girl of about 15 tried step down on the sidewalk. She fell dead in the gutter, with a shattered skull. They covered her with her own kerchief. In the morning we found this corpse with bare head on the doorstep of our neighbours, gendarmes.

A hundred steps further about six corpses fell on one heap. Before the march reached the train station, one hundred or more people were killed. The shooting lasted all night. The train was not at the station. The whole crowd was driven into a huge barrack next to the station. This afternoon I went with my sons to the train station to buy a newspaper. Near the barrack, all the puddles of blood testified only to what was going on at night.

Someone said that one of the Jews was carrying a deceased child in a shirt, it froze dead during the all-day stoppage outside. Our friend was walking in that march. Knowing the layout of our property, she ventured to escape. She ran into our vestibule. The door was closed. She jumped to the vestibule of our neighbour, my colleague Jan M., the inspector of the “Społem” cooperative, who, having seen this, drove her away. She ran into a storage room where she was allowed to stay for a few minutes and was again driven out. What happened to her, we do not know so far. All the night dogs were howling over those corpses.

They are dismantling the ghetto. Certainly all the Jews were taken away. Apparently, only a few workers were left in Gestapo warehouses, in the German egg and poultry company of Dietz6).

Here are a few stories from the field.

On 30th October I went to the village of Burzec to visit the cooperative. Arriving at the village, I was stopped by peasants fleeing the village, because the gendarmes came to round-up on the Jews. I learned that Jews escaped from the settlement of Adamów, armed themselves and came to Adamów, destroyed the community office, wanted to kill the head of the community, not having found him at home, they destroyed the whole house. One of the gendarmes was killed by them, one was wounded, the rest escaped with our “blue” policemen. At night, the Jews were transported through the village. The train was stopped and again about 10 wagons of the Jews fled and they ran into the forests. These Jews are being hunted down. This roundup gave 25 people killed. I know they haven’t been buried yet until 4th November.

Here is a conversation of peasants in the village of Burzec: “They tell me to bring this Jew to Łuków. I think: I will go to the forest, the rogue will escape me, so I jostle the carter, and the guy isn’t fool, he understood what’s going on, he seized the reins, made a noose, threw it around the Jew’s neck, the other end of it put to his feet, and we carried him in such a way to Łuków”.

At night I sleep at a host in Burzec – the chairman of the supervisory board of the cooperative. At night they wake him up and together with the village guard they went to surround the farm of another peasant who was accused of hiding a Jew. Fortunately, they didn’t find anyone.

In the village of Okrzeja, only a few gendarmes and a few ukrainians transported the Jews. The protagonists were the local Poles. The Jews were brought to the market square, opposite the church. They were ordered to dance, sing “hallelujah”, then to undress, lay on the ground, “line up heads”, and 90 people were shot dead. One of the mothers pressed her child’s corpse to her breast still after its death.

From the previous transport, a Jewish woman jumped from the train of Radzyń. She went to a village, no one gave her anything to eat, no one let her enter the farmyard. Resigned, hungry and cold, she decided to return to the ghetto in Łuków. A peasant was driving, she got into his wagon by force, but when he left the forest, “he by a whip, by the whip chased her from the cart, the Jewish woman is pushing on my wagon, what could I do, I chased her” – says the host of the cooperative.

Łuków, 16th November [1942]

In the village of Kąkolewnica, I learned that for a delivered Jew, alive or dead, the gendarmerie gives three litres of vodka. What I am noting down is the Kąkolewnica residents responsibility! I need to find out about it for sure. It’s hard for me to believe that we have fallen morally so low and accepted such vile and derogatory rewards. Are we really such bastards? There have been no major anti-Jewish actions since the last deportation. We’re expecting them because the hunt is continued.

One day, probably on 9th November, about 200 Jews were driven to the town hall courtyard, a part of them was shot dead, and the rest was driven to the Jewish cemetery and killed with machine guns.

A Jew was being led on 10th November. He fell onto the street, looked terrified at the escorting him gendarme who shot him dead on the spot. The whole day, on 11th November, the corpse was lying in Aleje [Kościuszki] street and watching with his terrified eyes.

Here is another picture from the last transport of the Jews, also from the same Aleje (T. Kościuszki) street in Łuków. A small, 5-6-year-old child, a boy, was walking towards the train in the crowd. In his cold hands, he was holding a bottle of milk given by his mother. At some point the bottle fell out of his hands and rolled into the gutter. The child follows it but the gendarme runs faster and when the child bent to pick up his treasure, a heavy gendarme boot crushes the bottle, the second kick overthrows the child who is killed by a Ukrainian lad with a precise shot. And he was left dead in Aleje Kościuszki street, farewelled by the insane eyes of the Jewish mother. Oh, you bastards, bandits, criminals. Can there be anything cruel that one shouldn’t wish for you? May the nightmare of the victims you murdered never cease to torture you. Oh, how bad it is that hell isn’t a reality.

The reaction of Poles

There are many Poles and there are many reactions. I’m writing here quite a lot about the meannesses. There are a lot of people who condemn German crimes and abhor them. There are people who go mad at the sight of German exploits. However, the most common opinion of Poles is: “It’s sad and cruel, but here the germans do us a big favor! They solve the Jewish problem”.

Our nationalistic party with all its annexes can be proud of its sowing. The Roman Catholic Church is finally celebrating its triumph. I congratulate on two thousand years!

The day of the last transport of the Jews from Łuków was for us (for me and my wife) the most tragic day of our lives. When a crowd of thousands of Jews was being driven down my street (11 Listopada), I was working in the garden. When the front of the column was near our house, some mysterious force tore the spade from my hands, brought me to the fence, I took off my cap, I was looking, wanting to take all the pain, all the despair of this whole crowd, these thousands of people, these children and mothers, these old people and these youth. I was asking if there is any higher justice, if there is any God, and I was saying that if God is there, he must be a bastard no less than germans, he is a criminal if he allows such crimes.

When the procession passed, I didn’t have the strength to move. At home, my wife got a rage attack, tearing her hair out of despair. I had to strain my whole will to be able to calm [her] down. For long, long days we couldn’t calm down, we didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and every work fell out of hands. Thoughts became dull. A panicky fear seized us. I escaped from Łuków and was lying ill for several days – a nervous breakdown. What, moreover, to write about if you can’t find words to express feelings which are throwing us. The only news coming to us from the African front heartens us up a little, that perhaps this meanness will end soon.

The reaction of Germans

Of course, there are many germans. This nation was taken over by some strange craze. As if, falling down by themselves, they wanted to pull the whole world into the abyss. I’m looking for exceptions among them, I’m looking for some individual reflexes of kindness, reflexes of heart or pity. Unfortunately, it’s safe to say that the entire German nation is mean. There are almost no reflexes of humanity. Sometimes, however, and their nerves can’t stand, here and there crying gendarmes were seen. Apparently, gendarmes helping the Jews to escape were seen. However, these cases are so rare that they don’t deny the rule, how much I want to believe it, that these cases are real. I’m scared, I’m afraid of losing faith in humanity. There is a German egg and poultry buying company in Łuków, which, I don’t know if it is caused by business or a bit of human feeling, pulls out the Jews from hands of perpetrators, employs them at the company, where it can and how it can. There was even a case of beating of Cilke7), the Gestapo man who insisted on taking away the non-Jews. Plenty of Jewish children are hiding in the plants of this company, in hen houses. Another manager, a Viennese, passing through the ghetto, found two Jewish children, took them with him and moved them to his plants.

I want to believe that there are still Germans who still have human feelings.

The diary was published in: Krzysztof Czubaszek, Stanisław Żemis – świadek zagłady Żydów w Łukowie / Stanisław Żemis – Witness of the Holocaust in Łuków, Warszawa 2019

The text of the diary is based on a manuscript kept in the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, ref. 302/30

Footnotes:

1) In the typescript of the diary the names of people of German, Ukrainian and Latvian nationality are written mostly in lowercase, as an expression of emotional attitude towards the perpetrators. This was reflected here. But in Polish all adjectives of nationalities are written in lowercase, without any special meaning, so in this translation we write them with a capital letter, according to English spelling.

2) Wacław Kostek-Biernacki (1884-1957) – an infantry colonel of the Polish Army, governor of the Nowogródek and Polesie province, minister. He was responsible for organizing and supervising the place of detention in Bereza Kartuska (Brest region) where political opponents of the pre-war Sanation regime, including Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, communists and peasants, were isolated and mentally as well as physically tortured. The prisoners were sent to the camp on the basis of an administrative decision – without the court’s verdict and any possibility of appeal.

3) Arbeitsamt (Germ.) – the German work office.

4) The mayor of Łuków was Kazimierz Pietroń.

5) In the typescript of the diary this quotation is in Russian, written in Latin alphabet, and means: “What have you done, you bastard!”.

6) The owner of the company was Dieter Dietz.

7) Tadeusz Cilke (Cylke, Zielke) was a Pole of German origin, belonging to the community of German colonists who lived from the 19th century in the villages of Aleksandrów, Łazy and Wagram near Łuków. During WW2 he signed the Volkslist and volunteered for Gestapo service. Knowing well the inhabitants of Łuków and its vicinity, tracked down underground activists, denounced his former teachers and colleagues. The Polish underground issued a death sentence on Cilke which was executed in August 1943. The assassination cost the lives of five partisans.

Biography of Stanisław Żemis