“..Today ..you have heard ..frightening news from Poland .. facts that make blood curdle. I have in my hand an excerpt from a letter ..a Jewish Woman in one Ghetto wrote to her sister in another Ghetto in Poland. ..letter is a shocking call to ..World.
‘My hand shakes. I cannot write ..our minutes are numbered ..only God knows if we will see each other again. I write and I cry ..my Children lament. They want so much to live. ..We all say goodbye to you.’
..atmosphere in which ..Jews live in ..Ghettos of Poland. Try to imagine ..People who see their nearest being dragged away to their death every day and each one knows that their turn must come. Imagine 1,000’s of Jewish Mothers ..Mothers who look at their Children and know that their death is inevitable. ..Imagine ..great crime of methodically massacring an entire people. Each of us who understands ..cruelty of ..crime must be shocked by ..feeling of shame that we find ourselves among ..living ..to belong to ..human genus ..if means are not found to stop ..greatest crime in human history. ..conscience of every person must be shaken ..serenity of those who ignore ..facts must be exploded. ..Each of us who does not do everything possible to stop ..mass slaughter will take upon themselves moral co-responsibility for ..dead. In ..name of ..hopeless innocent people sentenced to death in ..Ghettos of Poland ..whose hands stretched out to ..World unseen ..I call on all people ..all nations whose conscience is still weak ..erase ..burning shame ..at ..human race force ..Nazi murderers to stop ..systematic massacre of a People.” Szmul Ziegelbojm.
What is always important in life is the life itself, and in the case of Szmul Mordechai Ziegelbojm, this too is strictly the case. But with his suicide on May 12th 1943, this selfless act from a desperate Man was to leave the World with a glaring hole in its arsenal of moral probity. Szmul, in letters he left to posterity, to his Brother Fajwel, to his Bund colleagues in America, and to the President, and the Prime Minister of Poland, he points to an unethical and unedifying collapse of those moral principles which conduct civilisations advance. From the vantage point of the rage which swirled around him, Szmul could no longer step aside and simply look on as the World further abandons his Jewish People. While it is true that the attention of the World had been stalled by a War, of a World eager to destroy the racist narrative of a Nazi state, and of an imperial power that was coming together on a global stage, local actions confronted the very existence of the Jewish People. For Hitler and Japan, to both impress their eagerness for a domination over the rest of the World, a cataclysmic decline in humanity was perceived, witnessed and enacted. So we begin with Szmul Zygielbojm, who was born in Borowice, a village near Lublin, Poland, a Jewish Man who would come to prominence when being Jewish was a death sentence. Szmul was a key member of the Jewish Socialist Bund in Poland, which was one of the most important Jewish socialist labour organizations, and he served also as secretary to the Central Council of Jewish Trade Unions. When World War II broke out on September 1st 1939, Szmul was one of those Jewish leaders who were detained by the Germans in Warsaw. When he was released, he helped establish the Bund’s underground activities, and set about organising the fighting response to the German occupation. In December 1939, it was clearly recognised that Szmul was in danger of being rearrested and was urged by Family, Friends and Colleagues to leave Warsaw. Szmul took heed of such good advice and made his way to Belgium. From here, and after the fall of Belgium to Hitler’s forces, Szmul then made his way through France and on to New York, and then London.
“..During lunch ..received ..sad news ..my dear Parents and my Brother were in their graves. ..back at work. I was trying to move closer to ..dead ones ..to see my loved ones for ..last time. I was hit with a frozen lump of soil by ..good-natured German with a pipe ..and ..Whip man ..fired a shot at me. I’m not sure if he wanted to miss ..or if it was by accident ..but I survived. Ignoring ..pain ..working very fast in order to forget about my horrible loss even for a while. I was left alone in this World now. Out of my family of about 60 people ..I was ..only remaining survivor. ..goals ..aside from rescuing ..own life ..was to let ..World know ..what was happening in Chelmno. Through all that time ..I was calling to god and my Parents to help me save ..Jewish nation. ..at ..Rabbi’s house in Grabow. ..news spread in ..City ..many Jews came to ..Rabbi ..and I told them in detail about ..horrible events. Everyone was crying. I ate bread with butter ..I drank tea ..and I said the thanksgiving prayer. I have received greetings from a cousin from Lublin ..and from my family in Izbica Lubelska as well. They wrote that ..entire family have found themselves at ..cemetery ..in ..same way as in Chelmno. Please imagine my despair ..I have ran out of tears. This is probably last letter I’m writing to you. ..will ..join my Parents ..in ..cemetery ..in Belzec. It is ..same death as in Chelmno.” Szlama Ber Winer.
During February 1942 Szmul, who had been a formative member of the Jewish Warsaw Judenrate applied himself, as a member now of the National Council of Poland while in London, and did everything within his power to ensure the entire World knew about The Holocaust of the Jews in occupied Poland. While Szlama Ber Winer was now providing the Ringelblum’s Onyeg Shabbes with the exacting details of the mass murders of the Jews in Chelmno, evidence had been recognised within Chelmno and the surrounding areas. This Death Camp, in which the Jewish Slaughter was conducted by the method of asphyxiation, was measured through a gassing pipe into the back of a Gassing Truck. Szlama, who worked amongst the Waldkommando in the Rzuchow Forest while adding his People to the Kremation Pyre. What was most accurate in his lament, that his passing would be met in the same way as his Parents, recognises as he was rounded up, and physically taken to the Death Camp at Belzec, for resettlement there on April 11th 1942. For any such organs of Polish intelligence information should be alert to what was happening on their very doorstep and within their midst in Poland. By now, Szmul was receiving accurate information throughout the period of 1941 and early 1942, and by May 1942, he released a report based on information sent to him from the Jewish Socialist Bund in Warsaw. By the beginning of June 1942, Szmul’s connections with the Jewish Socialist Bund of Poland made the terrible details crystal clear.
The Gehenna of Polish Jews under Nazi Occupation.
June 1942 “..From ..day ..Russo-German war broke out ..Germans embarked on ..physical extermination of ..Jewish population on Polish soil.Everything that we know well was told ..Slonim and Vilnius ..Lviv and Chelmno. Chelmno ..mobile death vans ..whose exhaust fumes were pumped ..into ..passenger cabin. For many months we felt sorry that ..World was deaf and mute in ..face of our tragedy ..unparalleled in history. We had a grudge against ..Polish public opinion ..against ..agents in contact with ..Polish government ..that they did not provide information about ..Slaughter of Polish Jews ..that ..World did not know about it. We accused Polish factors of deliberately ignoring our tragedy ..lest it overshadow their own tragedy. All our interventions have ..apparently ..finally reached their end. In recent weeks ..English radio has constantly broadcast news about ..cruel abuse of Polish Jews ..Chełmno ..Vilnius ..Belzec. Today ..an abbreviated report on ..situation of Polish Jews was given and it is calculated that 700,000 Jews were murdered in Poland. At ..same time ..revenge was announced and brought to justice for ..violence committed. ..these killings were not isolated outbursts ..but a systematic effort to annihilate all the Jews in Europe ..town by town ..country by country. ..in villages throughout Poland and Western Russia ..Germans marched Jews to nearby forest or ravine ..and machine-gunned them into giant pits.”
What is not clear here in the details that are presented is what the West already knew, either courtesy of their own intelligence agencies or church contacts within Poland. Let us be frankly clear too, everywhere within Poland was the sophisticated intelligence evidence gathering that could be associated with all of Poland, and that is the congregation of the Catholic Church within Poland. As near as metres away from some of the Death Camps, Churches arose to deliver to the communion of their vast information flock. Each of these congregants would inform the priest, the priest the bishop, the bishop and so on until Rome and the seat of the Catholic church was informed. While the truth might have proved incredible to an incredulous media, the truth was all too starkly real for those Jews under the kosh of this German extermination policy, and it was well known. Szmul, who was totally dedicated to getting the message out of Poland, and alerting the entire Western World of the despicable nature of the German conduct toward the Jews, and as it was emerging throughout Poland. Szmul had an urgent demand and it was for the World to act, to rescue, or at least attempt to secure life for the Jews of Poland and save as many of the Jews of Poland as possible.
“..I am speaking to you comrades ..Brothers ..terrified by ..cruelties you are a victim. World knows ..enormity of your suffering ..it knows ..poverty of ..Ghettos ..these death traps ..it knows about ..processions of funerals constantly dragging along ..Streets ..it knows about 10’s of 1,000’s of innocently murdered Children ..Old People. All these crimes are burning wounds felt by every honest person.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
Szmul’s endeavour was in the vague hope to secure or perhaps salvage from the conscience of the World, a recognition that the accusation of indifference toward the Jews of Poland must not stand. Szmul campaigned tirelessly, knowing full well time was against him, and for his fellow Jews still alive in Poland, time was running out faster and more consistently than even he imagined. On June 2nd 1942 the very detail of all of the burgeoning evidence of these crimes against Polish Jewry was being stated through the BBC broadcast. In no uncertain terms, it was being recognised that the Jews of Poland had been singled out for an eradication process, a total destruction of their very being. This too has to be recognised that the extermination would be extremely achieved, and was to be driven on an industrial scale. The very truth of this too, that the very slaughter was an unprecedented extermination campaign that was both on an unparalleled and uniquely intolerable process of annihilation delivers this fact in the term Genocide lends to The Holocaust identifier.
On June 26th 1942 “..Jews were murdered here with ..help of poisonous gases. ..center of ..action was ..village of Chelmno ..located 12 kilometres from .. Kolo. Special cars ..gas chambers ..were used to poison ..Jews. 90 people were murdered in one party. ..victims were buried in a clearing in ..Luborodzkie forest by gravediggers selected from among them. Up to 1,000 people were poisoned daily. From November to March ..Jewish population of Kolo, Debice, Bugaj and other nearby towns were poisoned in Chelmno ..together about 5,000 people ..35,000 Jews from ..Lodz Ghetto ..and a ..number of Gypsies. In February 1942 ..operation moved to ..so called General Governorate.” Onyeg Shabbes.
Of course, nothing could disguise this extreme fact from the World, as the brutal truth that 10’s of 1,000’s of Polish Jews were being Slaughtered, filtered through to the consciousness of those willing to listen to Szmul’s regular pleas. While the destruction was being managed on a daily basis, already amounting to some 700,000 Jews massacred, and in the most brutally corrosive fashion, the annihilation would rise toward a frenzy of incomparable and escalating barbarity. While my words can barely conceal my fury, one can barely comprehend what someone like Szmul Ziegelbojm, or any Jew hearing all that was happening to the Jewish People could hope to cope with, let alone bear. The sheer weight of the trauma would so laden the strongest heart as to make it unbearable and would make us all falter and sink under the weight of anxiety and sheer despair. In the deepest sense of what any tragedy conjures up for us, we have never been presented with a yardstick so as to comprehend this immeasurable catastrophe for, and not just for the Jewish People, but for all of civilisation.
On June 27th 1942 “..For long ..long months ..we tormented ourselves in ..midst of our suffering with ..questions ..Does ..world know about our suffering. And if it knows ..why is it silent. Why is ..World not stirred when tens of thousands of Jews are shot in Ponary. Why is ..World silent when tens of thousands of Jews are poisoned in Chelmno. Why is ..World silent when hundreds of thousands of Jews are massacred in Galicia and in other newly occupied area.” Emmanuel Ringelblum.
The sheer glut of information reaching allied shores continues to take account of the often-barren reception it received. It cannot escape the historian that the that there is this accusation, that the status of the Jews, is in fact to be recognised as an endorsement of the need to do so little to save them. All enactments against the Jewish People can be recognised, and as Jews who simply did not matter to the World at large. Their certain abandonment is terrifyingly played out across the wider European Continent, and was witnessed by all too many who chose to both look the other way and detain the evidences necessary to make the account more recognised, more sooner. In the halls of power, what was being readily informed, was being ignored, shoved to the sidelines, and by those who saw in the Jews an expendability that does not belong in human relations. Such were the laments, that the inhumanity was so clearly expressed by all too many who should have pledged themselves to the humanitarian crisis unfolding before them.
On June 27th 1942. “..A very sensational news has reached ..Ghetto today Yesterday ..Friday ..five in ..morning ..London radio broadcast a special program about ..disappearance of Jews in Polish and Russian territories. ..names of Cities ..Vilnius ..Rowne ..Hancewicze ..are given with numbers that amount to 10’s of 1,000’s of victims. ..broadcast ended with a call to Jewish society and a deep faith that ..moment of deliverance and revenge is near. This means that at last our excruciating sufferings and pains ..as well as information about our countless victims ..reached ..wider public around ..World. Can we hope that our situation will change a little for ..better now. Will ..Slaughter and ..sending of 1,000’s of our Brothers and Sisters in an unknown direction ..be stopped. Maybe ..although it’s not very likely. It’s also possible that it also has an effect ..but anyway we are a toy in ..hands of murderers.” Eliasz Gutkowski.
It makes deliberate sense to broadcast the issue of the annihilation of the Jewish People at 5:00 in the Morning while most of the nation is asleep to the very need to inform, acknowledge and be aware of what this will mean for 6,000,000 Jews. While World opinion might well be provoked it seems certain that local media did not wish to advance the truth of what the Jews of Europe were now suffering. Then, as the Great Deportation, which had begun on July 22nd 1942, and continued in its initial phase, we become a party to the devastating destruction of Warsaw’s Jews, being steadily mounted and exacted.
On August 6th 1942 “..a terrible panic in ..courtyard. ..Children are ..hid ..Nazi murderers hunt especially for them. I decide not to go to ..basement. I will not occupy a place where you can hide a few more Children. Children have priority to be saved ..I think. I run to look for another hiding place. ..Gesia 30 Street ..where my friend ..Aleksander Landau’s carpentry is located. ..I meet 100’s of people ..among whom I meet many of my friends. ..they seek shelter so that wild Nazi animals would not find them. No!! There is no place for me there I can see. My yesterday’s friends look at me in some strange ..piercing way ..exactly as if I wanted to force my way into their settlement zone ..where only they have ..right to stay.” Menachem Mendel Kon.
On August 15th 1942, and while this was the 25th day of the great deportation from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, we saw no sign of abatement and this treacherous destruction would last until September 21st 1942. Here, and by which time more than 300,000 Jews had been transported away from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, and for a final resettlement at the Death Camp Treblinka, Warsaw would have looked quite empty. Gradually, as it was depleted of its great resource, and its sense of livelihood, the Jewish People would no longer echo to the sounds so vital to life. I am not an artist in which I could draw or paint the images necessary to expand upon what we are losing at this moment. But, and perhaps my words can shade in a partial detail which can measure somehow what actually matters in the loss we must feel. History approaches us again and again, and it accosts us here with evidence so brutal that are eternally damning to what was not recognised as a human response to these inhuman conditions facing the Jews on their way to the Slaughter.
“..shooting started at half past nine in ..Evening. In ..Street victims. Continuous traffic to and from Pawiak ..throughout ..night. Gutkowski sends his only child ..to ..cemetery ..from there they are to take ..boy to Czerniakow.” Abraham Lewin.
Also, in September 1942, as Szmul Ziegelbojm continued his steady stream of information flowing on the progress of The Final Solution, these were being disclosed in his reports delivered to the Daily Telegraph. Szmul continually informed the Polish government in exile too, and notified the allied powers that as many as 7,000 Jews were being transported daily away from the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. These Jews were not simply removed to be relocated in another Ghetto, or country retreat but in the euphemism of the day, which stated it was for a resettlement to Treblinka. Here, where these Jews met their deaths by Gassing there, preparations were being made to deliver ever more Jews from all over Poland, and Western Europe to this particular gate to hell. The levels of informative evidences reaching Szmul deepened his growing despair, and the fact that the conscience of the World was not moved adequately or sufficiently to act, more darkened his spirits.
“..On a farm in Czerniakow we saved several dozen People ..not members of ..Jewish Combat Organization movement. One of ..rescued ..Gabriel Zeew ..Son of our friend Eliahu Gutkowski. ..during ..great action in Ghetto ..Eliahu came to us ..completely helpless ..he had only one Son ..three years old. We took ..Child to Czerniakow and saved him.” Icchak Cukierman.
On December 10th 1942, a pamphlet produced by Szmul Ziegelbojm:
Stop Them Now: German Mass Murder of Jews in Poland
was issued. The fanfare by which this leaflet was met speaks wholly of an unconcern which could not breech an indifference that stood rigid in the face of 1,000,000’s of Jewish Deaths. Again, and through the BBC Szmul appealed for action to at least save the remnant of those remnants of Polish Jewry that still remained alive. Also that month, having met with Jan Karski, who passed to him a dramatic message from his fellow party members in Warsaw, Szmul is presented with a letter which should have clearly affronted all of human society.
“..Jews are dying. There will be no more Jews. What is ..point of Jewish leaders. Let them go to ..most important leaders ..leaders of ..Allies. Let them demand. If they refuse ..let them go. Let them remain outside. Let them refuse drink. Let them refuse food. Let them die. Let them die a slow death. Let ..humankind watch. Maybe this will move their conscience”. Leon Feiner.
Szmul attempted, time and again to stir the conscience of the Allied powers and all he got were vague promises to punish the perpetrators after the War. What Szmul did not know was there was an internecine collaboration amongst these powers to limit the number of Jews to be saved and to ensure that Justice to the ends of the Earth stopped at certain criteria never to match crimes and would be limited in scope and scale. His demand for a very appropriate revenge campaign against the perpetrators failed to impress his correspondents, and Szmul felt very much as if he was shouting into the wind. The urgency with which Szmul sent the following Telegram to his Bundist colleagues in New York, must be considered in light of the near total decimation of, and not just of Warsaw’s Jews, but of the whole of Polish Jewry also. What was being conducted throughout the land of his forefathers became the responsibility of Szmul Zygielbojm he felt he carried, and so as to save some remnant of the Polish Jewish community, this all grew too terrible to bear.
March 12th 1943 “..All over Poland liquidation proceeding ..Alarm ..World ..apply ..Pope for official intervention and ..Allies for extraordinary steps ..only you can rescue us ..responsibility toward history throws upon you.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
Between April 19th 1943 and April 30th 1943 a conference that was held in Bermuda, was to supposedly alleviate the crisis facing European Jewry. But this junket failed in any attempt to save any of the Jewish People. The British and American governments, who were made fully aware of what had been seeing the decimation of Jewish numbers throughout Poland for these past 4 years, could not be swayed by the weight of public pressure that was mounting to do something, to at least attempt to move against such a mounting genocide. The remoteness of the island itself, away from the glare of public opinion delivered what can only be assessed in history as a human failure on a monumentally inhuman scale of unconcern. There was inevitably no meaning given over to saving any Jews from Hitler’s plans to divest every single Jew in Europe from life itself. The Jews of Europe were to be abandoned to the vagaries of a War which would be bound by demarcation lines, switching, and swaying back and forth across the length and breadth on Europe, and for the coming 2 years. Victory was the call of the day, and for at least all 12 of those days, the feint cry of those excoriated 1,000,000’s of Jews fell upon too silent an unconcern, even indifference. Though the space to store Jewish Refugees in Spain was given room to manoeuvre, the burgeoning refugee crisis added weight to such a proposal. The paltry saving of any Jewish lives was some way off in the distance, a factor which exploited the apathy toward progressing the Jews, even as a concern. In early May 1943, news arrived of the failure of the Bermuda conference to come to the aid of the Jews under the Nazis. This soon was followed by a report of the crushing of the uprising in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. As the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was being crushed and the Ghetto itself was being razed to the ground, the Allies had held an almost forgotten conference to discuss saving the Jews. The abject failure to help the Jews in Poland then contributed to the suicide of his first report to The Daily Telegraph. On May 12th 1943 Szmul, aware of the travesty which unfolded in Bermuda, and at this time also receiving news that his wife, Manya, and their Son Artur were amongst those to be killed in the final liquidation of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. Their subsequent removal was to be toward Treblinka and their destruction there amongst the growing weight of as many as 1,000,000 Jews, and more, slaughtered at this Death Camp. In despair, Zygielbojm decided to take his own life and in his farewell letters, there was this protest to the Bund:
“..I am going away as a protest against ..democratic nations ..not having taken any steps at all to stop ..complete extermination of ..Jewish people in Poland. Perhaps my death will cause what I did not succeed in while alive.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
Szmul Mordechai Zygielbojm died with his People, and for his People and at the age of 46, left us with the knowledge that nowhere near enough was done to save the Jewish People of Europe. Some form of action might well have saved one more Jew, and that Jew might well have been Szmul Mordechai Ziegelbojm. Alone in an apartment in London, Szmul had remonstrated with a hollowed-out World, becoming vacated of 6,000,000 of his fellow Jews. This, Szmul would have recognised, was an unfinished legacy which curses the World of today, and tomorrow, for what it failed to do Yesterday. Of course, and in our need to remember these 6,000,000 individual Jews, Slaughtered as Jews, even individually remembered, we can sometimes overlook the necessity which some of these Jews placed upon our later needs to search for them. Of these, one of these Jews most surely is:
Szmul Mordechai Ziegelbojm.
“..I am taking ..liberty of addressing to you ..Sirs ..these my last words ..and through you to ..Polish Government and ..people of Poland ..and to ..governments and people of ..Allies ..and to ..conscience of ..whole world. ..latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
Totally remiss has been the conscience of a World transfixed by a War, and as nations in turmoil became transfixed by the World of Warfare, Jews were being eradicated. Sadly though, it is the leaders of the World who could not separate out the enormous and intended tragedy unfolding within earshot, and sight of so many of them. With a human need that is demonstrably moral, the saving of 6,000,000 Jews from extermination could have spoken more certainly of the conduct of humanity.
“..responsibility for ..crime of ..murder of ..whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out ..but indirectly it falls also upon ..whole of humanity ..on ..peoples of ..Allied nations and on their governments ..who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions tortured Children ..Women and Men they have become partners to ..responsibility. I am obliged to state that although ..Polish Government contributed largely to ..arousing of public opinion in ..World ..it still did not do enough. It did not do anything that was not routine ..that might have been appropriate to ..dimensions of ..tragedy taking place in Poland.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
It is damnable, that in the midst of the greatest tragedy ever to meet humanity, government responses could be routine. Such inhuman complacency must surely be measured in the abject failure of governance, and its supposed concern for society. All too easily, the Jews have been dismissed from society, lodged to the perimeters of community’s and dismembered then from all life afforded them by civilisations greatest acceptance, the toleration of difference. However, and given the strength of anti-Jewish feeling within Poland, one begins to wonder, is such an unresponsive approach both negligent and intentional. The words which spring forth from those within Poland, charged with representing All the People of Poland, is both discourteous and downright intolerant toward a specific community, the Polish Jewish Community. All of this must have weighed heavily upon those like Szmul, who moved away for his own safety but left behind his Family, Friends and these exact same Community’s of Jews. As a Jew, he belonged to those Polish Jews, European and World Jewry, within Poland the Jewish People now settled into the vagaries of a hatred both Germans and Poles felt a shared interest in exploiting.
“..Of close to 3,500,000 Polish Jews and about 700,000 Jews who have been deported to Poland from other countries ..there were ..according to ..official figures of ..Bund transmitted by ..Representative of ..Government ..only 300,000 still alive in April of this year. And ..murder continues without end.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
So here we are, and in assessing all that has happened to the Jews of Europe, we can be certain, the escalation of the Slaughter has come to a deadly resolution, and this was early 1943. By now, practically all of Poland’s 3,650,000 Jews had been Slaughtered, Gassed, Died or were otherwise extinguished, der Einsatzgruppe had shot, and gassed 2,000,000 Jews in Northern and Eastern Europe, and already 700,000 Jews from the remainder of Europe had not yet exhausted the fumes of the Death Camps in Poland. We must remember too as to where Hungarian Jewry now stands, isolated by a German Hungarian pact which was yet to steal 500,000, 600,000 of their Jews toward Birkenau and extinction there. It is fast becoming obvious to the entire World that Hitler is losing ground, his War is imploding, impacting heavily upon the German People and yet, his fixation upon the Jews, their immediate and exacting destruction, has not waned, has not been shelved, and it did not go away. It is still before him, awaiting the final resolve to finish what he started, and Hungarian Jewry awaited his closer attention.
“..I cannot continue to live and to be silent while ..remnants of Polish Jewry ..whose representative I am ..are being murdered. My comrades in ..Warsaw Ghetto fell with arms in their hands in ..last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them ..together with them ..but I belong with them ..to their mass grave. By my death ..I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against ..inaction in which ..World watches and permits ..destruction of ..Jewish people.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
The sad truth is that Szmul Zygielbojm could not live in a World which so failed his People that as many as 5,700,000 Slaughtered Jews already lay wasted upon the Continent of Europe. We cannot now honestly assess the fuller impact of this Slaughter without recognising, there were many more 10’s of 1,000’s of Jews awaiting resettlement from all over Europe. The fact too that 900,000 to 1,000,000 of Hungarian Jewry were to remain at the mercy of Hitler, and to the bitter end. That these Jews were taken from all over Hungary and would be driven to near total collapse one year later, and after Szmul’s death, any such consideration to be given to just this one man’s plight, must recognise his depth of despair in realising all that he had come to know.
“..I know ..there is no great value to ..life of a man ..especially today. ..since I did not succeed in achieving it in my lifetime ..perhaps I shall be able by my death to contribute to ..arousing from lethargy of those who could and must act in order that even now ..perhaps at ..last moment ..handful of Polish Jews ..still alive can be saved from certain destruction.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
It is nigh near impossible to write about the feelings which must have been consuming Szmul as a human being, let alone as a Jew within that human species we all belong to. Bu I am mindful, I owe due diligence to the memory of 6,000,000 People who were Jews, who were selected for ‘special treatment’, who were transported East and ‘resettled’ in the Death Camps, simply because they were Jews. The ramifications for all of history has seen the deliberate attempt by other’s to deliver, in similar ways, a response to the divergence of People being removed from the very existence they belonged to. At the gates to the 6 Death Camps within Poland, which laid as many as 5,000,000 Jews to waste, are all prostrate before all gods, any god, or any acceptance of what some god might have expressed is compatible with human existence. It might appear incompatible to some that a non-Jew would stand before the mantle of World opinion and accuse it of a blatant desertion of human compassion, concern, and the moral necessity to stand against all hatreds and protect all People from any of those hatred. But here I stand, a Writer of over 30 years, having dedicated 7 Books thus far to exploring the fall from grace of a humanity distilled with such viciousness, 6,000,000 Jewish People were destroyed. Szmul Zygielbojm was still hopeful, that at least some of the remnant of Polish Jewry would be spared the vagaries of a 2,000 year hatred which had seriously plagued the Jewish People in Poland for much of their 1,000 year presence. I cannot begin to assess the loss to be felt by those Jews who Survived, for those Jews who are alive today by dint of that Survival, nor can I sanction other than contempt for those who perpetrated the worst crimes ever to permeate humanity, and for those who stood along the margins, and allowed this all to happen. What I can say, and with complete candour is, there is a place called Israel which now must fight also for the memory of those 6,000,000 Jews and more, detained with The Holocaust, and for their Memory to be retained.
“..My life belongs to ..Jewish People of Poland ..therefore I hand it over to them. I yearn ..remnant that has remained of ..millions of Polish Jews may live to see liberation together with ..Polish masses ..and that it shall be permitted to breathe freely in Poland and in a World of freedom and socialistic justice ..in compensation for ..inhuman suffering and torture inflicted on them. And I believe that such a Poland will arise and such a World will come about. I am certain that ..President and ..Prime Minister will send out these words of mine to all those to whom they are addressed ..and that ..Polish Government will embark immediately on diplomatic action and explanation of ..situation ..in order to save ..living remnant of ..Polish Jews from destruction. I take leave of you with greetings ..from everybody ..and from everything that was dear to me and that I loved.” Szmul Zygielbojm.
Szmul Mordechai Ziegelbojm.
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