Selections, Brutality, and Foreign Contributors

Jakob Zylberberg, whose apartment was within the confines of the ghetto and who therefore did not have to move at first, recounts his family taking in a girl whose family had been killed in nearby Kalmic. Her older brother happened to be one of Jakob’s best friends, though by then Jews had largely gotten used to the deaths of loved ones (Zylberberg, VHA Interview). This numbness toward death, which began in 1939, contributed to the despondent culture the Nazis aimed to create. Levi wrote that the suppression of emotion made it easier to focus entirely on survival. Nonetheless, while death was a fact of everyday life, it was nearly impossible to cope with the deaths of so many loved ones and continue normally. When word got back to the Czestochowa ghetto that people were being deported to death camps, and that theirs was next, hope evaporated (Gerson, VHA Interview). Jews who had been deported from other ghettos to Treblinka occasionally escaped from the trains, and explained to those in Czestochowa what was truly going on. Gerson pointed out that most did not believe the words of these Jews. Even after seeing Nazis execute groups of innocent Jews, as shown in a disturbing image here, the idea of mass-genocide seemed inplausible. Such disbelief accentuates just how maniacal the Nazis were, as nobody could understand why or how the Nazis would kill off millions of civilians just because of their religious practice. Nonetheless, as the executions continued, and more and more Jews voiced similar concerns, Gerson, and others, realized that they were likely to die.

Deportations from Czestochowa began at the break of the fast on Yom Kippur, highlighting the Nazi contempt for Judaism as a religion. Gerson recalls seeing the selections from her window. She even saw many of her friends being put on the cattle cars for Treblinka. Jews looking out windows were shot at, so she was forced to look through her curtains. Emotionlessly, she stated that, for most Jews, it was either right for work or left for the gas chambers (Gerson, VHA Interview).

Benjamin Bender, who lived through many selections, recalls being eye to eye with Captain Degenhardt, the infamous SS Captain who led the aktions. Bender described Degenhardt as a “small man wearing a custom-made uniform and snow-white gloves, holding a short stick. He had small black piercing eyes and a scar on his face” (Bender, VHA Interview). According to Bender, Degenhardt took joy in determining which Jews would live and which would die, joking with each of them as he made his decisions. As Bender stood paralyzed with fear, he heard screams from adjacent buildings, as Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish soldiers were throwing babies off roofs and shooting others who tried to stop them. Twenty thousand Jews were sent to Treblinka in the first week of selections (Bender, VHA Interview). The Jewish quarter of Czestochowa was engulfed with terror. Not only did many Nazis seem to enjoy carrying out such despicable actions, but as noted above, foreign soldiers joined in. The compliance on the part of so many individuals, both German and non-German, naturally made many Jews lose faith in humanity, as it is hard to imagine how so many people could have not only allowed such behavior but even taken part in it.

As life in the ghetto continued, Bender recalls the Ukrainian guards being more hostile than the Germans. At one point, all of the Jews under the watch of a particular Ukrainian guard were to do 25 push-ups, and those who could not were beaten to death. One must keep in mind that these individuals were incredibly weak from working unbearable hours and malnourishment (Bender, VHA Interview). Such broad complicity highlights the immense scope of anti-semitism, as well as the international support the Nazis were able to garner for their final solution. Additionally, while the conditions of the ghetto increased mortality rates, the executions that became increasingly frequent in the early 1940s allow one to–at least to some degree–make sense of how the Nazis were able to gas entire communities of Jews. In the context of the frightful conditions that characterized the ghetto, it is a little bit easier to understand why Germans were able and even eager to kill Jews in cold blood. While ghettoization was meant to serve as evidence to the surrounding Poles that Jews were inferior, it seemingly also encouraged German soldiers to act with unusual violence. Germans killed Jews from the very first day they arrived in Czestochowa, although most of the deaths that occurred early in the ghettoization period were passive. Jews died of starvation and disease. The Final Solution, however, gave agency to the officers who committed these atrocious crimes. Passive extermination evolved into active extermination, and Jews who believed that they would live to see the days when they were no longer under Nazi rule lost nearly all hope.