But Hesia is still a fictional character to you. You persistently demand surnames, figures, and evidence. So here is the one to blame for the suffering of Hesia’s miserable mother; the jackal because of whom naked corpses are thrown onto the street. Here is Dawid (a significant name) Dobicki49 —the administrator of the cemetery, the ghetto’s public enemy No. 1, the scoundrel the Government Commissariat50 who was imposed on the cemetery before the war for his spying or secret lackeying. His administration is to blame for the fact that corpses lie about on the streets, that decaying bodies wait several days in vain before being taken to the cemetery, and that the poorest either commit the crime of desecration and throw corpses onto the street or have to spend their last dime on private funeral parlour [services]. His greediness, fraud, cynicism, and thievish instincts are to blame for the fact that even though we pay the Judenrat for all [9] funeral arrangements, we have to pay twice: for the hearse to take the corpse to the cemetery and for the handcart to take the corpse from the funeral parlour to the burial site.
The cemetery is swarming with grave robbers, and Dobicki is not the only one to finish off the victims. There are others too, such as Posner, Roland, Sztrauch, Szejnberg, etc. But let us start with that greediest vampire in the whole group of those who feed on the greatest tragedy of mankind, who suck out people’s blood like vampires, who prosper and live like millionaires.
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The Department of Cemeteries transports corpses from the city to the cemetery using a platform and a hearse hitched up to rented horses. The Judenrat does not have its own horses. Why? Are they too expensive? No, it’s not lucrative for the administrator, Mr Dobicki, who makes a fortune through renting. The horse owners, Mr Sztajner and Mr Goldsztajn (men with a very shady past—one of them was in prison before the war for some shady machinations), rent 3 horses to the cemetery for a total of 225 zlotys per day.
