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March 1942, Warsaw, ghetto. “גרעבמעל” [“Lvov”] Anonymous account of a refugee, a Zionist from Warsaw, on the situation under the Soviet occupation in Łuck and Lvov and the first wave of persecutions of the Jews after the outbreak of the German–Soviet war
[1] Lvov
(a) The way to Łuck
I left Warsaw on foot legally on 7 September 1939 and arrived in Łuck on 17–18 September. The issue of refugee aid was not so tragic then, because at that time everyone still had some money. It took several days before a large group of refugees reached the city. Truth be told, the Jews of Łuck showed a lot of understanding towards the refugees, even though the aid did not take an organised form. (In Łuck, I met Dr Kleinbaum753 in a military hospital.) Łuck was a purely Zionist town, with a Hebrew primary and secondary school. I left Łuck on 30 September 1939, by which time a registration of refugees had already been carried out (ordered by the military authorities). In Łuck I saw refugees even from Lvov (Hirshprung, a Lvov councillor). The majority of the refugees from Volhynia rushed to Lvov as soon as the train connection was established, and in the first days [2] of October 1939 the leaders of Jewish political society, as well as ordinary rich Jews and intellectuals, were already to be found there (i.e. in Lvov). Thus Dr Kleinbaum, Wahrhaftig,754 Białopolski, Szczupakiewicz, Dr Szwarc, Romanowski, Mazur,755 and others
