Haggard and emaciated, without money and most basic items of clothing,
we are looking for help. What now, miserable Jewish wanderer?
Warsaw, 30 June 1942.
ARG I 770 (Ring. I/814)
Description: duplicate (3 copies), typewritten, with Hersh Wasser’s handwritten
additions in Polish only on the first copy; Polish, Yiddish (in Polish transliteration
in Latin characters, in Warsaw dialect); 207×292 mm, substantial damage
and missing fragments, 21 sheets, 21 pages. Wasser’s note on p. 1 of the second
copy (ink): “13 standard pages.” Attached is his note in Polish and Yiddish:
“Hrubieszów. Compiled by H. Wasser. Written in June 1942.”
Edition based on the first and second copies of the duplicate, 7 sheets, 7 pages.
10 July 1942, Warsaw ghetto, Dovid Mandelbojm. Testimony “ ”הרוביעשאָוו
[Hrubieszów]. The flight of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Lublin
District; situation of Jews in Hrubieszów; partisan terror; first Aktion
(2–10 June 1942).
[1] Hrubieszów
One year ago, when the ghetto in Warsaw was becoming smaller and tighter,³¹³
[persecutions] by contrast bigger and fiercer, a large section of the Jewish population was gripped by the psychosis of running away from Warsaw and going
to the province, where the food was significantly cheaper and there were no
high walls. People were afraid of the dangers that were linked with illegally
leaving the walls [of] the Warsaw ghetto, they did not refrain from selling the
last household items in order to have the necessary money and to leave the city
where death by starvation was predicted.
The majority of these “emigrants” consisted of exiles and refugees, who
could not bear the Warsaw air and could not find a place for themselves here.
313 See footnote 312.