boy (the 16-year-old) [4] could address a German officer with the familiar form
of “you.” You are surprised, but it was completely natural there. Believe me,
all the catastrophes are solely the work of the Gestapo, before which the soldiers
also tremble. After many conversations with Germans of different ranks
and ages, I came to the conclusion that the army hates the Gestapo and SS.
Here is a small example: My boy came with the military car from work to
the Jewish district. In Zamość, there is no ghetto as in Warsaw, the Jewish
quarter is not fenced, and Jews live together with Christians; in addition
there are some streets where only Aryans live. A gendarme stopped him. You
should have seen how the soldier was trembling when he had to explain why
he had given the Jews a ride, even though what he had done was absolutely
legal, as it had conformed to an explicit order and an appropriate ordinance.
Briefly speaking, the Jews of Zamość all had appropriate permits, identification
papers, photos, and everything needed. There were Jewish workers who
used to pray well on arrival at the field, and even recited the entire Book of
Psalms, and more than once [5] young people had a good time playing “zole”³⁹⁴
(a card game).
The Judenrat in Zamość (23 members plus the chairman) with Attorney
Garfinkel³⁹⁵ (I think from Warsaw, a very honest and fair man) as chairman,
did not know of any tricks or schemes – he was, on the whole, honest:
Whatever the authority (Gestapo and Landrat) commanded, was holy, and no
one said anything against it. Indeed, the Germans could not complain about
their Judenrat. All the authorities in the town, including Gestapo, Landrat,
and even the gendarmes amounted to as many as 35 people. At the beginning
of 1942, during the winter, orders of all sorts started pouring out, like
hail, with the purpose to lock up the Jews in Zamość and to distinctly separate
them from the peasants. Even one metre outside the town meant a death
sentence. Many tens of Jews died this way.
394 A card game from Latvia.
395 Mieczysław (Mendl) Garfinkiel (1898–1990), attorney, owner of a land estate and brewery. In the 1920s, chairman of the of the Jewish Community board, during the war chairman of the Judenrat and the ŻSS branch in Zamość. After the destruction of the Zamość Jews, he went into hiding in Warsaw. After the war, changed his surname to Garwin, emigrated from Poland around 1948, finally settled in Rhodesia. He described the occupation period in a memoir written in 1946 and given to the ŻIH archives (AŻIH, Holocaust memoirs, 302/122). See A. Kopciowski, Zagłada Żydów w Zamościu, p. 65.
