had buried many soldiers, both German and Polish, as well as many horses.
The night passed peacefully.
Monday, 18 September 1939. Everything the same as yesterday. They
seized (horses) men for work. Among them was Yisroel Avrom, who had been
on his way to Łódź, but they took him from his cart and sent him to work on
the railway. [12a] In the afternoon, German Reichswehr⁸⁶¹ officials went about
cutting off beards. The first victim was the chazan, then Avrom Mordkhe
Golenberg, Yitzhok Joskowicz, Mordkhe Ber Rotenbach. So after that, anyone
who had a beard shaved it off himself. The rest of the day passed peacefully.
The night passed peacefully.
Tuesday, 19 September 1939. Got up late, that is, at 7 o’clock in the morning,
because we were afraid that we would be seized for work. My brother - inlaw
Yisroel Avrom had worked for them the day before and they had treated
him very badly, especially because he is a Jew. My wife Reyzl went to Chaim
Oyzer Szumiraj⁸⁶² to give him some money to bring us merchandise from
Łódź. Meanwhile my brother-in-law Yitzhok Borekh had come by. He had
left home because men were being seized for work, especially Jews. Yitzhok
stayed at my place till 10 a.m. It was market day and there were many customers
wanting to buy various goods, but I had nothing to sell. I could not
even have breakfast.
[13] At 1 p.m. precisely, when I went out with my son Leybl, two German
policemen approached us asking if we were Jews, and one of them seized us
immediately for work. By lucky chance I was able to avoid work, but Leybl
was taken to work at the school, where he had to work hard pumping up
tires. It was not until 4 p.m. that he let them know he was a watchmaker,
and so they gave him three watches to fix and sent him home. When he got
home, he was physically and morally broken because of the insults directed
at Jews. Levi Lejzerowicz and my son-in-law Moyshe Mordkhe also worked.
They, the Germans, forced Shimshon Gros to shave off Levi and Mordkhe’s
beards, and they had to pay him 20 groszes for the shave. “Oh, the shame
861 (German) Defence Forces of the Third Reich.
862 He later appears in the correspondence of the ŻSS. He applied for assistance as a war invalid from the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War. In January 1942, he was in Izbica on the Wieprz River with his wife Perła and children: Trana, Chawa, Mariem, Estera Fajga, Abram Layb, Chana, Łaja and Róża. See AŻIH, ŻSS, 211/84, pp. 21–26.
