Popowski’s office as chairman of the Judenrat was taken over by Meir
Taub.
Following Popowski’s death, conditions for the Jewish population began
to worsen. Incidents of shootings of Jews who left the ghetto and went to the
village to trade multiplied.
Incidents of inspections also began to multiply. Through an informer’s
tip-off, they found a some wares in the house of a merchant Lustik; it
included a larger number of silk socks, silk underwear, and linen. The entire
shtetl gave money to satiate the appetites of the gendarmes. In the house of
another Jew, they found some leather; this cost 12 pairs of tall leather boots,
a pair for each gendarme.¹²⁹⁴
A chapter of extorting money from the Jewish population began. Apart
from the weekly [5a] sum of money that the Jews paid to the gendarmes,
their appetite grew constantly stronger; they had to be provided with the
most expensive items.
The Polish policemen also extorted countless money from the Jews.
Two weeks before Passover, after the expulsion of the Jews from the
shtetls of Pustelnik, Wawer, and others,¹²⁹⁵ talk of an expulsion began in
this shtetl as well. We also found out that the Poles, whose huts the Jews had
moved into because of the establishment of the ghetto, turned to the Landrat
in Radzymin with a plea to expel the Jews from Tłuszcz.
These rumours of an expulsion were constantly repeated; we did not
know how much truth lay in these rumours. [The festival of] Shavuot went
by, and the Jews now began to say the opposite: that the danger had passed,
one could be calm.
On Monday, 25 May 1942, a Jewish tailor, who was working on a uniform
jacket of a Polish policeman, was [6] visited by the policeman and asked to
have the jacket ready on the same day because the following day all the Jews
would be expelled from the shtetl. The Jew told other Jews what the policeman
had said to him, and a panic and commotion ensued in the town.
There is no cemetery in Tłuszcz; all the deceased are taken to Jadów
to be buried at the local cemetery. It so happened that on the following day,
Tuesday, 26 May 1942, an old Jew, Meir Radz[y]miński, died in the town.
1294 Jews were forbidden to trade leather and fabric. See Doc. 123.
1295 26 March 1942. See Doc. 178.
