ghetto (approx. 100)⁹⁴⁰ were set on fire and there was an unsuccessful attack
on the Resettlement Office (Umsiedlungsamt) staff at Żelazna Street 103. One
should also mention the assassination attempt on Szeryński, which rendered
him harmless. More importantly, a quiet yet intensive campaign to make the
masses aware of the real meaning of the “resettlement” has begun. A number
of recent publications discuss the Warsaw events and the death camp
in Treblinka and also call for anti-Hitlerite activity. The efforts of [certain]
social groups encountered enormous objective obstacles, such as, above all,
the impossibility to communicate with one another and move about. It has
become problematic to move from one building to another, let alone to walk
from street to street. These are the conditions and atmosphere in which the
underground activity has to be conducted.
The final days of August passed relatively calmly, but it was obvious that
the end of the Aktion in the ghetto was still to come.
On Thursday and Friday (3 and 4 September) in the Warsaw ghetto
there were intensified blockades of workshops. The SS-men assisted by junaks
(Ukrainians, Lithuanians) escorted a few hundred people to the Umschlagplatz
from among those working in various divisions of factory labour, usually
ignoring their vocational qualifications. The SS-men arrived with a fixed
“quota” for a given workplace and conducted the selection, picking victims
according to their whim. It should be stressed that as early as during that
period workshops became almost exclusively reservoirs of victims for slaughter.
Outside the workshops life still flickered in the basements and catacombs
of the ghetto. After that new “selection” the number of Jews employed in given
workshops decreased by 25–30 per cent.
The Saturday of the 5th of September also passed under the omen
of further intensive blockades of workshops. The crews of B. Hallman’s⁹⁴¹
and W. C. Többens factories underwent particularly drastic reductions.h⁹⁴²
940 It is known that the ŻOB set empty buildings ablaze in the ghetto to stop the property of
those murdered from falling into the Germans’ hands.
941 Bernard Hallmann’s carpentry workshop located at Nowolipki Street 59. Before the Aktion
it had employed 900 people.
942 Page 20 was corrected by Oyneg Shabes editors. The fragment marked h–h is published in
its final version (a), which is an integral part of the report. The original version of this
fragment, version (b), is provided at the end of this document.
