of the copying. In two instances, there exist two identical copies of a bulletin
with different dates (20 and 22 May, and 25 and 30 June). The later two dates
surely refer to the day on which the copy was made. The bulletin dated 3 July
is actually a rough draft, as some of its information is written in a brief form,
with as many as four people listed as its authors. The information was also
repeated in the issue of 8 July.
The first two issues (3 and 12 April 1942) were in both Yiddish and Polish,
with the two versions differing slightly. The next six bulletins issued in May
and June 1942 were in Yiddish, while the following seven (from 18 June to
18 July 1942) were only in Polish. It is possible that each bulletin came out
in two language versions, some of which perished. It is also likely that when
the situation became tenser the group stopped preparing the bulletins in
Yiddish due to its members’ better command of the Polish language. It should
be noted that the bulletins issued after 18 July began to contain more and
more news from the Warsaw ghetto, which was a novelty, with information
about the persecution of Poles. The bulletins also repeated some information
from the earlier Yiddish issues. This suggests that the earlier bulletins
were intended for the editors of the underground press in the Warsaw
ghetto, while the later ones were also prepared for unspecified readers outside
the ghetto.
What sources of information did the bulletins’ editors rely upon?
Most notes in the bulletins are very brief and contain only data about the
approximate date of a given event with the number of victims. It seems
that the editors wrote down information obtained via telephone from, for
instance, employees of the ŻSS branches. It seems that several pieces of
news included in the bulletin of 29 May 1942 (document 53) came from such
a source.
Dęblin (Irena) – At the beginning of the second ten-day period of the
month, the Germans expelled the whole Jewish population from
the shtetl; on their way, 42 Jews were shot by the Polish police.
Ryki (near Dęblin) – On the same day, the whole Jewish population of
Ryki was also expelled in an “unknown direction”. The whole Jewish
community has disappeared without a trace. Before the expulsion, many
local Jews were shot. [. . .]
