Opole.⁵⁴ That contradicted the information about the total annihilation of
the Jews in Wąwolnica. Consequently, while extensively quoting Goldbaum’s
letter, the editors of the next bulletin, dated 12 April, added in a bracket that
the Jews resettled from Wąwolnica were “those who survived there after the
massacre of 22 March”.
Written in code for security considerations, some letters were a source
which the editors had trouble interpreting. An example is the correspondence
of Luba Rozenberg from Dubienka with Franciszka Zalcman from Warsaw,
used in the bulletin of 8 June 1942 (document 54). On 23 May Luba Rozenberg
described the events which took place in the town:
Mr Kiszyniewski visited us yesterday and many people again departed
to that town where Mr Tenenbaum and Josef, Wolf’s brother, [are]. So far
we are in good health. The number of those sent [there] is ten times larger
than the number of those who had been sent away when those mentioned
above had been sent away. I would have a lot to write to you about, but,
unfortunately, this is beyond description.⁵⁵
In the bulletin that passage was interpreted as follows:
The situation of Jews in Dubienka is catastrophic. In late May the
Germans massacred the Jewish population. There were over a hundred
casualties.
The codename “Mr Kiszyniewski” denotes a pogrom (from the pogrom in
Kishinev in 1903), which was obvious to the addressees of the letter, while the
part of the sentence about people departing to that town where “Mr Tenenbaum
and Josef, Wolf’s brother, are” was interpreted by Oyneg Shabes as a description
of a massacre conducted on the spot. Nonetheless, that cannot be unambiguously
inferred from the letter, which seems rather to discuss a deportation
from Dubienka. Luba Rozenberg’s letter of 4 June quoted in the same bulletin
contains another mention of the said Józef:
54 ARG I 943 (Ring. I/587).
55 ARG I 710 (Ring I/568).
