an account of the expulsion from Pruszków.³⁵² The refugees arrived by train.
From the Gdański Station they were sent to the city’s disinfection facility on
Spokojna Street, where they were subjected to a whole [4] series of harassments
that had absolutely nothing to do with the sanitary procedure.³⁵³ Later, at night, when the temperature was down to –25oC, they were placed in quarantine at Leszno Street 109. Their arrival was frightful. The large quarantine building had not been heated for the entire winter. The sewage and water pipes were frozen, the toilets overflowing with excrement. The corridors and halls were full of refugees from other towns, so crowded that there was nowhere to stand and nowhere to sit. Noisy and humid. The crying of children, the groans of the elderly and crippled, mingled with the general clamour. Everyone made himself a place as best he could, in order to hold out till morning, when it would be possible to go into town to family or friends. The children couldn’t sleep a wink. The noise didn’t let up for a second and grew even louder at daybreak. People came to themselves, stretched and got ready to leave. But no one was allowed out, not even for a little water, because the quarantine building was located in the Aryan quarter. That meant that a glass of water cost 20 groszes.
The minutes seemed like hours, and the hours dragged on. There was no word about being let out. There was no one to talk to about it: the manager could not be found. Noon came and we felt that the manager of the quarantine building was hiding from us. He probably wanted to tire the inmates to the point of exhaustion, so that they would be incapable of any resistance.
Suspicious-looking individuals turned up and endeavoured to persuade
us, with inborn servility, to ‘fix things’ with the manager as soon as possible,
because people had to stay here for a long time. We got talking to Jews from
Piaseczno, who [5] told us that the same thing had happened to them. They
had to pay up, and only then were they let out. Now we felt, and knew for
sure, that we had fallen into a trap. We positioned ourselves at different points
in the building and waited. Our instinct ordered us to resist! After a while
we got hold of the manager, Halber.³⁵⁴ We elected a delegation and went to
352 See Accounts from the General Government, Doc. 183.
353 Spokojna Street in the Warsaw ghetto was the location of one of the four municipal bathhouses. Cf. Combating typhus, in: Warsaw Ghetto. Everyday life, Docs. 27–34.
354 Maurycy Halber, employee of the Judenrat in the Warsaw ghetto, suspected of collaboration with the Germans. See The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Ivan R. Dee, 1999); Warsaw Ghetto. Everyday Life, Doc. 17.
