scandalous. After all, a certain number of people needed to be delivered and
somebody had to go. But another matter looked much worse. We were receiving
alarming news throughout the entire stay of those ‘convicted to hard
labour’ in Józefów. There were complaints about inhumane treatment, overburdening with work, insufficient and meagre board, and horrible sanitary
conditions. So it is no wonder that the desperate families literally organised
demonstrations against the Community and attacks at Obmann’s⁷²⁷ house.
When those attacks assumed worrying proportions, the Judenrat decided to
act. It was decided that a rescue expedition would be sent to bribe the camp
leadership and deliver some food. Some money was needed to implement that
plan. As the appeal to the heart and conscience of the ordinary taxpayer
proved fruitless, (and not without reason: during the entire period of the operation
of the Judenrat in Łowicz there was literally not one open meeting, so it
is no wonder that having no control over where the money was going, the people
refused to pay) unique fiscal-legal methods were applied: with the help of
the Jewish police the reluctant taxpayers were arrested at night, put in prison,
and detained until they paid the required sum. In America, they call it kidnapping,
while the Łowicz gangsters call it a ‘Campaign to Aid Forced Labour
Camp Prisoners.’ And it was a sanctioned and legal method! (The German
Steueramt never used it though!) It worked. I know one and only one case
when some brave man tried to resist. He suffered an utter defeat. It was a certain
Atłas, who had a personal enemy in the Judenrat. He suspected that they
would set him a large sum of money and he feared arrest, so he stopped sleeping
at home. After the Council’s praetorians had failed to find him, they beat
up his wife and daughter. They also took a fur coat, bedding, and several
other ‘trinkets’ as a ‘deposit,’ threatening to sell those things unless the owner
showed up. Mr Atłas had no other option but to go and pay. They made him
pay one hundred per cent more. As punishment!
But the culmination of this whole story is the fact that the inmates
received no help whatsoever, as Nysenbaum — a forced labour camp prisoner
— told me. Even though a delegation, consisting of councillors Szapiro
(Judenrat chairman), Dawid Szyja Brand and A. Urbach, went to Józefów several
times, it only provided the inmates with moral support in the form of
a few warm words. What happened to the money?
727 (German) Judenrat chairman.
