every 24 hours. After that time they were released and substituted with new
ones. Those hostages had to be present during all executions conducted on
a mass scale on the Poles (the only officially executed Jew, yet nobody knows
what for, was a certain Sywosz).⁸⁴⁹ The executions were conducted in the centre
of the square, near the theatre (besides, it was no innovation, but an old
and threadbare medieval idea). The convict was put in a special three-walled
booth lined with straw and then executed ceremonially.
October brought the introduction of the yellow armbands for Jews⁸⁵⁰ as
well as a ban on leaving home on Fridays, walking on pavements, and shopping
in Aryan [5] shops.
The very same month brought a wave of requisitions in Koło. After taking
over and emptying the Jewish shops and storehouses, the Germans began
to loot flats under the pretext of looking for weapons. They took literally
everything: bedding, underwear, money, clothes, and furniture. Not infrequently,
bare walls were the only things that remained after such a visit (for
example, at Koniński’s and Barab’s).
On 30 November an ordinance was issued forbidding the Jews to leave
their homes for four days. During that period, approximately 1,300 people
were arrested. It proceeded in the following way: the Germans rushed into
a flat and ordered everybody to leave it within an hour. The people could
not take anything except for the clothes they had on plus 50 zlotys in cash.
Before the departure, the Germans searched everybody thoroughly and then
took them to one of the [gathering] points [, there were...] three: the small
synagogue and two primary schools). They conducted an even more thorough
search there (they ever removed shoe soles). Whenever they found something
‘forbidden’ (two shirts, more than 50 zlotys, etc.), they brutally beat the people,
including women. But this is not the end. The Steueramt sent a sequestrator⁸⁵¹
to collect due taxes. The sequestrator, however, was unable to sequester anything
and he walked away with nothing, having deemed everybody ‘insolvent.’
849 The same event was described in Doc. 62.
850 On 14 November 1939, the chairman of the Regierungsbezirk Kalisch (later Regierungsbezirk Litzmannstadt) Friedrich Übelhör issued an ordinance commanding the Jews to wear yellow armbands on the right arm.
851 A person who takes over and holds property by judicial authority, for safekeeping or as security, until a legal dispute is resolved.
