implements and, with the last of their strength, they wrote down their names
on pieces of paper.
When the Germans entered the city in the early days, they were relaxed
and polite and would come and go in Jewish homes and they would negotiate
with them calmly, but it was not long before they changed their tune.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, it was decreed by the local Commandant that all
the Jews were ordered to appear for forced labour the next day. The town
rabbi sought to have them released from this obligation, but he was told
that no response would be forthcoming that day and that there would be
a reply tomorrow. But early the next morning, a negative response was given
to his request.
That day, [. . .] the Jews to seek and search in their purses with the common
excuse [. . .] every valuable that they found and they also entered the
bet midrash and broke open the holy ark and pulled out the Torah scroll and
flung it to the ground and trod upon it with disdain, and several women at
the risk of their lives entered the bet midrash and rescued the other Torah
scrolls, taking them into their homes for safekeeping.
On the holiday of Sukkot, the Jews were once more ordered to appear each
day for forced labour early in the morning.
The chairman of the [. . .] Council informed the town rabbi that he had
been ordered by the authorities to compile a list of all the Jews so that none
should escape the burden of labour and that he was required to include his
name in the list, so an intervention should be carried out while there was still
time. The rabbi turned to the local German pastor with whom he had been
on good and mutually respectful terms for many years. The pastor did indeed
intervene, but the intervention only served to highlight that there was a rabbi
in the town and the Commandant immediately ordered one of his soldiers
to go to the rabbi’s home to make the rabbi appear before him without delay.
The rabbi believed that he had been sent for in order to be put to work and
pleaded his case, but the Commandant cut him off, saying: Ach, sie unterliegen
doch nicht die Arbeitspflicht, sie sind doch jüdischer Geistlicher¹⁰⁸⁰ and
he presented him with a list of the sins, trespasses and transgressions of
the local Jews, including how one butcher had slaughtered an animal which
was stolen from the local pastor (to our sorrow, this was true), and said that
1080 (German) Oh, you aren’t subject to the obligation to work, you are a Jewish clergyman.
