were forced to unfurl the Torah scrolls from the prayer houses, spread them
on the ground like chodniki.¹⁰⁸⁴ Heaven preserve us, and tread on them. It was
a terrible sight. The Torah scrolls were the footways along which each had to
walk to the great mound and lay his Talmud and sacred books on it. The Jews
were ordered to set light to a bundle of straw next to the mound, and the autoda-
fé of sacred books began to burn. That sight is hard to describe on paper.
One thing is important: the fire smouldered for a full eight days until chol
hamoed Sukkot, which shows just how many books were burned. This is what
Yom Kippur was like in the shtetl of B[ełchatów].
28 April 1941
ARG I 689 (Ring. I/1016)
Description: duplicate (2 copies), handwritten (BW*), pencil, Yiddish,
148×207 mm, 6 sheets, 6 pages.
In the margins, the sign “+” (green ink). The document was kept in a binder.
Edition based on first copy of duplicate, 3 sheets, 3 pages.
ŁÓDŹ COUNTY
ALEKSANDRÓW ŁÓDZKI
After 25 April 1941, Warsaw ghetto, author unknown, ”די געשעיענישן
אין אַלעקסאַנדער־לאָדזער“ [Events in Aleksandrów Łódzki]. The last
weeks before the outbreak of war, entry of the Germans on 6 September
1939, beginning of the occupation, looting and killing of the Jews, expulsion
of the entire Jewish population to Głowno.
[1] Events in Aleksandrów Łódzki.
On 16 August there were mass arrests of prominent citizens of the town’s
German population. The German population felt crushed but not pessimistic,
1084 (Polish) footways, pavements.
