overflowing with wagons, carts, and motor cars stuffed with bedding, suitcases,
merchandise, packages, and bundles of all kinds. People fled as if from
a fire, wherever their eyes led them, in an attempt to avoid the fate of the
Jews who had been forcibly expelled from their houses on Zgierska Street.
The days were very cold at the time and the nights even colder. Many people
froze to death. Others lost ears, noses, hands, or feet to frostbite. People
told how German soldiers, out of their great “pity” for living creatures — in
this case the coachmen’s horses — ordered the bedclothes with which Jewish
women and children were covered to be taken from them and placed upon the
poor little horses. The turmoil lasted a whole week, from 12 to 19 December.
ARG I 895 (Ring. I/957)
Description: original (handwritten — LEG*, ink, 104×295 mm, minor damage
and fragments missing), duplicate (fragment) (handwritten — MS*, pencil,
148×210 mm), Yiddish, minor damage and fragments missing, 13 sheets, 17 pages.
On p.1 of the original, note by Hersh Wasser in Yiddish: “Łódź” and the Roman
numeral “I”. On pp. 1 and 2 of the duplicate, note by Hersh Wasser in Yiddish:
“Łódź” and the Roman numeral “II”; on p.3 of the duplicate, in the margins, the
Hebrew letter “ ל” and the letter (or sign?) “T” (ink; similar marks in Doc. 11).
Attached is a note by Hersh Wasser in Yiddish: “Eliahu Gutkowski, personal
experiences.” Documents were kept in a binder.
Edition based on the original, with separate pagination for both parts:
(a) 4 sheets, 4 pages, (b) 7 sheets, 7 pages.
After November 1939, place unknown, Fela Wiernik, “Wspomnienia i przeżycia
wojenne” [Wartime memories and experiences]. The first months of the
occupation. Persecution of the Jewish population.
[1] Fela Wiernik
Wartime memories and experiences
[2] When I heard about the outbreak of the war on 1 September, my main
thought was: how wonderful, there shall finally be some excitement. And
that was also what most of my girlfriends thought. Beginning in the morning,
