Braun and Frydlender, Gerszt and also Hajszerek and Naparstek. Ordinances
pertaining to Jews began to be introduced only gradually. An order was given
to remove Nazi flags from outside all Jewish homes. The German officers visited
Jewish shops especially to requisition merchandise on a large scale. They
also removed furniture from private flats. Many Jewish shops and flats had to
be vacated within a few hours or even within several minutes. German and
Polish families were accommodated there. Within several days, the face of the
town changed completely. Many Jewish shops were closed. Many had lost all
their merchandise. Other shops had been handed over to new owners, mostly
Germans. This was how Marie Hoffman took over Herszkowicz’s “Złoty Róg”
colonial shop, how the Kurz company took over Siemiatycki’s workshop, how
the Miller brothers took over Sender’s shop and how Rymarowicz took over
Perle’s wholesale shop.
The external appearance of Kalisz Jewry changed as well. Before the war,
the Jewish society of Kalisz included a rather large group of Orthodox Jews.
Many Jews in Kalisz had worn beards, sidelocks, coats, and traditional Jewish
caps. Now these outfits had almost completely disappeared. You could not
see even one Jew wearing a Jewish cap. Now they all wore hats or cycling
caps. Jewish beards and sidelocks had almost disappeared as well, because the
German soldiers often cut them off. All in all, the Jews cut [4] their beards or
tried to make them less conspicuous.
One day the Germans visited all Jewish shops and commanded their
owners to put a ‘Jude’ sign in a visible place, with the sign’s height set at minimum
20 cm.
On 10 October, the Jewish Council of Elders was established in Kalisz following
an order of the German authorities. There were no former representatives
of the Jewish Community left in Kalisz. At 2 p.m. on 2 September, the
Kalisz rabbi, Mendel Alter,¹¹³¹ had left the town and gone by car to Łódź. He
had not returned to Kalisz. Former Community representatives Heber and
Rozenblum¹¹³² had also left for Łódź. Jewish Kalisz was completely devoid of
1131 Menachem Mendel Alter (1877–1943), son of Yehuda Aryeh Leyb Alter, the Gerer rebbe (the tzaddik from Góra Kalwaria). From 1934, M.M. Alter was Chief Rabbi of Kalisz, chairman of the Union of Rabbis in Poland (Agudat ha-Rabanim be-Polin). He was in the Warsaw ghetto with his family, all perished in Treblinka.
1132 Józef Mosze Heber, Chairman of the board of the Kalisz Jewish Community of long years, paid director of the local Jewish Union of Retail Merchants, political and social activist;
