Date unknown, Warsaw ghetto, Mrs K., account recorded by Yekhezkel
Wilczyński,¹¹⁶⁸ “ די קאַלישער מאַרק־האַלע אַלס יידן־לאַגער ” [The Kalisz covered
market as a camp for Jews]. Expulsion of the author and her family
from their home in November 1939 and their detention in a camp in
the former covered market; their flight to Warsaw.
[1] The Kalisz covered market as a Judenlager (related by Mrs K.)
Not long after the occupation of our town, intensive measures were taken to
Germanise it by expelling the local population so as to make room for Latvian
Volksdeutsche. Above all, the aim was to make it Jew-free.
They began by ordering those Jews who lived in the more affluent, better
areas of town to leave their homes. We lived in a modern building with
central heating, so we were reluctant to move out of there, even though the
town commandant’s office was in the same building, which did not bode
well at all. On the other hand, if we stayed there we were sure to be warm
in winter and we would be [. . .]. I just took the more valuable objects from
home to a poorer relative of ours, who lived in a poorer street. Soon afterwards,
however, he came to us with the bad news that he had been afraid
to keep the things in his flat and had taken them down to the cellar. His
Jewish neighbours had presumably done the same, and this had apparently
become conspicuous to their Christian neighbours, until someone reported it
to the appropriate place. The main thing is that someone came and removed
everything from the cellars.
It was even known where my possessions had been taken in a bryczka.¹¹⁶⁹ I went there and in the courtyard of the building I already encountered
a shikse wearing my best slippers. In the stranger’s flat, [2] my pleas to give
1168 Chaskiel (Yekhezkel, Haskiel, Henryk) Wilczyński (1893–1943), engineer, co-owner of the Metal Goods Factory in Częstochowa, secretary of the Society of the Friends of the History of the Jews in Częstochowa, author of publications in Yiddish about sport and literature; in the Warsaw ghetto he was administrator of the house at Ogrodowa Street 43; for Oyneg Shabes he recorded testimonies, and also submitted the results of his prewar research on the history of Polish Jews in the first half of the 19th century.
1169 (Polish) chaise; an open horse-drawn carriage with a folding hood and a space for reclining.
