LUBICZ
After October 1941, Warsaw ghetto, author unknown, “Lubicz.”
Persecutions of the local Jewish population from the first weeks of
German occupation until the resettlement to Dobrzyń and Lipno on
12 October 1939.
[1] Lubicz
Lubicz, a settlement on the River Drwęca with 2,000 inhabitants, one third of
them Jews, experienced in this war not at all a small-town tragedy.
Military operations left the town almost unscathed; the only victim was
a bridge blown up by the Poles. On 3 September, when the German troops were
near Toruń, almost all the Lubicz residents left the town. Within a week, they
returned and, naturally, found their flats thoroughly plundered by the Poles.
So much for the start.
On 7 September, the German troops entered Lubicz and on the 9th they
confiscated a huge mill, which belonged to Jews of the name Hernes.¹³⁰⁶
The whole family was detained in a concentration camp, and one engineer
was taken to Toruń and employed to repair a damaged bridge. In the town,
the vast majority of workers were Poles (it was a reprisal for the pogroms on
Germans), who were terribly maltreated and beaten; however, in comparison
with the misery of the few Jews, their fate was still enviable. Not only were
the Jews given smaller [food] rations [2] and forced to work harder, but also
they were persecuted and tormented with a special kind of eagerness, putting
it mildly. Being an educated and wealthy man, the above-mentioned engineer
was ‘looked after with utmost care.’ Eventually, the Germans induced two
Poles, with whom their victim was carrying a heavy rail, to drop it suddenly
while putting it down. As a result, the rail crushed the poor wretch’s hand,
which caused his death, since there was no medical care available.
Having confiscated the mill, the Germans turned their attention to
shabby, typical small-town Jewish shops. They arrived in cars and loaded
1306 In the original, incorrectly Kernes. Before the war, Izaak Hernes owned the mill in Lubicz. See Gminy żydowskie pogranicza Wielkopolski, pp. 137, 376. Cf. Doc. 140.
