I myself witnessed the following fact. One evening, I was walking down
a street when I met Mrs T.,¹⁴⁵⁰ who gives me some dental gold and asks me to
take it to the ‘Committee’ because she is leaving the next morning and does
not have the time. She has already given us gold, but now she has found more
at home and she wants to donate it too. I took the gold, swathed in cloth,
and as it was on my way, I stopped by the ‘Committee.’ There were no members,
only two young men on duty. I gave them the gold and went home! Oh,
how naïve I was! I have regretted that ever since because I am convinced that
these men shared the offering, which sank in their pockets!
When it finally became obvious that nothing could save us and the
offerings would only extend our stay for two weeks, so that on 21 December
there would be no Jews in Lipno, several versions started to [11] circulate.
‘Committee’ members announced that the new Landrat had refused to
accept either the precious metals or money and ordered their distribution
among poor Jews for their journey! Many Jews began to leave the town, taking
everything they could with them. Some went to W[arsaw] several times,
taking away better and more valuable things. Nobody wanted or was able to
explain how the journey, searches, etc., went. Even my closest neighbour,
also a ‘Committee’ member, gave vague and unclear answers to my questions
as to how to carry on!
Jews began to leave L[ipno] as early as on 1 December 1939, even though
the deadline was 21 December. We decided to leave on 16 December but we
announced that we would leave on the last day, because there were many
instances of Volksdeutsche, who knew that some people were packed and would
leave the next day, rushing in the day before and taking the stuffed sacks and
suitcases. It would have also happened to us, but fortunately, I had hidden
two filled sacks away, so when [12] G[ermans] came in with a Volksdeutsche to
carry out a search two days before our departure, they did not notice them,
but they did take everything they liked! I must underline that during my
last week in L[ipno], that is from the 8th to 16th, I really did not know what to
do; I could not think logically and made many mistakes and errors. Oddly
enough, everybody went mad and had equally insane ideas. It was a mass psychosis of illogical thinking and everybody lost what could have been saved.
1450 Most probably the wife of Aron Trachtenberg, a dentist in Lipno, referred to earlier in this document.
