The town numbered 600 families, a total of 3,000 souls, and all were driven
out of town with blows from whips.
2 May 1941
[1] Our town was occupied two days before Rosh Hashanah.¹⁵⁸³ When they arrived,
more or less no one was maltreated. Most of our town had fled 8 days previously
to neighbouring shtetls and villages, so our Jewish population was smaller. Most
of our town’s Jewish residents came back to their homes for Rosh Hashanah.
On the first day of Rosh Hashanah the prayer houses were surrounded
and the private houses searched. All men aged 14 to 65 who were then in our
town, around 270 men, were taken. They sent them on trucks to Bydgoszcz,
where they kept them in barracks for two weeks in the most terrible conditions.
From Bydgoszcz they sent them on further, and to this day their poor
families do not know where their near and dear ones ended up. Despite great
efforts, no news has been obtained of any one of them.
Then an 18-year-old youth perished, shot in the street on his way from the
bakery with bread, for no known reason. After that, a series of house searches
began. They requisitioned the large warehouses and took all the merchandise.
The shops had to close. Then they searched people for money, treating women
in particular in a disgusting manner. Young people had to report for labour,
which the gmina regulated. Among those arrested in our town was the pharmacist,
a Zionist social activist who attended every Zionist congress and was,
all in all, one of our [2] most respected residents, the head of most of the philanthropic institutions, to which he himself was always the biggest donor.¹⁵⁸⁴ Sadly, we have no news of him to this day, and we do not know where he ended up.
On 8 November 1939 a written notice was received by 35 families, 107 people,
that on 9 November they must report with their families and with their luggage,
not more than 150 kilos per family, for evacuation to an unspecified
destination. Each person had to make a list of the moveable and immoveable
property he was leaving behind and leave the list with the mayor. All the families
reported at the appointed time outside the town hall, 107 persons in all
(among them women, small children, and old and sick people). For various
reasons they sent away only 70 and left the remaining 37 in the square. Where
1583 12 September 1939. In this document, part (a) it is 6 September.
1584 Adolf Riesenfeld, see above.
