Summary
The first part of volume 13 contains nine documents from the Ringelblum Archive which describe the six-month detention of around 4,000 Jews in Fort II of the Modlin Fortress in Pomiechówek, a town just north of Warsaw, across the Vistula River. These documents, which comprise individual testimonies, minutes of interviews with prisoners, and a study based on interviews, were registered by Oneg Shabbat collaborators during their quarantine at Leszno Street 109 and at the shelter at Stawki Street 9 in the Warsaw Ghetto. The collection is supplemented by a list of people murdered or deceased in the camp.
From the information in these documents emerges a consistent picture of life in Pomiechówek, although there are differences that stem from individual experiences. Their gehenna began in the first week of July 1941, when in several places in Ciechanów district where there were large concentrations of Jewish people (namely, in Płońsk, Nowy Dwór, Nowe Miasto, Zakroczym) a document-checking operation was launched in order to eliminate people who were not permanently registered as living there. In many cases these were people who at the beginning of the war had fled south across the Vistula River to nearby Warsaw, and upon return to their homes were unable to produce the appropriate documents. The document-checking was accompanied by disinfection of clothing and flats, together with forced hours-long baths in the Vistula River (in Nowy Dwór), or by going through the so-called “gates” made up of club carrying Gestapo functionaries (e.g., in Zakroczym and Płońsk).
Those unregistered as residents were directed to the Fort in Pomiechówek. The first to be brought there were in a group of about 2,000 Jews from nearby Nowy Dwór on July 6. Another large party of around 1,200 was brought in from Płońsk on July 9. It is estimated that in this camp, also called a “ghetto” or “prison”, approxi-
