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Introduction
A different atmosphere
Discriminating decrees
Confined in a ghetto
Men fit for work used as slave labourers
No way to make a livelihood
 

Introduction

The Jewish population of Bodzentyn may be accounted for by viewing its growth and declines on the basis of archival documents, beginning in 1820. However, even before that time Jews had begun to settle in Bodzentyn, some already in 1797.
 
It is obvious that the Jewish population from that time increased considerably faster, than did the Polish Christian population. In 1820 they were approximately 50 people, and some forty years later they were 170, an equivalent of 15 percent of the total population.
 
As the Jewish population continued to grow some of their fellow Polish Christian citizens would protest and remind the Mayor of the former non-tolerance of Jews as part of the Episcopal privilege of Bodzentyn. Also the Mayor was reminded of the ban on acquisition of property for Jews. Possibly some of the local people’s protests grew out of the new situation of competition in business.
 
However, as time passed by the local Polish Christian people of Bodzentyn begun to appreciate the skills that their fellow Jewish townsmen had to offer. Some would even protest at the idea that Jews should be forced to leave:
 
In 1824 the magistrate Kajetan Pawtowski pleaded that Mordka Weingold, a resident in his house, should not be expelled from Bodzentyn, for the simple reason that he needed his assistance. And people shared the opinion that neither the hairdresser, Abraham Fryzeman, nor the tanner, Chaim Grinszpanholtz, were to be evicted.
 
Also in the years to come the Polish-Jewish relation of Bodzentyn shifted; at some times it seems to have been balanced, and yet on other occasions some Poles would express their negative attitudes towards the Jewish population openly and even engage in anti-Semitic actions.
 
(The text above refers to some passages, in translation from the Polish language, on pages 130-131 in the work by the local historian, Artemiusz Wolczyk: Bodzentyn jako miasto i osada, 2007.)
 

A different atmosphere

The history of European and Polish anti-Semitism cannot be told in a few words; you may want to consult various sources:
 
“Jewish attitudes regarding Poles and Poles regarding Jews have been shaped by a complex and long history. Many Holocaust survivors have negative attitudes toward the Poles based on their experiences in the 1930's and 1940's.”
 
You may also want to consult the work by Emmanuel Ringelblum on Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War.
 
Most historians would agree that from the mid thirties, that is after the death of Joseph Pilsudski the activities of Polish anti-Semitic propaganda intensified. There were barriers introduced to ritual slaughter, as well as restrictions of Jews’ access to education and certain professions. Nationalistic factions agitated for economic boycotts to persuade all the country’s Jews to emigrate. Activists would take up posts outside Jewish shops and stalls, attempting to prevent Poles from patronizing them. Such campaigns were often combined with damage and looting of shops and beatings. There were also pogroms; the most well know is perhaps the one in Przytyk that took place in 1936.
 
As a direct result of increased nationalism and the escalating anti-Semitism in the 1930s, it was common to find Jews ridiculed publicly. In his diary Dawid Rubinowicz describes such an event in Krajno, not far from Bodzentyn:
 
”12 February. After breakfast we went out to shovel snow, even though no one had ordered us to, but the highway had got covered with snow during the night I recognized the village constable and asked him where he was going. He said he was going to the mayor with notices. About two hours later the village constable came up and began putting up a notice. It wasn’t a notice but a caricature of the Jews […]:
 
Dear reader, before your very eyes,
Are Jews deceiving you with lies,
If you buy your milk from them, beware,
Dirty water they’ve poured in there.
Into the mincer dead rats they throw,
Then as mincemeat it’s put on show.
Worms infest their home-made bread,
Because the dough with feet they tread.
 
When the village constable had put it up, some people came along, and their laughter gave me a headache from the shame that the Jews suffer nowadays. God give that this shame may soon cease.”
 
(The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz, pages 42-43.)
 

Discriminating decrees

Poland became a target for the Nazi regime in the autumn of 1939. From the beginning of the occupation, the German authorities issued all kinds of decrees discriminating against the civilian population, in particular the Jews. For one, in October 1939 Jews in Polish territories occupied by the Germans were ordered to wear a Star of David when in public, either as a white armband with a blue, six-pointed Jewish star, or in the shape of a yellow star to be sewn on their outer garment. Not wearing this was punishable – initially with a beating, later with a fine or imprisonment, and from 15th October 1941 with the death penalty. Also ritual slaughter was forbidden, as was Jewish public worship, Jewish children were not permitted in public schools, and their families were not allowed to own radios.
 

German policemen are making inquiries at a market in Poland, May 1941. The woman is wearing a Star of David on her arm, such a one that all Jews were forced to have on their clothes in Nazi-occupied territories. (Note that this photo was taken in Poland but not in Bodzentyn.) © Yad Vashem www.yadvashem.org
 

Confined in a ghetto

The first ghetto in Poland was formed in the autumn of 1939. In the beginning of 1942 there were hundreds of them to bee seen all over Poland and Eastern Europe. Not only did the Germans bring Jews to these ghettos from the immediate surroundings, Jews were also brought by way of deportation from other places, even Germany and Austria. This was the case also in Bodzentyn. In the fall of 1940 the Jewish Community, consisting of approximately 300 families, were faced with the responsibility to absorb a great number of impoverished Jews from the city of Płock. In the spring of 1941 all of them were confined in the ghetto of Bodzentyn with strict orders not to make any move in or out of the village.
 
Some of the Jews from Płock (now confined in the ghetto of Bodzentyn) wrote letters to their dear ones:
 
"...My family and I were assigned to Bodzentyn. In Bodzentyn the conditions were horrible. Our family, with two other families, twelve people altogether were living in an empty little store. Children were swollen from hunger and cold, and an epidernic broke out...
"...Our people died en masse from cold, hunger, and typhoid. Whole families were dying in a single day. […]
 
"...After some time I again started to smuggle merchandise to Bodzentyn. In the little town I could not recognize our people. They were transformed into skeletons. All of them were in rags; they had open sores and they were all begging. Thus appeared our compatriots before the end ..."
 

Men fit for work used as slave labourers

As in other places the Nazis ordered the Jewish Council (Judenrat in German) in Bodzentyn to produce a group of Jewish males fit for work and present them on a given day. The council was an administrative body, formed in each ghetto by order from the Germans.
 

Jews were brought to perform slave labour all over Nazi-occupied Poland. In the nearby of the ghetto, further away from home and in special camps. (Note that this photo was taken in Poland but not in Bodzentyn.) © Yad Vashem www.yadvashem.org
 
No one knew were the slave laborers would be taken that particular day. At times the boys and men would go and perform different kinds of work in the nearby and then get back in the evening, other days they would be transported further away.
 
Below you will find a list of places where Jewish men and boys were brought to:

• Starachowice-Wierzbnik: People were brought here most probably in 1942, just at the time of or possibly slightly before the liquidation of the ghetto. Others sought refuge in the camps on their own in order to avoid the so called deportation. In October 1942, when the ghetto of Wierzbnik was liquidated, slave labourers were interned in the camps of Majowka and Stzrelnica, and forced to work at the ammunitions factory, the steel work and the saw mill, Tartak.
• Skarżysko Kamienna: Seemingly groups of men were brought here in stages. The slave labour camp was called Hasag.

 
In the year of 1942 it seemed to some to be more secure to be at work in one of the labour camps than to be brought “East” by way of deportation. Working cards could be bought, but at a costly price. One family who made it this way was the family of Goldie Szachter Kalib. It was achieved through her father’s boyhood friend, a native of Bodzentyn called Szlama Ejnesman (or in a different spelling: Shlomo Einesman). At that time Szlama was a boot maker and occupied in various jobs for the Nazis: They had taken over the munitions factory in Wierzbnik-Starachowice (Starachowice-Wierzbnik) and were keeping slave labourers in several camps.
 

No way to make a livelihood

At the time of WWII and during the breaking days of the Nazi occupation of Poland, the head of the Jewish Community in Bodzentyn was Nus’n Szachter (Nusym Szachter in a different spelling). However, shortly after the Nazis had overtaken Bodzentyn Mr Szachter felt himself incapable of coping with the impossible demands placed upon him by the Nazis. The Jewish Community then elected his son, Froyim Szachter. When Froyim was taken prisoner and subsequently murdered at Auschwitz, Shmiel Weintraub was made head of the Jewish Community, and remained as such through the time of the liquidation of Bodzentyn. (Samuel Wajntraub, in a different spelling, had been the secretary of the committee for some time).
 
The niece of Froyim Szachter, Goldie Szachter Kalib, describes the event in her book The Last Selection when a minor German official was set up in Bodzentyn. (It happened in the end of 1940. The commissar was in fact a Volksdeutsch, a German living in Poland.) Before long the Germans had confiscated the family’s mill and handed it over to the commissar.
 
The Germans would demand for gold and valuables. All Jews had to hand in their furs. Their property was confiscated. Basically no Jew had any way to earn a livelihood any more. They were squeezed in, constantly in danger of being punished if they would go places, living in fear of being caught doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and always at the risk of being selected to slave labour, or worse – shot dead in cold blood for no reason at all.