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Goldie Szachter Kalib was the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family in Bodzentyn. After an idyllic early childhood, the German occupation of Poland turned her world upside down, as she was first sheltered from the full force of the Holocaust by Christian families, and then sent with her family to a labour camp, at the age of 13.
The tradition of Yom Kippur
“Yom Kippur, the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar, marked the climax of the High Holiday season. Jewish tradition holds that the fate of each individual, inscribed in heaven on Rosh Hashana, becomes finalized and sealed on Yom Kippur. Thus on the Yom Kippur Eve, crowds of Jews would be seen in Zwirki Plaza, piously wishing one another a heavenly verdict of good fortune for the coming year. The atmosphere was charged with the seriousness of the occasion.”
The beginning of the occupation
“There was a Jew I Bodzentyn who used to commemorate the anniversary of the death of his parents by visiting their grave at the Jewish Cemetery down Kielce Street and by reciting the memorial prayer there. One day, a she was standing in front of the tombstone intoning his prayer, the German gendarmerie happened to pass by the cemetery on its way into Bodzentyn. Apparently, a German caught sight of this Jew in the cemetery, and the head of the gendarmerie, Herr Dumker, halted the advancing group. The Jew was probably questioned and then ordered to go along with the Germans to a lot adjoining the property of the synagogue. There, Herr Dumker was seen taking out a revolver and shooting the guiltless Jew in cold blood. He photographed his slain victim before ordering him buried in this lot.”
Jakub Bromberg spent his childhood in Bodzentyn. In this village his father was born in 1882, on 18th November, Josek Chaim Bromberg. He was an educated man that could write in Russian, Polish, Yiddish and read Hebrew. He took part in the social work and had stamps for himself: “President of the Fire Brigade” and “President of the Tenants’ Association”. In 1933 the entire family left for Lodz, but in 1940 Josek Chaim Bromberg and the brothers of Jakub, as well as his sister-in-law with her baby all moved back. Jakub himself headed for Warsaw.
The testimony of Henry Krystal
During the Second World War Henry and his mother lived in Bodzentyn (her maiden name was Deborah Grossman). From 1942 until the end of the war, Henry was a member of a labour commando sent from place to place, including Starachowice, Bobrek, Birkenau, Siemensstadt and Sachsenhausen. He worked in a factory operated by the Siemens Company. At the end of the war he was in the city of Schwerin, in the British occupied zone of Germany. In 1947 Henry immigrated to Detroit, Michigan where he lived with an aunt and uncle, went to school and became a psychiatrist. You may listen to him and/or read the transcribed interview that was performed in 1996.
“It was not a ghetto [in Bodzentyn], but it was a Judenrat and, they treated the whole area as a kind of a Jewish ghetto, but not, not walled in.
[…]
The area was apparently under the jurisdiction of some Feldgendarmerie, like supposedly the equivalent of military police. But they would come, at least once a week when there was a marketplace and the farmers would come in and bring, bring things, sell things and buy things. And they started increasingly to kill people and sometimes at random, sometimes at the flimsiest excuse, like if you were running […] or they started beating you and they would just do it until they killed you. And also they started taking people to various work camps and various work projects. And also the Judenrat then got organized and they were trying increasingly to develop local work places so that the people wouldn’t be sent away. And so they worked whatever they could figure out, various assignments on the roads and maintenance and things like that. So there was increasing pressure for slave labour and for control and diminished food. And then they sent in a transport of Jews from the city of Plock, P.L.O.C.K um, which was in northwest Poland. And that means that the local Jews had to take them in, into their own homes. And we got especially squeezed with that apartment up there […] there were three rooms and we were evicted from the large room into a smaller room which had a little kitchen and the other people were going through it.
[…]
We, we had heard some things and some, actually people went there and some came back and other rumours were going around about uh, being sent ‘East’. That was kind of a mysterious word. If you were sent East, you don’t come back.
[…]
[The day the Germans liquidated the Ghetto] they requested the farmers, the peasants to provide horse and buggies.”
Dawid Rubinowicz
The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz; entry for 1 June 1942
“This morning two Jewish women, a mother and a daughter, had gone out into the country. Unfortunately the Germans were driving from Rudki to Bodzentyn to fetch potatoes and ran across them. When the two women caught sight of the Germans they began to flee, but were overtaken and arrested. They intended shooting them on the spot in the village, but the mayor wouldn’t allow it. They then went into the woods and shot them there. The Jewish police immediately went there to bury them in the cemetery. When the cart returned it was full of blood.”
The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz is known to be one of the most touching testimonies of the fate of Jewish children during the Holocaust. Writing down his thoughts and observations in short and direct notes in his school book, 12 year old Dawid Rubinowicz gives an insight of the fears for the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
Attention! The original text of the Diary is missing since 1968. Anyone who may contribute to its finding should get in contact with Bodzentyn.net.
On the cover of the 5th notebook there is a seal that says: “D. Rubinowicz Bodzentyn Kielecka Street Number 13”. This is the new address of the family, after the displacement into the ghetto of Bodzentyn.
The Diary was found and saved in 1957 by Helen and Artemiusz Wołczyk
Artemiusz Wołczyk was born in 1910. “[Artemiusz] was a real chronicler of Bodzentyn; a live encyclopaedia and a bank of knowledge on the history of Bodzentyn and the Swietokrzyskie region.” Many of his works may be found in Polish.
Artemiusz Wołczyk not only gathered important documents of historical value in Bodzentyn; before handing it all over to the archives in Kielce he
summarized his findings. Thus even today his work may tell the exciting story, including some very rare details, about the Jewish Community of
Bodzentyn.
In 1980 Konrad Weiss directed a documentary based on the Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz:
Dawids Tagebuch. Dokumentarfilm (Buch: Walther Petri und Konrad Weiß, Kamera: Michael Lösche, Regie: Konrad Weiss). DEFA Studio für Dokumentarfilm, Berlin 1980.
The diary of Dawid was added in the project I'm Still Here: Real Diaries of Young People who Lived During the Holocaust. Documentation (Buch: Alexandra Zapruder, Regie: Lauren Lazin). MTV News & Documentaries, New York 2005.
Exhibition and play set in Bodzentyn
Krystyna Nowakowska is the president of the Odnowica Association. She initiated the first local project concerning The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz in
the summer of 2007. The project was carried out by children who attended different workshops. In one of them they were taught how to write
Hebrew letters. Also the children got involved in the restoration of the Jewish Cemetery.
After having read the Diary of Dawid carefully the children were set to arrange scenes inspired by the text. Then they took photos with a camera
obscura. The photos were eventually worked on to look old; as if they were taken in the time of Dawid. Some of them were put on posters and
organised as an exhibition in Bodzentyn Secondary school; and a local historian, Stefan Rachtan, made a speech about Dawid and the history of the
Jews in the little town.
The project, called “Diary”, was carried out in accordance with the Program for tolerance of the Stefan Batory Foundation. Krystyna Nowakowska was also directing the process to set up a play based on The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. It was performed for the
first time on 28 September 2008, as part of the first official commemoration of the lost Jewish Community.
The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz: In 1957, a local historian, Artemiusz Wołczyk and his wife Helen discovered five faded copy-books, a diary that 13 year old Dawid Rubinowicz began writing 21 March 1940. This film provides an introduction to the Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz.
English
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Towarzystwo Dawida Rubinowicza
