Dawid Rubinowicz

Introduction

Dawid Rubinowicz was born on 27 July 1927 in Kielce. He had two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. The reason for the Rubinowicz family’s moving from Kielce, where Dawid was born, to the rural setting of Krajno close to Bodzentyn is unknown. There may, however, be some indication in the old records of births and marriages of this small satellite farm village. More than a few Jewish families have lived there, including members of the extended Rubinowicz family. In Krajno, Dawid's father, Josek (Jósef) Rubinowicz, ran a small dairy farm.

Even during the war, and especially in the summer of 1940 and even 1941, Dawid describes everyday life in the rural setting of Krajno with great fondness. He gazes at the green fields from his window, goes to the woods, and picks morels (mushrooms), bilberries, etc. His depiction of the area is similar to that of survivors recalling their childhood in nearby Bodzentyn.

When people were interviewed after the war—at the time of the discovery of the Diary—they recalled that people liked the Rubinowicz family. Their honesty and kindness towards others were much appreciated in the neighbourhood. There was no medical assistant in the Krajno, and allegedly, Dawid's mother, Tauba Rubinowicz, had pain relief powder and iodine, which she offered to curate people in the surroundings.

In October 1939, all Jewish children were excluded from the Polish state school system. Twelve-year-old Dawid Rubinowicz continued to study, but seemingly on his own and at home, or so he writes on 12 August 1940, i.e. just before the first anniversary of the outbreak of war and only weeks before the beginning of a new term. Thinking about how he used to go to school, Dawid feels like bursting into tears. “Today, I must stay home and can’t go anywhere,” he exclaims.

Dawid began chronicling his experiences on 21 March 1940, more than half a year after the outbreak of the war. A notice posted on a storefront in Krajno caught his attention: Jews are no longer allowed to travel using vehicles. Some months later, Dawid recalls the suffering that people have already experienced and how much everyone has gone through in such a short time.

Dawid wrote in Polish, the language he was taught at the local school. He uses the Polish expression for the SS extermination squads, the żandarmerią, or Gendarmerie, the German term for the unit of Order Police stationed in his rural small town, distinguished from Schutzpolizei, which were urban units. He also refers to the Judenrat, the Jewish council. According to Dawid’s diary, Dawid’s father and other adults elected such a council on 5 August 1940. 

Still residing in Krajno on 12 December 1941, Dawid starts receiving alarming news about the terror of the Germans and fears of coming face to face with them. In the districts of the General Government, Jews were required to wear an armband with a Star of David on it. Dawid knew that moving illegally, he would need to take off this armband so as not to be quite so easily recognized as a Jewish fugitive. Walking to Bodzentyn on 12 March 1942, the day the family moves into the ghetto, Dawid writes: “I went without an armband on […] I was terribly frightened. Oh God, if anybody had met us, then… Thank God we arrived safely.”

The house at Kielce Street No. 13, where the Cislowski family lived and the Rubinowicz family stayed, no longer exists. It was located in the opening on the right-hand side of the street, next to the black and white house in the photomontage. Find the location on Google Maps

Excerpts from the diary 

Abrupt ending on 1 June 1942

On 8 May, Dawid Rubinowicz writes that he hid in the house of a Polish woman living close by, not to get caught in one of the numerous raids. There is thus at least one reference to a "Polish woman", who may be Mrs Wacińska—the mother of the neighbouring family. In interviews from 1960, one 32-year-old Mr Waciński is described as the person Dawid Rubinowicz probably refers to in his diary on 11 May, when he recounts that he spent almost the whole day at "one Polish boy's place" as he was afraid to stay at home.

In the article "Wyjście z Bodzentyna", Mrs Wacińska gives her version of the final days for the Jews in Bodzentyn: "When the day of their displacement was close, Dawidek came to us and brought a parcel with books and notebooks. He said: 'Mrs Wacińska, may you store it for me; when I come back, I will take it back.'"

In the parcel, Mrs Wacińska found Jewish religious books and five yellow exercise books with stamps: D. Rubinowicz, Bodzentyn, 13 Kielecka Street. According to the interviewee in the article, the Germans rounded up the Jews a few days later, and the Rubinowicz family came to say goodbye.

From Dawid Rubinowicz's diary and eyewitness accounts, we know that raids took place, and people were brought to the Hasag Skarżysko-Kamienna slave labour camp in June 1942. At that time, there were still some months left until the liquidation. As the diary ends abruptly with one final entry on 1 June 1942, leaving many questions unanswered, we cannot know what Dawid's last days were like.

When the ghetto's liquidation occurred,* the German gendarmerie motored into town, doors were banged on, and all Jewish men, women, and children were rushed to the lower market square. From there, the entire Jewish community was taken to Suchedniów and loaded on trains to the extermination camp at Treblinka.

*Read more about the date below in the source section.

The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (6 May 1942)

Discovery of the diary