Żydowska Warszawa

GREAT RESETTLEMENT ACTION

Umschlagplatz, Stawki St. - 22 July 1942 – 24 September 1942 – referred to as the Great Liquidation Action - transfer of people from the ghetto to the gas chambers of Treblinka.

"There was a crowd of people with bundles and backpacks on the square. Everyone hoped against all hope that there would be no death awaiting them at the end of their journey and that they would need some of their belongings. This is why they took clothes, shoes, towels, soap, spoons, and other necessities with them. However, the square was so crowded that holding on to your luggage of 6-7 kilograms was impossible. People would just throw their backpacks away. (…) Instinct was telling them to flee from that cramped and smelly square. Their feet got stuck in faeces and dirt. As they waited for the railway cars to come, they would relieve themselves on the spot, as they stood - there was no way they could get through the crowd anyway. To get away from there, regardless of the cost, was just a forlorn dream. There was barbed wire everywhere, as well as German guards with machine guns, ready to shoot people. (…)” 

Author N.N, (AŻiHp, 21)

On 22 July, the Nazis started transporting people from the ghetto to the death camp in Treblinka. This was done as part of an operation codenamed Reinhard which, according to arrangements made beforehand with RSHA (Reich Main Security Office), assumed physical extermination of Jews. The relocation of people was carried out by SS and auxiliary troops consisting of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Latvian people. An important and negative part in the deportation of people from the ghetto in summer 1942 was played by the Jewish Ghetto Police whose operating commander was Jakub Lejkin. This organisation, which directly carried out German orders, was commonly hated throughout the ghetto. In the end, most Jewish members of that organisation shared the same fate as other Jews from the ghetto. Initially, the Germans claimed that they did not intend to deport all Jews. According to German orders, Jews employed in ghetto workshops manufacturing goods for the Wehrmacht were not to be transported "eastwards." The handling square on Stawki St, referred to as Umschlagplatz and earlier used for trading goods between the ghetto and the "Aryans," became a symbol of the extermination of Jews. 

At night, the walls of the ghetto were encircled by special German Blue Police units and auxiliary units: Lithuanian, Latvian, and Ukrainian. German officers sent the following message to Adam Czerniaków, the head of the Judenrat. "Transportation of Jews from Warsaw begins as of today. You are, after all, well aware that there are too many Jews here." Every person to be resettled was to take provisions for three days with them and up to 15 kg of hand luggage - except for valuable objects, such as gold, jewellery, or money, which would be confiscated. People believed that only those incapable of work would be deported - i.e. around 60 thousand of Jews - and that the rest would be left where they were.

People living in refugee centres, young people from the boarding house at 3 Dzika St, some inmates of the jail on Gęsia St, and street beggars were the first to be deported.

6250 people were transferred.

In the evening, Adam Czerniaków was summoned by the Germans to the offices of the Judenrat where he received new orders regarding relocation. He did not sign the documents but instead committed suicide by taking cyanide after the Germans left. 

Individual houses were locked down. People living in them were taken out onto the streets and ordered into groups of four or six - SS soldiers carried out a selection. To the left - freedom, to the right - Umschlagplatz. 

7200 people were transferred.

Poles who worked in the ghetto, at offices and companies, were no longer allowed to enter it.

7400 people were transported.

7350 people were transported.

6400 people were transported.

6320 people were transported. 

Representatives of youth organisations - Dror, Ha-Szomer, ha-Cair, and Akiba - met at the Dror kibbutz at 34 Dzielna St. The decision to create a Jewish Combat Organisation (ŻOB) was taken. Arie Wilner (nickname "Jurek") got to the "Aryan side" to contact the Polish underground.

5020 people were transported.

Posters encouraging people to appear at Umschlagplatz voluntarily appeared in the ghetto. Every person who appeared there by 31 July (that deadline was then extended to 4 August) was to receive 3 kg of bread and 1 kg of marmalade. People in the ghetto still did not believe that everyone transported away was to be killed. 

5480 people were transported.

6430 people were transported, including 1500 volunteers.

6756 people were transported, including 750 volunteers.

The Bund sent Załmen Frydrych (nicknamed "Zygmunt") to follow the people deported from the ghetto.

"Zygmunt" followed one of the transports of people. He reached Sokołów where, according to what local railway workers told him, the railway line forked, one of its sidings leading to Treblinka. One cargo train from Warsaw would go along that route every day, full of people, and return empty. No food was transported that same way. Civilian access to the Treblinka station was forbidden. (…) The next day, "Zygmunt" met two naked Jews who had managed to escape from Treblinka in the market in Sokołów. They described the ordeal to him in detail."

Marek Edelman, in: Rudi Asuntino, Włodek Goldkorn, Strażnik. Marek Edelman opowiada [The Guard. The Story of Marek Edelman], translated by: Ireneusz Kania, Kraków 1999, p. 205 

"Poles have a duty to help the persecuted Jews. Only fools and bastards fail to realise that Poles would be deported East right after the resettlement of Jews is over and only they can cheer at and support this action. Polish and Jewish people have to act together to make the hideous plans of our executioners fall through," wrote Trybunał Wolności, a Warsaw underground gazette, a part of PPR. 

Front for the Rebirth of Poland (FOP), in its turn, printed and distributed the "Protest" leaflet, designed by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. "Those who are silent in the face of murder, become accomplices to the crime."

6220 people were transferred.

6276 people were transported.

Jewish conspirators from the Oneg Szabat group buried ten metal boxes in the basement of the school at 68 Nowolipki St. containing the first part of the Ringelblum Archive - an account of life in the largest enclosed Jewish district in all of Europe under occupation. 

6458 people were transported, including around 3 thousand volunteers.

People in the ghetto began to realise the real purpose of their resettlement.

6568 people were transported.

Residents of the Janusz Korczak Orphan House and other orphanages in the ghetto were transported away.

A total of 6623 people were transported.

10 085 people were transported.

10 672 people were transported.

7304 people were transported.

The offices of the Judenrat are transferred from 26/28 Grzybowska St. to 19 Zamenhofa St. The council was to reduce the number of its employees by 50% and provide, by 12:00 pm the next day, 7 thousand people from among its employees and their families for resettlement.

All Jews living in the small ghetto - south of Chłodna St. - were to leave their apartments by 6:00 pm on 10 August. Only employees of the Walther C. Tobbens and Wilhelm Doring shops (workshops manufacturing goods to meet the needs of the Germans) were to remain there. 

6292 people were transported. 

Dawid Nowodworski, a member of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair, managed to escape from Treblinka and return to the ghetto. He told the story of what he saw there and his account confirms earlier speculations about the genocide of Jews transported east.

2158 people were transported.

7725 people were transported.

4688 people were transported.

4313 people were transported.

5168 people were transported.

Jews who lived on these streets were ordered to move out of their homes: Nowolipki, Nowolipie, Dzielna, Smocza, Pawia, Więzienna, Lubeckiego, Gęsia, Okopowa, Gliniana, Zamenhofa, Nalewki, Wałowa, Franciszkańska, Mylna, Leszno – employees of shops that produced goods for the Germans were to be accommodated there.

Trams no longer operate in the ghetto.

4095 people were transported.

4095 people were transported.

4168 people were transported.

3976 people were transported.

The action was suspended. The Germans were transporting Jews away from towns near Warsaw, including Otwock, Miedzeszyn, Falenica and Mińsk Mazowiecki.

The action was suspended. The Germans were transporting Jews away from towns near Warsaw, including Otwock, Miedzeszyn, Falenica and Mińsk Mazowiecki.

The Informational Bulletin of the ghetto underground reported: "We have determined that people are exterminated in a gas chamber at the Treblinka camp. A special dredger continuously digs shallow ditches into which the bodies of the murdered people are thrown." 

The action was suspended. The Germans were transporting Jews away from towns near Warsaw, including Otwock, Miedzeszyn, Falenica and Mińsk Mazowiecki.

German megaphones in the ghetto, referred to as "barkers," for communicating announcements of the Nazi authorities to the people were turned off.

The Germans returned to the ghetto. The Informational Bulletin: "Jews are transported away by rail daily. Panic also spreads among Jews who are quartered in shop’s barracks - it is expected that also those working for the Germans will be taken away. There are rumours in the ghetto that only several thousand Jews are to remain in Warsaw, the ones employed in those shops which are the most important to the Germans." 

3002 people were transported.

Around 3000 people were transported.

2454 people were transported.

The action is suspended. 

4609 people were transported.

1669 people were transported. 

An announcement was published, requesting that all Jews who lived on the following streets in the big ghetto: Smocza, Gęsia, Zamenhofa, Szczęśliwa, and Parysowski Square appear for registration purposes by 10 am on 6 September. They were allowed to take food for two days with them and drinking cups. People were forbidden to lock their apartments. Everyone who failed to comply with the regulation and remained in the ghetto would be shot.

Employment limits were introduced for companies in the ghetto - they received cards or metal number plates allowing their holders to remain in the ghetto. 32 thousand such "numbers of life" were distributed. The remaining inhabitants of the ghetto, the "unproductive" ones, were to be transported away.

Resettlement applied to sick people from hospitals and the medical personnel. Adina Blady-Szwajger, a doctor from the Bersohn and Baumanów Children's Hospital, injected children with morphine so that they could die in their beds. 

54 269 people were transported away, 2648 people were shot, 60 people committed suicide, 339 people died.

Some people chose to remain in the big ghetto, in hiding.

No more round-ups, daily transports of people were no longer organised. Umschlagplatz became a gathering place for people the Germans caught in the streets of the ghetto or on the other side of the wall. Some of the people were transported to Treblinka, others were released at the beginning of October.

Polish underground press published an announcement by the Directorate of Civil Resistance: "In addition to the tragedy which the Polish society has had to go through, decimated by the enemy, the monstrous systematic extermination of Jews has been taking place in our country for almost a year now. This mass murder is unprecedented as far as the world's history is concerned and all past atrocities seem pale when compared to it. (…) Incapable of actively countering this, the Directorate of Civil Resistance wishes, on behalf of all people of Poland, to express its objection and protest against such crime against Jews. All Polish social and political organisations and groups are together in this protest." 

Yom Kippur

2196 people were transported. 

SS-Untersturmfuhrer Karl Brandt notified the Judenrat that the resettlement action regarding the Warsaw ghetto had been completed.