[Testimonies given in Vilnius by Jewish refugees from German occupied Poland]

[Testimonies given in Vilnius by Jewish refugees from German occupied Poland] 

[Testimonies given in Vilnius by Jewish refugees from German occupied Poland] 

1 electronic resource (20 pages) 

Testimony of Chaim Leib D., 21 year old weaver from Pabianice. He describes leaving Pabianice for Warsaw at the beginning of the war with most ale-bodied men, leaving behind only the weak and elderly. In Warsaw he was involved in the civilian effort against the German invasion in building barricades in the streets. He describes the deprivation and lack of products and supplies during the later days of the way, and the expulsion of refugees from Warsaw by edict. Returning to Pabianice he encountered severe antagonism from the Polish population, who refused to sell him food even for money, and had to hide the fact that he is a Jew. After the German occupation he was taken to a camp together with much of the civilian and military population for fear of sabotage, where he describes starvation and executions of anyone the Germans suspected. There was discrimination and displays of antisemitism in the camp, both from Germans and Poles; the Jews were required to do labor and were not freed even when the Poles were. Food deprivation was severe. The author escaped on Yom Kippur and returned to Pabianice, where he describes confiscation of Jewish property with the aid of local German civilians. He describes the requirement to wear a yellow patch and the establishment of a ghetto. Protocol No. 79 is an extract from a volume of protocols /statements provided by a group of Polish-Jewish refugee writers and journalists who fled to Vilnius, Lithuania. In 1939 they formed a committee to collect evidence on the condition of the Jews in Poland under Nazi occupation.