[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 (17 pages) 

Testimony of Moshe D., 55 year old, from Warsaw. He and all his family were in Brok for the High Holidays at the beginning of the war. Returning to Warsaw, they found much of the city destroyed by German bombardment. The author provides a detailed list of streets and areas destroyed, showing the massive scale of the damage and notes that human casualties numbered in the hundreds. He notes the prominence of Warsaw Jews in civilian relief efforts and defense effort, and their all-round contribution. After the Germans entered Warsaw, the author describes them providing food t the population by throwing it off trucks into the crowd, and filming the ensuing chaos. He also describes the collaboration of Polish residents of Warsaw with the Germans against the Jews, by pointing the Jews out to be arrested or recruited for conscript labor. He describes Jews held for conscript labor for days on end without food, beaten harshly, and shot. Due to the worsening conditions of Jews in Warsaw, the author decided to leave the city together with his nine children and some friends. The family fled to Sokolow after an arrest and arrived to find much of the city also destroyed by bombardment, and the Germans demanded from the city a contribution of eighty thousand gulden, and when the sun could not be produced arrested a rich member of the Jewish community and a relative of the author, and held him for ransom. When the sum still could not be produced, they confiscated merchandise and property. Protocol No. 108 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.