They Didn't Cooperate

By Steve Rodan

The German success in the Final Solution was based on cooperation and deception. The German military, followed by the SS, would roll into a town and demand the Jews. Their pitch was the same: Cooperate and we will be fair; resist and we will kill you all.

Most Jewish communities, whether in Poland or the Soviet Union, chose cooperation. That led to the rapid decimation of the Jews. The collaborators were the last to go.

But there were some Jewish communities that resisted. They didn't have guns or firebombs. They were equipped with only one word -- "no." Lomza was such a community.

Lomza is located in northeast Poland about 150 kilometers from Warsaw. The city has a rebellious tradition, rising up against the Russian czar in 1863, who responded with mass executions. During World War I, Lomza was occupied by the Germans who opened fire on Polish fighters. In 1920, the Polish Army expelled the new Soviet Army from the city.

Wehrmacht brutality

History has a way of repeating itself. In 1939, Hitler's Germany invaded Poland and captured Lomza. The brutality of the Wehrmacht against the city's 9,000 Jews could not be exaggerated. The Jews were bombed and strafed from the air. The Germans rounded up all of the Jewish men on the streets, took them to the forest and held a mock execution, all the while shouting Polnische Schweine! Dreckige Juden. For entertainment, they torched a synagogue and packed hundreds of Jews into the local German church to starve. In all, about 1,500 Jews were killed. [1]

After nearly four weeks, it was the Russians' turn. The Germans left Lomza under the agreement to partition Poland, and the Red Army, followed by the secret police, arrived. The communists arrested nearly everybody, including party member. The exceptions were the fascist collaborators. Religion was outlawed and the young were forced to sing praises of Stalin.

The Soviet occupation didn't last long. In late June 1941, the German launched Operation Barbarossa and captured Poland and much of the Soviet Union. The SS and Gestapo returned. This time, there was no entertainment. The mission was genocide.

On the first day of the invasion, June 22, the Germans began the round-up of the Jews. They took away 100 people deemed prominent, including rabbis, businessmen, academics and lay leaders They were executed in the forest some 13 kilometers outside the city. By mid-August, the SS erected a ghetto and appointed a Judenrat, or a leadership meant to carry out German orders. The 24-member Judenrat was supported by a so-called Jewish police force.

In one day, up to 18,000 Jews from the Lomza region were packed into an area of two city streets. The usual occupancy was six families to one room. The Germans also demanded ransoms in gold.

First, the intelligentsia

At first, the Germans took away our intelligentsia, and then our able-bodied men, to labor on German farms. At first, people received letters from their loved ones, assuring them that everything was find, that they had more food than we had in the ghettos. [2]

The Jews never returned to their families in Lomza. And now, the Judenrat began to ask questions: Where were those conscripted? The Germans kept demanding more people.

Meanwhile, there were reports of mass killings. From July 4-9, some 2,000 Jews were killed during a visit by Hermann Goering, regarded as Hitler's chief deputy. In September, around the fast day of Yom Kippur, more than 2,000 men were shot dead in the forests of Gielczyn and Slawiec. The victims were yeshiva students, the unemployed and the elderly -- deemed "non-useful." Many Poles eagerly assisted. [3]

Eventually, a confrontation erupted between the Judenrat and the Gestapo. The Gestapo demanded 100 men for so-called labor duties. The Judenrat wanted to know what happened to the conscription of 50 men several days earlier. The Germans had assured the ghetto leadership that the contingent would spend only one or two days before returning.

The Gestapo commander was furious. He wanted more Jews now. The Judenrat said he would be given the 100 once the laborers came back to their families in Lomza.

Ultimate threat

Then came the ultimate threat. Unless the Gestapo was supplied with 100 Jews within an hour, the Judenrat would be shot. Here is how a survivor recalled the showdown to his friend Chaim Shapiro.

Not a single Jew was furnished to the Germans, my dear Chaim. You should have seen the courage of the ghetto committee; proudly, with their heads held high, they marched off to their execution! [4]

Without Jewish collaboration, the Germans were forced to do the dirty work themselves. They grabbed Jews in the streets and homes of the ghetto. Some escaped to the forest and were captured with the help of the Poles. By the end of the war, there were perhaps 32 survivors from Lomza, some of them given refuge by Catholic families despite the enmity of their church. [5]

Today, there is scant trace of a Jewish presence in Lomza. The Jewish cemetery can still be seen. In 1997, a Torah scroll was discovered while bulldozers were demolishing a home in the city. It was bought and sent to the United States by Gerald Bender, whose father came from Lomza.

In one of his last letters to Shapiro, his friend, identified only as Yakob, recalled the zeal of the Jews to survive. They knew that nearly all of them would be killed by the German extermination machine, but they were intent that somebody stay alive to tell the story.

We had to remain alive in order to be able to tell, to testify, to assure the continuity of our people. Suicide was rare. Life was miserable, useless, aimless, futile -- but especially in a time like this, no Jew could desert his family, his people, by taking the easy way out and committing suicide. [6]

Notes

1. Go, My Son. Chaim Shapiro. Pages 11-14. Feldheim. Jerusalem, 1989. Also, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume I. Christopher R. Browning. Martin Dean, Geoffrey P. Megargee. Page 918. Indiana University Press. 2012

2. Go, My Son. Chaim Shapiro. Pages 496-497

3. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Page 859.

4. Go, My Son. Chaim Shapiro. Page 497

5. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Page 919.

6. Go, My Son. Chaim Shapiro. Page 499

Below: A street in the Jewish quarter of Lomza before World War II. [Radzilow.com]