The Jews who lived in the ghettos under the Nazi occupation
showed their independence by leading an organized clandestine life.
The teacher who taught the starving children was a free man.
The nurse who secretly cared for the wounded, the ill and the dying was a free woman. The rabbi who prayed,
The disciple who studied,
the father who gave his bread to his children
the children who risked their lives by leaving the ghetto at night
in order to bring back to their parents a piece of bread
or a few potatoes,
the man who consoled his orphaned friend,
the orphan who wept with a stranger for a stranger-
these were human beings filled with an unquenchable thirst for freedom and dignity.
The young people who dreamed of armed insurrection,
the lovers who, a moment before they were separate,
talked about their bright future together,
the insane who wrote poems,
the chroniclers who wrote down the day's events
by the light of their flickering candles-
all of them were free in the noblest sense of the word,
though their prison walls seemed impassable
and their executioners invincible...
Even in a climate of oppression,
men are capable of inventing their own freedom,
of creating their own ideal of sovereignty
What if they are a minority?
Even if only one free individual is left,
he is proof that the dictator is powerless against freedom.
But a free man is never alone; the dictator is alone.
The free man is the one who, even in prison,
gives to the other prisoners
the thirst for, their memory of,freedom.
-On the third day of our travels, we arrived in Krakow again, but this time we were in the Ghetto. Like other major cities, Krakow had a large Jewish community. The Jews in Krakow had a rough road of persecution against them. Here is a little time-line showing the actions taken by the Germans:
September 1939-Germans Occupy Krakow, name it capitol of the Generalgouvernment.
May 1940-Jews are expelled by Germans out of the city of Krakow to the country side.
March 1941- Germans order the establishment of the Ghetto in southern Krakow, rather than in Kazimierz. (Traditional quarter of the city.) 20,000 Jews in the Ghetto.
-1942-Germans establish Plaszow forced Labor Camp.
-1944-Plaszow becomes a Concentration camp.
A plaque on the Ghetto wall reads: "Here they lived, suffered and perished at the hands of Hitler's executioners. From here they began their final journey to the death camps."
-As we walked through the former ghetto, through the underground shopping malls, and up the escalators, we walked into the Pharmacy in the ghetto. Before the establishment of the Ghetto, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, A pole, owned a pharmacy called "Under the Eagle." Tadeusz had no problem entering the Ghetto for work daily. He had no problem allowing the Pharmacy to be a center for Jews and youth movement leaders to exchange information and plan uprisings.
-From the Pharmacists autobiography:
"The Krakow Jews perished without achieving a libertarian revolt on the scale of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but they died with dignity, honorably, and without debasing themselves before the enemy. With the exception of a small number of those who sod out to the enemy, all who worked in various capacities engaged in deliberate and effective sabotage. Everything possible was done to slow the tempo of the assignments, to fail to meet deadlines and, in the Ghetto, to remove valuable objects, destroy and burn them, so that they would not fall into the German hands..."
From HaChalutz Halochem:
"To those who were the closest to us, that in their name we went to battle. We turn towards the anonymous graves of the dearest of our friends, who died in combat with a bigger force.
We have always wanted to lead a life of freedom, but if it is determined that we shall die, our wish to die is to die as warrior, that our death will be a proud and honorable one. Our cause was never to win in arms; victory wasn't ours to begin with. We chose to defend our spirit, and our spirit has not been slayed by the enemy. Death is neither defeat no disgrace. And a force of violence that crushes down a handful of rebels is not a force that has won.
We have achieved our will. We held arms, cause we could not accept the thought that thousands of Jews, men, women, elder and children were being massacred. Because we did not want to be taken as sheep to slaughter. Because we did not want that when the day will come, history will tell that the Jews of Poland died a pathetic death, with not even a single sign of resistance. We lifted the banner of resistance. our breakthrough is a cry of great revisionism that no force will ever silence. they can capture us and kill us until the very last, but they will not silence the cry that will be heard beyond our graves. True, it would have been worthy of our cause to start this cry before, but even today despite the knowledge that death preys us, there is but only one way for a proud Jew. God forbid us from bearing our heads in the sand, waiting inactive for the end to come. Will we die? that is not our defeat, it is the disgrace of those who instead of taking part in our efforts gave a treacherous hand to the enemy, and they are to blame for the death of Jewish Warriors. To us- victory alone. To us- the respect of the Jewish nation, that we shall defend until the very end.
To every dead warrior, ten new ones will join our struggle. They shall stand and take arms. We are paving the way, but one day the reminisce of the Jewish people will stand ready!"
-August 1943, HaChalutz Halochem.
After our tour of the ghetto, and briefly discussing the uprising, it was time to experience current European life in Krakow. We walked down to the downtown area, and had a lovely lunch, as the lunch gang had its first hoorah. Here is an artsy picture I took of downtown Krakow, thats right,I'm artsy.
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