On 21 December, 1939, Chaim-Leyb D. was interviewed by the “Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939” in Vilnius, Lithuania. He was 21 years old and came from Pabianice, a suburb of Łódź, where he worked as a loom mechanic. After the German attack on Poland, almost the whole population of Pabianice fled to Warsaw on foot, among them Chaim-Leyb D. He then decided to go back to his home town, where he encountered the brutal antisemitic German occupation regime. He fled eastbound until he reached Vilnius. Altogether, he traveled over 5.000 kilometers, mostly on foot. His further fate is unknown. The record of his full interview is to be found in the We Refugees Archive.
Excerpts from:
Wiener Library Document Section 532, Series 1, frames 0013–0033
Translation:
Miriam Schulz
Voice:
Tal Hever-Chybowski
Script:
Kristof Gerega (Schuldenberg Films)
Miriam Schulz
Direction:
Kristof Gerega (Schuldenberg Films)
Camera:
Anton Yaremchuck
Cut:
Kristof Gerega
Production:
Schuldenberg Films
Shortly after the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, it was decided within the first week of the war that the Polish government was to be withdrawn eastbound as Warsaw was threatened. The Polish press, among them representatives of the Jewish Polish press, was to be rescued as part of the evacuation plans.
On 8 February, 1940, Pese R. entered the office of the "Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939" in Vilnius, Lithuania in order to give an interview. She was one of many Polish Jewish refugees who had found shelter in Vilnius.
Among the more than 10,000 Jews who were stranded in Vilnius in the fall of 1939 there was the librarian and political activist Herman Kruk from Warsaw. His exceptional diary records and press reports sketch a mosaic of the heterogenous society of refugees in Vilnius since the beginning of the war.
Polish-Jewish refugee journalists and writers having dinner in their dormitory in Sadowa Street 9, 1939/40.
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Photo series by Bolesława and Edmund Zdanowscy
Herman Kruk was a refugee from Warsaw who wrote reports on the refugee situation in Vilnius for the Yiddish magazine Folks-gezunt (Public Health) of…
This list documents a selection of names, “nationalities”, arrival dates and places of origin of refugees who arrived in Vilnius in 1939.
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, just a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
Herman Kruk writes about his pain facing the catastrophic war situation in his chosen hometown Warsaw.