And We Are Not Saved

By David Wdowinski

Succinctly and powerfully recounts the experiences of the author, a founding member of the Jewish Military Union, and important witness during the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. (EJ 2007) “Because the author was a leader of a major Jewish political party in Poland he is able to give us an understanding of the historical and social conditions that preceded the holocaust and gave it its impetus. Because he is a trained psychiatrist, we get illuminating insights into the behavior of the individuals and the masses, both heroic and inhumanly brutal, that determined the tragic destiny of the Jews throughout Europe.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786254917

David Wdowinski

David Wdowinski was born in 1895 in Będzin, Poland. He was a psychiatrist and in the Second Polish Republic until the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. After the invasion, Wdowinski became a political leader of the Jewish resistance organization called Żydowski Związek Wojskowy (Jewish Military Union, ŻZW) active before and during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

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Text originally published in 1926 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

AND WE ARE NOT SAVED

By

DAVID WDOWINSKI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 6

PREFACE 7

IN THE BEGINNING… 9

CHAPTER I 9

GERMAN OCCUPATION— PRE-GHETTO PERIOD 23

CHAPTER II 23

THE GHETTO 30

CHAPTER III 30

CHAPTER IV 40

CHAPTER V 46

CHAPTER VI 55

THE UPRISING 63

CHAPTER VII 63

THE HARVEST IS PAST 68

CHAPTER VIII 68

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR 81

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 82

DEDICATION

To the memory of my mother, Miriam Bayle, my teacher, Menahem Mendel Szpiro,

and

to the unknown Jewish child, who symbolize for me the martyrdom of the Jewish people.

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended

And we are not saved."

Jeremiah 8:20

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I wish to express my appreciation and gratitude to Ruth Levine for her help and advice, but above all for her encouragement in the preparation and writing of this book.

PREFACE

This brief account of my life in the Warsaw Ghetto is an extract from a larger, more definitive study of the socio-psychological forces prevalent in Jewish life during two thousand years of the diaspora. It will attempt to throw, some light on the causes and effects of the behavior of the Jewish masses, their leaders and their persecutors, which culminated in the holocaust of our generation. This book is now in preparation.

I feel compelled to voice my thoughts on these subjects now, because large books have a way of taking too long a time to get done. We are on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto. For twenty years, under varying circumstances of physical hardship and mental duress and periods of relative calm, I have pondered upon the whys and the wherefores of the calamity that befell us. Any crisis or catastrophe in the life of an individual or a people, helps to bring into sharp relief the good and the had inherent in them. Impulses and even patterns of behavior that may be submerged under more normal circumstances, cannot be controlled so easily when one is faced with unforseen danger, when one must make quick decisions that may mean life or death. Such decisions and such behavior on the part of individuals and large segments of the population were brought into sharp focus during the period called Warsaw Ghetto. Some deeds were shameful. Those that had their roots in historical conditioning I have pointed out even in this short book, So that we may examine them, and bring sociological and psychological knowledge to them and seek remedies to ameliorate them in our time, and eradicate them from the future life of our people. There were noble and glorious deeds. I could not possibly recount them all. But in the retelling of some of them, I hope I have indicated, as others have before me, that not only the Warsaw Ghetto, but other ghettoes, as well as the concentration camps, were scenes where Jewish courage and nobility rose to heights not yet sung of in the history of our people. This has yet to be recorded and given its proper recognition, so that it may become the rich lode in which our youth can find treasures of inspiration and pride.

I have told something of my story in the Warsaw Ghetto to give some picture of how an individual lives and sometimes survives under conditions that are intended to crush and kill. It is impossible for the human mind to encompass astronomical figures. German laws and a consistent policy on the part of the German rulers to annihilate the Jewish people, are facts easily brushed aside after the first exclamation of disbelief. What  it is like for one person and his family to live under such decrees may give a .more cogent picture to one who has been fortunate enough not to "have shared in such experiences.

Because all of my life I have been active in Jewish life and have followed a definite political philosophy which sought the solution of the Jewish problem in terms that spelled dignity and honor to me and our people, I am hurt and apprehensive about our future when I see that even after such colossal losses as our generation has demanded from the Jewish people, we have learned little, In the last eighteen years I have watched practically the same Jewish leaders who didn’t see, or refused to see the catastrophe facing us in the thirties, now, after the holocaust, trying to assure the people that the storm is over, the billows calmed, and bygones are bygones, Again, instead of pointing an accusing finger at the new Judeocide threatening us from another direction (though a much more subtle one) they are willing to settle for little things from great powers—at least one Yiddish newspaper, a little Yeshiva, or the permission for members of a family to join their relatives. Again we are bargaining for crumbs from the table of the rich. Instead of standing in the forum of the world and shouting for all to hear about the regime of political criminals which is attempting to finish the job Hitler didn’t quite complete, they are again making a tinkling noise with the collection box: a penny for the poor Jews overseas.

I am filled with pain for the dead who should not have died, and for the living whom the leaders have given up. Often in the night I hear the macabre laughter of my young friends who gave their lives for the honor of their people. They seem to be asking: is this how it has to be even after the creation of a Jewish State? Is fear the permanent psychological reaction of Jews, some Jews, when their peace of mind is disturbed? Nothing seems to have changed. The free Jews reacted with fear when Eichmann was captured. What will the world say? As if the world cared when the Eichmanns were butchering Jews. And the free Jews on both sides of the Atlantic reacted with fear when Soblen escaped to Israel. All this, thirty years after Hitler came to power and eighteen years after he was allegedly destroyed.

I am well aware that I have touched upon two very unpopular topics in this book: the fraternization with Germany and the behavior of Jewish leadership. But criticism is a healthy thing, even though seldom welcome. Not being a citizen of Israel, I have not touched on any phase of Jewish life there. But things which are of concern to the Jewish people as a whole should be examined, talked about, criticised by Jews themselves no matter what the world may say. I hope that this has been constructive criticism, as I have intended it to be. If, however, it is taken in a hostile way, I am ready to accept that possibility as well. I have learned this acceptance from the teachings of three great Jews who have had an impact on my life and way of thinking: Herzl, Jabotinsky and Freud.

D. W.

IN THE BEGINNING…

CHAPTER I

The last patient has left. I am alone in my office and remain seated at the desk with little desire to move. It has been a long day and I am weary.

I know I have to give serious thought to a request made of me earlier this day, but the mind has a way of playing tricks with unpleasant thoughts and other images intrude, demanding attention. I close my eyes, but to no avail.

The journalist had pleaded with me on the telephone: You must appear at this memorial...you of all people, one of the few survivors, a leader of the uprising...the prominent Republican Senator from New York will be there and the Ambassador from Israel—who but you should share their platform on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto?

I did not commit myself at once. I wanted to think, to consider the unsavory feeling that embraced me and seemed to become stronger with every word that he uttered.

I must give my answer tomorrow, but I am too tired.

I look out from my high window in Manhattan upon the construction of Lincoln Center. In the April gloaming the scene before me is strangely reminiscent of the ruins of Warsaw after the first bombardment. The last rays of the sun touch the steel foundations with fiery glints and fade away, and the soft blue of early evening enfolds the harshness of the open craters and jagged concrete, and like an old pain, it is subdued and softened to an aching sadness.

There is something familiar in this sadness, recalling another time, another place, yet I cannot find it.

I open the top drawer of my desk, not to seek an answer there, but more as an aimless gesture, to halt the projectile of the mind which in this twilight world seeks to hurl me back to a time long gone. But it is too late. Before me in the open drawer lie the two vestiges of a life no longer mine—a small leather change purse and a silver compact. I look at these objects without actually seeing them physically, not the texture of the brown leather nor the hardness of the tarnished grey metal. I feel them as vast voids.

When all other possessions had been liquidated and lost, these two small things survived the ordeal of nine concentration camps, and now rested here, a mute testament to the stubborn will of man to live and the strange ways of chance that crushes multitudes and leaves lonely survivors.

The silver compact is tarnished and pitted and bent. The mirror has long since been shattered and destroyed, like the woman whose face it so often reflected.

Hold it a minute, she had said to me as we stood on that fateful line for yet another action, and handed me the compact In that instant the brute voice gave the order, Frauen rechts und Männer links. And a life was broken.

We had participated in the dying gasp of the Warsaw Ghetto, my wife and I, and managed to escape with the last small remnant of Warsaw Jewry. Before long the Nazis caught up with us and herded us into the Concentration Camp at Lublin-Maidanek where the final selection was made for more permanent abodes. It was there she had placed the compact in my hand.

I remember when I bought her this compact. It was a summer evening in Prague, August, 1933.

It had been a stormy session of the World Zionist Congress, the 18th Congress. Jewish leaders from all the comers of the globe had gathered in the Prague City Hall to discuss the fate of the Jewish communities in Europe, the role of Palestine in the face of the Nazi threat to Jewish