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Golda's Stories of
the Holocaust Part I - Time Section 3 – in the town Strachovitsa Chapter L – In the train to Auschwitz The tragic end of our Judenrat. The Gestapo took us in trucks to the railway
station. In the station they gave the Judenrat a comfortable
passenger coach for the journey. Part of the managers, between them Moshe Rosenberg, went
on it. The other preferred to travel in the freight cars together with their
family members. Many refugees from all over Poland were gathered in
our town from the beginning of the war. They worked and lived among us. They saw already the big troubles in Warsaw, Lodz and
many other places. They passed already through the hell, and were strong
and united. Our Yudenrat ours did to them a lot of troubles. These Jews begged: "Don't give us troubles. We are
Jews. It is not good for anybody if there are conflicts between us". The repeated requests were in vain, and they regarded
this as an account that will be settled in the future. When the train started to move, and the Gestapo left
the place, a big gang of men from these Jews entered quickly to the passenger
coach, and strangled to death sixty of the Yudenrat's members. Part of the Judenrat members had a criminal past.
Others were honorable regular citizens or were from the local intelligentsia
and joined this organization because of Germans orders. Most of them became morally corrupted, as for example
of Roiza Pomp. They took care only to themselves. They received bribe, embezzled
and stole. They lived good life in the wood factory. In
Auschwitz they had as a life insurance their earlier connections with the
Germans, and they became again supervisors. It was the same at Bergn-Belzen. After the war they received from the liberating
forces the jobs of representing and managing the survivors. As a result, They became
community leaders of the survivors throughout the world. The train continued to move, and we stood oppressed,
crowded and suffocated in the freight cars. I pulled my mother to the single window in the wagon,
in order to try to breathe a pure air. My Mother held my dress. She feared that I will jump
through the window and run away. This idea didn't even come to my mind. |