Am I A Murderer?

Testament Of A Jewish Ghetto Policeman

Calel Perechodnik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367010171
• eBook ISBN: 9780429720871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this moving memoir, a young Polish Jew chronicles his life under the Nazis. In the vain hope of protecting himself and his family, Calel Perechodnik made the wrenching decision to become a ghetto policeman in a small town near Warsaw. The true tragedy of his choice becomes clear when during the Aktion he must witness his own wife and child forced to board a train to the Treblinka extermination camp. Filled with loathing for the Germans, the Poles, his Jewish brethren, and himself, Perechodnik fled the ghetto to shelter with a Polish woman in Warsaw. In the course of 105 terror-filled days in hiding, he poured out his poignant story. Written while Nazi boots pounded the streets of the neighborhood and while his tortured memory was painfully fresh, this memoir has a rare immediacy and raw power. Shortly before his death in 1944, he entrusted the precious diary to a Polish friend. The document was eventually deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. Left nearly forgotten for half a century, it was finally published in Poland in 1993. We owe a great debt to historian Frank Fox for bringing us this sensitive translation, which reminds us anew of the power and truth of historical memory.

Warsaw

T HE FIRST IMPRESSION was quite pleasant. As I entered, I saw an iron stove right in the middle of the room, and in a short while everyone looked flushed from its warmth. First I greeted my mother, whom I had not seen since the Otwock Aktion. She tried to avoid my looks, but I paid no attention to that. Then I saluted Miss Hela and made my acquaintance of Genia. Wadaw was also present. We had dinner together, and I went to sleep.

The next morning while we remained alone in the room, I was able to evaluate our hiding place. One wall was a gabled end, which meant that another house adjoined there, and therefore from that side there was nothing to be heard. The rear wall was connected with a corridor and closets. Through there the neighbors could eventually hear what was going on in our room. They could assume, however, that it was the landlord. Later it turned out that there was no danger from that side either. The neighbors were always drunk. The other back wall was part of a coal bin. No voice would reach there. The front wall faced the street. Because the apartment had once been a store, the display windows had to be closed with shutters, as did the glass door. The door shutters were wooden; the top portion had double openings, which provided the only source of light. That was why it was barely light in the room, but even this did not last the entire day. We could hear very well what was happening in the street, but from the outside it was not possible to see what was going on in the apartment. The only appliances were the kitchen stove and the sink. There was no basement, so it was not possible to hide in the event it was necessary.

A plus to the apartment is that it leads directly to the street so that a janitor cannot control who goes in and who goes out. The landlady, after returning from work, opens the door widely so that everyone in the street can see what is going on in the room. At that time we are behind the wardrobe. Similarly, when someone is visiting Miss Hela—a janitor or some gossiper—we hide behind the wardrobe. Nobody ever finds out.

By a happy coincidence there is no one across the street. There is only a lumber business, and all day long they operate an electrical saw, the so-called krajzega.^*

A minus to the apartment is the lack of toilets. One has to make use of a bucket hidden under the sink. Once a week Miss Hela empties it. It’s not much fun, but it can’t be helped. Miss Hela is not in all day, and so we are on our own. We can wash, do laundry, whatever is necessary, and there is no oppressive feeling of being cramped by others.

Behind the wardrobe stands a bed on which my father and I sleep. Mother is on a couch. Genia sleeps on a pillow on the floor near the stove.

My father goes into town twice a week. He leaves the apartment at six with Miss Hela and returns at seven. He also buys food. He communicates with Michalski, who blames his brother for everything. Father believes him because he has to. For one, he has to maintain contact with someone. Second, when he goes for the whole day, he has no place to stop in, and this way he can stay at the Michalski shop and do a little business with him.

We are afraid of only one thing: The “whole town” knows that Genia is hiding here. Piekiełko knows. The Jewish legionnaires^† in the Warsaw ghetto know. We expect that if it “gets hot,” other Jews will tear the lock off the door to get in here.

Later it turned out that such thoughts were only proof of our naivete. We could not even get it through our heads that in Warsaw it would be so “hot” that this heat would literally burn all the Jews. The hiding place is a good one, and the proof of this is that Genia is already here ten months. And it is not especially costly.

After a week passed, I went to the Magister to introduce my father to him. I anticipated that from now on I would not be able to communicate with him personally. I asked that the goodwill he had shown me up to this time be extended to Father, whom I empowered to handle al my things. I only made an exception for a length of brown material for a woman’s winter coat, as well as brown lining, which I left for Janek’s disposal. Because of that, Father was furious with me, but I had no intention of telling him that I did this to let go of a burden that had oppressed my conscience for three months.

My wife’s white wedding suit, consisting of a silk dress, coat, shoes, bag, and gloves, I earmarked as a present for the Magister’s sister. It seemed to me that I did not betray my wife’s memory in bequeathing this beautiful suit to an unknown person, who nonetheless wanted to take in our daughter. I also wanted to leave our address for Janek, but my father categorically opposed it. I left only his Aryan papers with the Magister.

Although the Magister received us most kindly, I left him with my spirit broken. While we were there, someone was playing the piano in the next room. But it was not the pleasant notes of the music that so unbalanced me.…I was unsettled by the image of a house where the war reached to its very walls but could not breach them. Here my daughter could have been today, and if she was not, it was the result of my tardiness and lightmindedness. If it was intended for me to stay alive, it was so that I would do penance eternally. The image of my daughter brought up in such a noble family atmosphere as exists at the Magister’s obsesses me to this day.

One more thing did not give me peace of mind and reminded me of my guilt. It had to do with being able to save my English suits and winter coat. My father was angry with me that I had saved so few things. However, I blamed myself that I had saved anything. If I had not regretted letting go of these things before the Aktion, I could have had enough money to buy Anka a Kennkarte and also save her from Umschlagplatz.

In the end my father sold the suits and my coat to a friend of the Magister, Dr. R., for the sum of eight thousand zloty. I gave a sigh of relief when they were sold. I came to hate them so.

Our monthly budget for Miss Hela’s apartment came to three thousand złoty. We had ten thousand złoty in currency, and to that we added the money acquired from the sale of my property. We could sell other things that remained at the Magister’s. We estimated that if all went well, it would last us for a year’s life. It was necessary then to bring the rest of the things from Otwock to Warsaw.

My mother’s fur collar as well as father’s otter fur was at Dr. Mierosławski’s, a friend of the Magister; mine and my father’s small fur pieces were at the court official Alchimowicz’s, a small suitcase was at Brothers M.’s, and a knapsack with some small items from camp was at Glaskowa’s.

Because Father could travel to Otwock only in the winter, when the nights were long and dark, he decided to bring everything at once to Warsaw.

My father visited the doctor maybe ten times. At first he heard that another Jew, a Dr. (Michał) Kokoszko, who also had left some things with him, took them by mistake. Father explained endlessly that the one otter would enable our whole family to live for at least one month more. Mierosławski replied that he had sold his own otter for two thousand— as if this had any significance, except that it was probably my father’s otter—and he just dismissed this with a wave of his hand. He told Father not to come to him anymore because his house was under police surveillance. Finally, after many requests, he returned mother’s fur collar.

Dr. Mierosławski—I address him as if he were present—you are considered to be at the top of the social hierarchy in Otwock, but how are your morals different from those of the gymnasium messenger Franciszek? Indeed, I have more respect for him. At least he risked his head and robbed things worth around four hundred thousand złoty. You, on the other hand, a local doctor, our neighbor of many years, the father of my classmate, you were greedy for something worth one hundred times less.

It went a little differently with Alchimowicz. He returned to my father my small fur items with the gesture of a fine gentleman who would never covet someone else’s things. He didn’t let my father even cross the threshold of his apartment, received him in his dark corridor, and returned the things wrapped in a small pillowcase, as I had left them with him. At home it turned out that everything was in order except for one item. The most expensive item was missing: my gray squirrel lining.

I advised my father not to tell Alchimowicz about this because this great “gentleman” would feel insulted and in general would not want to talk to him, and it was still necessary to take away from him my father’s fur lining. But nothing helped. “When my father returned to recover his things, Alchimowicz did not deny that he had the fur, but he said that he would return it in the spring because his wife would wear it in the winter, and in general “he does not have a cloakroom.” I am certain that he knew very well that my father would not dare come to Otwock in the spring.

When I heard about this, it really opened my eyes. I couldn’t understand what had happened to a man who in his time had for safekeeping items worth hundreds of thousands of złoty and was now greedy over something worth several thousand. How could this man tell my father that there was “no cloakroom” in his place when all the furniture in his apartment was either mine or my father’s? I will add that some time ago he asked my father if he would give them to him for safekeeping.

How could two years change a grown man, a captain in the Polish army? I always thought of myself as someone who knew human nature, and here is one disenchantment. Apparently the human soul reacts differently in the presence of a live person and differently when it has to do with live corpses. Then it seems he recites a prayer that the live corpse should change into a real one and stop bothering “decent people.”

Only with Brothers M. was there no disappointment.

Everything that my father could collect he tied together and went to the station. He arrived in Warsaw after the curfew hours. When he was already on our street, two German soldiers stopped him. They examined my father’s Kennkarte, and then they saw the night pass given by the railway to passengers of the late train. This they just waved off. They went carefully through his things and searched his person thoroughly as well. As an opportunity presented itself, they stole the three thousand złoty that he had and the new reindeer leather gloves.

As it was, the story ended fortunately. First of al, they did not take him to the Komisariat, and secondly, they did not recognize that they had before them a Jew. Thirdly, they did not notice my father’s gold watch, and fourthly, they did not take al the things. This is the nature of a Jew that whatever happened, thank God that it wasn’t worse. But Father had his ful share of fear.

At that time Janek left the Warsaw ghetto for a few days. He liquidated his afairs in Otwock, submitted an application in the city council for a Kennkarte, and spent the night at the Magister’s, where he enjoyed a bath. He probably rented a room somewhere in Praga. He could not communicate with us, but this was Father’s fault since he surrounded our address with such secrecy. I would also add that he had more luck than we did; al his things were with Brothers M., and they could be trusted.

Because it was easy to get out of the ghetto, he returned for the time being to his friends, to that Jewish environment that created a milieu favorable¹⁹⁹ for a normal life. Father asserted that cards drew Janek to the ghetto, whereas I feel that it was a lack of family warmth that pushed him away from us.

The days dragged out in an impossible manner. Already at two in the afternoon I went to bed and remained there until nine in the morning. Most of the time I thought about one theme: how easy it would have been to save my wife and child. I went through thousands of combinations, one better than the other. It filled me with terrible sadness and feelings of guilt. There is nothing worse for a person than to be left alone with his own negative thoughts. Although I was not alone in the room, I didn’t have anyone with whom to share my problems.

Genia was crocheting the entire time; she was certainly a decent enough girl, but she lacked education. She understood how to behave, but she did not have enough reasoning for conversations, discussions, for comprehending another person.

Mother was avoiding me in a most obvious way, was even afraid to look me in the eye. I could not understand this at al. It’s true that there weren’t particularly warm feelings between us, but … Then the truth came out. Because mother suffered from insomnia, I advised her to take one pill of Veronol for the night. She, remembering the situation after the Aktion, thought that I wanted to poison her. She could not forget that it was I who had suggested the poison. The fear, that it was possible to be poisoned by one’s own son, she transformed into a mania that one could not knock out of her head.

She had shared this dread earlier with her husband, awakening in him an even greater mistrust of me. I was too proud to try to convince them that my intentions were always good. I thought that if I lived to be their age, and that it was necessary to fear that my son would dispatch the gendarmes to me, then I would no longer fight to live. Even now, as I write these words, I don’t have my father’s address, although I am here together with my mother.

I don’t know if anyone believes this; it is so macabre. Finally, the year of our Lord 1942 showed that everything was possible in this vale of tears. Mothers poisoned little children so they would not be betrayed by their crying. Sons poisoned their fathers when they could no longer save them. Since everything was now possible, it was not difficult to imagine that my parents were afraid that I wanted to poison them. They were governed by the maniacal thought that I could not stand it that they were alive and that my dearest ones, wife and daughter, had perished.

All that I did for my parents did not count. The fact that in spite of everything, I saved my mother and sent her to Kołbiel, that I sent her money and provided my father with things, that I now placed at his disposal all that I had—thereby shortening my own survival chances if the war went on longer—all this did not have the slightest significance for them. In their own time they bore considerable financial sacrifices for me. I expressed my gratitude doing the same. That I shared with them my moneys, they had accepted as a natural thing. But that I had proposed to my mother the use of poison in a completely hopeless situation, they could neither forget nor forgive.

An even greater chasm than that which separated me from my mother divided me from my father. It is not just the fact that he would not betray his address to me. Any understanding between us was impossible not just because of his attitude on the Jewish tragedy in general but of that of our family’s tragedy in particular.

I could not hear how a grown-up man, in addition a Jew, would argue that the murder of the Jewish people came as a result of sins committed by Jews toward God, that this entire cataclysm corresponded to the will of God and was foretold by the Jewish prophets. My father repeated frequently that everyone should do everything to save oneself but that one should not feel sorry for those who had perished.

But the crux of the problem was, it seemed to me, that he really could not forgive me for not taking care of his things rather than that I had brought my wife to the square. Ceaselessly he reminded me of what he had lost and counted what the cash value of that was....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• WAR
• THE AKTION
• AFTER THE AKTION
• THE CAMP
• WARSAW
• CONCLUSION
• The Last Days of Calel Perechodnik
• Letter to Pesach Perechodnik from Henryk Romanowski
• Last Will and Testament of Calel Perechodnik
• Afterword (from the Polish Edition)
• Notes from the Polish Edition
• About the Book and Editor