Białystok Ghetto
Liquidation of the Białystok Ghetto, August 15–20, 1943. Jewish men with their hands up, surrounded by German military unit
Białystok Ghetto location northeast of Treblinka. Main ghettos marked with stars; death camps, with white-on-black skulls. Solid red line denotes the Nazi–Soviet frontier – starting point for Operation Barbarossa.
Location	Białystok, German-occupied Poland
Date	July 26, 1941 – September 15, 1943
Incident type	Imprisonment, mass shooting, forced labor, starvation, deportations to death camps
Perpetrators	Nazi SS, Orpo police battalions, Trawnikis

The Białystok Ghetto^[1] (Polish: getto w Białymstoku) was a World War II Jewish ghetto set up by Nazi Germany in the newly formed capital of Bezirk Bialystok district of occupied Poland between July 26 and early August 1941. About 50,000 Jews from the vicinity of Białystok and the surrounding region were herded into a small area of the city. The ghetto was split in two by the Biała River running through it (see map). Most inmates were put to work in the forced-labor enterprises for the German war effort, primarily in large textile, shoe and chemical factories established within its boundaries. The ghetto was liquidated in November 1943 after the Białystok Ghetto uprising was crushed.^[2] All its inhabitants were either killed locally, or transported in Holocaust trains to the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps.^[3]

Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland

The city of Białystok was overrun by the Wehrmacht on September 15, 1939, during the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, and one week later ceded to the Red Army attacking from the East, in accordance with the Nazi–Soviet agreement. On September 27, 1939, Białystok was annexed by the Soviet Union following mock elections conducted in the atmosphere of terror.^[4][5] According to the terms of the German-Soviet Pact signed earlier in Moscow, the city remained in Soviet hands until June 1941, assigned by Stalin to the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Thousands of Jews flocked in from the German zone of occupied Poland.^[6]

The general feeling among the Polish Jews was a sense of temporary relief at having escaped the Nazi occupation in the first weeks of war.^[7] While most Catholic Poles consolidated themselves around the anti-Soviet sentiments,^[8] a portion of the Jewish population, along with the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian activists had welcomed the invading Soviet troops with bread and salt.^[9][10][11] Many young Jews who believed in communism, collaborated with the Soviet secret police whilst engaging in provocations; they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies" for example.^[12][13] Mass deportations to Siberia by the NKVD soon followed.^[6][14]

Operation Barbarossa

The German army attacked Soviet troops in occupied Poland on June 22, 1941 under the code-name Operation Barbarossa and took over Białystok on June 27, 1941. On the same day, the Reserve Police Battalion 309 arrived,^[15] tasked with inflicting terror upon the Jewish population.^[16] The first mass murder of Polish Jews was carried out during the so-called "Red Friday" of June 28, 1941, claiming the lives of up to 2,200 victims.^[15] The Great Synagogue was set on fire with approximately 700^[15] to 1,000^[16] Jewish men locked in it, and burned down with a grenade thrown inside. The killings took place inside the homes of the Jewish neighborhood Chanajki (pl) and in the park, lasting until dark. The next day, some 30 wagon-loads of dead bodies were taken to new mass graves dug up on German orders outside the city.^[15] Major Weis of Battalion 309 got drunk and later claimed to have known nothing about what happened. The official report submitted by his officers to General Pflugbeil of the Wehrmacht was promptly falsified.^[15] The Aktion was followed by the murder of about 300 Jewish intellectuals who were trucked to Pietrasze on July 3rd.^[6] Battalion 309 left for the front, and was replaced by Orpo Battalions 316 and 322, which were ordered to round up more Jews. On July 12–13, 1941, a frenzy of mass shootings by the two new battalions dubbed "Black Saturday" took place on the outskirts of Białystok.^[6] It is estimated that over 3,000 Jews herded into the municipal stadium – visited by Bach-Zelewski himself – were taken away and killed in antitank ditches.^[15][16] The total of over 5,500 Białystok Jews were shot in the first weeks of German occupation.^[6]

Irrespective of the mass-murder operations carried out directly in the city, the new district became an early theatre of Einsatzgruppen operations as well. Each death squad followed an assigned army group as they advanced east. Himmler visited Białystok on June 30, 1941 during the formation of the new Bezirk and pronounced that there is a high risk of Soviet guerilla activity in the area, with Jews being of course immediately suspected of helping them out.^[17] The mission to destroy the alleged NKVD collaborators was assigned to Einsatzgruppe B under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe; aided by Kommando SS Zichenau-Schroettersburg under Hermann Schaper, and Kommando Bialystok led by Wolfgang Birkner summoned from the General Government on orders from the Reich Main Security Office.^[17] In the early days of the German occupation, these mobile killing units rounded up and killed thousands of Jews in the district.^[17]

Creation of the Ghetto

The Ghetto was officially created on July 26, 1941 along the streets of Lipowa, Przejazd, Poleska and Sienkiewicza, and closed from the outside on August 1, 1941. It was surrounded by a wall with three guarded entrances. The Judenrat was formed, headed by Efraim Barasz. Within a brief period of time the Ghetto had up to 60,000 Jewish prisoners in it. Textile and armament factories were established with the help of Judenrat, along with soup kitchens, first aid sites and other amenities. Food rations were strictly enforced.^[2][6]

Ghetto liquidation

On February 5–12, 1943, the first group of approximately 10,000 Białystok Jews were rounded up by the mobile battalions and sent to their deaths in Holocaust trains at the Treblinka extermination camp. Another 2,000 victims just too weak or sick to run for the wagons were shot on the spot.^[6] Approximately 7,600 inmates were relocated into a new central transit camp within the city for further selection. Those fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp. In Majdanek, after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the Poniatowa concentration camp, Blizyn, as well as Auschwitz labor and extermination camp. Those deemed too emaciated to work were murdered in Majdanek gas chambers. More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed. Only a few months later, as part of Aktion Reinhard, on August 16, 1943 the ghetto was raided by regiments of the German SS with Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and Belorussian auxiliaries (Hiwis), known as Trawniki-men aiming at the ghetto's final destruction.^[2]

Faced with the final deportations, when all hope for survival was abandoned, the ghetto underground staged an uprising against the Germans. In the night of August 16, 1943, several hundred Polish Jews began an armed insurrection against the troops carrying out the liquidation of the Ghetto.^[2]

Holocaust survivor and postwar historian Szymon Datner wrote: "The blockade of the ghetto lasted one full month and on September 15, 1943, after the last of the flames of resistance had been extinguished, the SS units retreated." The final stage of mass deportations commenced.^[2] Only about one hundred Jews managed to escape and join various partisan groups in the Białystok area including Soviet. The Red Army overrun Białystok in August 1944.

Rescue efforts

There were numerous escape and rescue attempts made during the Ghetto liquidation. In February 1943 Leon Grynberg with his daughter Halinka as well as Felicja and Jakub Wajsfeld were saved by Michał and Jadwiga Skalski who lived on the Arian side of Białystok with their 10 years old daughter. Felicja delivered a baby-girl into Jadwiga's hands.^[18] Skalskis took in Fruma and Jankiel Rosen, and Aleksander Brener with his daughter Ida as well, seven people altogether. Most survived. Dr. Michael Turek and his brother Menachem escaped deportation and reached the home of Jan and Władysława Smolko who already harbored the Goldzin family of four.^[18] Polish Righteous Elzbieta Szyszkiewicz-Burda alias Liza (a professional nurse), used to pull Jews off the street – and out of mortal danger – right into her home, which served as a safe-house and contact place for the Jewish partisan movement.^[18] The AK member Marcin Czyżykowski brought in food and medicine into the Ghetto and on the way back took Jewish children to his and his wife Maria's home (up to twelve of them would wait there at a time, for placement with Polish families).^[19] Polish Righteous Jan Kaliszczuk kept two Jewish partisans at his home, Judel Pitluk and Aron Lach, and after ghetto liquidation, supplied them with food and medicine and drove them to the forest. Both survived. Many of them kept corresponding after the war.^[20] Not all rescue efforts were successful. Henryk Buszko (age 30) farming near Białystok, rescued Jews who escaped from the Holocaust train heading for the Treblinka extermination camp on September 21, 1943. Buszko was caught by the German gendarmerie arriving at Liza Stara from Pietkowo, and murdered for hiding Jews.^[21]

Notes and references

Further reading

• Holocaust Encyclopedia. "Bialystok". © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original (permission granted to be reused, in whole or in part, on Wikipedia; OTRS ticket no. 2007071910012533) on 5 August 2007. Retrieved July 26, 2007. Text from USHMM has been released under the GFDL. The Museum can offer no guarantee that the information is correct in each circumstance. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

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