A Building on an Empty Lot
chapter from a book.
Israeli historical fragmets
Warsaw - The End
"The Jewish quarter in Warsaw is no more".
This was written in the title of a document compiled by SS officer Jürgen Stroop, commander of the forces that liquidated the ghetto. The senior officer Stroop wrote a detailed report summarizing the forces' operation, embellishing it with a series of photographs. The report and photos were printed, bound in an elegant cover, and sent to his superiors, with formality mixed with pride.
The Stroop Report is a rare document that was captured and remains a written and photographic testimony to what transpired at the height of one of the most famous events of World War II: the liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw – the prominent symbol of Jewish rebellion against the German army. The powerful resistance that was brutally and efficiently suppressed in the capital city, which was very important in the eyes of the Nazis.
Stroop, it seems, possessed a well-developed historical sense and the skills of a good public relations person. When he embarked on the mission to exterminate the ghetto and all its inhabitants, he took a photographer with him who accompanied the forces and documented the general's actions with his camera. The photographer immortalized, in black and white images, extraordinary moments from the very last days of the ghetto. He saw and photographed – the end of lives, the destruction of homes, the ruin of a community, the final journey of victims being led to the Umschlagplatz (deportation square).
The scenes he deemed best were chosen to be included in the report. Such as: the besieged coming out of the bunkers; their hands raised in surrender; the march of the victims through the burning streets; the deported waiting in the square, moments before boarding the trains that would take them to their end. Amidst the images of destruction and ruin, combat scenes of soldiers and their commanders were interspersed – aggressive and determined to carry out the mission, sometimes their faces serious and at other times they appeared amused and smiling victoriously at the camera.
Thousands of Jews feature in the photographs in Officer Stroop's album. They have no names, only faces, or bodies seen from the front or back. They star against their will and do not know that their likenesses will remain etched forever in the pages of history. None of them were asked for permission to be immortalized in their humiliated moments. The one who photographed and the one who compiled the album's pictures did not bother to note names. Only after the photos were published and displayed in museums were survivors found who could provide precise details, names and places, or at least offer well-founded hypotheses from their memory.
Who are all the other photographed individuals in the Nazi album? We will never know. The authentic images, each worth a thousand words, show the bunkers where the last survivors hid, the fire burning from the houses and consuming all their contents, the one who escaped the fire and jumped from the window to his death, those who remained alive and surrendered themselves to the SS soldiers, the searches conducted on their bodies as they stood pressed against walls.
And perhaps members of the Jakubowicz family were also caught in the lens of the camera roaming the areas of Novolipie, Zamenhof, Smocza, Gęsia, Leszno streets.
Chava Jakubowicz, her father, and her three children were there in that photographed and immortalized arena.
Her eldest son, Moshe, the sole survivor of the family, saw images from the album throughout his adult life. He saw them on Holocaust Remembrance Days, in newspaper articles, in documentaries aired on television or on the cinema screen. They were displayed again and again and did not make a strong impression on him. He didn't even bother to examine them carefully and try to identify any of his loved ones. He saw them and turned the page of his life, without dwelling too much on the details.
The mere existence of the photos was enough for him, presenting the facts and resolving the doubt that had lingered in the hearts of all who heard the Holocaust stories. Later, when the details were revealed and doubts were erased, he no longer wanted to return to those sights, and as the years passed, they faded in the archive of his memories.
Only when he decided to open a narrow window into his childhood, and the photos were placed before his eyes, could he reconstruct the story of Muniek, who is Moshe.
Two hours or more they marched in a long procession through the ghetto streets. Whoever managed to take a bag or suitcase, or an important item – took it. Others walked only with the clothes on their bodies.
Upon reaching the "Umschlagplatz" (deportation square), they joined the thousands who were already waiting there.
Not far from the square, the train awaited to take Muniek and the surviving members of his family to the place where their predecessors had gone, hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.
This is a chapter from the book "A Building on an Empty Lot" - the story of Moshe Jakubowicz's life (Written in Hebrew).
Selected Translated chapters from the book appear here and can be accessed via the following links:
