Resistance activist in the Warsaw Ghetto, commander of the ŻOB camp branch in Poniatowa.
"We are alarming (...) you must support us with weapons. (...) We are calling on you urgently. Help us die with dignity! We want to continue following in the footsteps of the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto. We are ready," wrote Melech Fajnkind (Feinkind) in 1943, as commander of the ŻOB unit in the Poniatowa camp.
Born in Warsaw in 1898 , he became politically active as a teenager, also an ideological socialist, and was active in the ranks of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania . At the age of 18, he joined the Poale Zion-Left party , representing the far-left branch of Zionism.
In 1925, he left for Palestine , where for six years he co-founded the Poale Zion committee in Petach Tikva, near Tel Aviv. In 1931, he returned to Poland for health reasons and continued his political activities in Warsaw, becoming one of the party's leading activists.
After the outbreak of World War II, he found himself in the Warsaw Ghetto and lived at Dzielna Street 42. He worked at the Jewish Social Self-Help – in the Coordination Committee at Tłomackie Street 3/5 . Icchak Cukierman recalled in his book Naddmuch pamięci (Excess of Memory) that he met Fajnkind as a person who worked closely with the He-Halutz Dror movement and as a dear friend of Dror activists:
“Thanks to him, we got paper for our newspapers, and he also helped us with printing and duplicating (…) He was a very handsome man.”
From 1940, Fajnkind was a regular contributor to Oneg Shabbat , working on a project documenting life in the Warsaw Ghetto. In March 1942, he was one of the founders of the Anti-Fascist Bloc , a clandestine resistance organization uniting Zionist and communist circles. Following the large-scale deportation in the summer of 1942, he participated in the founding meeting of the Jewish National Committee (ŻKN) , which brought together representatives of various political groups and exercised political oversight over the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) . Fajnkind joined the ŻKN as a representative of the Supreme Council of Poale Zion-Left. He also served on the ŻKN-Bund Coordination Commission and was a member of the ŻKK's propaganda commission, working alongside Cukierman and Abrasza Blum.
When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out on April 19, 1943 , Fajnkind took part. Unfortunately, he was soon captured and deported (along with thousands of Warsaw Jews) to the Nazi labor camp in Poniatowa . Many of the prisoners at this camp had previously been members of the Jewish underground, keeping the idea of resistance alive among them. Fajnkind managed to organize a local branch of the ŻOB in the camp and became its commandant.
The prisoners created an underground organization, producing incendiary bottles and homemade daggers at night, preparing a plan for an armed rebellion against the Germans.
A letter signed by the pseudonym "Malachowski," i.e. Fajnkind, addressed to the ŻOB headquarters and sent on September 15, 1943, has survived. In it, he requested that weapons and a detachment of fighters who could support armed resistance from outside be sent to the camp:
"We report: our organization here is sufficiently large and prepared. The human resources are relatively good, but we are in constant need of assistance when it comes to weapons. We have absolutely no weapons.
And further, as above: "We are sounding the alarm (...) you must support us with weapons. (...) We are calling on you urgently. Help us die with dignity! We want to continue following in the footsteps of the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto. We are ready."
The ŻOB's plans were thwarted when, on the night of November 3-4, 1943, SS men and policemen from Lublin and the surrounding area, armed with machine guns, entered the camp, surrounding the area with a double cordon. They began the murder of Jews, leading groups of 50 to the execution site. One of the last groups of prisoners (according to historian Bernard Marek , ŻOB members) barricaded themselves in one of the barracks, offering active resistance and opening fire. The Jews also managed to set fire to the SS clothing warehouses, destroying a significant amount of German uniforms. In response, the Germans set fire to a barracks containing several hundred combatants. The Jews inside were burned alive.
Melech Fajnkind was murdered on November 4, 1943, during the "Erntefest" (Harvest Festival) operation, during which approximately 42 Jews were murdered in the camps in Poniatowa, Trawniki and Majdanek within two days.
Bibliography:
Ringelblum Archive, Vol. 11: "People and Works of Oneg Shabbat", Warsaw 2013.
Berman A., Wos der gojrl hot mir bashert. Kibbutz Lochame ha-Geta'ot, 1980.
Cukierman I., Excess Memory, Warszawa 2020.
Libionka D., The first outline of the history of the Jewish Combat Organization [In:] The Holocaust. Studies and Materials, No. 9, 2013.
Lenarczyk W, Libionka D., Erntfest (ed.) A forgotten episode of the Holocaust, Lublin 2009.
Mark B., The fight and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Warszawa 1959.
