After a break of almost six months, we continue the series "The Taste of Ghetto Life" by Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych, in which the author discusses, among other things, the issues of feeding the ghetto inhabitants, the activities of ad hoc feeding points for starving inhabitants, and the Transferstelle kitchens feeding children and infants.
The author tells the story of the courthouses, which served as a transit point for food smugglers, Janusz Korczak's efforts to obtain aid for the Main House of Refuge, the so-called house committees, and the people and institutions that had to face the nearly impossible task of feeding the poor and saving them from starvation. We publish columns on our website weekly. We invite you to read this challenging book, based on a diverse and solid source base.
Warsaw-born Bogdan (Dawid) Wojdowski, who as a teenager found himself in the Warsaw Ghetto, in his moving novel "Bread for the Dead," based on facts and his own experiences, paints a picture of hunger for the inhabitants of the closed district: "The first days of hunger are the worst, then it becomes bearable. First comes weariness, arms and legs feel heavy, every word grows into a painful clamor in the ears. The colors do not please the eyes, and the light hurts them. (...) One is constantly thirsty, cracked lips dry up. The jaw clenches of its own accord, and a pain erupts behind the ears at the sight of a tin spoon abandoned on the table. Then thoughts of food begin, terrible, exhausting fantasies. The stomach works like a siphon. The thought of a piece of turnip is enough for him, and his teeth crunch through the fibrous pulp, and the juice, faintly reminiscent of black turnip, milder in taste and sweetish, flows down his throat and moistens the swollen tongue, leaving a tart residue in the mouth. (...) The thought breaks away from the turnip and soars high. "When will they bring that bread?" (1971, pp. 24-25).
Bread – the object of desire for tens, hundreds of thousands of people crammed into a small area carved out of the so-called Northern District. The vast majority of whom died of hunger, disease, and exhaustion during the deportation operations and in the Treblinka extermination camp. Food: in the ghetto, alongside those craving bread and dreaming of turnips, there were also those who dined at the "L'Ourse" café, and the "Gazeta Żydowska" of August 1, 1941, reported that the kitchen at 11 Leszno Street "will distribute candy for adults and an additional 50 grams for children." This, however, does not change the overall picture of a place where obtaining food was a matter of paramount importance – a condition for, though not a guarantee of, survival.
Prof. Konrad Zieliński, head of the research department of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum
Emanuel Ringelblum's private apartment – Leszno 18
In the tenement house at Leszno 18 in the Warsaw Ghetto, lived Dr. Klara Mesz, a gynecologist, with her husband and daughter Hanna. After the great liquidation, she managed to escape to the Aryan side and happily survive the war (Memories of Hanna Mesz, in: Children of the Holocaust Speak…, vol. 1, Warsaw 2002, p. 98). During the ghetto uprising, a shelter for fighting Jews was also constructed in this same building. However, it is worth remembering when writing about the building at Leszno 18, that it was the residence of Emanuel Ringelblum and his immediate family – his wife Judyta and son Uri.
This was also likely the point where important decisions were made regarding the development of the underground ghetto archive created by Ringelblum, the research projects being carried out, and the recruitment of new individuals. It may have been at this point that it was decided that one of the themes explored by the Oneg Shabbat group's collaborators would be the ubiquitous hunger in the ghetto. Perhaps it was here that someone suggested inviting Lejb Goldin, a Yiddish writer and translator residing in the ghetto, to join the group of archivists. He was active in the youth labor movement before the war, wrote articles in the press about communist deviations, and collaborated with the Bund underground press in the ghetto (Biogram Lejb Goldin, in: Polski Słownik Judaistyczny (Polish Judaic Dictionary), available online, https://www.jhi.pl/psj/Goldin_Lejb_(Lejbl) , accessed February 13, 2020). His poignant text, written in Yiddish and titled " Chronicle of a Day," is a testimony to the slow death and unequal struggle against one's own body, already starved to the point of starvation. Leib Goldin, a beneficiary of one of the community kitchens in Warsaw's closed district, wrote: "The last soup – yesterday, twenty to one. The next – today, at the same time. A lot of time has passed. How much time is left? Eight hours. Although, in reality, the last hour, the one from twelve onwards, doesn't count. By then you're already in the kitchen, intoxicated by the smell of food. You can already see the soup. It seems that there are actually only seven hours left." (Ringelblum Archive. Anthology, Wrocław 2019, p. 713).
The hunger Goldin writes about is an inseparable companion of life, something that forces a person to feel primarily about their body. The author knows that somewhere in the world there are people who think about more than just food, who "walk for hours in gardens and parks, sit by the riverbank, in the cool shade under a spreading tree, and talk tenderly to each other, and laugh together, and look into each other's eyes so tenderly, warmly, and passionately. […] They may be hungry, but they don't think about it. And they are jealous, and they are angry with each other—but they don't think about food. And all of this is so real, and it's happening in the world, far away, but it's happening, and people are just like me—far away there..." (Ibidem, p. 717). The wait for a meal and the hunger that grew with each passing moment were, for Goldin, and probably also for other consumers of soups served in the Warsaw Ghetto's community kitchens, an unbearable torture. Watching those sitting nearby, already eating, caused almost physical pain: "At the opposite table, bliss reigns. A peaceful silence—they are already eating there. […] After the soup, their faces take on a blissful, happy expression" (Ibidem, p. 722). This experience was commonplace...
Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych – cultural anthropologist, Hebraist, sociologist, in recent years a curator at the Museum of Warsaw, researcher of the life and legacy of Janusz Korczak, collaborator of the Forum for Dialogue Foundation and the Center for Yiddish Culture, author of texts on "last matters" – the last journey of Korczak and his charges, the last performance of the pupils of the Jewish Orphanage and the last notes in Korczak's Diary.
Photo: Leszno 18, 1940, Dimensions Department, State Archives in Warsaw
