We continue Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych's "Taste of Ghetto Life" series, in which the author explores, among other things, the issues of feeding the ghetto's inhabitants, the activities of ad hoc feeding stations for starving residents, and the Transferstelle, a kitchen 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
Children's club – Nowolipie 30
In the Warsaw Ghetto, due to the closure of schools, it was necessary to organize other types of childcare. One example of this was the community centers where children would come for several hours a day to spend time under the care of the staff. Preserved Jewish Self-Help documents indicate that one such center was located at 30 Nowolipie Street (ŻIH Archives, file no. 211A/248) and was part of an extensive network of ghetto community centers. Unfortunately, little is known about this particular center, although thanks to the corpus of materials documenting the operation of several other centers collected by Emanuel Ringelblum's associates, one can somewhat surmise its operation by analogy. These are extremely interesting accounts of community center workers, women who spent time with the ghetto's youngest residents, organizing educational activities for them, but also, and perhaps even primarily, providing them with food.
The housing conditions in the ghetto children's recreation centers varied considerably. In the building at Śliska 28, the rooms were large and bright, and the recreation center reportedly even had tables, benches, and a wardrobe (Ringelblum Archive. Children – Secret Education, vol. 2, Warsaw 2000, p. 197). In the facilities on Ogrodowa and Stawki Streets, the situation was quite different. There was a lack of coal to heat the rooms, and an unpleasant odor emanated from the toilets (Ibidem, pp. 191 and 184). The residents of the recreation centers usually did not come from Warsaw. An unknown Motrolowa, who worked at a community center at 76 Nowolipki Street, wrote about her charges: "Some of the children are children of refugees who arrived […] two years ago, others are children of refugees from February 1941. There are sixteen orphans at the center. […] Forty percent of the children are without shoes, stockings, underwear, or clothes. They are dressed in rags. […] These children are dirty, itchy, emaciated, apathetic, and there is no way they can be interested in anything" (Ibidem, p. 188). The children staying at Dzika 3 are, to quote the words of the day-care worker there: "beings who are partly emaciated, sick (tuberculosis), exhausted. […] They all have scabies, are barefoot and naked. […] They sleep in rags, they don't undress at all. The situation of the orphans is particularly tragic. There are about one hundred and fifty of them. It is mostly the round [i.e., full] orphans who die. In November and December [1941], about forty of them died" (Ibidem, pp. 183-184).
Despite the dire health of the children in their care, the teachers tried to make their time enjoyable. A daycare worker at 25 Nowolipki Street wrote about herself: "I begin my daily work with a cleanliness inspection, assisted by two older girls, special hygienists. We send dirty children home, but we also often wash them ourselves, depending on the circumstances" (Ibidem, p. 186). However, what is most important to the children themselves is the fact that they can receive a meal in the daycare center and eat it in peace. A day care worker from Bagno Street wrote about this: "Breakfast was at 9:30. Each child, in the presence of the day care worker and one or two ladies from the Children's Commission, ate breakfast. Only those who see […] that a child's uneaten breakfast in the day care center is eaten entirely, or better yet, partially, by the parents can judge the significance of this. There were children in my group who absolutely refused to eat breakfast in the day care center because they were afraid of punishment from their mothers, who would beat them and scratch them for eating breakfast and not bringing it back" (Ibidem, p. 196). The hunger that prevailed among refugees and displaced persons, who were most often the parents of the day care center residents, in situations of extreme starvation caused them to even steal food from their own children.
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: Nowolipie from no. 30 to no. 38, ca. 1942 (Warsaw Foundation 1939, source: scan of the photo sent by Tomasz Lerski)
