"Great Action" (22 July 1942 – 21 September 1942)

Announcements. On July 20th, at noon, cars carrying SS officers appeared on the streets of the ghetto. Posts at the exits leading to the "Aryan Quarter" were reinforced. A security cordon was formed around the walls, formed by uniformed units of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Ukrainians. Stefan Ernest , an employee of the ghetto Labor Office, noted at the time his premonitions of the impending cataclysm that would unfold in Warsaw, the largest Jewish community in German-occupied Europe: "It was clear that some invisible hand was directing the spectacle that was yet to begin. What was happening, for now, was merely the tuning of instruments that would soon play some terrible symphony. Some kind of 'La danse macabre.'" That afternoon, when many Judenrat representatives were arrested and imprisoned in Pawiak, Ernest declared: "The game has begun." Fear fell upon the city. Everything indicated that the future of the Jews was sealed. The scenario, method, and means of its implementation remained unknown. At least seemingly. The Germans had begun "tuning their instruments" much earlier, while the powerless, atomized Jewish population sensed the coming "game."

The day before—on July 19, 1942— Marek Stok had entered information in his diary about the arrival in Warsaw of an SS team from Lublin. It was led by Herman Hoefle , an associate of Odilo Globocnik . At the same time, news began circulating in the district about the future of Warsaw's Jews. Hoefle—as indicated by rumors spread by members of the so-called "Thirteen" (Jews collaborating with the Gestapo)—unequivocally justified his presence in Warsaw: "The parasites must be destroyed. Their [the Jews'] fate is sealed."

The Lublin SS command arrived at the Judenrat headquarters before noon on July 22nd. A new announcement was dictated to the secretary, the main theme of which was the planned relocation of the ghetto population to the east. Residents of the "closed district" were encouraged to participate in the imposed undertaking by the promise that all who voluntarily reported to the Umschlagplatz would receive free food, their families would not be separated, and work awaited them in the east. Improved living conditions were promised. In justification, Hoefel told the head of the Judenrat, Adam Czerniakow : "As of today, the resettlement of Jews from Warsaw begins. You know, there are too many Jews here." Czerniakow did not sign the death sentence for hundreds of thousands of people. In the afternoon, posters bearing the announcement, approved by the Jewish Council in Warsaw, were posted on the ghetto walls. The Council's chairman took his own life the following day.

The first victims of the "Grand Aktion" were children. When assessing the misfortunes of all individuals and groups imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, is it permissible to make gradations and seek answers to the question: whose suffering was greater? Since everyone—women and men, young and old, healthy and sick, regardless of origin, social standing, education, poverty, religion, or political beliefs—was equally condemned to extermination? Within this human mass were children. Their fate was the most tragic. Often deprived of care—because their parents had already been murdered or were on their way to Treblinka. Abandoned, begging, and lonely. Understanding what was happening in the closed world of the ghetto, or unaware of it. Sensing the omnipresent evil, or in their childish naivety, inclined to believe that such was the reality. Constantly intimidated. In the face of the threats surrounding them, they were indifferent or fearful. They suffered repeatedly. They were the first to be sent to the Umschlagplatz – at the same time as the Jewish poor and refugees from nearby ghettos. It was common for lost children to reach their destination on their own. They asked to be sent to their parents. Herded into the wagons along with the mass of people, they set off on their final journey. Often, they never reached Treblinka, dying en route.

Rescue. Parents tried every possible means to protect their offspring. During the constant roundups, blockades, and the herding of people from place to place, they hid children, drugged, in backpacks. Stefania Staszewska (Szochur) recalls: "We looked at the larger backpacks with anxiety. And the whip lashed those backpacks, and how the father who carried them suffered. Many children didn't wake up that day. They couldn't stand the anesthetic." Jewish social activists also did everything they could to save the children. From the very beginning of the Warsaw ghetto, they created a network of boarding schools, dormitories, orphanages, and care facilities for them. For the children, these were places full of hope, with a semblance of security. So when the Jewish Order Service, supported by ethnic Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians, invaded "their" centers, the children—psychologically scarred, mindful of hunger and fear—reacted differently than the Warsaw poor or the so-called "refugees" (from the beginning of "Operation Reinhardt," Jews sent to the Warsaw Ghetto from other centers in the General Government). The latter had long been without a home, offered no resistance, and, forced, agreed to another resettlement. Adolf Berman estimated that a total of about 30 orphanages and boarding schools of all types were liquidated: "The entire branched child care system, encompassing over 100 facilities caring for approximately 25 children, was crushed." The staff was murdered along with the children.

Sacrifice. Some, like Janusz Korczak , along with Stefania Wilczyńska , Broniatowska , and Szternfeld , remained faithful to their ideals until the very end: selfless care for children. And they remained with them until the very end—their own lives and theirs. Nachum Remba wrote this about the August day when the teachers and their charges had to go to the Umschlagplatz: "It wasn't a procession to the train cars; it was an organized, silent protest against banditry. In contrast to the tightly packed mass that passively marched to their deaths, a Man rose, the likes of which are rarely seen in real life. The children lined up in groups of four. Korczak, his gaze fixed high, held the children's hands and marched at the head of the procession. These were the first Jewish cadres to march to their deaths with honor." Another figure, another example. And more questions that will always lack a clear answer. Adina Blady-Szwajger was a pediatrician. During the Great Action, she worked at a branch of the Bersohn and Bauman Children's Hospital (the future site of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum's permanent exhibition). She did everything she could to provide relief to the youngest: "And so [after years of] real work in the hospital, I leaned over the beds, and just as now, I poured the last of the medicine into those tiny faces." Marek Edelman, a witness to such acts, recounted: "Someone's merciful hand poured water with cyanide diluted into the burning faces of strange, sick children one by one. Cyanide is now the most precious treasure, unredeemed. Cyanide means a silent death, it saves from suffering." Were those providing such help committing crimes, or were their actions proving that even in such inhumane conditions, something like human mercy and compassion existed? Or maybe the opposite – by giving young patients morphine or cyanide, putting them to sleep forever – they committed acts that will never be justified?

Extremes. Throughout the ghetto, selections were carried out constantly—in squares and streets, in buildings, sheds, at the Umschlagplatz. During these selections, exceptional situations occurred: the Germans gave parents the opportunity to make perhaps the most difficult choice in their lives—to remain alive (temporarily) or die with their child. Staszewska recounted one of these. She witnessed with her own eyes how, during one of the blockades, a German snatched a child from a young mother's arms: "For a moment, she hesitated, then stretched out her arms after the child; she could have stayed with him. A second of thought, the whip hanging in the air—and the mother, turning her head, left without the child. We all felt her pain and despair." Antoni Szymanowski gave the example of a young father during a mass roundup (the so-called "Big Cauldron"): "A huge crowd, stunned, numb, and yet still seething with fear and anxiety, slowly moved toward the reinforced gates where the selection was taking place," he wrote in his memoirs. "I saw things there, terrifying in their horror. [This man's] wife had long since been deported. He had a free path to life, but without his children. He left them in the middle of the street and entered the gate. You should have heard the voice of his older daughter: 'Daddy.'" No witness to such a child's voice will forget. There were many such parents. There were also cases where mothers and fathers refused to surrender their children without consent. Many who managed to survive wrote about hundreds of such parents.

Barbarism. Herman Hoefle – the head of the "Grand Aktion" – had a habit of visiting the Umschlagplatz. He always observed those designated "for deportation" with calm and nonchalance. He especially liked to treat children as objects. "His kind face did not change expression as he entered the room where small children and infants, taken from their parents, lay on the dirty, fly-swarming floor." However, among the German officers, it was not he, but Geipel, the subordinate head of the Warsaw SS branch – Werterfassung (an institution that managed the confiscated property of Jews sent to Treblinka), who was a model criminal. Frequently present at the Umschlagplatz, he favored treating young women with particular cruelty. Samuel Puterman (a Jewish Police officer) witnessed his actions on numerous occasions. He recounted how Geipel selected a victim from among those scheduled for transport: "Once, a woman with a baby in her arms. He asked her a few questions, including whether she was happy to be going to work. He ordered her a loaf of bread, and the woman thanked him. He let her go, and she walked slowly away. Her baby's head peeked over his shoulder. Geipel took out his revolver and, for a long moment, savored the desperate silence that fell within a radius of a dozen or so meters. He aimed from above, slowly lowering the revolver... A red stain appeared on her mother's shoulder." Another time, he proposed to a young girl to become his lover: "She responded with a surprised look in her blue eyes. She stood for a long time, hypnotized by fear [at the sight of] the drawn revolver. Not a word came out of her mouth. He shot her straight into her wide blue eyes. The girl slumped and fell at his feet without a moan."

Overzealousness and madness. Most, if not all, witnesses to the "hunts" expressed this assessment of the behavior and actions of those serving in the Jewish Order Service. The means and methods of operation were unimportant. What mattered was their effectiveness. Meeting the quota—bringing a certain number of victims to the Umschlagplatz—was the most important, and in fact, the only, condition the Germans imposed on Jewish policemen. This gave them a chance to survive at least one day longer than their victims. Cries and screams had no effect on the Jewish Order Service representatives. Jehoszua Perle saw "mothers kissing the feet of the bandits and wanting to save their children." They remained merciless: "They dragged the sick from their beds, children from their cradles." Often, they transported their victims—old people and children unable to walk on their own—by rickshaw to the loading yard, directly to the wagons. Another witness (a woman) saw and heard how a Jewish Police Service officer treated a young girl: "Through tears, she pleaded: 'I know you're good, don't take me, my mommy's gone out for a moment. She'll be back soon and I won't be here.'" He was ruthless, cold-bloodedly doing his duty: "Two hours later, I saw an unconscious woman running down the middle of the road toward the square. She was desperately screaming: 'My child – where is my child?'"