Searching for the crack in the wall

This is the info I've gathered about the Pabianice ghetto, whittled down from a couple of different Holocaust history pages.

 The Kruschender Stadium on Zamkowa Street had 5 hectares, on which a football pitch and athletics competitions were arranged. Tennis players played on two courts. In the club premises on Pierackiego Street, you could play chess, checkers, and billiards.

https://www.zyciepabianic.pl/informacje/historia/gdy-tur-walczyl-z-burza.html

After the German army entered the city on September 8, 1939, persecution of the Jewish community began. Here, as throughout the Łódź Voivodeship, Jews were forced to wear armbands with the star of David and the word "Jude" on them. A curfew was also introduced, which allowed Jews to travel within the city only between 8:00-17:00, though they were forbidden from moving or leaving the city. They were also forbidden from using the sidewalks, and had to walk in the street. They had to nod in greeting to each German they met on the street. In February 1940, the occupation forces established a ghetto that enclosed Sobieski, Batory, Bóźnicza, Kapliczna, Konopna, Garncarska and Kościelna Streets.

The Nazis employed local Jews in several kinds of maintenance work, including the demolition of bunkers left over from the 1939 campaign and the leveling of terrain at the corner of Kapliczna and Warszawska Streets. Jews were made to sing a song during the walk to work and while they worked. It went as follows:

"We Jewish greenhorns didn’t know what’s work

Golden Hitler came and taught us how to work"

Despite the harsh living conditions in the ghetto, there was a small theatre staging plays and vaudeville shows. The former Jewish school housed a Jewish-only hospital.

On May 16-18, 1942, the liquidation of the ghetto took place. On May 16, the SS and SA encircled Warszawska and Zamkowa Streets, which were inside the ghetto. Jewish citizens were led along these streets. The weak, the ill, and those who did not agree to leave their homes were killed instantly. The living were kept in a stadium on Zamkowa Street. The area was encircled with a high fence.


During the march there, Poles and Germans witnessed the Jews being beaten and ill-treated. The Jews spent 3 days and 2 nights in the stadium, standing in the pouring rain, without food or rest. Several dozen were stripped naked, many were forced to perform circus tricks, while others had to applaud them. It is said that infants were forcibly taken from their mothers and buried after being left in a ditch to die.

An additional account of the liquidation is provided by Zygmunt Lubonski in a written account of what he witnessed during the war. They are collectively entitled Through the crack in the stadium fence. 

Through the crack in the Kruche & Ender sports stadium fence in the direction of Zachodnia Street (Curii-Sklodowskiej), I saw a limousine arrive and police major Sudau get out, surrounded by a few high-ranking individuals from Pabianice. They climbed the embankment encircling the pitch and glanced with expressions of mastery and contempt at the Jews grouped together there. The strangely solemn silence was broken only by the shouts of the oppressors in uniforms and a second later by the screams of those being beaten. The selection was in progress. With identity papers raised over their heads, fathers were separated from their families, and mothers from their children according to previously determined categories. The groups thus created were led through a narrow passage leading to the centre of the pitch. A few military policemen standing by the passage were scrupulously thrashing every passing person with sticks, including seniors and women. Infants were taken from their mothers and thrown into a roadside ditch.

In the evening, two groups of Jews, approximately 200 people, were escorted to the railway station. Nearby inhabitants reported that during the night, lights were frequently turned on where the Jews were gathered, and that afterwards the terrifying screams of the people being beaten could be heard. Saturday, May 16, 1942

Another account was given by Helena Morawska, who graduated from the teacher’s seminary in Pabianice and had worked in a Jewish school in Zduńska Wola on Ogrodowa Street for a year. She spent the occupation in Pabianice. The excerpt from her recollections below dates from that period:

On Saturday evening, May 16, 1942, one of the neighbors alerted everyone in our building. We all went to the outside into the yard. There was a real downpour that evening. The spotlights created such a light in our yard that we could all see each other – and how scared we all were. We knew that the Jews from the ghetto were in the Kruche & Ender stadium. Then the lights went out, and thousands of human beings uttered a heart rending scream. It seemed to be some sort of beastly game – a constant, rhythmic repetition of the same thing– the extinguishing of the lights and the sounds of screaming. The next day, I went to the church in the Old Town. Elderly Jews who looked half dead were being transported in carts out of the stadium. They didn’t show any reaction to what was going on around them. The carts were heading towards the station. After the war, I went to Zdunska Wola to learn of my Jewish friends’ fate. Out of a dozen or so people (two schools), only Mrs. Róża Koenigsberg-Luboszyc survived…

Other accounts by Poles – inhabitants of Pabianice:

At the time, the whole city was shocked by this abhorrent event. For a few days, the boys from the “Kruk” team reported on a suspicious “Siedliczka” movement, that is, the police presidium on Gdanska Street. On the evening of  May 15th, SS soldiers arrived from Łódź. The outposts around the ghetto were reinforced. Then, in the early morning on May 16th, with a great uproar, the Germans began to chase the Jews out of from the ghetto. Pushed, beaten and frightened, the people were arranged in fours and led through Warszawska Street, and then along Zamkowa street to the Krusche & Ender sports stadium. It was a shocking sight. More than six thousand emaciated, weak, sallow-skinned, hollow-eyed people were chased out into the middle of the road. There were women holding small children, stumbling old men supported by their sons and daughters, sick people shuffling along. All in a deathly silence. None of those wretched, terrified people moaned or cried. Not even the small children dared to cry out, paralyzed with fear. You could only hear the guards yelling “Los! Los!” Some led dogs on leashes, barking at the people being chased.

The whole crowd, filled with fear, was locked up inside the stadium. It was raining that night. The people, who were soaked, chilled and hungry, were left on the sodden ground. Another day passed with them remaining in the open air without any food. Then another night. It wasn’t until the third day that the selection took place. Infants were killed. Old people were rounded up in one corner of the pitch. They lay half dead. Many had died of cold and hunger. A few had committed suicide. In the evening, those who had enough strength were rushed to the railway station and pushed into freight cars. They headed off into the unknown, where their fate was about to be sealed.

Although all this took place under the supervision of special police unit, with the stadium enclosed by a high fence, people from the neighboring houses watched these events with dread.” Kruk” sent a few boys with cameras hidden in sugar bags. Several photographs were taken.  After seeing them, “Baryka” again ordered “Anka” and “Sęk” to  systematically chronicle the Nazi crimes in the city and in the vicinity.