Primary sources are the gold standard for researchers and readers who want to truly understand history. The voices,images, and words of witnesses who were there (wherever there was) and then (whenever) convey what was current then and part of our history now.
There’s a site I often check to see what happened on this date. I checked it today, and found October 22’s diary entry could almost be written today or in the near future. Thus proving the adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” *
The entry for October 22 was written in 1942 by
image courtesy Etsy seller
Zygmunt Klukowski, a doctor and resistance fighter in Szczebrzeszyn in eastern Poland. It’s titled It is almost impossible to comprehend.
October 22
The action against the Jews continues. The only difference is that the SS has moved out and the job is now in the hands of our own local gendarmes and the “blue police.” They received orders to kill all the Jews, and they are obeying them. At the Jewish cemetery huge trenches are being dug and Jews are being shot while lying in them. The most brutal were two gendarmes, Pryczing and Syring.
The Jews that were moved yesterday out of Szczebrzeszyn were held at the Aiwa plant. Around 9 p.m. another group of Jews from Zwierzyniec were brought in. Today around noon all were loaded into railroad cars, but by 4 p.m. the train had not moved. It is very cold and rainy. After the Jews were loaded into the cars, factory workers collected and brought to an assembly area money, gold, jewellery, and pearls.
In town some of the Jewish houses were sealed by the gendarmes, but others were left completely open, so robberies took place. It is a shame to say it but some Polish people took part in that crime. Some people even helped the gendarmes look for hidden Jews. The Germans even killed small Jewish children. It is hard to describe.
It is so terrible that it is almost impossible to comprehend. Legally the Jews don’t exist in Szczebrzeszyn anymore, but still many Jews are in hiding. All will be killed sooner or later. I went to city hall today. The total number of Jews killed—they call them disabled—is unknown. Even the best specialists were exterminated. We can feel the shortage of good mechanics.
Follow-up information, and a sidebar of dates for you to explore, is here.
*George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher and writer, in The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense, written in 1905.
