Page 91 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. "Fragmenty pamięci".

Wielka Szpera 5-12 września 1942 The Great Szpera, 5-12 September 1942

In the morning, the areas around the hospitals were surrounded, and all the sick, without
exception, were loaded onto trucks and taken out of the ghetto. Since it was already known
from the stories of those deported from the provinces how the Germans ”dealt” with this
kind of deportees, a huge panic arose in the city. Dantean scenes were taking place while
loading the sick. People knew they were going to their deaths! They even fought the Germans
and had to be thrown forcefully onto the wagons.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, 1 September 1942

No effort could ever capture the mood, the whimpers and the panic that have filled the ghetto
since this morning. If we were to say that today the ghetto is drowning in tears, then in
the light of what you can see and hear in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, wherever you stand or
whatever you look at, this sentence would not even be a stylistic device, but only a clumsy
description, an almost meaningless phrase. There is not a house, not a chamber and not a
family that has not been affected by this terrible tragedy. Some have a child, others an old
mother, others an elderly father. No one has the strength to sit at home with folded arms and
wait for the final sentence. It is difficult to bear the despair gnawing at your heart within four
walls. People take to the street because there they feel less lost.
Józef Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days, 4 September, 1942

On 4 September 1942, several people spoke at the fireman’s square, but only the speech by Chaim
Mordechaj Rumkowski, the Chief of the Jewish Elders, stands out. He said he had received orders to
send about 20,000 people out of the ghetto. “Sacrifice of children and the elderly is imperative,” he
assured. He explained, “I must carry out this heavy and bloody operation. I must take the limbs away
to save the body. I must take the children away because if I do not take them away, the others will be
taken away instead.” “I appeal to your reason and your conscience,” Rumkowski pleaded. “The num-
ber of those who will be saved is far greater than the number of those who will have to be sacrificed.”
He begged: “Fathers and mothers, give me your children!”

People were both in disbelief and desperate. They were looking for a rescue for children, old parents or
aged relatives. The next day, a poster appeared in the ghetto announcing the “szpera” and forbidding
people to move around the ghetto.
From Saturday, 5 September 1942, until cancellation, a general curfew from 5 PM onwards was en-
forced in the ghetto. No one was allowed on the streets. The only exceptions were law enforcement
patrols (police officers and firefighters), as well as doctors and officials who had special permits. For
eight days, Jewish police officers, under the supervision of German military police, searched house by
house. At a signal, all the inhabitants of a given building had to appear at an assembly, and there it
was decided who was fit for work and who was not.

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