Free Download Przemyslowa Concentration Camp The Camp The Children The Trials Katarzyna Person Full Chapter PDF

Przemys■owa Concentration Camp:
The Camp, the Children, the Trials

Katarzyna Person
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/przemyslowa-concentration-camp-the-camp-the-child
ren-the-trials-katarzyna-person/
THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS CONTEXTS
Przemysłowa
Concentration Camp
The Camp,
the Children, the Trials
Katarzyna Person
Johannes-Dieter Steinert
The Holocaust and its Contexts
Series Editors
Ben Barkow
The Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association
Huddersfield, UK
Suzanne Bardgett
Imperial War Museum
London, UK
More than sixty years on, the Holocaust remains a subject of intense
debate with ever-widening ramifications. This series aims to demonstrate
the continuing relevance of the Holocaust and related issues in contempo-
rary society, politics and culture; studying the Holocaust and its history
broadens our understanding not only of the events themselves but also of
their present-day significance. The series acknowledges and responds to
the continuing gaps in our knowledge about the events that constituted
the Holocaust, the various forms in which the Holocaust has been remem-
bered, interpreted and discussed, and the increasing importance of the
Holocaust today to many individuals and communities.
Katarzyna Person
Johannes-Dieter Steinert
Przemysłowa
Concentration Camp
The Camp, the Children, the Trials
Katarzyna Person Johannes-Dieter Steinert
Jewish Historical Institute University of Wolverhampton
Warsaw, Poland Wolverhampton, UK
ISSN 2731-5711 ISSN 2731-572X (electronic)

The Holocaust and its Contexts
ISBN 978-3-031-13947-5 ISBN 978-3-031-13948-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13948-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Jean-Philippe Tournut
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
It is a long time since our first discussion about working on a joint project
to produce a co-authored manuscript and finally a book. Over the course
of our journey, we have received a great deal of support, and we know that
we would have never succeeded without the help of family members,
friends, colleagues, and the patient and helpful members of staff at many
archives. These have included the IPN Archive in Warsaw, the City Archive
in Łódź, the University Archive in Bremen, the State Archives of the Free
and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the ITS in Bad Arolsen, the US Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington DC, the Marek Edelman Dialogue
Center in Łódź, and the Hebrew University’s Kestenberg Archive in
Jerusalem.
We have to thank Sharon Kangisser Cohen (Yad Vashem) who helped
us enormously with the testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive, Ewa
Wiatr and Adam Sitarek (University of Łódź) who advised us on particular
aspects of wartime Łódź, and Artur Ossowski (IPN Łódź) who shared
with us his profound knowledge of the camp staff and the post-war trials.
Waldemar Spallek created a map of the camp. John Benson, Mike Dennis,
and Metka Potočnik (all University of Wolverhampton) encouraged us
during the course of many discussions.
We also have to thank our academic institutions, the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw and the Institute for Historical Research in
Wolverhampton, for all their support, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
for Holocaust Studies for the award of a Research Fellowship.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Last but not least, we thank our publisher Palgrave Macmillan and—in
particular—the editors of the series “The Holocaust and its Contexts”,
Suzanne Bardgett and Ben Barkow, first for accepting our manuscript and
subsequently for providing a range of invaluable academic and linguis-
tic advice.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Camp 13
3 The Children 75
4 The Trials163
5 Conclusion225
Archives and Interviews233
Bibliography235
Name Index243
Place Index249
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In the early 1970s, more than one hundred men and women relayed their
wartime memories to a court in the Polish city of Łódź. They talked about
months and years of suffering they had endured in a camp next to the
ghetto in Łódź, then re-named Litzmannstadt, the only purpose-built
camp for children under the age of 16 years in German occupied Europe.
The camp, which was at the centre of the former prisoners’ narratives, had
up until then hardly existed in public consciousness. It was only decades
after the war that public awareness and knowledge about this unique camp
grew. It took decades before the first article was published about it, and
before the West German government officially recognized it as a
concentration camp.1 This book is about the camp at Przemysłowa or the
Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt. It is
1
In 1969 the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen included the camp in its pre-
liminary register of concentration camps and detention centres. In 1977 the West German
government officially recognized the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager as a concentration camp.
Vorläufiges Verzeichnis der Konzentratioonslager und deren Außenkommandos sowie anderer
Haftstätten unter dem Reichsführer-SS in Deutschland und deutsche besetzten Gebieten
(1933–1945) (Arolsen: Internationaler Suchdienst, 1969), 513. See also: Joseph Robert
White, “Polish youth custody camp of the Security Police Litzmannstadt,” in: Encyclopedia
of camps and ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. I, part B (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2009), 1527; Bundesgesetzblatt, Teil I, 24.09.1977, 1814.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
K. Person, J.-D. Steinert, Przemysłowa Concentration Camp,
The Holocaust and its Contexts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13948-2_1
2 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
about the establishment of the camp, about the experience of the child
prisoners, and about the post-war investigations and trials.
As a “camp for young criminals” Przemysłowa was for many years not
considered to be worthy of recognition and memorialization. There was
no physical trace of it in the bustling post-war industrial city of Łódź, and
little memory among its over 750,000 inhabitants. The Polen-
Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt did not fit any
official narrative of wartime heroism and most of the witnesses testifying
in court were by this point very sick. The torture and malnourishment,
which they had endured in childhood, had left clear traces on their bodies
and minds. Many of them had their education truncated by their impris-
onment in the camp and had never returned to school once freed from it.
Some were brought to testify in the court from prisons, some from hospi-
tals. Even those who had homes to return to and managed to re-build
their lives never spoke publicly about what had happened to them during
the war. Nobody asked and they did not volunteer. The camp had broken
them, just as it was intended to.
The camp at Przemysłowa existed for just over two years, from
December 1942 until January 1945. During that time, an unknown num-
ber of children, mainly Polish nationals, were imprisoned there and sub-
jected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. On leaving the camp they
received hardly any help. While some were able to return home, many
ended up enduring a difficult life in post-war orphanages or simply
attempting to make it alone, sometimes together with fellow former camp
inmates, navigating the chaos of early post-war Poland. For almost all, the
consequences of what they had endured in the camp remained with them
for the rest of their lives.
1.1 The Sources: German Contemporary

Documents and Personal Accounts
Even though for the first thirty years after the war there was very little
research on the camp, this was not due to a lack of sources. In fact, histo-
rians have a relatively solid range of sources at their disposal. There are
contemporary documents, data from post-war investigations, and a rich
base of post-war testimonies by former camp prisoners, ranging from wit-
ness statements in the trials of camp staff to oral history interviews.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
It is unknown what happened to the camp files at the end of the war.
Some were undoubtedly destroyed by the retreating Germans, some were
randomly taken away by former prisoners, Soviet soldiers, Polish citizens,
and the post-war inhabitants of the former camp area. We know for exam-
ple that a female prisoner, then 14, on leaving the camp took with her
both her own and her brother’s complete camp files and about 200 pho-
tographs as well as a name index of the girl prisoners.2 The surviving docu-
ments are today available in the archives of the Institute of National
Remembrance in Warsaw (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), which also
holds camp-related documents collected by the Chief Commission for the
Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Warsaw. Most, but by
far not all, contemporary camp documents are likewise researchable in the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (which also holds a rich col-
lection of microfilmed files from the German city administration of occu-
pied Łódź). The University Archive Bremen (Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte
des 20. Jahrhunderts, SfS) keeps photocopied documents collected by the
late Michael Hepp, a historian who also gave parts of his collection to the
ITS in Bad Arolsen. The Staatsarchiv Hamburg holds the German inves-
tigation files, which include photocopies of the key documents from the
IPN archives. In addition to the remaining contemporary camp docu-
ments, the City Archives in Łódź holds a number of files from the German
wartime city administration and the German ghetto administration. The
latter are also available online.
The documents in the IPN archives include some correspondence
about the origins and the building of the camp in occupied Łódź and its
sub-camp in Dzierża ̨zna near Zgierz, a series of medical reports
(Sanitätsberichte), a camp ledger (Lagerbuch) from Dzierża ̨zna, some gen-
eral correspondence between the main camp and the sub-camp, a collec-
tion of death certificates, financial and agricultural production statistics
from Dzierża ̨zna and a collection of personal files from camp guards and
camp staff. Among the documents collected by the Chief Commission for
the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a series of applica-
tions (Anträge auf Einweisung) from the Katowice area (mainly from
criminal police and welfare offices) which provide the alleged reasons for
deporting children to the camp. Additionally, the IPN archives include
files from the post-war trials of members of the camp staff and guards as
2
Józef Witkowski, Hitlerowski obóz koncentracyjny dla małoletnich w Łodzi (Wrocław,
Warszawa, Kraków, Gdańsk: Zakład Narodowy Im. Ossolińskich, 1975), 275.
well as personal deposits of Józef Witkowski, a former prisoner, one of the

key figures in the trials of the camp staff and later a pioneer historian of
the camp.
These documents are supplemented by photographs: both those within
camp files and those retained by individual prisoners. While these were all
“official” photographs, that is, staged to make the camp look appropriate
for outside inspection, they can still tell us a lot about its infrastructure as
well as the way in which German authorities wanted the camp to be
perceived.
Our research of contemporary documents has been supplemented by
an analysis of personal post-war accounts, the majority of which can be
found in the post-war trial files in the IPN archives, in German investiga-
tion files kept in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, and within the Kestenberg
Archive in the Hebrew University’s oral history collection gathered in the
late 1980s and early 1990s. The vast majority of those interviewed for the
Kestenberg Archive had been children during the war, ranging in age from
new-borns to teenagers. Interviews quoted in this book were conducted
with former prisoners of Przemysłowa camp by the aforementioned histo-
rian of the camp, Józef Witkowski. Additionally, some accounts originated
from an interview project with former Polish child forced labourers,
headed by Johannes-Dieter Steinert and supported by the foundation
Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, as well as from the USC Shoah
Foundation Visual History Archive. There is also a collection of testimo-
nies and personal files of former prisoners in the collection of the Society
of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (Zwia ̨zek Bojowników o Wolnos ́ć i
Demokrację, ZBoWiD), an organization which enlisted, among others,
former concentration camp inmates. Also quoted, as an important post-
war source, are the results of medical examinations carried out on former
prisoners, from the immediate post-war months up until the 1970s.3
1.2 Research Questions/Methodological Remarks

This study focusses on child prisoners, girls and boys, aged eight to fif-
teen—with some children even younger—and takes a detailed approach to
the experiences of prisoners of different ages and different gender, in the
camp and in the post-war era, and to how they remembered and narrated
3
The first results were published in Maria Niemyska-Hessenowa, “Dzieci w „lagru” w
Łodzi,” Służba Społeczna no 1 (1946): 79–85.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
their past. Of particular interest are the alleged reasons why children were
deported to the camp and how they experienced their deportation, their
living and working conditions in the camp, their relationships with other
prisoners, their perceptions of the guards and the camp staff, as well as
forms of non-conformant behaviour and resistance. A part of the book will
be dedicated to their experiences of liberation and their attempts to find a
place in the post-war world. In order to contextualize these individual
experiences, it was important to describe the historical background,
including the changing role of the criminal police in National Socialist
Germany and German occupied Poland, the German occupation policy,
the situation of Polish minors in general and in the so-called annexed ter-
ritories and in occupied Łódź in particular.
While central parts of the study are based on post-war accounts—mainly
from former child prisoners but also from guards and camp staff, includ-
ing some of the leaders—other parts are based on contemporary German
documents as well on Polish and German documents produced in the
course of post-war trials and legal investigations, the vast majority of them
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These sources complement each other
and allow us to research and portray the camp in a way which would have
been impossible using only official documentation. Thus, this study analy-
ses personal accounts as historical sources by using the tools of qualitative
historical interpretation. By doing so, the study is located in the context of
our own most recent research on Polish, Soviet, and Jewish forced child
labour4 and the history of the post-war search for retribution,5 but also in
the tradition of historians like Yehuda Bauer,6 Omer Bartov,7 and
4
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit. Polnische und sowjetische Kinder
im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa 1939–1945 (Essen:
Klartext Verlag, 2013); Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Erinnerungen
jüdischer Kinder 1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2018).
5
Katarzyna Person, “Jews denouncing Jews. Denunciations of putative collaborators and
reactions to them in the postwar Jewish Courts of Honor,” in: Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge,
Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust eds. G. Finder,
L. Jockusch (Detroit. Wayne State University Press, 2015), 225–246; Katarzyna Person,
“Building a Community of Survivors in Post-War Jewish Honor Courts: the case of Regina
Kupiec,” in: Shoah: Ereignis und Erinnerung ed. A. Bothe, M. Schärtl, S. Schüler-Springorum
(Berlin: Hentrich&Hentrich, 2018), 171–184.
6
Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2009).
7
Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New
York: Simon and Shuster, 2018).
Christopher Browning,8 to name just a few, who in their work have impres-
sively demonstrated the advantages of using both contemporary docu-
ments and personal accounts, including those submitted many years after
the described events.
In 1999 Ulrike Jureit presented a ground-breaking study regarding the
interpretation of personal accounts and the importance of comparing data
found in a range of sources in order to establish a critical mass that justifies
broad deductions and an integration of the research results into broader
social and societal contexts.9 However, the possibilities of such deduc-
tions—as much as they belong to the daily life of historians—are limited
by the boundaries in which the sources have been created. Individual
memories do not always confirm and complement each other. Instead,
they represent the diversity of human experience and provide a multidi-
mensional and multifaceted picture of the past.10 Accounts in short are not
impartial and objective but individual and subjective. They manifest reflec-
tions about memories and are often problematic for establishing “hard
facts”, a problem lawyers had to face during the post-war investigations
and trials. Witnesses approach and view the past in a different way to his-
torians, who often read sources against the grain and compare data gleaned
from different sources.
Furthermore, there is the “problem of the incommunicable”, as the
psychologist Henry Greenspan termed it. Even if survivors feel free to tell
their story in the way they want to tell it, they still have to decide what and
what not to tell. The context of an account is therefore characterized by
what the narrators regard as “tellable” and what they judge to be “hear-
able” on the recipients’ side. To quote Greenspan: “It constitutes a double
transaction comprising an inner dialogue, always embattled, between sur-
vivors’ speech and survivors’ memories, and outer dialogue, equally con-
tested, between survivors and their listeners”.11 As a consequence, most
survivors choose a series of short episodes, representing both good and
8
Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New
York: W.W. Norton, 2010).
9
Ulrike Jureit, Erinnerungsmuster. Zur Methodik lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews mit
Überlebenden der Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager (Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verlag,
1999), 386, 393f.
10
Omer Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in
Buczacz, 1939–1944,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 25, no. 3 (2011), 506.
11
Henry Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” in: The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies,
eds. Peter Hayes; John K. Roth (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 417.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
bad experiences.12 In the context of this study such theoretical reflections

apply only to those accounts, created in a more or less open interview situ-
ation, in which the interviewees were not strictly guided by the inter-
viewer. Among them are those from the Hebrew University Kestenberg
Archive. Yet, most of the accounts used for our research were created in
the context of legal investigations, in which lawyers followed their own
agenda, and which were also influenced by such factors as the stress of
testifying in a crowded courtroom or the presence as witnesses of former
camp personnel. They were also to a large degree shaped by the political
agenda of the trials. As Carolyn J. Dean has pointed out: “The courtroom,
as has often been noted, is a particularly powerful arena for the making of
new meanings, and trials are rich sources for tracing new narratives about
mass atrocities and genocide: witnesses tell their stories, lawyers shape
them, and formal rules constrain testimony and shape its meaning”.13
Nevertheless, what emerged from those trials were testimonies, which can
be analysed and interpreted with qualitative historical methods. Depending
on the degree of intervention by lawyers in the course of the witness state-
ments, interpretations can be difficult but not impossible. The overriding
value of the trials, however, is that witnesses, finally encouraged to talk
after decades of silence, were not only testifying about the crimes of those
standing trial, but attempting to draw as full as possible a picture of their
lives in the camp and its effect on their post-war lives.
It is self-evident that the children imprisoned in Przemysłowa suffered
from trauma that may have affected their memory and consequently their
ability to recall. The degree of trauma experienced depended on a number
of factors, including the children’s pre-incarceration experiences, their
personality and age. According to psychologist Jon A. Shaw, children of
pre-school age are less at risk of developing post-traumatic stress symp-
toms than older children, if the former still have parents present who are
able to react and support the child in an appropriate way. In contrast,
older children possess greater cognitive knowledge and understand some-
thing about death and the dangers of physical injuries.14 In general, psy-
chologists assume that teenagers and young adults suffered less from
12
Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” 420 and 422.
13
Carolyn J. Dean, The Moral Witness. Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2019), 8.
14
Jon A. Shaw, “Children, adolescents and trauma,” Psychiatric Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 3
(2000), 230.
trauma, and after the war they recovered faster than older prisoners.15
Such greater resilience can be explained by the fact that children were able
to adapt more quickly than adults to the realities of a camp; they could
“prove” themselves and present themselves as “model workers”.16 The
study will show that such general statements were only partially applicable
to the survivors of the Przemysłowa concentration camp. A key factor in
their adaptation to camp life, just as important as age, were previous expe-
riences: whether children had come to Przemysłowa having endured other
prisons or if they had come straight from home; whether they had come
from a stable, caring family background or if they had spent the early war-
time years surviving on their own or with other children, living on the
streets, or on the move through German occupied territory. All of these
affected the way in which they experienced their imprisonment at
Przemysłowa.
“Children experienced the camps not only in a different way, they also
remember them differently”, noted psychologist Andrea Reiter.17 Barbara
Bauer and Waltraud Strickhausen made a similar argument: “Children
experience differently, they do not have an interpretation system to classify
their experience; they are still developing it. They keep in their memory
what has impressed, astonished, delighted and worried them in a different
way. They memorize cruel scenes more sustainably than adults”.18 As will
be shown in this study, the same applies to the experience of friendship
and camaraderie.19
It should also be underlined that the testimonies quoted in this book
were significantly shaped by the post-war experiences of their authors.
Some were still young when the war ended and so these included aban-
donment, lack of recognition of their experiences, difficulties with
15
Shamai Davidson, Holding on to humanity: the message of Holocaust survivors: the Shamai
Davidson papers, ed. Israel W. Charny (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 145f.
16
Sara Ghitis and Ruth Weinberger, “Jüdische Sklavenarbeit. Lebensgeschichten aus den
USA,” in: Hitlers Sklaven. Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen
Vergleich, eds. Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (Wien, Köln,
Weimar: Böhlau 2008), 324–335.
17
Andrea Reiter, “Die Funktion der Kinderperspektive in der Darstellung des Holocausts,”
in: ‘Für ein Kind war das anders’.Traumatische Erfahrungen jüdischer Kinder und
Jugendlicher im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, ed. Barbara Bauer, Waltraut Strickhausen
(Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 1999), 216f.
18
Barbara Bauer, Waltraut Strickhausen, “Einleitung und Tagungsprotokoll,” in: ‘Für ein
Kind war das anders’.., 15.
19
Ghitis and Weinberger, “Jüdische Sklavenarbeit,” 334.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
continuing education, and struggle with illnesses, resulting from condi-

tions in the camp. While the book is mainly about children undergoing
horrific experiences, therefore it is also about the adults that those chil-
dren became.
1.3 Historiographic Context
Our study is integrated into several different areas of historiography. First,
it is part of the emerging research on German occupation policy in Eastern
Europe, in particular in Poland, which will be analysed in the first chapter
of the book. Secondly, it is rooted in research on German and Polish com-
memoration of the atrocities carried out by German civil and military
authorities in occupied Poland—including the public and academic inter-
est the history of Przemysłowa concentration camp has raised internation-
ally. The chapter “Memory of the Camp” will analyse the main aspects of
these developments.
Furthermore, our analysis contributes to the history of children and
childhood which has become a vital field since Philippe Ariès’s ground-
breaking 1960 book L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime.20
Ariès’s work has inspired generations of historians, and it is safe to say that
the amount of research conducted on children in the Second World War
and its aftermath would have been hardly possible without it. Research in
this area has focussed on a variety of aspects; yet the majority of books and
articles have concentrated on German, Jewish, and Eastern European chil-
dren. Among the early monographs were Dorothy Macardle’s Children of
Europe. A Study of the children of liberated countries: Their wartime experi-
ence, their reactions, and their need, with a note on Germany from 1949,21
and Kiryl Sosnowski’s The Tragedy of Children under Nazi Rule, pub-
lished in 1962 in a Polish and English edition.22 The latter focussed in
particular on Polish, Jewish, and German children during and after the
war and mentioned briefly the children’s camp in occupied Łódź.23
20
Philippe Ariès, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime (Paris: Plon 1960).
21
Dorothy Macardle, Children of Europe. A Study of the children of liberated countries:
Their war-time experience, their reactions, and their need, with a note on Germany (London:
Victor Gollancz 1949).
22
Kiryl Sosnowski, The Tragedy of Children under Nazi Rule (Warsaw: Zachodnia Agencja
Prasowa 1962).
23
Sosnowski, The Tragedy of Children, pp. 98f.
A third pathbreaking publication in this context was Debóra Dwork’s

1991 Children with a Star. Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe which still can be
regarded as a standard work on Jewish children in the Holocaust, in ghet-
tos, concentration and labour camps.24 2005 saw the publication of two
monographs in this area. As Sosnowski before, Lynn H. Nicholas concen-
trated in her study Cruel World on Jewish and non-Jewish Children of
Europe in the Nazi Web.25 She emphasized the ideologically and racially
determined victimhood of children, but also the role of National Socialist
education and resistance. Nick Stargardt took a similar approach in
Witnesses of War. Children’s lives under the Nazis, which was also published
in 2005.26 His focus can be characterized as a biographical narrative in
which children were analysed both as objects of National Socialist politics
and as active subjects.
Alongside the monographs, there are numerous edited books which
concentrate on different groups of children or the different problems
which children had to face. The 2018 anthology Kindheiten im Zweiten
Weltkrieg, edited by Francesca Weil, André Postert, and Alfons Kenkmann,
stands out among them.27 Based on an international conference, orga-
nized by the Hannah-Arendt-Institute at the Technical University Dresden
and the University Leipzig in 2015, the editors gathered more than thirty
articles written by experts in the field. While this volume can be seen as a
stocktaking of academic research on children in the Second World War,
there are numerous publications which focus on the aftermath of the
Holocaust, forced labour, and wartime displacements. Their titles give a
good indication of the contents: The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime,
edited by Simone Gigliotti and Monica Tempian (2016);28 Freilegungen.
Rebuilding lives—Child survivors and DP children in the aftermath of the
24
Debóra Dwork, Children with a Star. Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press 1991).
25
Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World. The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web (New York:
A. A. Knopf 2005).
26
Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War. Children’s Lives Under the Nazis (London:
J. Cape 2005).
27
Kindheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, eds. Francesca Weil, André Postert, Alfons Kenkmann
(Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2018).
28
The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime. Migration, the Holocaust and Postwar
Displacement, eds. Simone Gigliotti and Monica Tempian (London: Bloomsbury 2016).
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Holocaust and forced labor, edited by Henning Borggräfe et al. (2017);29

Jewish Families in Europe edited by Joanna Michlic (2017);30 and Starting
Anew. The Rehabilitation of Child Survivors of the Holocaust in the Early
Postwar Years, edited by Sharon Kangisser Cohen and Dalia Ofer (2019).31
Finally, our work on the Przemysłowa concentration camp contributes
to the research on child forced labour. In 2013, Johannes-Dieter Steinert
has published a monograph on Polish and Soviet children in National
Socialist Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe,32 followed in
2018 by a book on Jewish children.33 Additionally, reference should be
made to some studies in which child forced labour has been examined as
part of a broader thematic approach. Among these was Kiryl Sosnowski’s
book, mentioned above, which included a chapter on this topic; but also
publications on Polish children by Roman Hrabar, Zofia Tokarz, and
Jacek E. Wilczur since the 1960s, with a comprehensive overview of their
findings published in 1981 in English, French, and German.34 Although
this volume focused mainly on the kidnapping of Polish children, the
Germanization programme, and the role of the Lebensborn, it also analy-
ses the relationship between child forced labour and National Socialist
ideology.
29
Freilegungen. Rebuilding Lives–Child Survivors and DP Children in the Aftermath of the
Holocaust and Forced Labor, eds. Henning Borggräfe et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein
Verlag 2017).
30
Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present: History, Representation, and Memory, ed. Joanna
Beata Michlic (Waltham: Brandeis University Press 2017).
31
Starting Anew. The Rehabilitation of Child Survivors of the Holocaust in the Early Postwar
Years, eds. Sharon Kangisser Cohen and Dalia Ofer (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem 2019).
32
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit. Polnische und Sowjetische
Kinder im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa (Essen: Klartext
Verlag 2013).
33
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Erinnerungen jüdischer Kinder
1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag 2018).
34
Roman Hrabar, Zofia Tokarz, Jacek E. Wilczur, Kinder im Krieg–Krieg gegen Kinder:
Die Geschichte der polnischen Kinder 1939–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1981).
CHAPTER 2
The Camp
2.1 The German Criminal Police

The Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt was
a unique institution, unparalleled in National Socialist Germany and
German occupied Europe. It was the result of both the racist German
occupation policy in Poland and of an ideologization of the German
Police, which arrogated to itself powers that had previously belonged to
the German judiciary and the youth welfare system.1
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor on 30 January 1933, the National
Socialist German Workers Party had no detailed blueprint for a reorgani-
zation of the police. However, as historian Thomas Roth noted, the new
government quickly intensified its discussions about the best way to fight
crime. Instead of the liberal practices and “sentimental humanitarianism”
favoured during the Weimar Republic, “robustness” and “efficiency”
became the new guiding principles of the police force after 1933.2 The
new directions of police work were most obvious in the field of crime
1
Petra Götte, Jugendstrafvollzug im “Dritten Reich”: diskutiert und realisiert–erlebt und
erinnert (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2003), 74.
2
Thomas Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen” zu den „Asozialen”. Ideologie und Struktur
kriminalpolizeilicher „Verbrechensbekämpfung” im Nationalsozialismus,” in: „Minderwertig”
und „asozial”. Stationen der Verfolgung gesellschaftlicher Außenseiter, ed. Dietmar Sedlaczek
et al. (Zürich: Chronos, 2005), 69.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
K. Person, J.-D. Steinert, Przemysłowa Concentration Camp,
The Holocaust and its Contexts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13948-2_2
prevention which was now used as an instrument of terror against crimi-

nals but also against the so-called asocials3 and against anybody whom the
new National Socialist government aimed to exclude from the ideologi-
cally driven notion of the “people’s community” or Volksgemeinschaft.
Crime prevention was regarded as an essential part of a racist policy that
not only aimed to fight crime and to control persistent offenders but one
that also became increasingly obsessed with the idea of defining potential
criminals at the earliest possible stage. With the notion of lawless tenden-
cies being hereditary, “criminal biology” and “racial hygiene” became vital
instruments of an increasingly ideologized German Criminal Police. By
applying such racist theories in the area of crime prevention, the police
aimed to contribute to the establishment of a new socially and racially
homogenous people’s community.4
Parallel to the National Socialist policy of “co-ordination”
(Gleichschaltung) which took place in all areas of German society from
1933 onwards, the German Police—previously devolved under the indi-
vidual German states—was restructured and centralized. This did not hap-
pen without a fight about the competencies of different NS elites and
institutions, but finally the ambitions of Heinrich Himmler and his
SS-apparatus triumphed. In charge of the Gestapo since April 1934,
Himmler was appointed the Head of the German Police (Chef der
deutschen Polizei) on 17 June 1936. Only a few days later, on 26 June
1936, Himmler appointed his protégé Reinhard Heydrich as the Head of
the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). Henceforth, the Gestapo and the
Kripo (Kriminalpolizei or Criminal Police) operated under the umbrella
of the Security Police, with Arthur Nebe in charge of the Criminal Police.5
One of the key figures of this new centralized Criminal Police was Paul
Werner, born in November 1900. Although Werner was recruited into the
German Army in June 1918, he was discharged in December 1918 with-
out having served at the front. Afterwards, he read law at Heidelberg and
Freiburg and went on to be appointed a prosecutor in Offenburg (1928)
and in Pforzheim (1930). In April 1932 he was appointed judge to the
district court (Amtsgericht) in Lörrach. Werner joined the NSDAP in May
3
Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen” zu den „Asozialen”,” 66.
4
Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen“zu den „Asozialen”,” 71f.
5
Götte, Jugendstrafvollzug im “Dritten Reich”, 69; Patrick Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten.
Die deutsche Kriminalpolizei und der Nationalsozialismus zwischen 1920 und 1960 (München:
C.H. Beck Verlag, 2002), 75.
2 THE CAMP 15
1933 and his career took off in September of that year with his appoint-
ment as the first head of the new State Criminal Police in Baden. Supported
by Arthur Nebe, in May 1937 Paul Werner was promoted as his deputy in
Berlin and tasked with the internal organization of the Reich Criminal
Police Office. At the end of 1937 he held the rank of SS Sturmbannführer.6
Paul Werner’s National Socialist vision for the new Criminal Police
became apparent in two articles published in 1941 and 1944. In his 1941
article, he focussed on criminal and verwahrloste minors. The German
word verwahrlost has different meanings, depending on the context: dis-
solute, neglect, self-neglect, unkempt, decadent. In the following “disso-
lute” and “youth dissolution” will be used as the general terms if the
context is not unambiguous (as it is in most of the documents). Werner
emphasized that in the area of crime prevention the work of the Criminal
Police was not to follow existing law but rather the will of the govern-
ment, as expressed by the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection
of the People and the State (Verordnung des Reichspäsidenten zum Schutz
von Volk und Staat), issued on 28 February 1933.7 Three years later, in his
1944 article, he justified the work of the police outside existing laws as
“institutional authorization”: the Führer had empowered the police by
published and unpublished orders, which covered both the tasks and the
methods. These orders had not been communicated to the police in gen-
eral but to the police leadership only and authorized the police leadership
to establish the necessary regulations. They were designed to fall in line
with the National Socialist concept of life within the people’s community
and were closely monitored by the Führer and his representatives.8
One of the first tasks Paul Werner took over in Berlin was to compile a
decree on police crime prevention, which was published by the Reich
Minister of the Interior on 14 December 1937.9 It standardized the prac-
tice of taking the so-called Berufsverbrecher and Gewohnheitsverbrecher
(professional criminals and habitual offenders) into preventive detention
6
Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten, 89.
7
Paul Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige. Polizeiliche Jugendschutzlager,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege,
vol. 16, no. 11/12, Feb/March 1941, 274f.
8
Paul Werner, “Die Einweisung in die polizeilichen Jugendschutzlager,” in: Zum neuen
Jugendstrafrecht. Vorträge auf der Reichsarbeitstagung der Jugendrichter, Jugendstaatsanwälte
und Gebietsrechtsreferenten der Hitler-Jugend anläßlich der Verkündung des neuen
Reichsjugendgerichtsgesetzes, Berlin 1944, 96.
9
(Vorbeugehaft), which was legalized already in February 1933 by the

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the
State; but it also went beyond the 1933 regulations by introducing heredi-
tary criteria to identify those who should be taken into preventive
detention.10
Three months later, Werner explained the essentials of this decree and
its consequences for the work of the police in an article published in the
journal Kriminalistik. Of particular interest in this context is a paragraph
on gemeinschädliche or “asocial” persons, who, without necessarily being
criminals, demonstrated by their behaviour that they were not willing to
fit into the National Socialist community and as a result were judged
harmful to the community. Werner named, among others, beggars, vaga-
bonds, prostitutes, and alcoholics, but also the workshy and individuals
who refused to work. According to Werner, such behaviour could be
caused by hereditary factors, inadequate education, or other causes.
Convinced that “asociality” could be explained genetically and was passed
on from generation to generation, Werner trusted that unlimited preven-
tive detention, as enabled by the December 1937 decree, would interrupt
the genetically based criminal line.11 It is not known how many individuals
were persecuted under the stigma of being “asocial”. Around 70,000 vic-
tims were imprisoned in concentration camps, but there was probably a
large number of unrecorded cases of “asocials” murdered in the so-called
euthanasia programme or taken to psychiatric clinics or to the so-called
Jugendschutzlager (youth protection camps) in Moringen and Uckermark.12
For Paul Werner it was a logical step to include children and juveniles
in the crime prevention programme, be it for educational or hereditary
reasons. It took until 24 May 1939, however, to establish a Reich Central
Office for Combatting Youth Criminality (Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung
der Jugendkriminalität), which was part of the Female Crime Police
Office (Weibliche Kriminalpolizei).13 According to Werner, the task of this
new office was the surveillance of minors with a hereditary criminal incli-
nation, and if necessary placing them into preventive detention. It did not
matter if the minors had committed a criminal offence or not. Of
10
11
Paul Werner, “Die vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei,”
Kriminalistik, vol. 12, no. 3, March 1938, 60.
12
Stegemann, “Arbeitsscheu” und “asozial”, 37.
13
Martin Guse, “Haftgrund: “Gemeinschaftsfremder”. Ausgrenzung und Haft von
Jugendlichen im Jugend-KZ Moringen,” in: “Minderwertig” und “asozial,” 133.
2 THE CAMP 17
paramount importance for Werner was to avoid any potential damage to

the National Socialist community.14
After the German attack on Poland in 1939, the discussion on children
and juveniles took a different turn. This derived in part from Germany’s
experiences in the First World War, when the number of criminal offences
committed by minors had risen dramatically. In 1915, only 16% of all con-
victs sentenced for crimes and offences had been minors, whereas by 1917
the figure had risen to nearly 27%. In this year, approximately a quarter of
all sentenced crimes and offences were committed by individuals aged 12
to 18.15 As early as 1939, therefore the Reich Criminal Police Office
warned against a likely increase in youth criminality. On 22 December
Paul Werner attended a meeting on “degenerate youth” in Reinhard
Heydrich’s office.16 The participants agreed to place minors who consti-
tuted a threat to other children and juveniles in special youth re-education
camps (Jugenderziehungslager). On 12 February 1940, the Council of
Ministers for the Defence of the Reich, chaired by Hermann Göring,
accepted a corresponding proposal brought forward by Heinrich Himmler.
On 26 June 1940, the Reich Security Main Office announced that the
confinement of youths should “begin within a short period of time”.17 By
August 1940, the first so-called Jugendschutzlager (youth protection
camp) for male minors aged between 16 and 21 was opened in Moringen,
Lower Saxony, followed by a similar camp in Uckermark, Brandenburg,
for female minors, in June 1942.18
Among those particularly interested in the camp in Moringen was
Robert Ritter, the Head of the Criminal-Biological Institute of the Security
Police (Kriminalbiologisches Institut). Ritter was born in 1901 and edu-
cated in strict Prussian tradition in the Cadet School (Kadettenanstalt) at
Berlin-Lichterfelde. With the end of the First World War, Ritter’s ambi-
tion to pursuit a career as an officer collapsed. After the war, he fought
14
Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige,” 277.
15
16
Jürgen Harder, “Introduction to youth camps,” in: Encyclopedia of camps and ghettos,
1933–1945, 1525.
17
Harder, “Introduction to youth camps,” 1525.
18
Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher. Konzeptionen und Praxis der
Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg:
Wallstein, 1996), 376; Guse, “Haftgrund „Gemeinschaftsfremder”,” 134.
with a unit of the Freikorps in Upper Silesia, before fighting French occu-
pation in the Rhineland. In 1921 Ritter finally made his Abitur and began
his academic career. Nine years later, in 1930, he received his doctorate in
medicine from the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he worked in
psychiatric clinics in Zürich and Tübingen. He was awarded his Habilitation
in 1936, and in the same year started to work in the Reich Health Office
(Reichsgesundheitsamt), where he took a zealous approach to the persecu-
tion of Sinti and Roma. By developing a registration and classification
system, he paved the way for their deportation to concentration and death
camps. Ritter had encountered Paul Werner when he collected data for his
Habilitation in Karlsruhe.19 A few years later, at the end of 1941, Werner
supported Ritter to become Head of the Criminal-Biological Institute of
the Security Police, which was incorporated into the Reich Criminal Police
Office. Soon after, Ritter established a department of his institute inside
the Moringen youth protection camp. He aimed to continue his research
and to develop a preventive “racial hygienic campaign against criminals”,
which amounted to experiments and selections conducted on the young
prisoners based on pseudoscientific criminal and hereditary theories.20 On
24 June 1942, Ritter defined the purpose of the youth camps in a letter to
the camps in Moringen, Uckermark, and the concentration camp in
Ravensbrück. It was, he wrote, to “examine the inmates for criminal-
biological traits, to support those who can still be members of the com-
munity so that they can take their place in the national community while
holding those who are uneducable until their final accommodation else-
where, making use of their labour”.21
The camps in Moringen and Uckermark remained operational almost
until the end of the war. Both were planned and constructed mainly for
German minors who were destined to stay there until either some form of
successful educational outcome had been attained or the prisoners had
reached the age limit for detainment in a concentration camp, a labour
camp, or a labour education camp for adults. The aims of these camps,
Paul Werner stated in 1941, were custody and education (Bewahrung und
Erziehung), by work and instructions, as well as by firm military
19
Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten, 95–97.
20
Jürgen Harder, Joseph Robert White, “Youth protection camp Moringen,” in:
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1531.
21
Harder, White, “Youth protection camp Moringen,”1531.
2 THE CAMP 19
discipline.22 In this, the camps Moringen and Uckermark were very similar
to the camp at Przemysłowa, although the upper age limit was different.
Additionally, the children’s camp in occupied Łódź—the subject of this
book—served also the racist German occupation policies in Poland as well
as the Germanization of the annexed territories.
2.2 Planning the Camp

Any research about the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in
Litzmannstadt is complicated by the fact that most of the contemporary
German camp documents were destroyed or dispersed at the end of the
war. In contrast, there is a relatively large amount of contemporary docu-
mentation available from the German wartime city administration and the
German ghetto administration that allow us to tentatively reconstruct the
process of political decision making from the early days of the German
occupation until the opening of the camp in late 1942. The archival situ-
ation in Łódź is much more favourable for historical research than in most
other German occupied cities and towns in Eastern Europe, as the Polish
underground in January 1945 sabotaged the trucks that were already
loaded with the most important German files and many of the Polish driv-
ers ordered for their transport that day did not report for work.23
In a 2009 article for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s
Encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, historian Joseph White referred to an
“arrest campaign against juvenile delinquents” in occupied Poland, started
by the Reich Security Main Office and carried out just two months after
the invasion. In this context, the head of the Reich Criminal Police Office,
Arthur Nebe, “called for the establishment of Jugendschutzlager in the
Old Reich and the newly incorporated territories of Poland” and ordered
the Criminal Police Office in occupied Łódź to establish such a camp by 1
April 1940.24 The creation of the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager in
Litzmannstadt, although it turned out to be unique, was clearly related to
the youth protection camps in Moringen and Uckermarck, which were
22
23
Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Deutsche Selbstzeugnisse über Alltag, Lebenswelten und
NS-Germanisierungspolitik in einer multiethnischen Stadt, eds. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg,
Marlene Klatt (Osnabrück: Fiber Verlag, 2015), 46, 306.
24
Joseph Robert White, “Polish youth custody camp of the Security Police
Litzmannstadt,” 1527.
under discussion at the same time. There was no evidence that it was
intended to serve a purpose other than these camps, let alone that it would
accommodate children under the age of 16. It seems that the lower age
limit was a later development based on the fact that non-German children
could legitimately be deported to one of the “regular” concentration
camps at the age of 16 or over.25 Additionally, there were local and regional
German ambitions to solve social problems caused by the occupation pol-
icy by brutal solutions, including the imprisonment of children in a special
concentration camp.
From the very beginning of German occupation of Łódź, German offi-
cials kept detailed records of complaints about criminal, dissolute, and
depraved Polish youth. The German occupation forces (including the city
administration and the police) were fully aware that most of the social
problems, in particular those affecting Polish children and juveniles, were
a direct result of decisions made at a local, regional, and national level.
These were analysed in some detail and included: the temporary break-
down of the local economy in September and October 1939, forced
migration caused by the invasion, the deportations of approximately
75,000 Jews and Poles into the General Government (1939–1941), the
deportation of more than 100,000 Polish forced workers to Germany, the
inward movement of Germans from the so-called Altreich and in particu-
lar of ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union following the 1939
Ribbentrop—Molotov agreement, the mass movement of Jews into the
ghetto and of non-Jews out of the designated ghetto area, the arrest of
1500 citizens and mass murder of 500 citizens regarded as the intelligen-
tsia and elite of the city, the billeting of German troops and National
Socialist organizations on a large scale in city premises, including school
buildings, and in this context—but also as a result of German occupation
policy—the permanent closure of Polish schools in December 1939.26
In September 1940, the Criminal Police Office in occupied Łódź stated
in a letter to the Inspector of the Security Police and SD in Poznań that
the office had repeatedly warned about the increase of youth criminality
caused by the deportation of Polish workers to Germany and the
25
ITS/1.1.22.0.O.Nr.3, Doc 78733350, RSHA, Behandlung jugendlicher Ostarbeiter,
29.1.1943.
26
Bömelburg and Klatt, Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 26, 43.
2 THE CAMP 21
enormous distress and material need among the remaining family mem-
bers.27 A year later, the office cited the lack of schools as the main reason
for the unruliness of Polish children which was resulting in black market
activities, smuggling, pickpocketing, and other thieving as well as in beg-
ging. However, for the Chief of the Police (Polizeipräsident), Dr. Wilhelm
Albert, it was also the “character predisposition of the Pole per se” that
contributed to this situation. “There are Polish parents”, stated Albert,
“who do not only neglect their children but also encourage them to com-
mit crimes”. According to Albert, Polish children often started their crimi-
nal career as early as seven. Additionally, he characterized the Polish
population as inferior and demanded that “asocial elements” should as far
as possible be kept separate from the German population.28
Although the consequences of German occupation policies were clearly
recognized in the internal German reports, the frequent references to
“race” aimed to minimize German responsibility. While the German
authorities recognized an increase in criminality and negligence among
German children, they responded to it by blaming the Polish children for
influencing their German peers.29 These reproaches were encouraged by
the housing conditions in occupied Łódź and the close cohabitation of
Polish and German families in most parts of the city.30 German statistics—
although of dubious quality, not at least due to ideological premises—
stated that in 1939/1940 in Łódź 400,000 Poles lived together with
60,000 “Germans” and 230,000 Jews. By 1943 the demographic situa-
tion had changed to 350,000 Poles, 80–100,000 Jews, and 107,000
Germans and ethnic Germans who had signed the ethnic German register
(Volksliste).31
The German response to the increased youth negligence and criminal-
ity was not to solve the social problems with social measures, such as re-
opening Polish schools. Instead, there was an increased demand for the
racial segregation of the Polish population, including the imprisonment of
27
IPN Ld 1/284, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt to Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD in Posen, 10.9.1940.
28
IPN GK 310/197 t.22, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt, Albert, Vorschlag über die
Beschäftigung und Arbeitsverteilung der in das Jugendverwahrlager einzuweisenden pol-
nischen Jugendlichen, 30.8.1941.
29
ITS/1.1.22.0.O.Nr.3, Doc 78733309, Stadtrat Litzmannstadt, 16.6.1941.
30
Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31798, Protokoll über die Eröffnung der
Kreisarbeitsgemeinschaft für die Jugendbetreuung in Litzmannstadt am 23.11.42.
31
Bömelburg and Klatt, Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 15.
some in concentration and labour camps. Moreover, as early as autumn

1940 the German authorities had started to deport Polish children aged
13 and 14 to work as forced labourers to other parts of Germany.32 In
October 1940, a local Female Criminal Police Office was established in
occupied Łódź with the aim to fight youth crime but also to liaise with the
local Youth Office, the Welfare Office, and the Labour Office.33
Destitution among the Polish population in Łódź was so severe that an
increasing number of children (and adults) were driven into prostitution.
The German authorities recognized that this was caused by the large num-
ber of German troops in the city and unemployment among the Polish
population, but also that it was being undertaken through sheer need. In
July 1940, the Criminal Police Office reported that in five or six cases,
Polish parents had approached the police to take action against their 13-
and 14-year-old daughters—who had been driven to prostitution—
because they had lost all influence on them.34 Such reports were
accompanied by statements about the moral decadence of Polish boys and
girls. A report from the Criminal Police in Leslau (Włocławek) just north
of Łódź mentioned a gang of 14 young Polish thieves, aged between 12
and 16, who specialized in shoplifting and pickpocketing and who sold the
stolen goods mainly in the local ghetto. According to this account, mem-
bers of the gang not only engaged in sexual intercourse with other mem-
bers of the group but also frequently changed partners. The report stated
that only five juveniles were charged and imprisoned by the local court,
while all others were found to be too young and consequently incapable
of crime. As there was no closed educational institution (Geschlossene
Erziehungsanstalt) available in Leslau, the children were in fact set free
and handed over to their parents.35
German authorities in occupied Łódź occasionally also stated that Polish
children smuggled food into the ghetto. Compared to other towns and
32
und des SD in Posen, 9.10.1940
33
und des SD in Posen, 9.10.1940
34
und des SD in Posen, 27.7.1940. Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31820, Kriminalpolizeistelle
Litzmannstadt to Regierungspräsident Litzmannstadt, Verwahrlosung der polnischen
Jugend, 12.11.1940.
35
Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31820, Kriminalpolizei Leslau, Bericht. Zunahme der
Kriminalität bei den polnischen Jugendlichen, 14.3.1941.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
die vrugteboord het die bome die grond al bestrooi met die wit- en
rosesneeu van hul fyngeurende bloeisels, en glimlag nog uit al die
botsels aan hul takkies. Twee lindebome, in die hoek van die
agterplaas, versprei hul geur in die lug, en die kastaiingbome van die
laning versier hul donkergroen gebladerte met wit blomtrosse.
Hulle hoor hiervandaan die ewige lied van die weergeboorte; hulle
is getuie van die onophoudelike belofte van die vrugbare aarde aan
die werksame mens.
Voor hulle en om hulle heen is die jonkheid van die jaar—’n beeld
van die bestendige lewe self. Swyend kyk hulle alles so aan; aldrie
dink aan Marcel, en hierdie alte skone dag maak hul droefgeestig.
Gebuig en moeg, neergedruk deur haar herinneringe, laat mevrou
Kibert haar dogter met die kaptein meegaan na die hek. Sy sien hul
aanstap, dink in stilte aan wat miskien kan gebeur, vertrou die
toekoms van Paula toe aan God, en gaan na binne om in
eensaamheid die gebeurtenisse nogmaals voor haar gees te haal
waarvan Jan vertel het.
Paula en Jan groet mekaar aan die end van die laning. Die
jonkman draai nog ’n keer om en volg met sy oog die slank-
buigsame gestalte wat tussen die bome deurgly. Op dieselfde
oomblik kyk Paula ook om. Die toeval jaag ’n kleur in haar gesig. Om
hom nie te laat dink dat sy dit ekspres gedaan het nie, draai sy om
en stap dapper na hom terug.
—Jan, sê sy bewoë, ek dink net daaraan: ek het jou nie genoeg
bedank nie, vir my broer, wat ook min of meer ’n broer vir jou was, vir
my moeder wat jou briewe en jou besoek tog so aangenaam gevind
het in haar droefheid. Jy is baie vriendelik gewees vir ons. Ek het
gevoel dat ek jou dit nog moes sê, daarom het ek teruggekom na
jou.
Haar ontroering maak haar skoonheid meer menslik en treffend.
—Ag nee! antwoord die jonkman, moenie so danig bedank nie;
was ek dan nie Marcel se maat nie. En vóór ons was ons vaders ook
al maats.
Sonder nog meer woorde te kan kry, bly hulle mekaar so staan en
aankyk. Hulle voel ’n wonderlike verleëntheid, hulle wil daar ’n end
aan maak, maar wil ook nie. Jan sien op Paula se wange die
skaduwee van die lang ooghare, neergeslae oor haar vlammende
oë, wat na die grond kyk.
—Luister, sê hy eindelik. In Marcel se baadjie was net één brief:
die laaste een van jou ma. Maar hierdie portret was daarby. Ek het
gedink dat ek dit maar aan jou moes gee.
Hy gee haar ’n half-verweerde kaartjie waarop sy sien, tussen die
bome van Maupas, twee klein meisies van tien of twaalf jaar—die
één blond, die ander bruin, die één het ’n soet gesiggie en kyk alles
verwonderd aan, die ander lyk of sy in beweging was: dis Alida en
Paula self.
—Ag! sê Paula. En met dowwe stem vra sy:
—Het hy nooit met jou gepraat oor haar nie?
—Nee, nooit.
Die kaartjie ontglip aan haar hand en val met ’n droë tikkie op die
sand van die pad. Sy hou haar nou nie meer in nie, sonder enige
trots in haar houding beween sy die onverbiddelike lotsbestemming
van haar broer—deur die liefde na sy dood gelei, en hy het dit
geweet.
Jan neem haar hand.
—Ja, daar vèr in Afrika het ek baiemaal gedink: hoe verkeerd en
dom gaan die noodlot tog te werk—waarom nie vir my geneem nie,
in plaas van Marcel? Oor my sal tog niemand getreur het nie.
Wat kan sy antwoord? Daar skiet net ’n vlam uit haar oë. Sy tel die
kaartjie self op, voordat Jan kan buk om dit te doen:
—Dankie, Jan; kom gou weer; jy bewys ons daar ’n weldaad mee.
Hy kyk haar ’n oomblik aan en stap dan weg. Sy gaan langsaam
die tuin deur, huis-toe. Sy hou van blomme, sy pluk ’n roos af, en, vir
die eerste keer vanjaar is dit vir haar ’n bietjie aangenaam om aan ’n
roos te ruik. Die dood van haar broer het vir haar ’n ander en
onverwagte aansien gekry; en by haarself herhaal sy die woorde van
Jan, terwyl sy die opwekkende les daarvan voel:
—Ons moet die dode eer, dog ook vertroue behou in die lewe.
Dié woorde, is hul nie die kort samevatting nie, die aansporing tot
ware lewe, wat die loopbaan van helde samevat as in ’n kosbare
kragaftreksel? Die is groot wat nie suinig is met die moeite wat hul
moet gebruik nie, en wat op hul kort of lang loopbaan ’n afdruksel
maak van hul siel—vry van alle vrees en swakheid. So put sy dan
bevrediging en vertroosting uit die aandoening self wat haar in
verwarring bring. En terwyl sy die fyn geur opruik, sweer sy by
haarself om van nou af dapper haar swaar te dra, sonder bitterheid
en sonder te murmureer. Haar afgeskeepte jonkheid sal nie
nutteloos wees nie as dit hom aan die wêreld gee soos ’n vrywillige
offerande. En as sy by haar moeder kom, wat die blomme van
Marcel water gee, omarm sy die arme ou vrou, asof sy die ouderdom
wil beskerm wat aan haar sorg toevertrou is, asof sy die belofte van
nuwe moed met ’n seël wil bekragtig en wil toon dat sy dit meen met
haar nuwe lewensopvatting.
VI.
ISABELLA.
Vooraan in ’n hokkie of „loge” van die eerste rang, in die

konsertgebou, sit mevrou Marthenay (Alida) en mevrou Landeau
(Isabella). Aan al die oë en brilletjies wat op hulle gerig is, bied hulle
so hul skoonheid te kyk aan—eersgenoemde met bedeesheid,
laasgenoemde ekspres en beslis. En die teëstelling in hulle
skoonheid val goed in die oog. Isabella dra ’n aandrok van dun, geel
sy, met ’n punt laag toelopend van voor, sodat haar volmaak-skone,
dunne hals goed te sien is; en, om die blankheid van haar hals nog
meer te laat uitkom, dra sy ’n swart ferweellint daar om, met ’n
diamant daarin van die helderste water. Die sagte Alida dra ’n rok
van swart kant, sonder ’n enkele juweel; en die sombere kleur—wat
sy ekspres gekies het om nie in die oog te val nie—pas goed by haar
fyne blondheid.
Agter die dames sit graaf Marthenay, meneer Landeau en kaptein
Jan Berlier. Die stuk wat vanaand gespeel word, is „Iphigenie in
Tauris,” van Glück. Op die eerste mate van die orkes, soos snel
opmekaarvolgende golwe, stilte en aandag in die saal
verspreidende, verdwyn Marthenay stilletjies deur die agterdeurtjie
van die „loge.” In ’n oomblik is hy in die dobbelsaal. Toe sy vrou
omkyk, sien sy dat hy weg is. Alleenstaande in haar ongeluk, en
terwyl sy die vriend van Marcel so by haar sien, dink sy met
weemoed aan wat sou kan gewees het, maar wat nie is nie. Isabella
wag nou met die geduld en gespanne aandag van ’n kat haar kans
af om eindelik haar begeerde prooi te bemagtig, en sy gee haar
bekoorlikheid tyd om sy werk te doen, want sy voel agter haar blote
nek, waar haar swart hare opgeborsel is, die asem van die jonkman
wat agter haar sit. Meneer Landeau voel hom geslinger tussen twee
gedagtes, tussen die begeerte om in die nabyheid te toef van sy
verfynd-wrede, skone vrou, en die lus om na die leessaal te loop en
in die koerante na te gaan hoe die geldmark staan—die toneel van
sy eindelose worstelinge.—Hy gaan.
Alleen gelaat, geniet Jan nou van die hemelse musiek—eenvoudig
en rustig, soos die lyne van ’n Griekse tempel. Wat hy hoor, is die
roerende smeekbede aan die kuise Diana gerig deur Iphigenie:
vraende aan die godin om haar tog liewer genadiglik te laat sterwe
as haar te verban na die woeste kuste van Tauris. Deur die
voorwaartse beweging van haar jong liggaam, haar uitgestrekte
arms, die reglynige en harmoniese plooie van haar wit gewaad, die
adel in haar houding en haar suiwer-skone gelaat, verteenwoordig
die sangeres—maar in lewende lywe—die outydse marmerbeelde,
waarvan die onbeweeglik vaste vorme altyd nog aandoening wek in
siele wat gevoelig is vir skoonheid, en waarvan die invloed nog altyd
aangroei met die tyd. Half begrypende die hoë besieling van hierdie
kuns, juig die mense geesdriftig toe.
Isabella kyk om en sien met verbasing dat Jan se oë skitter van
opgetoënheid—hy kyk oor haar heen na die toneel. Sy fluister hom
toe, sodat hy vooroor buig en die geur kry van haar huid.
Ná die eerste bedryf het Alida lus om die kaptein te vra om haar
na die dobbelsaal te bring en haar man te gaan haal. Het sy hom nie
iets te vra nie? Maar sy durf nie en neem maar die arm van meneer
Landeau. Dat almal nou weg is, is net na Isabella haar sin, en sy
wink vir Jan om naas haar te kom sit.
—Weet jy, sê sy, dat ek jou dood al beween het?
—My dood? Maar dan was jy ’n bietjie haastig daarmee.
—Ja, die dood van kaptein Kibert is bekend gemaak geword; en jy
was mos daar by hom. Hoe kon ek weet dat dieselfde lot jou nie
getref het nie?
—Het die mooi oë my waarlik beween?
—’n Hele aand.
—Hulle brand en skitter so, dat hul jou trane wel moet laat
opdroog.
—Hulle is bly om jou weer te sien, Jan. En brutaalweg kyk sy hom
aan met brandende, smagtende oë. Oombliklik geluk dit haar om
tussen hulle twee te herstel die vryerige verhouding wat vir hulle
vroeër so aangenaam was. Sy sien dat hy sy handskoen uit het. Sy
trek hare ook uit, en haar vingers vol goue ringe, strengel sy deur dié
van haar ou maat.
—Jy hou van edelstene, sê hy, en by die lig beskou hy die dun
uitlopende vingers en rose naels van haar blanke hand.
—Ja, antwoord sy, dan het ek ’n gedagte dat ek, in klein, al die
skatte van die wêreld by my dra.
Om sy mond speel ’n twyfelagtige glimlag.
—Die wêreld is baie groot, mevrou, om dit in u handjie te kan hou.
—Kyk hoe mooi is die groen van hierdie smarag, Jan.
—Ek hou meer van die veld-groen.
—En die helder-blou van hierdie saffier.
—Dis nie so skoon as die hemelblou nie.
—En hierdie robyn.
—Bloed is mooier.
—En hierdie pêrels.
—Ek hou meer van trane.
—Nou ja, dan kan jy tevrede wees, want trane het ek vir jou
gestort.
—En die trane, mevrou, was hul ook van die eerste water, net
soos die diamant aan u hals?
—Is dit nie ’n mooi diamant nie? Die vonke wat dit uitskiet, is enig.
Hulle glimlag van pret oor hul verliefderige skermutseling—soos
twee sabelskermers wat mekaar met die wapen groet. Net of sy
geniet van ’n ruiker blomme, so asem die jong vrou gretig die jong
lewe in. Haar boesem gaan op en neer onder haar keurslyf van
sagte sy, wat haar volle vorme goed laat veronderstel, en op haar
blanke huid kan Jan die fyn vertakking van blou aartjies sien tot waar
hul verdwyn onder die sye stof. Die onberispelike snit en hang van
haar kleed laat goed sien wat ’n volmaakskoon liggaam daarin sit,
gekroon met die fiere koninklike gelaat en pikswart hare. Hy hoef
maar te buk om die skoon blom te kan pluk—die seldsame, lewende
orgideeblom. Die steel na hom toe gebuig, die blaartjies uitgesprei—
trillende in die lou aandwindjie—bied die blom hom aan. Waarom
sou hy dit nie pluk nie? Weet hy dan die skoonheid nie op prys te
stel nie, en die jeug, wat deur die plesier opgefleur word? Maar as hy
dit nie waardeer nie, dan sou hy nie in teenwoordigheid van die
vreugde die uitdrukking hê van diepe droefgeestigheid nie, wat
alleen ontstaan as ’n mens met die dood bekend is.
—Ek het tog so lank vir jou gewag, sê sy, met ’n veranderde stem,
waarin hy ’n toontjie van verlange ontdek.
—Het jy regtig vir my gewag?
—Ek wag nog vir jou.
Die orkes begin te speel vir die twede bedryf. Alida en meneer
Lavernay kom terug in die „loge”—meneer Landeau het sy plek aan
meneer Lavernay afgestaan omdat hy liewer in die leessaal bly by sy
beursoordinkings dan te luister na die droefgeestige musiek wat hy
tog nie verstaan nie, en wat so anders is as die operettedeuntjies.
Langsaam word die outydse drama op die toneel afgespeel. Maar
die musiek—opvoedster van kalme en reine siele—kan Jan nou nie
meer bekoor nie. Vlak voor hom, tussen die swart ferweellint en die
keurslyf, sien hy die blanke vlees van Isabella, en hy stel hom voor
hoe sag dit moet wees. Sy kyk half opsy en hy sien haar sy-gesig:
met sy oog volg hy die skone lyn van haar neus tot sy blik gevestig
bly op haar rooi lippe—skone lippe, slaafs tot sy diens bereid. Want
het sy nie gesê nie: Ek wag nog vir jou? Waarvoor wag hy nog? Het
hy dan meteens onverskillig geword vir die tallose verleidinge van
die lewe, in hierdie vrou samegevat in haar buitengewone
skoonheid, soos die soort oosterse reukflessies wat in één
druppeltjie die aftreksel bevat van duisend rose? Het die Afrikaanse
son dan sy bloed koud gemaak in plaas van daar gloed in te giet?
Hy is nog jonk en ongetroud, by wie sou hy meer kan geniet van sy
jonkheid en vryheid?
Die skone hoof, wat so sy aandag boei, draai nou weer na voor,
en nou is sy oog gevestig op haar hare—waarvan hy die gewig skat
—op haar hals en skouers. Dit duisel in sy hoof: ’n oomblik sluit hy
sy oë en sweer dat hy die vurige begeerte sal tevrede stel wat hom
verteer.
Op die oomblik van oorgawe laat die musiek hom die akkoorde
hoor van diepe en aanhoudende gemoedsontroering—statig en
bedaard, selfs by die heftige smart wat hul moet vertolk. Sy
oorspanne senuwee tril. Sy gevoeligheid, vertienvoudig deur die
uitsig op genot, drink die hemelse musiek met graagte in, soos ’n
verdroogde blom die dou.
Op die toneel betwis Orestes en Pylades mekaar die voorreg om,
die een vir die ander, te sterwe—dewyl op die somber kuste van
Tauris een van hulle as offer geëis word. Dis ’n diep-droewige
worsteling waarin die weldadige vriendskap die innigste liefde nog
oortref.
Jan probeer om teëstand te bied aan die ontydige invloed van die
musiek en toneel, want dis heeltemal in stryd met sy opgewekte
hartstog. Maar sy wil is verlam en kan nie lank weerstand bied nie.
Hy het die lewe, in al sy uitinge van skoonheid, te lief om weerstand
te kan bied aan so’n volmaakte kuns, wat hy begryp en bewonder,
waarvan die reine besieling alle lae begeertes, alle haat en
beuselagtigheid uit ons harte losruk, soos onkruid uit ’n tuin uitgetrek
word, sodat die oneindig kosbaarder plant beter mag bloei: die
heilige begeerte na liefde en toewyding.
Hy voel nou dat hy reeds verhewe is bo die aanbidding van die
éne vrou. ’n Begeerte gryp hom aan om, as die ware, verskillende
lewens gelyk te lewe. Van ’n lae wellusteling is hy in ’n held
verander; hy wil terug, maar voel hom dan weer opgehef. Met
onweerstaanbare mag dring sy verlede lewensloop hom aan sy
herinnering op: Hy is weer saam met sy vriend Marcel, op die
woestyntog, waar hy, in eensaamheid en gevaar, by gebrek en
strewe, gevoel het wat die lewe beteken in al sy grootheid, want hy
het toe besef wat die rigting en waarde daarvan is. En van die broer
dwaal sy gedagtes af op die suster. Van die begin af het hy vanaand
elke gedagte aan Paula verban. Het hy haar, ’n oomblik gelede, selfs
nie heeltemal vergeet nie? Waarom verskyn sy nou meteens weer in
sy gedagtes, en waarom sou dit wees dat die kuise musiek wat hy
hoor, so bevorderlik is aan haar ontydige koms in sy herinnering? Hy
probeer om haar beeld te verdrywe, maar hy het daar berou oor.
—O! dink hy, waarom is sy tog nie net so mooi soos hierdie een
nie?
En weer is sy oog op die skone hals en skouers, dis net of daar lig
uitstraal wat hom aantrek. Maar met stille genoeë, dog sonder te
dink aan die growwe ongepastheid van sy vergelyking, erken hy
darem:
—Paula het mooier hare; as dit los is, moet dit seker tot by haar
knieë kom.
Isabella draai haar hoof om en lag met hom.
Paula het mooier oë ook, dink hy weer. En in sy gedagte sien hy
hoe die swart oogappels, met hul blitsligte, hom weer aankyk. Maar
daar’s ’n verwyt in dié oë, en hy verstaan goed wat hul sê: Waarom
dink jy aan my met so min respek? skyn Paula hom te vra. Het ek
miskien probeer—net soos hierdie een by jou—om jou te verlei met
vertoning en aanloklike maniertjies? Het dit my, in jou
teenwoordigheid, al ooit ontbreek aan sedigheid en waardigheid? As
jy my nie liefhet nie, laat my dan met vrede in my eensame bestaan;
moenie my reine jonkheid onteer deur die beeld daarvan te maak tot
’n voorstelling van jou laere begeerlikheid nie. En as jy my liefhet, o!
as jy my liefhet! waarom is jou liefde dan nie sterk genoeg om jou los
te ruk van ’n bekoring waarvan jy nie weet of dit jou lewe uit die
goeie koers sal stuur nie. Kom tog na my toe terwyl jy nog vry en
onskuldig is. Laat my op jou voorhoof en in jou oog niks ontdek wat
laag en gemeen is nie. Ek weet nie of ek mooier is nie, maar ek het
jou lief, so innig, dat hierdie vrou nooit ’n begrip daarvan kan hê nie.
Hy behoor reeds nie meer tot dié jongkêrels wat deur die lewe
gaan met oogklappe aan nie. Dié soort jongkêrels kan nie die
ontsaglik groot velde sien wat naas die smalle pad van hul harstogte
lê nie, en wat aldag die vrugbare saad ontvang van menslike strewe.
Nadat Jan nou eers net sy oog gehad het op die begeerte van die
oomblik, sien hy meteens die kaart van sy hele bestaan voor hom
uitgesprei, en hy lees daarop—uit sy afkoms en sy verlede—die
openbaring van sy toekoms. So beskou, kry die liefde vir hom ’n
ander betekenis. In plaas van die wellus, stel hy hom voor die
bekoring van ’n gemeenskap van gedagtes, en van die innerlike krag
wat voortspruit uit vrede van die gemoed en uit ’n kalm, huislike
bestaan. In plaas van verbygaande, heftige opbruisinge, stel hy die
genot van duursame geluk en die welsyn van die ras.
In die drie weke wat hy nou al terug is, het Jan al baiemaal na
Maupas gegaan. En dit was nie net maar om twee bedroefde vroue
te troos nie. Deur haar fierheid, deur haar ernstige en diepe gevoel,
deur haar jeug, waarvan die skone ingetoënheid vir hom duidelik
word, oefen Paula ’n onweerstaanbare aantrekking op hom uit. Ná
elke besoek moes hy tot eie verbasing beken dat die teruggetrokke
en verstandige noointjie ’n hart vol lewe besit, net so klaar om die
lewe met geesdrif te geniet, as sy die smart gedra het sonder te
beswyk. Op die treffende manier van liefhebbende harte, wat daar
plesier in het om hul liefde terug na te gaan dat hul kan sien hoe die
tyd dit aangebring het, so vergelyk hy die teenwoordige bekoring wat
Paula op hom uitoefen met die vae herinneringe van vroeër dae toe
hy nog rond gespeel het met ’n wilde, uitgelate Paulatjie. Vergetend
dat hy haar self vergeet het, verbeel hy hom dat dit ’n ou neiging is
wat die kinderjare oorleef het. Met die heldersiendheid van die
instink, bowenal voel hy dat sy toekomstige krag en ’n normale
verloop van sy lewe dáár te soek is, en nêrens anders nie. So bemin
hy dan die jong nooi, soos ’n mens op dertigjarige leeftyd bemin: met
vertroue en teerheid. Haar bekoorlike teenwoordigheid het sy hart
vervul met nuwe vrede.
Nou kom die hartstogtelike Isabella weer tussenin. Ná haar
huwelik vir geld, oorstelp sy haar „flirt” van vroeër dae met al haar
onbevredigde sinlike begeertes, met al die storme van haar
gemartelde hart. Sy het baie trouer gebly aan Jan as aan haar eie
man, meneer Landeau. Sy het uitgekyk na sy terugkoms. En toe sy
hom weer sien, was sy nog meer aangetrek deur die erns en diepte
op die gesig van die jongman te lees, as deur sy sorgloosheid en
vrolikheid van vroeër dae; sy het by haarselwe gesê dat sy nie meer
sal wag nie, en om hom te behaag, hang sy haar skoonheid voor
hom uit soos ’n vlag.
Wel, sonder te weet, is dit haar ook geluk om hier in die „loge” van
die konsertgebou enige oomblikke oor hom te triomfeer. Die hele
aand het sy al getwyfel of haar middeltjies om die mooi jong offisier
te vang, iets uitgerig het—hy is maar terughoudend, en ook maar
versigtig met sy woorde.
Daar val die gordyn, die bedryf is uit; nou sal sy die kans
waarneem om die afgebroke gesprek weer aan te knoop.
Brandend van ongeduld, kyk sy dadelik om na hom, en, ekspres
so vooroorbuiend dat hy mooi langs haar welgevormde hals kan kyk,
vra sy:
—Waaraan het jy so gesit en dink? Ek het gemerk dat jy nie na die
musiek geluister het nie.
—Ek het aan twee mooi vrouens gedink.
—Dis één te veel.
Met haar twee oë, skerp soos pyle, probeer sy om die harde
voorhoof te deurboor en daarin te lees.
Ongeduldig en dorstig na haar geluk, waarvan sy haar wil
verseker, staan sy op en sê:
—’n Mens stik hier van die warmte. Kom, kaptein, bring my na die
wandelsaal.
En as sy aan die arm van Jan uitstap, kyk sy die vryerige
Lavernay aan met ’n blik wat sê: gefop oudjie! want hy sit haar en
oppas. En as hul uitstap in die gang, leun sy, met die hele gewig van
haar wulpse liggaam, op die arm van Jan.
Hy bly nog maar stil, en sy vra, met bevallige bedeesdheid:
—Jan, is ek dan nie meer mooi nie?
—Kyk om u heen, mevrou, wat sê die oë van die mense?
Ja, die oë van die hele deftige skaar in die wandelsaal is op hulle
twee gerig. Vrouens wat verbykom, kyk na haar rok en bereken die
snit en waarde daarvan; en haar bekoorlike blote arms en hals trek
die aandag van almal. Sy tik met haar waaier op Jan se vingers en
antwoord.
—Jy, wat jy sê alleen, is al wat ek vra.
—En die ou oppasser van jou, daar in die „loge”? vra Jan,
laggend.
—Hy doen my boodskappe.
Gesteund deur sy gedagte aan Paula, maak hy of hy die
toenadering nie merk nie, en nie sonder ’n seker ontroering nie, voel
hy die ronde arm van die verleidster op syne. Die hoogrooi kleur op
die gesig van die jong vrou bedek maar half ’n uitdrukking van
teleurstelling.
—Onthou jy nog, Jan, die eikebos by Chenée?
—Ja, sê hy, en hy dink daaraan hoe die lot van Marcel daar beslis
is.
—Ek sou so graag weer met jou daarnatoe wil gaan. Jan, sê my
nou reguit: as ek nog ’n jong meisie was, sou jy dan meer van my
hou?
—Jy is nou mooier, maar anders. Ek sien altyd jou man agter jou.
—Jou grappies is laf, Jan, sê sy, nou sy sien dat meneer Landeau
nie daar is nie. Sy sê weer:
—Is jy dan bang vir hom?
—Glad nie!
—Vind jy hom onaangenaam?
—Ja.
— Moet hy dan aangenaam wees as jy met my wil . . . . „flirt”?
Hy lag en sê:
—Natuurlik.
—Maar dis snaaks.
—Ja, sy is tog sy vrou.
Nou lag sy weer; met haar gesig half agter haar waaier, sê sy:
—Ja, so op ’n manier.
—Hou op.
Sy maak die stemmetjie na van kinders wat knor gekry het.
—Ek sal dit nooit weer doen nie, hoor.
Hy kyk haar aan soos sy daar voor hom staan, heeltemal aan hom
oorgegee. Waarom sal hy nog weerstand bied aan die oproeping
van die plesier, in so’n skone vorm gehul?
—Isabella! fluister hy.
Op haar beurt kyk sy hom nou weer in sy oë aan, en, stralende
van genoeë, lê sy haar sagte hand in die hand van die jonkman.
—Jan! my liewe Jan!
’n Oomblik verlustig altwee hulle in die saligheid van beloofde
genot en in die bedwelmende betowering wat die jonkheid aanbied.
Daar lui die bel: die voorstelling begin weer. Swaar weeg hul geluk
op hulle, spraakloos en langsaam stap hul terug na die konsertsaal.
Bo-op die marmere trap bly hulle staan om asem te skep. Haar
triomf dwing haar die bekentnis af:
—Jy weet nie hoe jy my van ongerustheid laat bewe het nie, Jan.
Ek het waarlik al geglo wat die mense sê.
Vaag-ongerus, en met halfbeklemde hart, vra hy:
—En wat sê die mense dan?
—Dat jy Paula Kibert liefhet.
Hy laat die arm val wat op syne leun, en vra, met veranderde
stem:
—Wie vertel jou dit?
—O! sê sy, ontsteld en bleek, asof sy aan sy voete die puinhope
sien van haar geluk. Net deur die towerkrag van één naam is sy
verslae. En dié naam, in haar onnoselheid moes sy dit self uitspreek.
Dis genoeg dat sy Jan net aankyk om te besef hoe groot haar
nederlaag is; en woedend omdat sy so meteens uit haar hemel geval
het, vererger sy nog haar dwaasheid:
—Ja, die hoogmoedige klein ding, met haar prinsesmaniertjies,
het jou wel weet te vang; dit moes ek geweet het. Ek wed dat sy
haar speletjie al lank met jou gespeel het. Soos alle ou-jong-nooiens
is sy op die mannejag. Loop maar na haar toe: sy wag vir jou.
Nou die verleidster self hom aan sy ware liefde teruggee, sien hy
haar met medelye aan:
—Isabella, dit het vroeër net van jou afgehang om my vrou te
word. En vanaand nog het jy kon opmerk hoe swak ek en hoe sterk
jy is. Dit betaam jou nie om so te praat nie.
Sy antwoord niks. Die op-en-neer-gaan van haar bors toon aan
wat ’n storm daar in haar woel. Met haar allesoorwinnende
skoonheid gee sy die stryd op, erken haar nederlaag en gee haar
oor aan haar verdriet. Die neerlaag vind haar onvoorbereid. Te lank
al het sy altyd mog reken op die geluk van haar oorwinninge. Haar
flirterige, sinlike liefde weet net van geesdriftige verheffinge of
wanhoop, en is onmatig in ’n liefdeskermutseling.
Hulle bly alleen staan op die balkon, bo die trap; die mense is al
almal die konsertsaal in. Die leegheid van die wandelsaal lyk
bowemate groot vir Isabella. Sy vat met haar hande aan haar keel
asof sy wil stik, en hef eindelik haar oë op na Jan; dit maak sy hart
seer om die smart te sien van dié skone wese. Nou dat sy innig
verdriet het, voel sy niks laags of gemeens meer nie.
—Jan, snik sy, met ’n nouliks verstaanbare stemmetjie, jy het dit
goed gesien: daar is geen vrou wat jou liefde so verdien as Paula
nie. Jy sal gelukkig wees, en ek baie ongelukkig . . . .
Sy kan nie meer sê as dit nie, maar vooroorbuigend neem sy die
hand van die jongman en druk ’n soen daarop. Hy voel ’n traan op sy
hand val, en, as sy weer haar hoof ophef, sien hy die trane langs
haar wange afrol. Sy herstel haar genoeg om te kan sê, met ’n
armsalige glimlaggie:
—Is dit nou pêrels, Jan?
—Jou trane is duisendmaal meer werd.
Hy neem haar in sy arms en soen haar op haar oë. Die
onversigtige afskeidsomhelsing laat hulle amper weer beswyk.
Hoeveel paartjies is daar nie al aanmekaargeketen geraak nie ten
gevolge van so ’n paar sekondes van vertedering en jeugdige
ontroering? In die liefde is oral gevaar; ons vlees is so swak en ons
wil so wankelend . . . . ’n Deur wat oopgaan, is hul redding. Hulle
gaan terug in hul „loge.”
—Omdat ek bang was, het ek my lewe misgeloop, sê sy.
Vir die res van die aand vergeet sy heeltemal wat ’n krag sy in
haar skoonheid besit, sy is droewig in haarself gekeerd, sy haat haar
mooi rok en haar juwele, en sou liewer die heerlike armoede van
ware liefde besit. Vir die res van die aand het haar oorwinnaar—
onderdaniger en kragteloser as ’n oorwonnene—sy oog nog op die
skoonheid, wat nooit syne sal word nie. Voordat die vlam van sy
begeerte uitgaan, brand dit hom nog. Voordat hy met vaste stap op
die reguit pad van sy bestemming gaan, kyk hy nog ’n slag om na
die wellus—en nie sonder ’n suggie nie.
Toe sy uitstap by die deur om huis-toe te gaan, help hy haar nog
met die wit symantel wat sy om die blanke naaktheid van haar hals
en skouers slaan. En nou eers dat sy weg is, voel hy bly dat hy haar
baasgeraak het, en dink hy ongedwonge en vry aan die reine, fiere
jongnooi wat sy hele hart vervul—die hart wat so vol moed is en tog
so swak.
Alida het maar min met Jan gepraat die hele aand. Hy het haar
besig gesien met haar man. Daar word gefluister dat Marthenay
belangryke verliese gely het by die dobbelspel en dat hy so
opsigtelik aan die gang is met ’n seker dame van die deftige wêreld.
Sonder teenstribbeling onderwerp Alida haar aan haar droewige
bestaan, met ’n hart wat al vooruit die ergste verwag. Wat help haar
nou haar groot fortuin? Sy verwag geen geluk meer nie. Haar natuur
is te fyn en gevoelig om hom te kan troos met die genoeëns van die
wêreld, terwyl daar verlatenheid is in haar huis en leegheid in haar
hart. Haar dogtertjie alleen hou haar nog terug van wanhoop. Sy
maak haar groot met oordrewe liefde, en weet nie dat sy haar ook
ontwapen vir haar toekomstige lewe nie.
Maar vanaand het die teenwoordigheid van Jan haar weer met
pynlike helderheid laat terugdink aan die gebeurtenis daar in die
eikebos van Chenée toe sy te swak was om haar geluk te gryp ten
koste van ’n gemaklike selfoorwinning of selfs maar ten koste van ’n
belofte om te wag en geduld te hê. Sy wou Jan nog gevra het om
haar iets te vertel omtrent die dood van kommandant Kibert. Maar
dié vraag het nie oor haar lippe gekom nie: is dit nie reeds ontrou
van haar as sy so’n vraag sou doen nie? Nougeset, laai sy dié nuwe
smart ook nog maar op haar innerlike weduweeskap.
So kom sy dus nooit te wete nie dat Marcel, op die oomblik van sy
dood, die portret by hom gedra het van ’n blonde blouoog-meisie,
wat hom gebring het tot die fiere minagting van die dood.
VII.
DIE GEHEIM VAN PAULA.
Jan het ’n ope rytuig in die dorp gaan haal en help sy oom daarin.
Die oubaas is opgeskik in swart manel en keil, borshemp, hoë
boordjie en pêrelgrys handskoene, en in sy hand sy goudknop-
wandelstok.
—Ek voel bra ongemaklik in al die deftigheid, sê hy aan sy neef.
Hy het spyt dat hy sy tuinklere moes uittrek. En ’n mens sou sê hy
gaan weg op ’n lang reis, want Jan moet allerhande raadgewinge
aanhoor in verband met sy agterblywende roosboompies.
Jan stel hom gerus daaromtrent.
—Maar, oom, vergeet veral nie u boodskap nie.
—Verbeel jou! sê die ou mannetjie, opwippend. Ek sal jou
boodskap goed oorbring, al sou my beste rose ook verlep solank as
ek weg is.
Die oom gaan na Maupas om aan mevrou Kibert die hand van
Paula te vra vir sy neef Jan. Die rytuig verdwyn om die draai. Jan is
ongeduldig en opgewonde; in plaas van binne-toe te gaan, stap hy
langsaam die pad langs, agter die rytuig aan. Op dié manier sal hy
sy oom gouer ontmoet as hy terugkom; en miskien sal hy dan voor
die aand tyd hê om self nog na Maupas te gaan en te praat met
haar, wat dan sy verloofde sal wees. Hy kyk na die son, wat sonder
die minste haas na die berge daal, en hy verwens die vervelende
lang somerdae.
Ná die aand van die komedievoorstelling het die gevoel in die
jonkman se hart nog inniger geword. Hy het Paula lief om haar moed
en haar fierheid, en ook om die geheimsinnige onverklaarbare
aantreklikheid wat op ons uitgeoefen word deur die gelaatstrekke,
die kleur van die oë, die sware hoofhare, die gestalte, en al die
bekoorlikhede van die vrou in wie ons vooruit die versekering en die
blydskap van ons toekoms lees, of van ’n toekoms vol rampsalige
dog genotvolle kwelling. Die verstandige jongnooi, met haar
vlammende oogopslag, het sy hart vervul met tere liefde; bowenal
het sy hom daartoe gebring om die ware doel van ons menslike
bestaan na te streef—die doel wat nie daarin lê dat ons die begin en
die end van alles in onsself soek nie, maar daarin, dat ons
onbaatsugtige en werksame skakels uitmaak tussen voorgaande en
nakomende geslagte. Waar sou hy ooit ’n edeler metgesel kan vind,
dapperder, standvastiger, beradener? Sy het groot geword soos ’n
jong plantjie wat krag put uit vrugbare grond. Haar famielie is ’n
waarborg vir haar deugsaamheid. Net ’n bietjie son het haar
ontbreek om tot volle wasdom te kan kom. Sou liefde haar nie met
die warmte en lig kan bedeel nie? En wat ’n vreugde om te sien hoe
sy opegaan soos ’n blom, om te voel dat ’n mens daar ’n bietjie
oorsaak van is, om aan die alte swaar beproefde jonkheid weer
smaak te gee in die dag wat verbygaan, om haar te laat wens dat dit
nie so gou verdwyn nie!
Sy sal hom liefkry; miskien het sy hom reeds lief. Sou hy verkeerd
gesien het, of het hy haar nou en dan betrap op ’n klein verrassing
van haar geheime jongmeisies-gevoel, ondanks die waardigheid en
terughoudenheid wat al haar beweginge bestuur? Het sy oog nie
nou en dan ’n blossie gevang op haar wange nie, ’n alte snelle knip
van haar oë, en veral die manier van aankyk, die blik, so rein, so
trouhartig, so vas, so onwillekeurig vriendelik op hom gerig? En nou,
as hy terugdink, lyk dit dan nie vir hom of hy ook gedeel het in die
afkeer wat sy by alle geleenthede laat blyk het teen Isabella Orlandi
nie? Isabella Orlandi—hy het haar nog nie weer gesien nie; hy sal
haar ook nooit weer sien nie; hy voel nog ’n soort van bygelowige
vrees vir haar, en hy verban die alte skone beeld uit sy gedagte; dit
verneder hom en herinner hom wreed aan sy swakheid. Maar as
geliefde van Paula Kibert voel hy sterk genoeg om die gewig van die
hele wêreld te kan dra. Is dit nie ’n teken van ware liefde nie, as dit al
ons kragte verhoog en ons soveel selfvertroue gee?
Ander bedenkinge het nog by die gevoel van sy hart gekom. By ’n
huwelik skei ’n liefhebbende hart hom nie af van die stoflike en
maatskaplike lewe nie; en juis daardeur, deur die moeilikhede wat in
die weg kom, leer die liefde verstaan wat die menslike bestaan in die
algemeen beteken, en dat dit beskerm moet word; die hartstog,
daarenteen, probeer om dit te vergeet of te verniel. Die famielie
Kibert is nie ryk nie, en wat hy self moet erwe, is ook maar min.
Alhoewel hy die militêre diens liefhet en nie sonder hartseer daarvan
sal afskeid neem nie, voel hy nie die beroepsaansporing—soos
Marcel by voorbeeld—wat ’n mens as dit ware by die skouers gryp
en dwing om ’n pad te gaan waarbuite hom net ongemak en ongeluk
te wag is. En hy moet rekening hou met die stoflike behoeftes van sy
aanstaande huishoue.
Sonder moeite het hy sy lewensplan uitgewerk: hy gaan as kolonis
na Frans en Etienne Kibert in Asië. Hulle het al so dikwels aan hul
moeder geskrywe dat hulle hulp nodig het om hul werk behoorlik uit
te brei. Hy is ’n kind en kleinkind van landbouers, en daar is ’n
verlange in hom na die vrye, vreedsame buitelewe. Sy vroutjie sal
nie bang wees om met hom oor die see te gaan nie: sy sal hom sterk
maak vir ’n lewe van stryd en avontuur. Die bloed van ou dokter
Kibert—onverskillig vir gevaar—die bloed van die ou moeder—met
haar onoorwinlike geloof, wat alle beproewings vir haar draaglik
maak—dié bloed vloei ook in die are van die meisie wat hy bemin.
Met die selfsug wat ’n minnaar kenmerk, vergeet Jan net één
persoon, by al sy toekomsplanne; of liewer, sonder daaraan te dink,
maak hy nou ’n plan om dié één te beroof van haar enigste
soetigheid in ’n bitter bestaan. Die dapperheid van mevrou Kibert is
vir hom ’n sterk waarborg van Paula se moed, sy is so’n moeder
waardig; maar hy besef nie dat hy van die arme vrou haar grootste
opoffering gaan verlang nie: haar laaste kind, dié wat sy so angstig-
beminnend in haar arms druk, en wat God haar nog gespaar het.
Terwyl hy so op die pad van Maupas aanstap, sy geluk tegemoet,
in die skemer en die heerlike lug van die someraand, maak ou Marie
die deur oop vir sy oom. Sy laat hom in die voorkamer, en terwyl sy
haar nooi gaan roep, dink sy:
—Wat is die ou se planne—met sy swart manel en keil?
Die ou bly stilstaan voor ’n blompot met rose wat in die middel van
die tafel staan. Hy bekyk hulle so digteby dat dit lyk of hy hul wil
opruik, en meteens lig hy sy hande op in die grootste verbasing. So
kry mevrou Kibert hom daar staan. Hy groet haar nouliks, dog wys
dadelik na die blomme en roep uit:
—Daardie een! Sien u dit?
—Ja, sê sy, verwonderd.
—Waar het u dit gekry?
—Ag, ek weet nie meer nie, meneer.
—Onmoontlik! U moet weet. Antwoord!
En ’n bietjie minder brutaal sê die ou rosegek dan weer:
—Asseblief tog, mevrou. Dis baie belangryk.
Mevrou Kibert probeer nou om haar geheue te ondervra:
—My seun het die steggies uit Siena meegebring. Ons het dit hier
geplant en dit dra mooi.
—A! het ek nie geweet dis ’n Sinese roos nie! En die naam weet u
natuurlik nie. Niemand ken hier die name van blomme nie.
Mevrou Kibert beken glimlaggend dat sy die naam nie weet nie.
En daar begin die ou uit te vaar, wel ’n halfuur lank, oor die
skandelike verwaarlosing van die plantkunde by die onderwys.
Mevrou Kibert, dinkende aan iets anders, kan skaars ’n woordjie
hier en daar inbring. Sy verseker hom dat sy van name niks weet
nie, maar darem baie van blomme hou.
Maar die ou is nou heeltemal opgewonde, en nie meer in te hou
nie. Hy vertel haar die geskiedenis en name van rose in vreemde
lande. Mevrou Kibert voel wel wat die doel van sy onverwagte
besoek is: hy wat net vir sy plante lewe en sy medemense
veronagsaam, dit moet wel iets belangryks wees wat hom
uitgedrywe het, dit kan niks anders wees nie as ’n aanvraag ten
huwelik. Bewoë dink sy aan Paula, wat nie tuis is nie en so gelukkig
sal wees as sy terugkom. Die ou vrou probeer om sy woorde op ’n
ander koers te lei:
—Hoe gaan dit tog met Jan? Ons het hom al ’n paar dae nie
gesien nie, hy kom te min hier.

Free Download Przemyslowa Concentration Camp The Camp The Children The Trials Katarzyna Person Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Free Download Przemyslowa Concentration Camp The Camp The Children The Trials Katarzyna Person Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Przemys■owa Concentration Camp:

The Camp, the Children, the Trials

ISSN 2731-5711 ISSN 2731-572X (electronic)

Cover illustration: Jean-Philippe Tournut

Archives and Interviews233

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

1.1 The Sources: German Contemporary

well as personal deposits of Józef Witkowski, a former prisoner, one of the

1.2 Research Questions/Methodological Remarks

bad experiences.12 In the context of this study such theoretical reflections

continuing education, and struggle with illnesses, resulting from condi-

A third pathbreaking publication in this context was Debóra Dwork’s

Holocaust and forced labor, edited by Henning Borggräfe et al. (2017);29

2.1 The German Criminal Police

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

prevention which was now used as an instrument of terror against crimi-

(Vorbeugehaft), which was legalized already in February 1933 by the

paramount importance for Werner was to avoid any potential damage to

2.2 Planning the Camp

some in concentration and labour camps. Moreover, as early as autumn

Vooraan in ’n hokkie of „loge” van die eerste rang, in die

You might also like

Free Download Przemyslowa Concentration Camp The Camp The Children The Trials Katarzyna Person Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Free Download Przemyslowa Concentration Camp The Camp The Children The Trials Katarzyna Person Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Przemys■owa Concentration Camp:

The Camp, the Children, the Trials

ISSN 2731-5711 ISSN 2731-572X (electronic)

Cover illustration: Jean-Philippe Tournut

Archives and Interviews233

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

1.1 The Sources: German Contemporary

well as personal deposits of Józef Witkowski, a former prisoner, one of the

1.2 Research Questions/Methodological Remarks

bad experiences.12 In the context of this study such theoretical reflections

continuing education, and struggle with illnesses, resulting from condi-

A third pathbreaking publication in this context was Debóra Dwork’s

Holocaust and forced labor, edited by Henning Borggräfe et al. (2017);29

2.1 The German Criminal Police

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

prevention which was now used as an instrument of terror against crimi-

(Vorbeugehaft), which was legalized already in February 1933 by the

paramount importance for Werner was to avoid any potential damage to

2.2 Planning the Camp

some in concentration and labour camps. Moreover, as early as autumn

Vooraan in ’n hokkie of „loge” van die eerste rang, in die

You might also like

Archives and Interviews233