The Diary of Mary Berg

Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto - 75th Anniversary Edition

Mary Berg, Susan Lee Pentlin

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781780744469
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Biografías históricas

The first eye-witness account ever published of life in the Warsaw Ghetto Mary Berg was fifteen when the German army poured into Poland in 1939. She survived four years of Nazi terror, and managed to keep a diary throughout.This astonishing, vivid portrayal of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto ranks with the most significant documents of the Second World War. Mary Berg candidly chronicles not only the daily deprivations and mass deportations, but also the resistance and resilience of the inhabitants, their secret societies, and the youth at the forefront of the fight against Nazi terror.Above all The Diary of Mary Berg is a uniquely personal story of a life-loving girl's encounter with unparalleled human suffering, and offers an extraordinary insight into one of the darkest chapters of human history.

CHAPTER I

WARSAW BESIEGED

OCTOBER 10, 1939

Today I am fifteen years old.¹ I feel very old and lonely, although my family did all they could to make this day a real birthday. They even baked a macaroon cake in my honor, which is a great luxury these days. My father ventured out into the street and returned with a bouquet of Alpine violets. When I saw it I could not help crying.

I have not written my diary for such a long time that I wonder if I shall ever catch up with all that has happened. This is a good moment to resume it. I spend most of my time at home. Everyone is afraid to go out. The Germans are here.

I can hardly believe that only six weeks ago my family and I were at the lovely health resort of Ciechocinek, enjoying a carefree vacation with thousands of other visitors. I had no idea then what was in store for us. I got the first inkling of our future fate on the night of August 29 when the raucous blare of the giant loud-speaker announcing the latest news stopped the crowds of strollers in the streets. The word “war” was repeated in every sentence. Yet most people refused to believe that the danger was real, and the expression of alarm faded on their faces as the voice of the loud-speaker died away.

My father felt differently. He decided that we must return to our home in Lodz. In almost no time our valises stood packed and ready in the middle of the room. Little did we realize that this was only the beginning of several weeks of constant moving about from one place to another.

We caught the last train which took civilian passengers to Lodz. When we arrived we found the city in a state of confusion. A few days later it was the target of severe German bombardments. The telephone rang again and again. My father dashed from one mobilization office to another, receiving a different-colored slip of paper at each one. One day Uncle Abie, my mother’s younger brother, rushed unexpectedly into our house to say goodbye before leaving for the front. He was ragged, grimy, and unshaven. He had no uniform; only his military cap and the knapsack on his shoulders marked him as a soldier. He had been making his way from one city to another, looking for his regiment.

We spent most of our time in the cellar of our house. When word came that the Germans had broken through the Polish front lines and were nearing Lodz, panic seized the whole population. At eleven o’clock at night crowds began to stream out of the city in different directions. Less than a week after our arrival from Ciechocinek we packed our necessities and set out once more.

Up to the very gates of the city we were uncertain which direction we should take—toward Warsaw or Brzeziny? Finally, along with most of the other Jews of Lodz, we took the road to Warsaw. Later we learned that the refugees who followed the Polish armies retreating in the direction of Brzeziny had been massacred almost to a man by German planes.

Among the four of us, my mother, my father, my sister, and I, we had three bicycles, which were our most precious possessions. Other refugees who attempted to bring with them things that had been valuable in the life they had left behind were compelled to discard them. As we advanced we found the highway littered with all sorts of objects, from fur coats to cars abandoned because of the lack of gasoline. We had the good luck to acquire another bicycle from a passing peasant for the fantastic sum of two hundred zlotys*, and we hoped it would enable us to move together with greater speed. But the roads were jammed, and gradually we were completely engulfed in the slow but steady flow of humanity toward the capital.

Mile after mile it was the same. The fields withered in the terrible heat. The gigantic cloud of dust raised by the vanguard of refugees swept over us, blotting out the horizon and covering our faces and clothes with successive layers of dust. Again and again we flung ourselves into the ditches on the side of the road, our faces buried in the earth, while planes roared in our ears. During the night huge patches of red flared up against the black dome of the sky. The fires of burning cities and villages rose all around us.

When we arrived in Lowicz, the city was one huge conflagration. Burning pieces of wood fell on the heads of the refugees as they forced their way through the streets. Fallen telephone poles barred our path. The sidewalks were cluttered with furniture. Many people were burned in the terrible flames. The odor of scorched human flesh pursued us long after we had left the city.

By September 9, the supply of food we had taken from home was used up. There was nothing whatever to be had along the way. Weak from hunger, my mother fainted on the road. I dropped beside her, sobbing wildly, but she showed no sign of life. In a daze, my father ran ahead to find some water, while my younger sister stood stock-still, as if paralyzed. But it was only a passing spell of weakness.

In Sochaczew we managed to get a few sour pickles and some chocolate cookies that tasted like soap. This was all we had to eat the entire day. Finding a drink of water was almost as difficult as procuring food. All the wells along the way were dried up. Once we found a well filled with murky water, but the villagers warned us not to drink from it because they were sure it had been poisoned by German agents. We hurried on in spite of our parched lips and aching throats.

Suddenly we saw a little blue plume of smoke rising from the chimney of a house at the side of the road. We had found all the other houses along the road deserted, but here was a sign of life. My father rushed in and returned with a huge kettle, but there was a strange expression on his face. In a trembling voice he told us what he had found, and for a while we could not bring ourselves to touch that precious water… He had found the kettle on a stove in which the fire was lit. Near by, on a bed, a man was lying with his face turned to the wall. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, so my father called out to him several times. But there was no answer. Then he walked over to the sleeping peasant and saw that he was dead. The bed was full of blood. The window panes were peppered with bullet holes.

The kettle which we “inherited” from this murdered peasant became our faithful companion on the long road to Warsaw. As we neared the capital, we met the first German prisoners of war walking along the highway, led by Polish soldiers. This sight was encouraging to us, yet the Germans did not seem cast down by their condition. They wore elegant uniforms—they smiled insolently. They knew they would not be prisoners for very long.

We had our first taste of cooked food in Okecie, a suburb of Warsaw. A few soldiers in a deserted building shared their potato soup with us. After four days and nights of seemingly endless traveling, we realized for the first time how tired we were. But we had to go on. There was not a moment to lose, for as we left Okecie we saw men and women building barricades with empty streetcars and cobblestones torn up from the streets, in preparation for the siege of the capital.

In Warsaw we found women standing at the doorways of the houses, handing out tea and bread to the refugees who streamed into the capital in unending lines. And as tens of thousands of provincials entered Warsaw in the hope of finding shelter there, thousands of old-time residents of the capital fled to the country.

Relatives in the heart of Warsaw’s Jewish quarter gave us a warm and hearty welcome, but constant air attacks drove us to the cellar during most of our stay with them. By September 12, the Germans began to destroy the center of the city. Once again we had to move, this time to seek better protection against the bombs.

The days that followed brought hunger, death, and panic to our people. We could neither eat nor sleep. At first, in a new home on Zielna Street, we knew real comfort. The owners had fled the city, leaving a clean apartment for our use. There was even a maid to give us hot tea, and for the first time since our flight from Lodz, we ate a real meal served on a table covered with a white cloth. It included herring, tomatoes, butter, and white bread. To get this bread my father had to stand for hours in a long line in front of a bakery. As he waited there, several German planes suddenly swooped down and strafed the people with machine guns. Instantly the line in front of the bakery dispersed, but one man remained. Disregarding the firing, my father took his place behind him. A moment later the man was hit in the head by a bullet. The entrance to the bakery shop was now free and my father made his purchase.

After this supper we listened to a broadcast in which an American reporter described the Nazi methods of warfare to his American listeners. “I stood in a field and from a distance saw a woman digging potatoes. Beside her was a little child. Suddenly a German plane swooped down, firing at the unarmed woman, who fell at once. The child was not hit. He bent over his fallen mother and wept heartrendingly. Thus another orphan was added to the many war orphans of Poland. President Roosevelt!” he exclaimed in a deep voice, “I beg of you, help these mothers who are digging potatoes for their children; help these children whose mothers are falling on the peaceful fields; help Poland in her hour of trial!” But no help came…

Our house at 31 Zielna Street was next to the telephone building, which was a target for the German guns throughout the siege. Although struck by many shells, the lofty and solidly built structure was only slightly damaged and the telephone girls remained at their posts. Many houses nearby were destroyed, and again we had to spend our nights in the cellar. Then one of the bombs exploded in the front room of our apartment, and we were forced to return to the crowded home of our relatives.

Gradually the food supply of the city became exhausted. Now and then, depending upon which canning factory had been hit by the German bombs, various kinds of tinned goods were thrown on the market. Some days only sardines or pickles were to be had in the stores.

Our hunger for news was as great as our hunger for food. The only paper that still came out was the Worker, the organ of the Polish Socialist Party, which appeared in special editions. We admired the heroism of the editors and printers who, under the most difficult conditions, saw to it that the population was kept informed of events. They told us, for instance, that the British fleet had anchored at Gdynia. Very often the news printed in the Worker heartened us, but premature or falsely optimistic reports only deepened our disappointment later.

By September 20, the radio was silent and the water system had ceased to function. We began to feel as if we were on a desert island. I shall never forget September 23, the date of the Day of Atonement² in 1939. The Germans deliberately chose that sacred Jewish holiday for an intensive bombardment of the Jewish district. In the midst of this bombardment a strange meteorological phenomenon took place: heavy snow mixed with hail began to fall in the middle of a bright, sunny day. For a while the bombing was interrupted, and the Jews interpreted the snow as a special act of heavenly intervention: even the oldest among them were unable to recall a similar occurrence. But later in the day the enemy made up for lost time with renewed fury.

In spite of the danger, my father and a few other men who lived in our house went to the neighboring synagogue. After a few minutes one of them came running back, his tallith (prayer shawl) on his head, a prayer book in his hand, and so shaken that for some time he was unable to speak. A bomb had fallen upon the synagogue and many of the worshipers had been killed. Then, to our great joy, my father returned unharmed. White as chalk, and carrying his tallith crumpled under his arm, he told us that many of those who, only a moment before, had been praying at his side had been killed during the service.

That night hundreds of buildings blazed all over the city. Thousands of people were buried alive in the ruins. But ten hours of murderous shelling could not break the resistance of Warsaw. Our people fought with increased stubbornness; even after the government had fled and Marshal Rydz-Smigly³ had abandoned his troops, men and women, young and old, helped in the defense of the capital. Those who were unarmed dug trenches; young girls organized first-aid squads in the doorways of the houses; Jews and Christians stood shoulder to shoulder and fought for their native land.

On the last night of the siege we sat huddled in a corner of the restaurant below our house. A few elderly Jews chanted Psalms in tearful voices. My mother had wrapped us all in thick blankets to protect us from the tiny splinters that filled the air. When she herself stuck out her head for a moment, she was hit on the forehead by a splinter of shrapnel. Her face was covered with blood, but her wound proved to be only a small scratch. We realized that our shelter was a firetrap, so we set out for Kozla Street to find safer quarters with our relatives, stumbling over the mutilated bodies of soldiers and civilians as we walked. We found only the skeleton of a house rising above a huge cellar packed full of people lying on the concrete floor. Somehow or other they made room for us. Beside me lay a little boy convulsed with pain from a wound. When his mother changed his dressing, one could see that a shell fragment was still embedded in his flesh and that gangrene had already set in. A little further on lay a woman whose foot had been torn off by a bomb. No medical aid was available for these people. The stench was unbearable. The corners were crowded with children wailing piteously. The grownups simply sat or lay motionless, with stony faces and vacant eyes. Hours went by. When daybreak came I was struck by the sudden stillness. My ears, accustomed to the crash of unceasing explosions, began to hum. It was the terrifying silence that precedes a great calamity, but I could not imagine anything worse than what we had already been through. Suddenly someone rushed into the cellar with the news that Warsaw had capitulated. No one stirred, but I noticed tears in the eyes of the grownups. I, too, felt them choking in my throat, but my eyes were dry. So all our sacrifices had been in vain. Twentyseven days after the outbreak of the war, Warsaw, which had held out longer than any other city in Poland, had been forced to surrender.

As we came out of the cellar, we saw our ruined city in the clear September sun. Salvage crews were at work removing victims from the wreckage. Those who still showed signs of life were placed on stretchers and carried to the nearest firstaid stations. The dead were heaped upon carts and buried in the nearest empty ground—in the yard of a ruined house or an adjacent square. Soldiers were buried in public parks, and small wooden crosses were placed over their graves.

We returned to our own street. On the pavement lay the carcasses of fallen horses from which people were carving pieces of meat. Some of the horses were still twitching, but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to 1945 edition
• Introduction
• Chapter I Warsaw Besieged
• Chapter II The Ghetto Begins
• Chapter III Life Goes On
• Chapter IV Underground
• Chapter V Russian Bombs
• Chapter VI Typhus
• Chapter VII “Violence Against Thy Brother”
• Chapter VIII Horror Stalks The Streets
• Chapter IX Another Year
• Chapter X Spring Is Cruel
• Chapter XI The Germans Take Pictures
• Chapter XII The Privileged Go To Prison
• Chapter XIII The Children Go For A Walk
• Chapter XIV The End Of The Jewish Police
• Chapter XV Bloody Days Again
• Chapter XVI Internment Camp
• Chapter XVII The Battle Of The Ghetto
• Chapter XVIII Journey To Freedom
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Chronology of Events
• Index
• Copyright