Unlike the
Warsaw and Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghettos, the Jewish ghetto
at Bendzin was not sealed off from the outside until the
spring of 1943, but life was harsh for the residents all the
same. One of the more prosperous among them, Alfred
Schwarcbaum, escaped to Switzerland. From there he conducted
relief and rescue work for Jews in his homeland, together
with Dr. Abraham Silberschein's Relico Organization in
Geneva and with the New York-based American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee. Schwarcbaum also used an undercover
address in Lisbon to conduct illegal communication with
Jewish anti-Nazi resistance groups. Youth movement members
arose in armed resistance when the Nazis liquidated the
ghetto on August 1, 1943, and held out for two weeks. While
nearly all the Bendzin Jews were being deported to the
Auschwitz extermination camp, a small group escaped to
Slovakia and Hungary, where they continued underground work
until the end of the war.
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October 8,
1941, registered letter from A. Israel Gold in the Bendzin (Bendsburg)
Jewish ghetto to Alfred Schwarcbaum at Lausanne,
Switzerland, censored at Frankfurt, with October 14 Lausanne
arrival backstamp. The purple marking across the flap
reads: "Sender: Jewish Agency in Bendzin, Mail Collection
Center." |