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| I do not have a single photo of my real grandfathers; Baruch Wasserman and Gabriel Rozental, therefore I used photograph of my extra grandfather - Janusz Korczak. It was the only photo we had on the walls wen living in Warsaw after WWII. |
July-August 1941 - Pinsk
It starts in Pinsk 1941 - Holocaust by bullets
My grandfather Baruch Wasserman (born 1882 in Pinsk) was a teacher in Jewish schools there. He was teaching jiidish and mathematics and other subjects in numerous schools. The main school he worked at was carrying the name of Mejsze Glejberman. It was the major Jewish Bund School. Boruch also worked at vocational schools for girls and boys that were learning different crafts.
How did my grandfather died?
On the July 4th 1941, the Nazi-German army conquered Pinsk. It was the first large city in occupied territories whose Jewish population was to be completely annihilated. On the 9th of July, part of the Einsatzgruppen of the SS (for special tasks) arrived in Pinsk and immediately began persecuting the Jews including the murdering of several of them.
On 30 July 1941, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler order in this manner: “All of the Jewish men in Pinsk should be executed, and the women and children should be driven into the swamps".July 4th, Germans entered Pinsk. Only one month later in August 1941 two aktions were carried out. Aktions means planned murdering and involved SS soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the mounted SS brigade. The officer in Command was Sturmbannfuehrer Magill. Polish police forces of Pinsk were also involved. Most probably my grandfather Baruch Wasserman was shot, murdered in these two actions and his body was buried in a pit close to village Iwaniki or Kozlowicze with all other Jews murdered in actions.
By order of the RFSS,
All Jews aged 14 and over who are found in areas being combed shall be shot to death; Jewish women and children shall be driven into the marshes. The Jews are the partisans reserve force; they support them. The killing by gunfire shall be carried out in accordance with orders from the local SD offices. In the city of Pinsk, the killing by shooting shall be carried out by cavalry companies 1 and 4, which are to be transferred to Pinsk. This Action is to begin at once. A report on the implementation shall be submitted.
August 5th 1941.
This deadly order was forwarded to the cavalry companies, and the killings took place on August 5–8, 1941. Most probably my grandfather Baruch Wasserman was shot on August 5th, 1941.
On the 5th of August 1941, 8,000 Jewish males were killed by the first cavalry company of the SS, near the village of Posienicze – Iwaniki, approx. 4 Km. north from Pińsk. The Nazis used the pretext that Jews were being taken to work as laborers for three days. The murdering continued through the 6th of August. The German fourth cavalry arrived in Pińsk later on August 6th to help expedite the actions.
On the 5th of August 1941, 8,000 Jewish males were killed by the first cavalry company of the SS, near the village of Posienicze – Iwaniki, approx. 4 km north from Pinsk.
On July 22, 1942, the systematic deportation of Jewish people from the Warsaw ghetto begins, as thousands 6 - 10 000) are rounded up daily and transported in the cattle wagons to a newly constructed extermination camp at Treblinka.
It was on July 17, when Heinrich Himmler, arrived to Auschwitz to watch the progress of the Final Solution, the arrival of 2,000 Dutch Jews and the gassing 500 of them. The next day, Himmler promoted the camp commandant, Rudolph Hoess, to SS major and ordered that the Warsaw ghetto should be depopulated and the inhabitants transported to extermination camp in Treblinka.
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| The Umschlagplatz, literally transshipment square was the former railway siding by Dzika and Stawki Street in Warszawa. Here the Nazis loaded Jews from Warszawa Ghetto onto cattle trucks to be resettled in the east, which in practice meant being sent on crowded freight cars to the extermination camp at Treblinka, 90 kilometres (55 miles) east of Warsaw. |
My grandmother Helena Rozental b. Polirsztok was deported om August 3rd 1942.
August 5th 1942.
Janusz Korczak (my extra grandfather) and 239 children from the Orphanage at 16 Sienna street were deported August 5th , 1942. My father was the only teacher from Dom Sierot that survived the deportation as he was working outside the Ghetto on that day.
