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| Until April 1942 the Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto remained open: it was not fenced in, nor was it guarded. The ghetto’s perimeters were marked by signs bearing the word Ghetto painted white, along with a black human skull. |
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| Borders until June 1941. |
German occupation authorities established the first ghetto in Poland in the city of Piotrków Trybunalski on October 8, 1939. Until April 1942 the Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto remained ‘open’: it was not fenced in, nor was it guarded. The ghetto’s perimeters were marked by signs bearing the word “ghetto”, along with a human skull, but Jews were allowed to leave the ghetto without a license, albeit only during specific hours, and only to a certain part of the city. Jews were not allowed to use main streets and parks.
Since 1939 the number of residents in the ghetto continued to rise steadily, due to an influx of Jewish refugees. At the beginning of the war the city had held some 10,000 Jews. In April 1942 the number had risen to 18,500. The refugees came primarily from areas in western Poland – Pomerania, Poznan and Lodz – which had been annexed to the German Reich. Additional refugees came from Polish territories that had been annexed to the Soviet Union and thereafter occupied in June 1941 by Germans (Operation Barbarossa). Also, the number of Jews moved from Warsaw and Cracow. These cities were, like Piotrków, cities within General Government (German: Generalgouvernement).
Numerous Jews choose Piotrków to move to for the safty reasons.
Rubinlicht and Finkler from WarszawaRubinlicht
One of the families that moved to Piotrków Trybunalski was the family of Rubinlicht from Warszawa, parents with two children. Rubinlicht story starts down town Warsaw, Poland. They lived in a building at the corner och Chmielna and Marszalkowska Street, Warsaw. Pinkus Leib Rubinlicht, a diamond broker and Anna Perla Rubinlicht, nee: Finkelstein were both from Sulejów, a small city close to Piotrków Trybunalski.
Having diamonds was actually an advantage and crucial to their survival. Ruta´s and Tusia's first memories are from Warszawa in September 1939. At that time they were just four and seven years old but remember the German bombardings of Warsaw, the outbreak of WWII.
Ruta, born in 1935 remembers that they Their daughters of
Family Rubinlicht decided that it might be safer to move out of Warszawa to Piotrków Trybunalski, a city 160 kom sout from Warszawa and close (15 km) from Sulejów, the place from which they originated. Sulejów was not an option during the very first days of the war. Between September 4 and 6 Sulejów suffered from a number of heavy bombardments and a fire that encompassed the entire city. Of the 93 houses in which Jews lived, 80 were destroyed by fire. After that many of Sulejów's Jews moved to Piotrków Trybunalski.
Parents worked, forced labor, at Huta Hortensja, one of two the Piotrków glass factories. Father, Pinkus Rubinlicht, like many others, was paying off whom he could to keep his family together. Judenrat members and probably Germans as well. During the Great Action in Piotrków Ghetto in October 1942 the Rubinlicht parents were relatively safe as workers of the glass factory, however, the children, Tusia and Ruta, were sent outside of the ghetto. During the Action in October 1942, the rest of their extended family in Piotrków was sent to their death in the Treblinka extermination camp. The fate of the Rubinlich family can be followed in the DP-2 card issued after the liberation from Bergen-Belsen.
Two years later, during, November and December 1944, the final deportations of Jews from glass factories Kara and Hortensja and wood factory Bugaj, were planned. On November 24, 1944, the first of the final transportation came. Pinkus Rubinlicht that worked at Hortensja got his name on the list to go to Mauthausen in German-annexed Austria. However, he was first registered in Buchenwald on December 24, 1944. Later he was transferred to Mittelblau Dora. Mittelbau-Dora was located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. To start with it was established in the late summer of 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labor and later including evacuated survivors of eastern extermination camps. It is possible that Pinkus Lajb Rubinlicht that was registered as a watchmaker was involved in the manufacturing of the V-2 rocket. He perished in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp on March 27, 1945. The cause of his death was written in German Grippe. That means the flu. However, we have to remember that the camp records of the registered inmates were often used to state false causes of death. It is known that the official cause of death of shot inmates were was registered in many cases as cardiac arrest. Other causes often used were bilateral pneumonia and septic pharyngitis.
Pinkus Rubinlicht's wife Anna and his two daughters Ruta and Tusia were on the list of women and children to be sent during the first week of December 1944 from Piotrków Trybunalski to the concentration camp Ravensbrück in northeast Germany. On the same day when women were transported to Ravensbrück the men with boys were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Rubinlicht mother and her two small daughters survived the Holocaust. Ruta was born in 1935 and Tusia was born in April 1939, just a few months before WWII started. Two sisters of Anna Rubinlicht, Ruchla (19) and Estera (24) were in 1942 sent to the death camp Treblinka. Anna Rubinlicht father Finkelsztajn Berek (56) was taken year 1942 to Germany from Sulejów. During the liquidation action on October 15, 1942 in Sulejów, Jews were forced to walk 14 km to the ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski. On October 18, the Sulejów Jews staying in Piotrków were sent to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
Pinkus Rubinlicht's wife Anna and his two daughters Ruta and Tusia were on the list of women and children to be sent during the first week of December 1944 from Piotrków Trybunalski to the concentration camp Ravensbrück in northeast Germany. On the same day when women were transported to Ravensbrück the men with boys were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Rubinlicht mother and her two small daughters survived the Holocaust. Ruta was born in 1935 and Tusia was born in April 1939, just a few months before WWII started. Two sisters of Anna Rubinlicht, Ruchla (19) and Estera (24) were in 1942 sent to the death camp Treblinka. Anna Rubinlicht father Finkelsztajn Berek (56) was taken year 1942 to Germany from Sulejów. During the liquidation action on October 15, 1942 in Sulejów, Jews were forced to walk 14 km to the ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski. On October 18, the Sulejów Jews staying in Piotrków were sent to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
During the Action of October 1942, transports to the death camp Treblinka, the Rubinlicht parents were relatively safe as workers in the glass factory, but their daughters, Rita and her sister Tusia went into hiding outside of the ghetto. The rest of their extended family was sent to their death in Treblinka. On the night of October 13/14, 1942, the inhabitants of the Piotrków ghetto witnessed Dantesque scenes. The Jews were expelled from their homes and gathered in the post-barracks square, where a selection was carried out. Those unfit for work were sent to Treblinka. The Germans were helped by armed Ukrainians and Latvians; Jewish police officers also took part in the operation. By October 29, about 22,000 people were sent to their deaths.
Workers of wood factories Dietrich & Fischer on Bugaj and glassworks “Kara”, “Feniks” and “Hortensja”.
While the children's parents, Anna and Pinkus were working shifts at the glass factory, their daughters stayed nearby the factory with a friend of Pinkus, along with another child, a cousin. A similar situation was at the Bugaj wood factory.
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| DP-2 card of Anna Rubinlicht. She and her two daughters were brought from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden by the UNRRA White Boat Mission. In the card of Anna Rubinlicht, we can follow the entire story of her family. Her two sisters were sent from the Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto to the death camp Treblinka in 1942, Anna and her two daughters were sent in December 1944 from Piotrków Ghetto to Ravnsbrück concentration camp and thereafter further transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. |
Family Finkler were Chasidic Jews living in Warsaw. At the end of August 1939 father of the family went to Piotrków for the shiva of the relative. Thereafter he was afraid to travel back to Warsaw as there were Germans everywhere. The family became apart until 1942 (to check) when Kaja Finkler´s mother decided to send her to live with her father and his mother. The decision was motivated by the above facts and that Piotrków ghetto was regarded as a safe place. Kaja was therefore smuggled out of the Warszawa Ghetto and traveled with a Polish woman by train to Piotrków Trybunalski. Later her mother succeeded leave Warszawa ghetto and to join the rest of the family in Piotrków.
In October 1942 the Piotrków ghetto changed its face. It become the deportation point for the death trans to Treblinka like it was in June 1942 in the Warszawa Ghetto. During the Action in the Piotrków ghetto Finkler family were hiding and survived the October deportations. More than 22 000 Jews were deported. Approximately 2 000 Jews actually entire Jewish families were left "legally" to work at the three factories in Piotrków; 1 000 at the Bugaj wood factory, and the rest at two glass factories Kara and Hortensja.
Fiszgrund from Cracow
Salomo Fiszgrund has to leave Cracow when Germans occupied the city. He risked prison for his political activities. He left his wife and two children in Cracow and moved to the Russian occupied theritories. Later Salomo´s friends, Bund activists, persuaded his wife to go with the children to Piotrków Trybunalski, where the conditions in the ghetto were milder. They left for Piotrków in 1940 together with their Polish made Aniela. Juliusz started working in the Judenrat as a clerk. In 1941, the ghetto was closed and Aniela had to leave it. She returned to Cracow. When the Judenrat leadership was arrested in the Spring of 1942, Juliusz began working in Bugaj wood factory where plywood tents were made for the German army. We have to remember that in 1944, more than eight million foreign forced laborers were employed in the German war economy inside the Third Reich.
False dates of birth during the Holocaust.
It was important for the survival during the Holocaust to be in the right age group. It can be confirmed by looking at the dates of birth of the Holocaust survivors who arrived in Sweden after WWII.
