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Group portrait of Jewish youth in the Bedzin ghetto.

Photograph | Digitized | Photograph Number: 23133

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    Group portrait of Jewish youth in the Bedzin ghetto.
    Group portrait of Jewish youth in the Bedzin ghetto.

Among those pictured is Mania Baum (front row, second from the left); Dosia Dafner (front row, right); Rozia Sztrochlic (standing in the second row, second from the right); and Moniek Dafner (Mania's fiance, second row, third from the right).  Moniek survived and lives in the U.S.

    Overview

    Caption
    Group portrait of Jewish youth in the Bedzin ghetto.

    Among those pictured is Mania Baum (front row, second from the left); Dosia Dafner (front row, right); Rozia Sztrochlic (standing in the second row, second from the right); and Moniek Dafner (Mania's fiance, second row, third from the right). Moniek survived and lives in the U.S.
    Date
    Circa 1942
    Locale
    Bedzin, [Zaglebie; Katowice] Poland
    Variant Locale
    Bendzin
    Bendin
    Photo Credit
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sigmund Baum
    Event History
    Bedzin, Sosnowiec, and Dabrowa Gornicza are three neighboring towns located in the Zaglebie district in southwest Poland. On the eve of World War II, Bedzin and Sosnowiec supported Jewish communities of approximately 28,000 each, while Dabrowa had 5,000. The Germans occupied the towns on September 4, 1939. Five days later they set fire to the Great Synagogue in Bedzin. The flames quickly spread and engulfed fifty adjacent houses. Physical attacks were accompanied by repressive economic legislation which forced the Jewish population to relinquish their businesses and personal property. In the first days of the occupation, separate Jewish Councils were appointed in Bedzin and Sosnowiec, but early in 1940 the Bedzin council was subordinated to the Zentrale der Juedischen Aeltestenraete (Central Office of the Jewish Councils of Elders in Upper Silesia), established in Sosnowiec and headed by the increasingly autocratic Moshe Merin. This council represented some forty-five communities in the area and operated its own Jewish police force.
    During 1940-41 the situation in Bedzin, Sosnowiec and Dabrowa was considered somewhat better than elsewhere in occupied Poland. There, the Jews resided in open ghettos and their lives retained a semblance of normalcy. As a result, thousands of Jews from central Poland sought refuge there. In addition to this influx, several thousand Jews from the district were forcibly resettled in Bedzin and Sosnowiec at this time, among them the Jews from Oswiecim, who arrived in the spring of 1941 prior to the opening of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Sosnowiec Jewish Council was responsible for drawing up lists of local Jews to be sent to forced labor camps in Germany and Eastern Upper Silesia established under the Organisation Schmelt program. Jews selected for forced labor had to report to the local transit camp, known as the "Dulag." Failure to comply resulted in their arrest and the withdrawal of their family's ration cards. Transports to labor camps began in 1940 but were greatly expanded in the spring of 1941, after Himmler decided to use labor from the Organisation Schmelt camps for constructing large factories to support German war production. The Jewish Council was also involved in establishing German-owned workshops which employed Jews. The largest of these was the Rosner Fabrik, a network of workshops which produced military uniforms and other goods and services for the German army. From a workshop employing a few dozen people, it grew into a factory complex with three thousand workers. Those fortunate enough to get positions in these enterprises were exempt (for the time being) from deportation to labor camps. Unlike the typical German overseer, Rosner treated his employees with respect and fought to protect them. He even warned them of impending actions. The Rosner Fabrik remained in operation until Rosner's arrest and execution in January 1944. When the schools were closed the local Zionist youth organizations took over the task of instructing the children. They also engaged in agricultural training on small plots on the outskirts of town. In Bedzin the local Zionist youth were allocated a hundred acre plot which was known as the "Farma" and became a focus of youth activity. The first round of deportations to death camps occurred in May 1942, when 1500 Jews were sent to Auschwitz. The following month another 2,000 were deported. Then, on August 12, all the remaining Jews in the three towns were ordered to report to the soccer field in Sosnowiec, ostensibly to have their papers revalidated. Instead, a large selection ensued resulting in the deportation of 8,000 to Auschwitz. The youth movements under the leadership of Hashomer Hatzair activist Zvi Dunski, conducted a campaign urging their fellow Jews not to report for the deportations. They also began to organize underground resistance units. The "Farma" became the headquarters of the Jewish underground and was the site of clandestine meetings with Mordechai Anielewicz, Arie Wilner and other leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. The underground concentrated its efforts on acquiring weapons and constructing bunkers in preparation for a revolt. But opinions were divided between those who favored resistance in the ghetto and those who stressed the search for escape routes out of the ghetto. In the spring of 1943, the remaining Jews in Bedzin were confined to a ghetto set up in Kamionka, while those remaining in Dabrowa and Sosnowiec were concentrated in Srodula. The two sites bordered on one another and operated as a single ghetto. On August 1, 1943 the final liquidation of the ghetto began. Zionist youth offered armed resistance in several bunkers which hampered the Germans and forced them to spend almost two weeks clearing the ghetto. Some one thousand Jews remained after the liquidation. Most were settled in the Sosnowiec labor camp, established on the site of the Srodula ghetto. These Jews labored in workshops as tailors, cobblers and carpenters. The camp was finally liquidated on January 13, 1944 and its prisoners sent to Auschwitz.

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-administration-of-poland. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ghettos-in-poland.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Photo Source
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Provenance: Sigmund Baum

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Biography
    Zygmunt Baum is the son of Szmul and Chaja Baum, who owned a floor covering business in Bedzin and lived on 16 Kollataja Street. Zygmunt had three siblings: Freda (b. 1919), Mania (b. 1924), and Aron (b.1933). In the summer of 1942 the Baum family was relocated to the Bedzin ghetto in Kamionka. On August 1, 1943, the entire family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Freda and Aron were killed on arrival; Chaja and Mania survived until January 18, 1944, when they were gassed; Szmul and Zygmunt were transferred to a series of concentration camps in Germany and were reunited in Ohrdruf. They were liberated in Neunburg Forwald in May 1945 during a death march from Flossenburg. In 1946 Zygmunt and his father returned to their hometown and later settled in Gliwice, Poland. Zygmunt and his family emigrated to Sweden in 1968.

    Herman Sztrochlic was a well-to-do businessman and president of the Jewish community in Bedzin, married to Regina (Kerner) Sztochlic. Their three children, Zygmunt (b. February 1, 1917), Estera (b. 1919), and Roza (b. 1921), all attended the Fuerstenberg Gymnasium. In 1940, Zygmunt married his high school classmate, Sabka Kominska (b. 1917).

    Roza Sztrochlic married Abram Dafner, whom she met while studying at the Fuerstenberg Gymnasium, in 1943. He had planned to emigrate to Palestine, but delayed his departure until it was no longer possible. In the ghetto, Abram worked in the post office, facilitating an illegal letter exchange to Switzerland and the sending of food packages to a nearby labor camp. When the Jewish Council learned of his activities, they dismissed him from his job and transferred him to the ghetto police office. Rozka and Abram were deported to Auschwitz following the final Action of August 1, 1943. Rozka was gassed on arrival; Abram survived.

    During the German occupation Herman Sztrochlic was a member of the Jewish council and was put in charge of the finance department. In 1943 the entire family was deported to Auschwitz and only Zygmunt survived. On October 26, 1944, he was transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Stutthof, and from there to Haiflingen, Dautmergen and finally, to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated by the British army. After the war Zygmunt was remarried to Rose Grinberg, and together they immigrated to the US in 1947.

    [Source: Brandt, Kersten et al. Before They Perished: Photographs Found in Auschwitz. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2001, 2:61.]
    Record last modified:
    2020-06-22 00:00:00
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