Portrait of the Broda family.
Photograph | Photograph Number: 29657
- Date
-
1942 July 07
- Locale
- Dabrowa Gornicza, [Zaglebie; Katowice] Poland
- Variant Locale
- Dombrova
- Photo Designation
-
GHETTOS (MAJOR) -- BEDZIN/DABROWA/SOSNOWIEC -- Families/Portraits/Youth -- Dabrowa
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sally Goldblum Wasserman
Portrait of the Broda family.
Pictured are Aron and Shendel Broda with their young son.
- 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. - Biography
- Sally Wasserman (born Salusia Goldblum) is the daughter of Izak and Tola (Broda) Goldblum. She was born January 23, 1935 in Katowice, Poland, where her father was a kosher butcher. Salusia had one younger brother Wolf (b. 1937). In September 1939 the family moved to Dabrowa where they were incarcerated in the ghetto. During the winter of 1941, her father Izak was sent to a labor camp and from there transferred to Treblinka, where he worked in a Sonderkommando alongside his brother-in-law, Moszek Broda. In 1942 or 1943 Moszek was instructed to accompany a train carrying the confiscated possessions of prisoners to Majdanek. Not wanting to be separated from Izak, he smuggled him aboard. After a brief period in Majdanek the two men were transferred to Auschwitz. Izak, however, soon contracted typhus and died. Moszek was evacuated from Auschwitz to Germany in January 1945 and was liberated in Bergen-Belsen in April. After her father's deportation, Salusia remained in the Dabrowa ghetto with her mother and brother. During this period Salusia met Mikolei Turkin, a public school teacher who was officially classified as a second-generation Volksdeutsch. He was assigned work as an electrical meter reader in the ghetto. He took a liking to the little girl and brought her food. After Salusia introduced him to her mother, Turkin started to bring her news of the outside, gleaned from BBC broadcasts. He also warned her of impending actions in the ghetto. Eventually Turkin offered to hide Salusia if the need arose. In preparation for that eventuality, Turkin put her through a few drills, lest she had to be removed from the ghetto in a hurry. During the last week of July 1943 the liquidation of the ghetto began. On the eve of her deportation, Tola arranged for Turkin to take Salusia. She also prepared a letter to be sent to her sister Ange (Broda) Kraicer in Toronto and a packet of family photos for her daughter to remember them by. Salusia's mother and brother were deported to their death in Auschwitz-Birkenau in early August. Salusia remained with the Turkins until May 1945. Following the liberation the Turkins were persecuted by fellow Poles and denied ration cards. They made contact with a group of returning Jews and told them they were hiding a Jewish child, but had no food to sustain her. The group agreed to share their rations if the Turkins would relinquish Salusia. The survivors then placed Salusia in a Jewish orphanage in Gleiwitz. The Turkins, wanting to be near the child, moved to Gleiwitz. They also contacted Salusia's relatives in Canada. Surviving friends of her parents found her in Gleiwitz and took her with them to Sosnowiec, but Salusia ran away to be with the Turkins. In March 1946, Moszek Broda came to Gleiwitz to find Salusia. She was still unwilling to leave the Turkins, but after three weeks agreed to accompany her uncle to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. From Belsen she joined a special transport of war orphans who were given permission to immigrate to the U.S. She sailed to New York on board the SS Ernie Pyle on January 16, 1947. Eleven-year-old Salusia was initially placed in an orphanage in Brooklyn, NY, but shortly after her arrival her aunt, Ange (Broda) Kraicer, came from Toronto and smuggled her into Canada. Salusia remained with her aunt's family in Toronto for the remainder of her youth.
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Sally Goldblum WassermanSource Record ID: Collections: 1999.A.254 -
Record last modified: 2003-04-15 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1113379
