Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?
Beatings
How did they beat them? Can you describe that for me? With sticks, or...
Rubber sticks.
That they got from the Germans?
It was steel inside. It was wrapped around with either leather or rubber, but they were hitting us over the heads and everywhere they could find a place.
Did they beat anybody to death? The Judenrat themselves?
The Judenrat themselves? Uh, well I, I can't recall, but uh, they--I heard, I can only tell you what I heard others were saying. That they were not so nice. The things that they didn't have to do, they did. Even if the Germans were not present they did the beating and arresting people who were not yet, were...weren't yet wanted by the German authorities.
They themselves selected Jews to be arrested.
Oh yes, oh yes. They had their full power. Of course, they had a quota, you know, that they had to uh, deliver so many Jews at a certain time, which was understandable, they had to take somebody. So they, they took the ones that they didn't like so much and they took them away. And I seen some trucks driving away, but I had no knowledge whatsoever what was going on. Uh, I mean, as far as where they were going, whether they were going for work, whether they were going to the trains. And uh, it wasn't such a huge town that they had to be uh, traveled by trucks, because uh, you could hardly see before the war uh, any uh, substantial amount of cars. Uh, we had a bus going to Warsaw, and that--as, as far as I can remember... I can remember horses and wagons, but not too many cars. Like I say, the standard of living was very low.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn