Alexandra’s Reviews > The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto > Status Update

Where are Dawid’s other writings, like poems and the mentioned _Alarm_?

… Nobody’s working anywhere; everyone’s running to secure work assignments for those in their family who are unemployed; parents of the unfortunate children are trying to save them by any means. The Registration Office was sealed after the lists were made, so that all rescue attempts by falsifying birth certificates, registration books and other documents, or making up death certificates, etc. are failing.”

“Friday, September 4. Łódź. Yesterday’s tragic news has turned out to be unfortunately true. The Germans are demanding all the children up to age ten, the elderly over sixty-five, and all other sick, swollen invalids, people unable to work, and those without employment. The panic in the city is incredible. …

… As a result, when the Germans sent in vehicles today for the rest of the sick, a number of hostages were included to fill the quota, while the ‘connected’ ones stayed in hiding. The mood in the ghetto is panicky; everything’s in suspense, and everyone’s waiting.”

… they went to the apartments of the sick who had already been driven out and, as if out of the blue, asked where the deported person was. When the unfortunate relatives answered that they had already been taken, the police took hostages anyway, unless the alleged fugitive was presented. …

… On this occasion, the Jewish police committed a kind of crime unknown before in the ghetto. The Germans demanded as a quota the number of sick registered on the hospitals’ lists. The police, as a result of various orders from influential people, wanted to spare the relatives of powerful persons, so they invented a new way of dealing with the situation: …

“Wednesday, September 2. Łódź. The hospital tragedy did not end with yesterday’s deportation of the sick from the ghetto. When the Germans found out that a number of the sick escaped from various hospitals, they demanded their return. Following the registers from the hospitals, they started to search the apartments of patients’ relatives to fish out the fugitives. …

… Their wages are minimal, deductions [for their expenses] enormous, and their working conditions must be awful because notifications keep arriving about sick workers sent to hospitals in Berlin, from where they are returned to the ghetto and are unable to work.”

27.Aug.1942: “I’m helping to set up a new file of workers being deported for labor to Germany. I am learning very interesting things: letters and bills sent in by various German firms and work camps that employ Jewish slaves (jüdische Arbeitskräfte) from our ghetto. …

… Leder-und-Sattler idiots. Above all, I don’t have too much time left to stay at home and think of food.”