I first noticed this photograph on the partitions of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, in June of 2022.
The picture, which reveals the round-up of Jewish males by Nazis in my father’s city on September 12, 1939, is essentially the most consequential photograph in my guide.
![//www.belzec.eu/media/files/pages/278/wieliczka_ang.pdf]](https://www.yourtango.com/sites/default/files/2022/the-round-up-of-sept-12-1939.png "//www.belzec.eu/media/files/pages/278/wieliczka_ang.pdf]")
Photograph taken by unnamed Wehrmacht soldier on September 12, 1939 in Wieliczka, Poland; courtesy of Tomasz Wisniewski, Ph.D., Wisniewski Coll.
Yad Vashem accepted my guide, a memoir tracing the Holocaust by the eyes of my father, Nathan Poremba, who was 9 years previous on that day when his father was rounded up with these males and murdered by Nazis in southern Poland, into its library. However I did not know this photograph was on that wall when my guide was printed in 2021, and I didn’t see it there throughout my go to to the museum in 2018.
Seeing it now, the caption below it mentioned “Jews in Compelled Labor,” which is very incorrect.
I write this to not deal with how Yad Vashem initially received the caption flawed (and nonetheless has it flawed), however slightly, to deal with how necessary survivor testimony to such unspeakable occasions is.
The phrases of those that skilled this sort of horror not solely supplies the background to what one sees in a photograph, however explains what one can not see with the bare eye.
The significance of telling every Holocaust story absolutely and in truth can’t be understated.
In terms of the Shoah (the Hebrew phrase for the Holocaust), very often what the attention sees in {a photograph} is however a small a part of a a lot bigger, totally different and darker story.
On September 12, 1939 the German military, together with the SS, a Polish municipal official, and Polish civilian neighbors, engaged within the round-up of thirty-two Jewish males in Wieliczka, Poland.
The {photograph} in query, taken by the Wehrmacht (the armed forces of the Third Reich) reveals the beginning of that round-up.
What will not be conveyed within the {photograph} taken by the Wehrmacht is what my father, Nathan Poremba, z”l (an abbreviation for the Hebrew phrase zichrono livracha, which suggests “of blessed reminiscence”), witnessed as a baby: the German technique to protect towards Jewish resistance, performing to slowly achieve the complacence and passivity of the very individuals it focused and meant to homicide — on this case, Jewish Poles.
Black’s Regulation Dictionary defines a witness as “an individual who has information of an occasion. As essentially the most direct mode of buying information of an occasion is by seeing it, [the] ‘witness’ has acquired the sense of an individual who’s current at and observes a transaction.”
To clarify the worth of witness testimony, Elie Wiesel defined the function and significance of the eye-witness to the Shoah in a 2008 tv collection referred to as All Issues Thought of:
“[O]ur tales are important, important to reminiscence. I consider that the witnesses, particularly the survivors [of the Shoah], have a very powerful function. They will merely say, within the phrases of the prophet, ‘I used to be there.’ ”
Nobody else can lay declare to this function however the one that was there, who noticed and heard that which was laid earlier than their eyes and ears.
My father Nathan witnessed, survived and supplied testimony so the world would know what occasions preceded and adopted this snapshot.
Photograph of Nathan Poremba in 1945 after the Holocaust, courtesy of the creator
All one can see within the {photograph} are the start phases of the round-up of 32 Jewish males and little else.
Sure, Jews being made to comb a cobblestone street within the metropolis’s principal market sq. is what you suppose you see. However the viewer solely sees this occurring below the risk and with watchful eyes of the German Wehrmacht and my father’s Polish neighbors.
Way more, and much worse, is at play.
For six days prior, 9-year-old Nathan witnessed what the Germans have been doing in Wieliczka.
The testimony he later shared as a survivor make clear how Hitler’s Ultimate Answer functioned within the early phases of the conflict towards the Jews, earlier than this coverage had been placed on paper.
With out realizing what the Ultimate Answer was — the mass homicide of Europe’s Jews — Nathan witnessed the grand scheme of deception meant to foster the compliance of Nazi victims by trickery and false guarantees.
Not one of the Nazi-planned machinations of deception have been but identified to the world, not to mention the Jewish neighborhood of Wieliczka.
Nobody knew of the German technique bent on fostering compliance and conditioning the Jews to being rounded up.
Nobody knew what would possibly happen subsequent after a round-up.
Nobody knew but that they might sometimes be precursors to a mass genocide occasion.
“Jews in compelled labor” — the caption utilized by Yad Vashem — will not be an correct description of what was occurring within the photograph, and it was definitely not what younger Nathan witnessed.
What was actually occurring within the photograph snapped by the German Wehrmacht on September twelfth in Wieliczka, Poland on Rynek Górny Avenue
All one can observe within the photograph are eight Orthodox Jewish Poles being made to comb a cobblestone heart sq., therefore the “Jews in compelled labor” moniker {that a} museum would possibly affix to this photograph.
However this photograph was taken minutes, possibly hours, earlier than Nathan’s father, Joseph Poremba, z”l, was made to affix the group at gunpoint.
Wieliczka’s final 32 Jewish males have been then loaded up on vans, pushed to a close-by forest, lined up and murdered by machine gun.
This motion was virtually exceptional on the time, as a result of few, if any, knew of deliberate mass killing occasions as early as September 1939.
Wanting on the image, I assume you, too, see solely Jews sweeping a street.
However Nathan’s eye-witness testimony to the true occasions dispel any notion that the Jews standing there are “merely” being compelled to do labor.
On September 7, 1939 Nathan was a nine-year previous Jewish boy residing in Wieliczka, Poland, a majority-Jewish small metropolis simply eight miles southeast of Kraków.
Photograph of the Poremba household in Wieliczka, Poland in 1932, courtesy of the creator
The Wehrmacht rolled into Wieliczka on the seventh in personnel provider vans and on horseback. The town had already been nicknamed “a city with out males,” for many Jewish males fled Wieliczka between September 1st and sixth.
However not all Jewish males ran away to cover upon the enemy’s arrival. Thirty-two refused to flee, certainly one of which was Joseph Poremba.
Unbeknownst to the boys who remained, from the seventh to the eleventh, the Germans secretly labored with a Polish municipal clerk, Pawel Mazurowski, a voluntary confederate, to create a kill-list of these remaining Jewish males who selected to not depart their households. It could take Mazurowski and the Wehrmacht 5 days to spy and compile this listing of thirty-two Jewish males.
However how would the Germans spherical them up for mass homicide with out inflicting a panic or a riot?
On September twelfth the Germans rounded-up Joseph and thirty-one different Jewish males with out an rebellion. The Germans have been decided to haven’t any resilience on this present day which could have the unintended consequence of inspiring the Poles to query their very own mortality and to stand up. The Germans couldn’t danger resistance whereas establishing their dominance and management simply twelve days into the conflict.
What the {photograph} fails to point out is why the Germans met no resistance on this present day. It was Nathan’s testimony as a survivor that supplied the main points one can not see within the photograph.
To ensure that the Germans to keep away from a revolt, they needed to exhibit that their actions on the twelfth (killing day) have been no totally different than these of the 5 days that got here earlier than. The Germans conditioned Wieliczka’s Jews into pondering the September twelfth round-up was merely one other train in public humiliation, abuse and torture.
Over these 5 days, Nathan watched the Germans routinely round-up Jewish males and teenage boys and power them to comb the roads available in the market sq., as seen within the {photograph}.
They compelled the Jews to choose up horse dung with their naked arms and put it of their pockets and milk buckets, to push wheelbarrows laden with heavy boulders for transport from one finish of Rynek Górny to the opposite for sport, and to do all of this whereas the Germans and Poles shouted humiliation and abuse at them.
The Poles got here out to look at these occasions and to mock the targets of the German workout routines.
Importantly, my father testified that nothing greater than humiliation, the chopping of peiyot (sidelocks worn by Jewish males), and tough language was foisted on the Jewish males.
However as soon as the key kill-list was accomplished on September twelfth, the Germans have been led round city house-by-house by Nathan’s Polish neighbors to the situation of the Jewish males.
The Germans proceeded into Nathan’s house and the properties of thirty-one different Jewish males and took them at gunpoint to the market sq. on Rynek Górny for a sixth consecutive day. From there, the boys have been loaded up onto vans and informed on this present day they have been being taken out of city for a special kind of labor.
Suspecting nothing totally different was occurring than the 5 days that got here earlier than, no resistance was undertaken by the Jews. The Jewish males have been taken two-and-a-half miles away to a close-by forest in Taszyce — the place they have been murdered.
The German plan to forestall resistance earlier than it would happen was profitable. They have been capable of conceal their murderous plan by making the day seem almost similar to the earlier 5.
The each day workout routines in humiliation, with nothing extra, successfully sowed the seeds of passivity amongst Wieliczka’s Jewish inhabitants. Having believed nothing extra would occur to them, the Jews didn’t resist and the German plan labored. There was no revolt.
Thus, the photograph taken on September twelfth captures solely a small a part of the story, and positively will not be appropriately defined by merely describing it as “Jews in Compelled Labor.”
The photograph fails to point out the viewer the bigger image of the German plan at work, one thing solely a witness can do when he breathes life into this particular story.
It’s Nathan’s eyewitness testimony that fills within the blanks and provides reminiscence to the Jewish martyrs.
Photograph of the Nathan and Joel Poremba in 2014, courtesy of the creator
So, what’s the lesson from Nathan’s testimony as a survivor of terror as we watch present occasions unfold?
In a world that claims Jews didn’t resist, Nathan’s testimony explains the “why.”
The German’s psychological technique in Wieliczka in a mere 5 days fostered inaction, permitting their Jewish victims to suppose no grave hurt would come to them as a result of nothing excessive had occurred.
It was so early into the conflict there was merely no information of what the Germans had deliberate. Solely later did it turn out to be identified what their motives have been in conducting round-ups, public humiliation and abuse: a prelude to mass homicide.
Because the final Jew of Wieliczka, Nathan later testified and demonstrated to the world what it will not in any other case haven’t identified about this {photograph} and what it says concerning the penalties of passivity within the face of psychological terror.
What the photograph fails to point out are the results of and strategies the Germans employed to suppress resistance.
However by testimony, one eyewitness was capable of set the file straight despite the trauma inflicted on him by revisiting the scene of mass homicide, together with the homicide of his personal father.
Might all of us give because of survivors of terror who bear witness and testify so all of us can be taught and do higher.
Joel Poremba is a enterprise lawyer with twenty-five years of litigation expertise in each state and federal courts. The son of Holocaust survivor Nathan Poremba, he not too long ago printed the memoir of Nathan’s story in “My Identify is Staszek Surdel.”
This text was initially printed at The Instances of Israel. Reprinted with permission from the creator.
