Resistance and Destruction in the Częstochowa Ghetto (<1952)

by Liber Brener

This Yizkor Book was published in Wrocław, Poland, prior to 1952.

The introduction to this Yizkor Book states:

“This work by Liber Brener which we present, ‘Resistance and Destruction in the Częstochowa Ghetto’, is an expansion and an elaboration of a diary, which the author kept during a lengthy period in the ghetto and [labour] camp. Following liberation, L. Brener recovered these memoirs, revised them and complemented them with an array of German, Polish and Yiddish documents, as well as with testimonies from other surviving Jews from the Częstochowa Ghetto.”

Liber BRENER (1897-1986), was a teacher, social activist and chronicler. He was born on 4th November 1897 in Turzysk (Wołyń), the son of Naftali and Chana.

The Breners were a poor Chassidic family. His father was a gabbai (managing the court) of the son of the Turzysk tzaddik, Reb Dodie (Dawid Aron Twersk)i, later to become a tzaddik in both Żarki and Częstochowa. His mother owned a small stall selling flour.

After the war, Brener went to work for the Yiddish-Buch publishing house in Warsaw. He was the editor of books published, in Yiddish, for schools and adult readers. The Communist Party’s antisemitic campaign, in 1967 and 1968, forced Brener to leave Poland for Israel.

In translating this Yizkor Book, every effort has been made to translate, as accurately as possible, the Yiddish text and to transliterate (and double-check) the names of people and places as they would have been spelt in a historically, accurate manner (surnames may have been changed post-War). This includes the use of Polish diacritics where appropriate.
(Such care and research may not have been carried out in translations of this Yizkor Book appearing elsewhere.)

This Yizkor book, in its entirety, has been professionally translated into English.

The professional English translation of this Yizkor book has been made possible by the financial support of the

Wolf Rajcher z”l and Dora Rajcher z”l were both Holocaust survivors from Częstochowa.

They were prisoners in both the “Big Ghetto” and the “Small Ghetto” and, until liberation, were slave labourers in HASAG-Pelcery. Following the War, they emigrated to Melbourne Australia.

Upon the passing of both his parents, their son, Andrew Rajcher, established this charitable fund in their memory.

Chapters are listed in the order in which they appear in the Yizkor Book.
(The numbers in brackets, after each article, correspond to the appropriate page numbers in the Yizkor Book.)

Table of Contents (Created by translator)

Introduction (0-4)

The First Tortures (5-11)

The Judenrat and its Authority (11-20)

The Ghetto (20-25)

Forced Labour (25-32)

Jews Would Escape from the Collection Point (32-34)

The Jewish Police (35-39)

The Economic Situation of the Jews in the Ghetto (39-42)

Social Aid (43-51)

Cultural Activity (51-58)

The Underground Movement in the Ghetto (58-65)

Demographic Proportions (65-70)

On the Eve of the Liquidation (70-76)

The Great Liquidation (76-89)

The “Small Ghetto” (89-112)

The Resistance Movement in the “Small Ghetto” (113-137)

Inside the HASAG Camps (138-157)

Underground Work in HASAG and in the Koniecpol Woods (157-166)

The Last Days in the Częstochowa HASAG Camps (166-169)

A List of the Jewish Doctors [and Dentists] in Częstochowa Who Perished During the German Occupation (174-176)

Please note: Even though they are not listed above, pages 170-173 are actually NOT missing.
In the original text, these pages contain end-notes and a table of corrections,
which our translator has already incorporated into the above texts.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

Dave Horowitz-Larochette

IMPORTANT NOTICE

While the English translation is available for download, it may not, either in part or as a whole, be distributed or published without the prior written permission of Andrew Rajcher, the copyright-holder of this English-language version of this Yizkor Book.