#Szmul Zygielbojm

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Yom HaShoah (27th of Nisan): Remembering Szmul Zygielbojm

Szmul Zygielbojm (February 21st, 1895-May 12th, 1943) was a Jewish-Polish socialist leader of the Jewish Labor Movement, the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile during WWII.

May, 1942, a horrifying report reached Zygielbojm from the Warsaw Bund. The report detailed the Nazi Final Solution efforts. It specifically provided details of Atkionen, extermination camps, the nature and detail of the slaughter of Jews. The report stated bluntly that some 700,000 Jews had been murdered. Zygielbojm worked to bring the human disaster to Allied and public attention.

A few months later definitive proof of the Holocaust was brought to the Polish government in Exile, the U.S., the British government and Allies about the Holocaust by Jan Karski. Zygielbojm redoubled his efforts to try and rouse public lethargy to respond to the murder of European Jewry.

He was only successful in rousing words of shock, sympathy and threats of later justice to the Nazi perpetrators but no tangible actions.

With the fall off the Warsaw Ghetto to attacking German infantry and the death of his wife and son in the Ghetto, Zygielbojm did the only thing he could do to shock public awareness.

He committed suicide.

An excerpt from his final note reads:

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility. (x)

His death made international headlines for a short time, but along with his efforts to garner public attention and tangible action from the allies, it was quickly forgotten.

Bio retrieved from Find A Grave and Written by Jerry Klinger (President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.)

[thomasthetankieengine]

Someone with a Stalin pfp posting this is brutally ironic, since the Bund was forcibly disbanded in 1921 by the Bolsheviks and a great deal of former Bundists met with grim fates at the hands of the Soviets:

David Petrovsky, Mikhail Liber, Fanny Nyurina, Isaak Nusinov, Yakov Bykin, Yakov Drobnis, Joseph Meerzon, Isaak Illich Rubin, Moisey Rukhimovich, Mikhail Mednikov, Moshe Gutman, Mark Donskoy, Abram Merezhin, Aleksandr Zolotarev, and Israel Leplevsky were all shot during the Purges.

Victor Alter and Henryk Ehrlich were both shot on Stalin's orders.

Aron Sokolovsky, Mikhail Borodin, Isaak Goldstein, Anna Rozental, Aron Vainshtein, Moisei Natanovich Gurvich, and Moisei Rafes died in the GULAG or Sovet prison.

Samuil Agurskii died in Soviet exile.

Zakhar Grinberg died in Soviet prison after being beaten to death.

To be fair, though, Polish Bundists often did not fare much better.

Simon Dubnow, Mordechai Gebirtig, Michał Klepfisz, Pati Kremer, Maurycy Orzech, Aron Skrobek, and Abraham Blum were all murdered by the Nazis and Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide to protest the apathy of the Western Allies and Polish government in exile with regard to the Holocaust.

[brunojordanposts]

Seis millones y uno (Szmul Zygielbojm: un judío polaco socialista, antifascista, internacionalista y ardiente antisionista)

Por David Rosenberg Integrante del Grupo de Socialistas Judíos de Gran Bretaña y del comité editorial de la revista Jewish Socialist. El siguiente discurso fue pronunciado por David Rosenberg en un evento del Día del Recuerdo del Holocausto organizado por Na’amod: Judíos británicos contra la ocupación sionista de Palestina el 27 de enero de 2024.      Es imposible hacer justicia a millones de…

[lecoupdedeuxveuves]

Den Juden Polens

Dem Andenken von Szmul Zygielbojm

Aus den polnischen Städten und Dörfern hört man keine Schreie der Verzweiflung, die Verteidiger des Warschauer Ghettos fielen wie eine Kampftruppe... Meine Worte tauche ich in Blut, mein Herz in großer Trauer, für euch, o polnische Juden, der polnische Wanderpoet.

Nicht Menschen, sondern blutige Hunde, und nicht Soldaten, sondern Henker kamen, um euch, eure Kinder und Frauen mit dem Tod zu treffen: Euch in Gaskammern zu ersticken, in Waggons mit Kalk zu töten und über die Sterbenden, Wehrlosen und Erschreckten zu spotten.

Doch ihr habt den Stein erhoben, um ihn auf den Kanonier zu werfen, der das Geschütz aufstellte, um euer Haus vollständig zu zerstören... Söhne der Makkabäer! Auch ihr könnt sterben, den hoffnungslosen Kampf aufnehmen, begonnen im September.

Dies muss wie in Stein in das polnische Gedächtnis eingraviert werden: Unser gemeinsames Haus wurde zerstört und das vergossene Blut verbindet uns, uns vereint die Mauer der Hinrichtung, uns vereint Dachau, Auschwitz, jedes namenlose Grab und jedes Gefängnisgitter.

Der gemeinsame Himmel wird über dem zerstörten Warschau leuchten, wenn wir unseren blutigen, langjährigen Kampf mit dem Sieg beenden: Jeder Mensch wird Freiheit, ein Stück Brot und das Recht erhalten und eine höchste Rasse wird entstehen: edle Menschen.

Władysław Broniewski

Żydom Polskim Pamięci Szmula Zygielbojma

Z polskich miast i miasteczek nie słychać krzyków rozpaczy, padli, jak hufiec bojowy, warszawscy obrońcy getta… Słowa me we krwi nurzam, a serce w ogromnym płaczu, dla was, o Żydzi polscy, polski tułaczy poeta.

Nie ludzie, lecz psy okrwawione, i nie żołnierze, lecz kaci przyszli, by śmiercią porazić was, wasze dzieci i żony: gazem w komorach wydusić, wapnem w wagonach wytracić i szydzić z umierających, bezbronnych i przerażonych.

Lecz wyście podnieśli kamień, by cisnąć nim kanoniera, który nastawiał działo, by dom wasz zburzyć do szczętu… Synowie Machabeuszów! i wy potraficie umierać, podjąć bez cienia nadziei walkę, we Wrześniu zaczętą.

Oto, co trzeba wyryć, jak w głazie, w polskiej pamięci: wspólny dom nam zburzono i krew przelana nas brata, łączy nas mur egzekucyj, łączy nas Dachau, Oświęcim, każdy grób bezimienny i każda więzienna krata.

Wspólne zaświeci nam niebo ponad zburzoną Warszawą, gdy zakończymy zwycięstwem krwawy nasz trud wieloletni: każdy człowiek otrzyma wolność, kęs chleba i prawo i jedna powstanie rasa, najwyższa: ludzie szlachetni.

[disruptiveempathy]

[Szmul Zygielbojm] would not have known the details, but he grasped the general course of events, and made an effort to define it for the rest of the world. In a careful suicide note of 12 May 1943, addressed to the Polish president and prime minister but intended to be shared with other Allied leaders, he wrote: ‘Though the responsibility for the crime of the murder of the entire Jewish nation rests above all upon the perpetrators, indirect blame must be borne by humanity itself.’ The next day he burned himself alive in front of the British parliament, joining in, as he wrote, the fate of his fellow Jews in Warsaw.

—Timothy Snyder, from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

[arcticdementor]

Szmul Zygielbojm (Polish: [ˈʂmul zɨˈɡʲɛlbɔjm]; Yiddish: שמואל זיגלבוים‎; 21 February 1895, Poland – 11 May 1943, London) was a Polish Jewish socialist politician, Bundist trade union activist, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile.

Zygielbojm was born in 1895 to a working-class family and had to leave school at the age of ten. In his early twenties, he became involved in Bundist trade union activism. In 1924, he was elected to Bundist Central Committee. He edited a Bundist newspaper and was elected to Łódź city council in 1938. Upon the invasion of Poland he fled to Warsaw and was briefly a member of the Judenrat.

He fled to the Netherlands and then England, where he was appointed to the National Committee of the Polish government-in-exile. He interviewed Jan Karski and tried to publicize the news of the mass murder of Jews in Poland. After the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was brutally crushed and Warsaw's remaining Jews murdered, he committed suicide to protest the indifference and inaction of the Allies.

[stillunusual]

ŚMIERĆ ZYGIELBOJMA (The Death Of Zygielbojm) @ JW3, London 23/3/2022

[chicago-geniza]

so zahorska wrote her holocaust play--smocza 13, set in lwow’s jewish district, chillingly on the same side street that serves as the central image for vogel’s “lwowska juderia” essay--in 1943, badly shaken when szmul zygielbojm committed suicide in london as an act of protest against the mass murder of european jews. it’s never been staged, but apparently she wrote to wiktor weintraub about sending it to HABIMA??? 

anyway i’m sure you are all on the edge of your seats for the next thrilling installment of “Raya Reads Dead People’s Mail”

[anarchotolkienist]

To His Excellency The President of the Republic of Poland Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz Prime Minister General Wladyslaw Sikorski Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, I am taking the liberty of addressing to you, Sirs, these my last words, and through you to the Polish Government and the people of Poland, and to the governments and people of the Allies, and to the conscience of the whole world: The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out. The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions – tortured children, women and men – they have become partners to the responsibility. I am obliged to state that although the Polish Government contributed largely to the arousing of public opinion in the world, it still did not do enough. It did not do anything that was not routine, that might have been appropriate to the dimensions of the tragedy taking place in Poland. Of close to 3.5 million Polish Jews and about 700,000 Jews who have been deported to Poland from other countries, there were, according to the official figures of the Bund transmitted by the Representative of the Government,** only 300,000 still alive in April of this year. And the murder continues without end. I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people. I know that there is no great value to the life of a man, especially today. But since I did not succeed in achieving it in my lifetime, perhaps I shall be able by my death to contribute to the arousing from lethargy of those who could and must act in order that even now, perhaps at the last moment, the handful of Polish Jews who are still alive can be saved from certain destruction. My life belongs to the Jewish people of Poland, and therefore I hand it over to them now. I yearn that the remnant that has remained of the millions of Polish Jews may live to see liberation together with the Polish masses, and that it shall be permitted to breathe freely in Poland and in a world of freedom and socialistic justice, in compensation for the inhuman suffering and torture inflicted on them. And I believe that such a Poland will arise and such a world will come about. I am certain that the President and the Prime Minister will send out these words of mine to all those to whom they are addressed, and that the Polish Government will embark immediately on diplomatic action and explanation of the situation, in order to save the living remnant of the Polish Jews from destruction. I take leave of you with greetings, from everybody, and from everything that was dear to me and that I loved.

The last letter and suicide note of Szmul Zygielbojm, the Bundist representative to the Polish Government in Exile in London.

[dzismis]

Ostatni list

Szmul M. Zygielbojm Do Pana Prezydenta R[zeczpospolitej] P[olskiej], Władysława Raczkiewicza, Do Pana Prezesa Rady Ministrów, Generała Władysława Sikorskiego Panie Prezydencie, Panie Premierze, Pozwalam sobie kierować do Panów ostatnie moje słowa, a przez Panów — do Rządu i społeczeństwa polskiego, do Rządów i Narodów państw sprzymierzonych, do sumienia świata: Z ostatnich wiadomości z…

[dirjoh-blog]

The tragic death of Szmul Zygielbojm-The man who exposed the Holocaust to the allies.

The tragic death of Szmul Zygielbojm-The man who exposed the Holocaust to the allies.

[jacobsvoice]

Auschwitz and The New York Times, 75 Years Later

Our weekly issue of Life Magazine, dated May 7, 1945, arrived on my ninth birthday. Its cover photo showed three solemn men, one with his wounded wrist in a sling, with the caption “The German People” who, Life explained, “know the bitterness of defeat.” I already knew about World War II. Nearly four years earlier my father, engaged in our annual December ritual of setting up my Lionel electric trains, was repeatedly interrupted by radio broadcasts. I could not imagine why anything was more important than my trains. It was December 7, 1941.

Even in Forest Hills (Queens), life changed. Occasional night-time blackouts were scary. My public school had a victory garden to provide food, we kindergarten pupils were told, for starving European victims of the Nazi conquest. My father, too old for the draft, became a proud volunteer fireman. He also sold war bonds to his fellow costume jewelry friends, enabling me to win the school prize as the best salesboy. My picture appeared in the local newspaper.

At a gathering in Philadelphia to visit my beloved grandmother and her sisters, all refugees from Odessa decades earlier, news had arrived that my mother’s brother, my favorite uncle, would be drafted. The women began to scream and sob as if he had been captured by the Czar’s army. A year later I met my cousin Billy, in full dress in his marine uniform, at his parents’ home in New Jersey. Within a year he was killed in the battle of Tarawa.

On May 7, 1945 I turned the pages of Life past pictures of celebrating American soldiers to a full-page photo of a boy walking along a path through tall trees, passing scores of dead bodies, some clothed, others not. The next five pages, with photos of emaciated survivors in the Nazi death camp of Gardelegn, were terrifying. There were men with legs as thin as sticks and faces twisted in horror. The head and arm of a dead prisoner was squeezed under the wooden door where he had tried to escape. Worst of all was a full-page photo from the Nordhausen camp, where the emaciated dead bodies of 3,000 slave laborers, lying in rows, were viewed by American soldiers.

But far and away the most enduring war photo for me was of a young boy my age emerging with other children and their parents from an underground bunker in the Warsaw Ghetto. The boy, carrying a thin bag over his shoulder, wore knee-high socks, shorts, a jacket and a cap. With Nazi soldiers guarding the procession, his arms were raised in surrender. His face showed the terror he surely felt. “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw,” reported Nazi commander Jurgen Stroop proudly, “is no more.” The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where the boy might have been taken to die along with a million other Jews, will be observed in Jerusalem, and at the death camp, on January 27th.

Perhaps The New York Times, which buried the Holocaust in its inside pages when it even deigned to mention that unprecedented horror, will finally acknowledge its evasion of what happened at Auschwitz. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, a proud American Reform Jew, had fiercely opposed singling out Jews as victims of Nazi annihilation. Jews who were deported to death camps were identified in his newspaper as “persons,” not Jews. Its first published account of the Nazi extermination plan, duly identified as “probably the greatest mass slaughter in history,” appeared on an inside page at the bottom of a column of unrelated stories.

It got worse. In the summer of 1942 the Times cited a report by Szmul Zygielbojm of the Polish National Council documenting the slaughter of 700,000 Jews: “children in orphanages, old persons in almshouses, the sick in hospitals and women were slain in the streets.” For months, Germans had been “methodically proceeding with their campaign to exterminate all Jews.” But the Times front page that day featured articles about tennis shoes and canned fruit. Auschwitz horrors never received front-page attention.

The Times described the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in brief inside page stories. Its first account, nearly three weeks after the revolt began, was four paragraphs long. Its solitary editorial about the uprising referred to 400,000 “persons” who were deported to Treblinka. There was no indication that those “persons” were Jews. As Sulzberger explained to a friend, “We chose to think of Jews as human beings instead of any particular religious group.” Only once in four years was the fate of Jews mentioned on the front page or the subject of a lead editorial. Their horrific plight never qualified for the daily Times ranking of important events.

The Times can never erase its inexcusable dereliction of journalistic responsibility. How will it cover the upcoming memorial observances in Auschwitz and Jerusalem marking 75 years since its liberation? Will it atone for evading the murder of six million Jews who were deemed too inconsequential for notice in its pages.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit: The New YorkTimes, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, chosen by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer for Mosaic as a Best Book in 2019

[sansasnowcastle]

OMG MY RELATIVE IS MENTIONED IN PBS'S THE STORY OF THE JEWS DOCUMENTARY, LIKE FOR A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE MOVIE

[dzismis]

Śmierć Zygielbojma. Co napisał w ostatnim liście do społeczeństwa i rządu polskiego?

Śmierć Zygielbojma. Co napisał w ostatnim liście do społeczeństwa i rządu polskiego?

Autor Paweł Smoleński 5 Wojciech Mecwaldowski w filmie ‘Śmierć Żygielbojma’, reż. Ryszard Brylski, dystrybucja: Monolith Films (/ materiały prasowe)Zanim Szmul Zygielbojm odkręcił gaz, napisał w liście do prezydenta Władysława Raczkiewicza i premiera Władysława Sikorskiego: “Przez śmierć swą pragnę wrazić najgłębszy protest przeciwko bezczynności z jaką świat się przypatruje i pozwala lud…

[jacobsvoice]

75 Years Later

Our weekly issue of Life Magazine, dated May 7, 1945, arrived on my ninth birthday. Its cover photo showed three solemn men, one with his wounded wrist in a sling, with the caption “The German People” who, Life explained, “know the bitterness of defeat.” I already knew about World War II. Nearly four years earlier my father, engaged in our annual December ritual of setting up my Lionel electric trains, was repeatedly interrupted by radio broadcasts. I could not imagine why anything was more important than my trains. It was December 7, 1941.

Even in Forest Hills (Queens), life changed. Occasional night-time blackouts were scary. My public school had a victory garden to provide food, we kindergarten pupils were told, for starving European victims of the Nazi conquest. My father, too old for the draft, became a proud volunteer fireman. He also sold war bonds to his fellow costume jewelry friends, enabling me to win the school prize as the best salesboy. My picture appeared in the local newspaper.

At a gathering in Philadelphia to visit my beloved grandmother and her sisters, all refugees from Odessa decades earlier, news had arrived that my mother’s brother, my favorite uncle, would be drafted. The women began to scream and sob as if he had been captured by the Czar’s army. A year later I met my cousin Billy, in full dress in his marine uniform, at his parents’ home in New Jersey. Within a year he was killed in the battle of Tarawa.

On May 7, 1945 I turned the pages of Life past pictures of celebrating American soldiers to a full-page photo of a boy walking along a path through tall trees, passing scores of dead bodies, some clothed, others not. The next five pages, with photos of emaciated survivors in the Nazi death camp of Gardelegn, were terrifying. There were men with legs as thin as sticks and faces twisted in horror. The head and arm of a dead prisoner was squeezed under the wooden door where he had tried to escape. Worst of all was a full-page photo from the Nordhausen camp, where the emaciated dead bodies of 3,000 slave laborers, lying in rows, were viewed by American soldiers.

But far and away the most enduring war photo for me was of a young boy my age emerging with other children and their parents from an underground bunker in the Warsaw Ghetto. The boy, carrying a thin bag over his shoulder, wore knee-high socks, shorts, a jacket and a cap. With Nazi soldiers guarding the procession, his arms were raised in surrender. His face showed the terror he surely felt. “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw,” reported Nazi commander Jurgen Stroop proudly, “is no more.” The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where the boy might have been taken to die along with a million other Jews, will be observed in Jerusalem, and at the death camp, on January 27th.

Perhaps The New York Times, which buried the Holocaust in its inside pages when it even deigned to mention that unprecedented horror, will finally acknowledge its evasion of what happened at Auschwitz. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, a proud American Reform Jew, had fiercely opposed singling out Jews as victims of Nazi annihilation. Jews who were deported to death camps were identified in his newspaper as “persons,” not Jews. Its first published account of the Nazi extermination plan, duly identified as “probably the greatest mass slaughter in history,” appeared on an inside page at the bottom of a column of unrelated stories.

It got worse. In the summer of 1942 the Times cited a report by Szmul Zygielbojm of the Polish National Council documenting the slaughter of 700,000 Jews: “children in orphanages, old persons in almshouses, the sick in hospitals and women were slain in the streets.” For months, Germans had been “methodically proceeding with their campaign to exterminate all Jews.” But the Times front page that day featured articles about tennis shoes and canned fruit. Auschwitz horrors never received front-page attention.

The Times described the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in brief inside page stories. Its first account, nearly three weeks after the revolt began, was four paragraphs long. Its solitary editorial about the uprising referred to 400,000 “persons” who were deported to Treblinka. There was no indication that those “persons” were Jews. As Sulzberger explained to a friend, “We chose to think of Jews as human beings instead of any particular religious group.” Only once in four years was the fate of Jews mentioned on the front page or the subject of a lead editorial. Their horrific plight never qualified for the daily Times ranking of important events.

 The Times can never erase its inexcusable dereliction of journalistic responsibility. How will it cover the upcoming memorial observances in Auschwitz and Jerusalem marking 75 years since its liberation? Will it atone for evading the murder of six million Jews who were deemed too inconsequential for notice in its pages.

 Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit: The New YorkTimes, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, chosen for Mosaic as a Best Book of 2019 by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer.

[dzismis]

Zabił się, bo nie mógł znieść bezczynności świata na Holokaust. „Milczeć nie mogę i żyć nie mogę”

Zabił się, bo nie mógł znieść bezczynności świata na Holokaust. „Milczeć nie mogę i żyć nie mogę”

Kiedy podejmował najtrudniejszą decyzję w swoim życiu, jego najbliżsi już nie żyli, a setki tysięcy rodaków ginęło masowo w obozach zagłady. Dlatego bezsilny polski Żyd, z dala od rodzinnej Warszawy, odebrał sobie życie. W akcie niezgody na ludzkie okrucieństwo oraz niedowiarstwo i krótkowzroczność możnych tamtego świata.

12 maja 1943 roku, gdy Szmul Zygielbojm – przebywający w Londynie członek…