Stanislaw Wygodzki, a Polish Jewish writer, was born in Będzin (1907) to the Zionist activist Icchak Wygodzki. When he was young, he was an actor in the drama group of the “Ivria” society (after WWI) and performed on the Hebrew stage. He was also active in the “Hashomer Hatza'ir” organization. He studied in the Yavne gymnasium, but despite the Hebrew-national education he received in his father's home and from his teachers Sobotko, Tewel Klajnman and Z. Borensztajn, he turned his back to the Zionistic goals of these people. He was fascinated with radical leftist ideals and he started to offer his talent to the Polish working class and their literature. In the twenties, he was arrested because of his communist activity and was kept in prison for a long time.

In the last war, under the regime of the Nazis, he suffered much more, both as a Jew and as a writer with communist tendencies. In his poems he glorifies the fighters for equality and social justice and the masses of the oppressed people who did not give up until “over Poland, my homeland, whose war and rebirth I accompanied, the red flag of liberty was lifted.”

In the twenties he published his maiden composition in a literary journal and since then his reputation among Polish writers became greater. In the war, he lost his whole family: parents, brothers, wife (a member of the famous Domb family in Będzin) and daughter. He was thrown into solitary confinement, sent to Auschwitz, and tried to commit suicide, but he did not succeed and was left alive.

His works in prose and poetry express his emotional and spiritual personal world. The poems of Bialik, whom Wygodzki describes as “the giant of the Hebrew poetry”, had a very strong effect on him, which is reflected in his book of poems “The Diary of Love.”

His poems which are dedicated to the Holocaust are imbued with depression and grief. There he expresses the tragedy of the Jewish people with great intensity. In one of his ballads he mourns:

“Forgive me for the century in whose decadence I lived
Under the load of the mortar I collapsed
I dug pits in the forests
Lungs consumptive and contracted
I tasted from the poisoned goblet
With a lost hand I inscribed my words
And my soul knew no solace”.

His first book of poems, called “Apel”, appeared in Moscow in 1933. Until now, the following books have been published: “The Clerk”, “In The Valley”, “Jalonek and the So”, “Back Home”, “Near the Road”, “The Empty Yard”, “Six Stories” and a collection of poems which includes 120 poems, divided into eight main parts according to topics.

Wygodzki translated some of Shalom Aleichem's and Efraim Kaganowski's works into Polish and also the letters of Egon Erwin Kisch, a German Jewish writer.

Now he lives in Poland and his reputation of a gifted writer attracts many many readers. His books have been out of print for a long time now.

M. H.

I have seen mothers who did not want to separate from their children even when they could save their own lives, but I have also seen mothers who desperately deserted their children and handed them over, and after the children had been gathered into the trucks to be executed, they joined the labor camps and the path of suffering .I will not hurry to judge them as guilty or innocent. I have been weighing this problem for a long time. I have talked to people in God's service, to the wise, to laymen, to mothers of children and to barren women, but the more I thought about it, the more perplexed I became.

If I showed you a woman who poisoned her son to save him from the tortures of the German hell, would you ask her how she felt at night, all alone, with the memories of her deed?

I knew that telling the story would not help to understand it, although that was my purpose, but it could uncover part of its mystery… I also knew that its hero would remain a fiction, the fruit of the writer's imagination, if I did not materialize him in a real person, in a real place and in a real time because the things told here have their hold in reality:

In prison B-0 (probably in Auschwitz – the translator), in which I was put three days ago, there were eight separate cells. Right away I knew that only two were occupied: mine and the second to my right. I heard not only the frequent clicks of the lock of the other cell, but also the footsteps and other sounds through the wall that divided our cells.

The jailer let us out twice a day – once to the toilets and once to get our food ration. First to come out was the unknown prisoner, and then was my turn. We had never met. I was waiting for my investigation with apprehension. I could not fall asleep not only because of my stress and tension, but especially because of the terrible cold. It was January 1942, a freezing, stormy winter also to those outside of jail. I slept on the floor in my clothes, all curved up, my head on my arms.

On the third night I woke up to the sound of the opening door of the nearby cell, and right after that there was complete silence, a silence that made you tremble, and it was as if I could hear the pulse of the emptiness through the wall.

After a while, that same door opened again and I heard the pent up puffs of the jailers dragging a body. I listened intently. First there was silence. But after a minute I heard moans and groans which did not stop. I turned to the other wall hoping that doing so I would not hear the sobs, but they reached my ears even there. Moreover, they sounded as if coming from where I was standing. I squeezed myself into the corner, but it was in vain. I stuck my fingers into my ears and this time it worked, but how long can one stand with his arms lifted? I felt I was going crazy.

The first rays of dawn could be seen through the window, a pale, weak light. And there, across the wall, an unhappy human-being was wailing. During that day they took him out twice again. I knew it because I heard the jailers' footsteps and their screaming voices, and when they brought him back, I heard from his cell the same endless moans, a wordless outcry which tore my heart. When I was forced to listen to those heartbreaking groans day and night, I wished I too felt physical pain and cried out bitterly. Then I understood something which I had never believed in before, that tortures of the soul are more painful than tortures of the body. It is better to lose your mind because of swollen, beaten fingers and broken bones than of the endless, maddening cries coming from behind the walls of my cell.


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When the jailer opened the door and handed the dinner ration, I asked him about the date of my expected investigation. It was clear to me how it would end, but then, at least, when I was out of my cell, I would no longer hear my neighbor's cries. It seemed that my impertinent question did not particularly surprise the jailer. He had known the souls of people who had been tortured there for more than a year, and also their reaction to the heartbreaking cries heard for twenty hours a day.

At night that door opened again. The prisoner had been taken to innumerable investigations. For a short while there was silence, which restored my peace of mind, but soon, the maddening cries burst out again. I became a nervous wreck, a bundle of raw nerves. I punched the wall with my fists to stop the harsh voice, but the person behind the wall did not become any quieter.

Once, the door of my cell opened. I squeezed myself into the corner, so the policeman did not notice me at first, because through the half-open door only dark light could be seen. – “Komm!”, come!

Fear seized me. My instinct told me that despite the endless wailing, it was better here than where the cruel Gestapo inquisitors were waiting for me.

– “Come! Come!” He repeated his order twice. One order which was spiced with words of contempt and ridicule probably did not satisfy him.

I went out to the corridor. He did not close the door of my cell and pointed to the room where the abandoned prisoner was staying. He opened the door and ordered me to get in. Then I saw…

On the floor lay an old, torn suit and the tortured man was thrown on the ground breathing heavily . His underwear was soaked with blood and he wriggled and twisted with pain, pressing his head towards his belly, shrinking and moaning. I think the moans were soundless, so how did they still cut the air and deafened my ears?

– Take off your clothes!

The policeman pointed at me. I was wrong. Not at me, at my clothes. I hesitated because I did not understand anything.

– Well!

I took off my jacket and then my trousers.

“Dress him up!” – He pointed to the prisoner.

I touched the lean, wizened, helpless body which was senseless but burning with sores and wounds. By the light of the open door I noticed that his limbs were covered with red, blue-gray bruises. I leaned down trying to hold him, but he slipped off my hands, looking at me with dim but imploring eyes. It was very hard to dress him because he kept moving clumsily, hitting his head at the stony floor. I was helpless. I did the job hurriedly so as to finish it as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, I found pleasure I his groans, as if content that my heart had become numb and senseless…

He was still alive.

I returned to my cell with only my underwear on. Soon after that, he was taken away again. The savage officers had probably been disgusted with his blood-soaked clothes and decided to cover him with mine.

I trembled. It was so cold. Then I froze. They brought him back again and walked away, cursing and swearing. I heard his cries even before he reached his cell. Had I already got used to that roar?

The day after, the policeman called me and said:

– They brought him a suit from home. Take your clothes off him and dress him with his.

I hesitated.

– I will put on his suit. Let him stay in mine – I replied.

I did not know what had hit me. Was it disgust with his blood-soaked clothes, or the fear of having to touch his pain-stricken body?

The policeman changed his mind and threw at me the suit which the stranger had received from home. It seemed that he too had grown tired of that contemptible job. He locked the door and I put on the clothes which were not mine. I didn't even look into the pockets which had been turned inside out after a search.

The suit was the type of the warm sport clothes of skiers. The trousers could be fastened under the knees and also stretched down to the ankles and tightened to the shoes. Now I felt much better. After a night in the new suit, it seemed to me that the stranger's clothes were particularly warm. Later, I noticed that the suit was too large and dragged on the floor. I would have preferred mine, but it had probably soaked the blood of the poor convict by then. He was breathing hard for another three days and nights and I too was numb. When he stopped for a minute I felt bad, as if missing his groans.

One morning the door of his cell opened and didn't close again. When I went to the toilets, I peeped into his room and it was empty. Death had arrived. His things had been collected and the blood – washed up.

I got off at the station, and so did the woman. She started talking to me:

– Were you in a concentration camp, sir?

I lifted my arm and showed her the number, thinking that would satisfy her curiosity.

– You were lucky to get out alive!

Her dry eyes became moist and a tear ran down her cheek. We walked slowly taking our time.

– Were you there for a long time?

I calculated.

– Since January 1942. Since I was arrested. Exactly here, in A.

– Were you here in prison, sir?


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– Why do you ask?

She caught my hand and continued:

– And did you survive it?

– You see I did!

– My son too might have survived, but I…

Here she stopped, bent her head and released my hand.

– My son too was here. Did you know him by any chance?

I explained to her that I had not known anybody because I was in solitary confinement.

She was quiet for a while and then continued to ask.

– Did they beat a lot?

– They beat as they chose to, but somehow I came through. And what happened to your son?

– I killed him!

I looked at her questioningly. 'This woman must have lost her mind,' I said to myself.

– You killed him in prison? Is it possible? How did you enter?

You remember the market in A. We walked on the cobbled road, skipped over the well near which the peasants used to water their horses. A driver stopped his car in front of the tavern.

As early as January 1942, her son, knowing that he would not be able to escape the SS had prepared poison which he hid under the lining of the coat's pocket, for the sake of safety. If they arrested and tortured him during the investigation, he might not be able to bear it and would mention names of others, which might cause their arrest. This was what he had told his mother.

And indeed, one day he was arrested in his yard while cutting wood. He was dressed in his shirt without a jacket. He was dragged forcefully, shoved into a motorcycled cart and taken away.

She continued to speak, her voice slightly anxious.

– I had always looked for an opportunity to send him the coat in which the bundle with the cyanide of potassium was hidden. I used to take the risk and walk up and down the prison square and once I even knocked at the gate. They told me that my son did not need the coat because he was kept warm enough and ordered me to get away. I returned home, desperate. The day after, however, late at night, a policeman appeared at my door and asked for a coat for my son. I didn't think much, opened the wardrobe and took out long warm trousers that could be fastened under the knees, sportsmen's trousers, designed for skiers. I also handed him a coat… As the policeman was leaving, I kissed his hand. After a few days I was informed that my son had suddenly died and they returned the coat. But it was not my son's coat; it was somebody else's. I haven't been able to find out what it meant.

I realized that at that moment I became part of her life and that I had lived her experiences, her wishes and the last hours of her murdered son. I heard her story and my heart seemed to explode. I must have stopped because she asked:

– Have you grown tired, sir?

I resumed walking and she continued:

– I don't know what my son did when he received the coat, but I'm afraid he suffered tremendously until he got it. Even you, sir, who sat with him at one time, cannot deny it completely and relieve me from the doubt.

– Madam, people suffered a lot there, but rest assured that you did very much for your son in his last moments.

– But you, sir, you were there too, and still you managed to come out alive. If I hadn't sent him the coat, I wouldn't have killed him. How can I live in peace when my conscience tortures me day and night? With every passing day my regret grows deeper and I am filled with more remorse. If I had only known that they flogged him, caused him unbearable suffering, and that the poison eased his pain, I would have felt better, knowing that I helped him speed up the end of his suffering…

She rested a minute and repeated:

– Yes, I would have been quiet.

What could I tell her and how could I comfort her? Should I have described to her the cleansing suffering of her son the martyr? Should I have told her the truth that the coat had never reached her son? If I had done so, I would have certainly wounded her tired soul which was already so beaten and depressed. Let the poor mother live in the hope that her son had taken his life and she had helped him hasten the arrival of the liberating death.

In 1951 an urn of ashes of the Zaglembian Jews sacrificed in Auschwitz was presented to the Zaglembian Émigrés Organization. It was given by a former Sosnowiec resident, David Zicher, who remarkably had managed to survive, and who had served as an inmate near the camp's death furnaces. There was a meeting with the organization's board led by Rabbi Menachem Hager of blessed memory, who served many years as the chairman of the Zaglembian Émigrés Organization in Tel Aviv, till he passed way in 1954. In the meeting [Zicher] he described in a choked voice and tear-filled eyes, how he had probed and turned over with his hands a small quantity of ashes, that he had carefully saved from the last dispatch of Jews from our region in 1943, amongst whom was his wife and children who had been gassed and incinerated.

By agreement of the Chief Rabbinate of Tel Aviv, that had intervened in this matter, it was decided after deliberations and inquiries that this box of ashes should be brought for proper burial in Israel. In the month of Av, 5712 (1952), a funeral took place in which many people participated and the urn of ashes was buried in a very prominent, central location in the old Nachlat Yitzhak cemetery, near the graves of the soldiers who had fallen defending the State of Israel. The chairman of the organization, who was also head of the Chevrat Kaddisha, strove to see achieve this.


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The miniature “mita”^[1] on which the ashes of the martyrs of the Zaglembian communities was brought to Israel and photographs of the temporary headstone in the cemetery and the monument, that was erected later, were presented to the archives of the Yitzhak Katzenelson Bet Lochamei Museum, for the Holocaust and the Rebellion legacy, located near Kibbutz Lochamei Haghettaot in the Western Galilee.

The buried ashes remained for two years without a suitable headstone, because of the lack of funds to erect a monument in memory of the glory of the Jews of Zagłębie. Later, funds were collected by donations from our surviving brothers, and a monument was erected for their eternal memory.

On the 11^th anniversary of the destruction our parent's birthplace, on Tisha B'av 5714, (8/8/1954) an unveiling ceremony of the monument, on which the names of the twelve Zaglembian communities that were destroyed were engraved in marble:

The committee members lowered the black cloth that covered the monument, and a magnificent monument was revealed to the excited gathering. The crowd wept. People fainted. After the prayer “El Male Rachamim” and the reciting of “Kaddish”, the crowd left the cemetery that had been sanctified, and has served since then as a meeting place for memorials that take place annually on Tisha B'Av.

During a memorial service in 1957 a terrible tragedy took place, which ended with the death of one of our most dedicated members in organization matters. Attorney Dr. Pinchas (Paul) Majteles, a Holocaust survivor, became excited to such an extent during a very impressive eulogy, that he fell on the martyrs grave, and his pure soul was extinguished. Even in death he was not separated from his wretched brothers, the full extent of their tragedy he had experienced himself.

^[1] “Mita” – stretcher for carrying the dead. Return

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