ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST UNDERSTANDING & PREVENTION

JUMPERS & ARYAN PAPERS

JUMPERS.

Passive resistance extended into the Final Solution phase. Many people caught in "resettlement actions" (pogroms), loaded naked into cattle trains for the "special treatment" in the gas chambers, jumped from running trains, naked in subfreezing temperatures. Some managed to escape, the majority was shot or wounded by the Ukrainian guards accompanying the death trains.

The "jumpers" usually returned to their homes, displaying unbelievable courage and inventiveness. In 1942, in Rohatyn Reb Meir, a religious Jew with a beard and sidelocks, jumped the death train, and returned home by train, playing the role of mute with a toothache, having his head wrapped around with rags concealing the beard and the sidelocks.

ARYAN PAPERS

Another form of passive resistance was hiding on "aryan papers." Leaving the ghetto on false "Aryan" papers required not only special physical appearance, but also a special psychological makeup. Staying on the "other side" meant to be hunted by the Jews catchers, exposed to a constant danger of detection, and only a few could take the tension. Many Jews returned to the relative "safety" of the ghetto after venturing to the other side. The stronger people, people that thrived on danger survived.

"Life on the surface (aryan papers) is not easy at all. A Jew on the surface lives in constant fear, under constant tension. Danger lurks, at every step. In the blocks of flats-the landlord, smelling a Jew in every new subtenant, even if he produces a guarantee of Aryanism from a trustworthy source; the gas and electricity account collectors; next, the manager and the porter of the block, a neighbor, etc.- all these constitute a danger for the Jew on the surface, because each of them can recognize him for a Jew. .. Unaccustomed to life "on the Surface", gives himself away by looking round in every direction to see if anyone is watching him, by the nervous expression on his face, by the frightened look of a hunted animal, smelling danger of some kind everywhere."

"While the Ghetto still existed, one could observe the return of great numbers of blackmail victims to the Jewish side which district, broken in spirit, stripped of belongings and money, cursing the Aryan side which had deprived them of their last haven. The returning Jews kissed the earth of the Ghetto, blessed everyday spent there and claimed that there they could rest without continually watching out for the police and the "Black Maria" with the Gendarmerie. Some people returned to the Ghetto even without having been blackmailed, just for fear of this nightmare which prevented Jews on the Aryan side for sleeping at nights and imbued them with deadly fear...for a Jew is no escape, there is merely a choice of kind and place of death. There are four kinds: (1) death in a Ghetto bunker.; (2) death on the Aryan side: (3) death in the S.S. labor camps in Trawniki or Poniatow, and (4) death in an interment."

kimel@systec.com