TLUSZCZ GHETTO

Tluszcz Ghetto

Train on the line from Tłuszcz - Małkinia - Ostrołęka (photo circa 1979)

A Jewish settlement was founded in Tluszcz in the early 20^th Century, and the Jewish population grew to 1102 in 1921. Gur Hassadin redominated in the community, which was served by R. Yaakov, Yosef Birkman from 1912 until his murder by the Nazis in 1942.

The Zionist and Agudat Israel were active between the two world wars, with Yavne and Beth Jacob schools in operation.

Map showing the trainline from Warsaw to Tluszcz

The Nazis took the city on 14 September 1939 setting up a Judenrat in October and instituting a regime of forced labour. Many fled east in the winter of 1939/40 leaving about 740 Jews , including refuges in the town.

Crowded into a ghetto from September 1940 the Jewish population suffered from starvation and a typhoid epidemic, throughout that winter.

On 27 May 1942 600 Jews were led towards Radzymin after 70 were shot in the town, about half of the deportees were murdered along the way and the rest were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto.

A SMALL STATION OF TREBLINKA

Here is the small station of Treblinka
Here is the small station of Treblinka
On the line between Tluszcz and Warszawa
From the railway station Warsaw - East
You get out of the station and travel straight

The journey lasts
five hours and 45 minutes more
And sometimes the same journey lasts
A whole life until your death

And the station is very small
Three fir trees grow there
And a regular signboard saying
Here is the small station of Treblinka...
Here is the small station of Treblinka...

And no cashier even
Gone is the cargo man
And for a million zloty
You will not get a return ticket

And nobody waits for you in the station
And nobody waves a handkerchief towards you
Only silence hung there in the air
To welcome you in the blind wilderness

And silent is the pillar of the station
And silent are the three fir trees
And silent is the black board
Because here is the small station of Treblinka...

Here is the small station of Treblinka...
And only a commercial board stands still:
"Cook only by gas"
Here is the small station of Treblinka...
Here is the small station of Treblinka...


-WLADYSLAW SZLENGEL

Translated from Polish to Hebrew by Halina Birenbaum
and from Hebrew to English by Ada Holtzman