In These Nightmarish Days

Josef Zelkowicz

1942

Here you have him, the proud Jew. The Jew who ruled his kingdom with a high hand in complete despotism: here is the Jew who never heeded anyone’s advice, who did everything with his own hand and followed only his own lights. Here that Jew stands in front of the crowd as a broken man. [ . . . ]

“The ghetto has received a painful blow. They demand…

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Creator Bio

Josef Zelkowicz

1897–1944

Josef Zelkowicz grew up in a wealthy Hasidic family and was ordained as a rabbi. A professional journalist before the war, Zelkowicz took a keen interest in urban poverty, Jewish ethnography, and Hasidic lore. These interests stood him in good stead as a key and extremely productive member of the Łódź ghetto archive. His most sustained piece of writing was his hour-by-hour description of the Szpere, the great deportation from the ghetto in September 1942. He was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944.

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