Dwojra Szczuczyńska Testimony (doc. 301/2)

Original, manuscript, 2 pages, 210 x 295 mm, Polish language

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Dwojra Szczuczyńska, residing in Warsaw, tells about the Hotel for Jews that was set up by Germans in cooperation with the Jewish Gestapo men.

In May 1943, the news came that Jews who were foreign citizens could leave the country. This was a trap for Jews who were settled or in hiding on the Aryan side. There were (it was said) certificates at the Gestapo for Jews who had died in action, Germans making it convenient for the Jews who had survived, sold citizenships and with that underhanded method caught the naïve ones. 1Note 1: There were two types of documents which were supposed to provide their holders security: certificates issued by British authorities, authorizing entry to Palestine, and the passports of the Latin American countries.At the head of this scam was a Jewish Gestapo officer named Lolek Skosowski, a resident of Łódź (who lived until the last minute in Lwów at 4 Teresy Street and was killed by the party), who sacrificed his own family to underscore the trustworthiness of this program, having taken them out of the Łódź ghetto.

Naïve people were recruited at the Hotel Polski on Długa Street. At the gate there was an armed guard [wacha], 2Note 2: Wacha (German ‑ Wache) – guard post. who kept order and chased away onlookers. The richest Jews fell victim to this, who would pay several hundred thousand złotys each for a certificate. They came with their fancy baggage. There was a restaurant and barber shop right there. The ladies and gentlemen felt as if they were on a fancy ship. A committee was formed

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from among the Jews, which took care of orphaned children who were allegedly supposed to leave for Palestine. Thanks to the big-heartedness of the Gestapo, poor orphans were accepted in exchange for payments in-kind and similar arrangements. Transports were sent depending on how many naïve people were taken in. There were three such transports. The first was to Wittel 2Note 2: Wittel – Vittel, a spa town in France. Group held in Vittel was then deported to the death camp at Auschwitz., from whence letter were even sent, the second went to Hannover, the third and last to Pawiak. 2Note 2: Further groups of residents of Hotel Polski were deported to the concentration camp at Bergen‑Belsen.

After a while, there ceased to be any news. A card from Hannover came from one woman, written in an arranged code to her friends, which unmasked the enormity of the scam, namely the sentence we are doing very well was to mean the group’s extermination.

The last transport did not go far, only to the prison known as Pawiak, hundreds of thousands of people were killed.

The hotel scam caught about 3,000 people from the Aryan neighborhood. They were people who had every opportunity: they looked good, had living conditions, and were set up, which means they had work in various places (railroad, post office, fire department) and they had the possibility of surviving the period of German barbarity.

5 Note 5: [Signature:] Szczuczyńska

Lublin, September 4, 1944

Collected by M. Asz