Reliable reports of Jewish resistance to Nazis in the smaller townships in occupied Poland where the Nazi garrisons are usually limited to a small number of reserves reached Soviet authorities here today.
One report tells how Jewish women in the small town of Lublinetz attacked German soldiers who plundered their property, forcing them to flee the town panic stricken. Another report relates how Jews in the township of Adamov killed all the Nazi gendarmes. In both cases the Jews were aided by the local non-Jewish population.
In Lublinetz the attack on the German soldiers is reported to have taken place on October 4. On that day the entire Jewish population was ordered to appear on the market place. There the Nazi soldiers ordered the Jewish men and women to undress and on the pretext that the warm clothes were needed for the German army, the soldiers loaded the confiscated wearing apparel on trucks, leaving the men and women clad only in their underwear.
As the trucks were about to leave town, the Jewish women, encouraged by a crowd of non-Jews, suddenly rushed the vehicles, pulled some of the Nazis to the ground and started to beat them with their fists. The Nazis were soon trampled by the crowd of Jews and Poles. Outnumbered by the local populace, the Germans did not attempt to use their guns, but fled in one of their trucks, leaving the other vehicles containing the confiscated clothing.
In Adamov, the Jewish attack on Nazi gendarmes took place in September, Fearing that they would be deported from the ghetto to “unknown destinations” as were the Jews in other ghettos, the Jews of Adamov decided to slip from the ghetto without permission and seek shelter in the neighboring woods. Local Nazi authorities executed a number of Jews as “collective punishment” for the escape of the others, but the Jews continued to sneak out and join those in the woods.
“When the Jews in the woods felt that they were strong enough to over-power the Nazi garrison in Adamov, they broke into the township, attacked and killed all the Nazi gendarmes, visited their homes in the ghetto, took whatever they could with them, and led their families into the woods,” the report states.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
