Germany’s annexation of Austria (the so-called Anschluss) in March 1938 caused grave concern in the Polish government that a mass exodus of Jews with Polish citizenship - fearful of Nazi persecution- would attempt to return to Poland. The Polish parliament preemptively moved to denationalize all Polish citizens who had been living abroad for more than five years by rendering their passports invalid if they lacked a special consular stamp. Only passports issued with this Polish consular stamp would be honored, and Jews without it - even with otherwise valid passports - would be considered “stateless.”
This action on the part of the Polish government infuriated the Germans who themselves were targeting “Eastern” Jews for expulsion. They threatened to deport its Polish citizens if the government of Poland did not rescind its order. However, even before Poland could respond, Reinhold Heydrich had ordered police officers in Germany to round up Polish Jews and transport them to the Polish border. These roundups occurred at the end of October 1938 with 17,000 Jews being arrested. Allowed to take just a few belongings, and having to surrender personal property and money, these Jews were conveyed by train to Polish border towns whereupon they were unceremoniously offloaded like cargo, often driven by police on foot across the empty fields. In Zbaszyn alone more than 8000 stateless people were forced to endure horrendous conditions during winter months until accommodations could be made for them by Jewish agencies. Among the unfortunate families in Zbaszyn were the Grynszpans. Daughter Zendel Grynszpan wrote her teenage brother Herschel, an unemployed illegal immigrant living in Paris, about their deplorable circumstances. In a rage, Herschel went to the German embassy in Paris and fired five shots at Ernst Vom Rath, a young diplomat at the Foreign Office, mortally wounding him. Herschel was arrested, his fate unknown. However, the incident was used by the Nazis - at Joseph Goebbels suggestion - as a justification for escalating terror on the Jews; the November “Kristallnacht” pogroms in both Germany and Austria was its realization, leading to a mass exodus of Jews from Germany and Austria.
On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Polish Jews and non-Jews alike fled the advancing Germans. Within two days Britain and France declared war on Germany, thus commencing World War II. On the 29th of September Poland surrendered. Many of the Jews caught up in the Polenaktion would be ensnared in the Nazi dragnet and perish as the war dragged on.
--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966
Browse the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection.
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Passport of Josef Heidenstein and the Polish Action
2022.1.59
Blue booklet with bird with crown in circle on cover, includes photograph on pages 3 and 9 of 40 pages, no stamps on pages 24-40.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Mr. Heidenstein’s German passport documents the events surrounding the Polenaktion. His passport was issued in Berlin in 1936. He was deported by the police to Poland on October 28, 1938 (p. 9). He would be in a refugee “camp” on the Polish and German border in Nowy Tomysi , a town just a few miles from the Grynszpans in Zbaszyn. Poles applied the Ministry of Interior stamp for the special committee for those deported from Germany (p. 7), as well as border stamps indicating his deportation.
Mr. Heidenstein survived, travelling in 1939 via Belgium and Holland for the U.K. His passport was extended in London in 1940.
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Postcard From Distraught Jewish Woman Alone in Vienna after Kristallnacht
2014.1.56
Front: Handwritten message in black ink.Back: Red printed postcard lines, black handwritten address and message, and red stamp.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Mailed by a Jewess named Schprinze, addressed to her family in Jerusalem, Palestine. German handwritten message addressed to Josef Pollak, a family member who managed to leave Nazi Germany in good time while Ms. Schprinze remained alone in Vienna. The text indicates her state of mind: her confusion, fear, and separation from reality. "One can only imagine the horrors these days: the sounds of broken glass everywhere, all the raging mobs looting shops, sights of wild fires burning old sacred synagogues. Above all the feeling that life is completely turned over..." She begins the card with family matters, asking for Morris's address which she has lost, then complains she has no luck (mazal). She continues, "Morris is not writing to me... I am worried for my life... I have no time to think... Please help me..." Signed in Hebrew letters "Schprinze." She mailed the card with surface rather than air mail and neglected to write her address. As no family name appears on the card, we know nothing of her fate.
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Herschel Grynszpan Led From Paris Police Station by Detective
2014.1.51
Front: A black and white photograph of a man in a hat leading a man shielding his face out of a building with pasted paper with typewritten title.Back: Stamp, writing, and sticker.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Wire photograph taken ten days after Grynszpan shot Ernst Vom Rath, angered that his parents had been forced by the Nazi government to leave their home in Hanover, Germany, and return to Poland, their country of origin. Vom Rath's murder provided a rationale for the initiation of a nationwide pogrom against the Jews referred to as Kristallnacht.
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Press Photograph: Witnessing Kristallnacht in Berlin
2014.1.52
Front: An image of ransacked Jewish-owned stores in Berlin. Verso: Typewritten information about the image. Back: "Most Important News Pictures of '38"
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Acme wire photo with following information verso: “A street scene in Berlin showing the shattered fronts of Jewish-owned stores, the result of anti-Jewish demonstrations following the slaying of Ernst vom Rath in Germany's Paris embassy. Vom Rath's slayer was a Jewish youth. 12-13-1938." The image seems to capture a range of moods of the onlookers, from incredulity to exultation to disengagement.
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Jewish Woman Seeking Refuge from Nazi Menace During "Polish Action"
2016.1.40
Front: woman sitting on steps with head in hand, a tag ‘247’ hangs from her sleeve; Back: handwriting in pencil and date handstamp.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
As the Nazi noose tightens, the number of Jews seeking refuge through the 1930s increases exponentially, even as there are few countries willing to admit them. This woman’s expression embodies the frustration of the prospective Jewish émigré who is frantically attempting to find shelter from the Nazi storm, in this case a Polish-born Jew living in Germany who is one of 17,000 Jews rounded up and loaded in sealed railway cars and driven across the Polish border by SS men in October 1938.
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German Propaganda Justifying Invasion of Poland
2014.1.439
Brown leaflet titled, "Das Totenfeld der Volksdeutschen in Polen."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
An imprint by the German authorities justifying the invasion of Poland. The leaflet, in German, reports on the alleged systematic massacre of the of ethnic Germans and claims that the Poles had killed 58,000 innocent civilians since the end of World War I. In small part "... Even by 1931, one million Germans had been displaced from their homes by the Poles. The German-Polish pact of January 1934 did not even bring the expected changes, but instead... more Polish rabble-rousing and terror in connection with their chauvinistic organizations and their Polish rape-and-torture administrations. The German-Polish contract was just a cloak for the Polish Government to continue their oppression of Germans... We have already informed the world press, that this Polish blood orgy happened against unarmed German men, women and children. The Bromberg night was just the beginning of a campaign of terror and murder against every single German in Poland..." The Bromberg incident, dubbed by German propagandists as "Bloody Sunday," involved the alleged massacre of ethnic Germans in the city of Bromberg (Bydogoszcz), which the Nazis used to further inflame public opinion against the Poles. The German government claimed "our special investigation group already found hundreds of mass graves. We could open just a few of them, because of the winter weather. We already identified 12,857 bodies. In the spring we will be able to open all those graves and identify those killed. The Chief of civil administration founded an administration for finding and rescuing ethnic Germans, which has been ordered to investigate how many Germans were killed since the outbreak of the war... The total number of people murdered by Poles is actually 58,000. These victims of Polish terror were not just found at Bromberg. The field of dead extends to the Silesian and mid Polish sector. Even in these areas, thousands of Germans have been displaced as cattle and had been shot by the Polish Army with machine guns. The German nation paid a large amount of blood for this, the Polish nation will be burdened forever..." Sadly, such German propaganda is still cited by some today as "proof" of Polish atrocities toward ethnic Germans living there.
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Photograph of German Soldiers Marching Through Piotrkow Trybunalski Ghetto in Poland
2021.1.14
Group of soldiers walk through the streets of a Jewish Ghetto with a skull and bones sign visible in the foreground.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Piotrkow Trybunalski was the first ghetto established by the Germans 38 days after the invasion of Poland on October 8, 1939. A ghetto sign with skull and bones is clearly visible. This period photograph was removed from a soldier’s album.
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Dr. Lasch Broadside on the Establishment of the Lvov Ghetto
2021.1.116
Three columns of the same text, each in a different language -- German, Ukrainian and Polish. Dr. Lasch at bottom right of each column.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Approximately 220,000 Jews were living in Lvov in eastern Poland – at the time in the Soviet occupation zone – when the German Army Group South and Einsatzgruppe C invaded in June 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa. Ironically, half were refugees fleeing eastern Poland after the Nazi occupation. Almost immediately, a number of German-inspired and encouraged pogroms occurred by Ukrainian nationalists in which 6,000 Jews were murdered. This broadside addresses the establishment of the ghetto in Lvov. The name appearing on this document is that of Dr. Karl Lasch, German governor of the province of Galicia, and friend and protégé of Hans Frank who is the head of the General Government in German-occupied Poland. Lasch and Fritz Katzmann, higher SS and Police Leader, were involved in the establishment of a “Jewish residential quarter” – a Judischer Wohnbezirk - in an area of the suburbs known as Zamarstynow, a wretched slum in the northern part of the city of Lvov. Jews were to be given little more than one month to move into this area. Conditions were wretched for the more than 111,000 Jews forced to live here. Extreme overcrowding, poor sanitation, lack of heat, and hunger from markedly diminished food rations contributed to many Jews dying of typhus. Selections occurred almost immediately. The sick and elderly were murdered even before they entered the ghetto. Many Jews were deported to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camp Belzec – so named for Reinhard Heydrich, who died of his wounds after an assassination attempt – where they were instantly murdered. Jews deemed less expendable were forced to work at the Janowska labor camp. In August 1942, the so-called Great Aktion occurred and approximately 50,000 more Jews perished at Belzec. These Aktions continued on the orders of Katzmann and included shootings and hangings. Members of the Judenrat were not spared and were hanged in public. With the final dissolution of the Judenrat, the Ghetto was renamed Judenlager Lemberg, a forced labor camp for Jews working for German war industries.
[Related items: 2012.1.577, 2012.1.579]
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Copy of Broadside Announcing Curfew Times for Jews in Brody, Poland (Ukraine)
2016.1.59
Text separated by vertical line at center, left side in Ukrainian, right side in German
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
German broadside announcing – in both Ukrainian and German – curfew times for Jews in Brody, Poland (Ukraine) in July 1941. In September 1939, not long after the invasion of Poland by Germany, Brody was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in June 1941, Brody was occupied by Einsatzgruppen. By May 1943, with the assistance of local Ukrainian units, all the Jews of Brody were either murdered of deported to the Belzec and Majdanek killing centers.
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Illustrating the Persecution of Civilians in Poland
2012.1.399
Black and white photograph of a man shaving the beard of a man as men in uniform surround them. Back includes pasted news clipping.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Soldiers enjoy humiliating a Jewish man by shaving his beard.
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Lvov Ghetto Broadside
2012.1.577
Tan poster with three columns of text, one in German, the other Ukranian, and the last Polish. There is a diagonal red line across the entirety of the poster.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
An announcement printed in three languages - German, Polish, and Ukrainian - organizing the Lvov Ghetto (Lemberg in German), referred to as a “Jewish residential area” in the city of Lemberg. This would entail “clearing out of Jews” on streets throughout August and listing each street and the day it is to be cleared of Jews. Dr. Ullrich who endorses this broadside is the Chief of Police (Schutzpolizei) of Lvov.
Lvov had been absorbed into the German-administered General Government after the Non-Aggression Treaty between Germany and the USSR. A ghetto was established for Jews in 1941, its inhabitants used for slave labor or transported to the extermination center at Belzec - one of the so-called Aktion Reinhard camps.
This broadside addresses what has been referred to as the “Great Aktion,” occurring in August 1942. In anticipation of Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler’s arrival, as many as 55,000 Jews were systematically and methodically removed from their homes and taken to Janowska transit camp or deported to Belzec extermination camp. Preparations were made by the Gestapo, the German and Ukrainian police, and specially trained SS brigades called Vernichtung Kommandos (extermination commandos) to fulfill Himmler’s wish of murdering half the Jews of Poland within one year. In preparation for deportation, entire city blocks were emptied, the Jewish victims removed, and the sick, elderly, women and children sent to their deaths at Belzec. Many were simply shot in place. Healthy men were used for slave labor. The murder of Jews through successive selections continued after the “Great Aktion” through June 1943. Those Jews not capable of working were dispatched to Belzec, the others were sent to Janowska. There were so few Jews left that the ghetto was redefined as a work camp. Those Jews were eventually liquidated as well. During the period of the German occupation of Lvov more than 250,000 Jews were murdered.
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The Mass Extermination of Jews in German-Occupied Poland
2012.1.98
Cream-colored pamphlet titled, "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland" with red text. Interior includes information written in English.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
A document addressed by the exiled Polish government to the governments of the United Nations in 1942. The pamphlet is concerned with the mass extermination of Jews in German-occupied Poland, and the Nazis’ “fresh horrifying methods” of extermination. The Polish government in exile was first to reveal in November 1942, through its courier Jan Karski, the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the existence of concentration camps.
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Cast Metal Plaque, Rescued from Berlin's Fasanenstrasse Synagogue During Kristallnacht
2019.2.356
Metal plaque with scene of men seated at table
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The Fasanenstrasse Synagogue was Berlin’s liberal Synagogue and the largest Synagogue in Berlin. It was opened in 1912, and during its years of operation had been for a time the spiritual home to Rabbi Leo Baeck. During the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938, along with many other synagogues in Germany and Austria, the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue had been set on fire - under Joseph Goebbels orders - and destroyed by SA thugs. This plaque, depicting a Seder scene with a group of Rabbis - probably influenced by a painting by the 19th century artist Moritz Oppenheim - had been damaged in the ensuing destruction of the synagogue. However, someone, perhaps a congregant, had been able to rescue the bullet-damaged plaque and carry it out of Germany to Jerusalem.