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The Struggle and Dissolution of the Jewish Community
World War II started in Nowy Dwor on September 1st, 1939. On that morning the first German bombing operation took place near the wood-mill. The town’s war casualties list had began at that time. In Yom Kipur the synagogues was destroyed and the Bet Midrash burned down. Following the massive bombing of Fortress Modlin and resulting destruction and many casualties the majority of the Jewish population left town toward Warsaw. But they found devastated town, after three weeks of air-bombing and shelling, in which food was hard to find and people waited hours in lines in front of the few bakeries which remained operational. The people of Warsaw were hungry. The German enter Maudlin and Nowy Dwor on Saturday, September 30,1939 - a few days after taking Warsaw. After the end of the fighting, in 1940, Jewish people started to return to Nowy Dwor facing a lot of destruction. In a short time the German war machine achieved control over Poland but then it started the war against populations. Many Jewish families were forced to share housing with others and the hardship started all over again. The Germans went from house to house and took the few thing which were left after the houses were robbed earlier by the Poles. At nights and during the days the Germans, while hitting and humiliating, took the Jewish men to work in the clean-up of the ruins, but mainly for cleaning toilets. But this was only the beginning as the testimony of Abraham Goldbrach and Wolf Szlamowicz shows in details. In their story includes a long period in Auschwitz the notable concentration camp. Other people told the stories of children and adults who managed to live out of the real reach of the Nazis. Children and adults which had to support themselves wandering in constant fear on the fringes of society. Some managed to find somebody that was willing to hide them and help them to survive. Some of these people did so throughout the war some were eventually caught and shipped to a concentration camp. In Nowy Dwor like in other places the Nazis used Jews to police, and execute their policy among, the Jews. Some of the chosen people often assumed the role of vicious, wicked and cruel master (beyond what they were forced to do). Such was the case in the torture-camp in Pomyekov to which several thousand of the area Jews were expelled in May 1941. The leading oppressor was a Jew named Maylekhel. But his behavior did not last. Jews from Plonsk, who together with the Jews of Nowy Dwor experience his brutal rule, did away with him. We should remember this bitter truth regarding the level to which people may sink in times like these. Many Nowy Dwor Jews have spent time in the Warsaw Ghetto. There, like in the Nowy Dwor Ghetto, they have experienced the misery of famine, sickness and pain. They also participate in the battle of the uprising. Some witnessed the final liquidation and shipment to the death camps. Others managed to join the partisan forest-groups who fought the Germans until the end of the war in 1945. Some of the Nowy Dwor inmates in these camps were influential and participated in uprising like the one in Trablinka. Clinging to the old typical Jewish belief that evil and evildoers come to their dome, the Jews of Nowy dwor struggled in these dark days to last another day. But only a few lived to see the day of victory, and not too many could act with human dignity and heroism under the indescribably savage and ghoulish conditions. After the war some of the survivors returned to their town. they found there nothing but ruins and desolation, an empty town with a destroyed cemetery. The local Christians looked upon them with curiosity and disbelief. Did the Jews who outlasted the death camps come to claim their dispossessed homes and businesses? Eventually many of the survivors came to Israel. There on the land of the Jewish National Fund in Holon, a Shikun (Housing Development) was established for Jews of Nowy Dwor descent. "Shikun Nowy Dwor" is a continuation of the Jewish community of Nowy Dwor. All who reside there nurture the wish and hope that the noble Jewish ideals adhered to by our ancestors in Nowy Dwor will find their fulfillment. The Shikun was built the collective efforts of all Nowy Dwor Jews in the world.
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