A Doctor of the World and a Human without Frontiers

Alina Margolis-Edelman

“IT’S A WAR!”

On 1 September 1939, the German army, without a formal declaration of war, invaded Poland. The Second World War thus broke out. As early as on 9 September, the Germans entered Łódź. Whoever refused to submit to the occupiers was facing persecution. Two months later, Łódź was incorporated into the German Reich. On the night between 10 and 11 November 1939, the Germans destroyed the monument of Polish national hero Tadeusz Kościuszko in Plac Wolności [Freedom Square], set fire to the synagogues, and started detaining members of the intelligentsia and political and social activists. Aleksander Margolis, Alina’s father, was taken to a jail in Radogoszcz, where he was beaten and tortured. According to witness testimonies, he took it with great dignity, and was even quoted as having said, “I’m proud that they made an example of me, too. If so many Jews were tortured, why should I – a representative of Jewish laborers – not suffer as well?”

At the same time, Anna Margolis was doing all she could to secure her husband’s release, also with the backing of German officer Hans Werner, Aleksander’s university acquaintance, who had been deployed to Łódź and quartered at their place. The teenage Alina visited her father every day, bringing him food and fresh underwear. From 14 November 1939, she was forced to wear a yellow band on her right arm – a symbol used for identifying, or rather stigmatizing, Jews. The following month, the bands were replaced by yellow patches the shape of the Star of David. But Alina would have no idea of this new development, since her mother had sent her and her brother to their aunt’s place in Warsaw. On 7 December 1939, following a mock trial, Aleksander Margolis was murdered in Lućmierz-Las near Zgierz, together with a group of prisoners whom the Germans had arrested as part of an operation against the Polish intelligentsia. Alina Margolis did not know what had happened to her husband until the war ended. When the ghetto was being established in Łódź and all the Jews had to move to the Bałuty district, she rejoined her children in Warsaw. She found a job at a children’s hospital, which became part of the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940.

Photo caption: The final prewar photo of Aleksander Margolis (1887-1939), taken in his director’s office at the Radogoszcz hospital. He was murdered in December 1939 as part of an operation against the Polish intelligentsia. To this day, he only has a symbolic tombstone at the Doły cemetery in Łódź. His brother, Ignacy, was drafted in the Polish army as a doctor in 1939. After the unsuccessful defensive campaign of September 1939, he found himself in the territory occupied by the Soviet Union, and then, together with his wife and daughter, who had joined him in the meantime, he was deported to Siberia, where he died. His wife Klara returned to Poland in a uniform of a Polish First Army colonel. Alone.

Photo caption: Anna Margolis (1892-1987) survived the war and died at the age of 95. She was an exceptional doctor specializing in the treatment of tuberculosis in children and ran a tuberculosis clinic for children in Łagiewniki near Łódź. She never remarried.

 

Photo caption: The monument of Tadeusz Kościuszko in Plac Wolności in Łódź, a symbol of Polish patriotism, was destroyed on 11 November 1939.

Photo caption: The charred ruins of the synagogue in Kościuszki street.

The Reichsgau Wartheland

This is what the Germans called the western lands of Poland (the Greater Poland region and the Łódź area) incorporated into the Reich. The occupiers considered these lands to be historically German and strove to Germanize the local population.

The General Government

These were Polish territories which were not incorporated into the Reich during the Second World War, but were under the German occupation. Some of the cities within the limits of the General Government were Kraków and Lublin, as well as Warsaw, where many Łódź residents had fled.

“The Germans allowed us to bring prisoners food once a day. Jews were already wearing armbands with the Star of David.

Each day, I left home carrying a billycan. The moment I would get on a tram, I would swiftly remove the band from my arm. On the tram, I would meet other girls, who were also carrying billycans. One of them, my classmate and neighbor, once said, ‘But you’re a Jewess, why aren’t you wearing a band?” Some lady looked in our direction, but said nothing.

One day, a good German was posted at the camp’s reception area. When I gave him the billycan, he stopped me and asked, in Polish, if I wanted to see my father. After a couple of minutes, he came back with dad. My father wore a coat, but did not have any cap, and it was a cold November day. He seemed thinner than I remembered, very pale, and very tired. He looked at me, didn’t smile, and asked, ‘Are you doing anything?’, and I replied, ‘Mommy tried, and Mr. Werner tried as well, but nothing can be done’.

He looked at me again and repeated, ‘Nothing can be done…’.

Moments later, the German soldier came back and took him away.

The next day, they didn’t take the billycan from me, and I never saw my father again, and this “nothing can be done” phrase has remained with me ever since.

My mom survived. When the war ended and the whole world was in raptures, she learned that my father – whom she was still waiting for, believing he would return – had been killed by the Germans in a small forest near Łódź. Thus, her life of a woman ended when she was forty-three”.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? What did the beginning of the Second World War look like in your town or country? Look for information in books, on the Internet, ask older people, or watch documentaries. Can you imagine how Alina Margolis, her mom, and other Poles of Jewish origins may have felt upon being forced to wear armbands and then Stars of David? Can you think of examples of persecutions on the basis of faith, nationality, skin color, etc. in today’s world?