Unknown From Warsaw

  • NO
  • From Warsaw
  • in the Ghetto, deportation
  • administrative, Germans operations, death
  • illness, medical, outside of Warsaw

  • A hospital for mentally ill people. Ringelblum described it in the following words: 'In Zofiowka there are demented people from the whole country, more than 100 mentally ill were brought from Tworki, and 30 from Kobierzyn. All together there are ca. 400 ill, who starve.' The hospital was closed down on 19 August 1942 due to the liquidation of the ghetto in Otwock. During the liquidation Julian Tuwim's mother, Adela, was murdered, as well as the famous actor Michal Znicz.

  • The author started to write on 5 January 1944, and the last entry is dated 14 January 1945. The diary was written in ten, common, chequered school notebooks. Written irregularly. Bermanowa probably took a pen in her hand only when she either found the time or when she felt strong enough. Successive entries, dated scrupulously, written in Polish, were written in occupied Warsaw ('in hiding'), then in occupied ('free') capital and in a number of places near Warsaw (again 'on the Aryan papers'). The first event described took place during the Polish-German War of 1939, the latest - three days before the liberation of Warsaw (17 January 1945).

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