"Every day at least one prisoner is murdered" - A Trembling letter from a prisoner of the Stalag VI-B camp who ...

"Every day at least one prisoner is murdered" - A Trembling letter from a prisoner of the Stalag VI-B camp who perished in the Holocaust

A trembling letter from a prisoner from Stalag VI-B named Moshe (Moiz) Gruenzweig - prisoner number 52.077, sent to a person named Aharon Epstein on October 27, 1941. The letter, which was written on official camp postcard, describes the horrors that are happening every day in brief and urgent language. He writes that the letter itself may cost him his life. French.

Translation of the letter from French: "I am writing the following to you candidly, and know that this may cost me my life. Life here is really not what you think. We are woken up from sleep every day at 4 am. The morning order lasts about 5 hours. Terrible overcrowding in the beds. Nothing to eat. We stand in the freezing cold and wait for an order. Every day they murder at least one prisoner. A month ago, a transport left for Auschwitz. Hugo said they walked hundreds of kilometers on foot. Many died along the way. Ukrainians cooperate with them for favors. If the letter reaches you, try to talk to attorney Pollack. Maybe he can help. I can't go into more detail."

We found in the Yad Vashem names database the name Moshe Grunzweig. According to what is written there, he was born in Czechoslovakia in 1913, and perished in the Holocaust (it is not known where).

During World War II, some 54,000 people were incarcerated in the Stalag camps from June 1941 to August 1944, including political prisoners, communists and Jews. Some 45,000 prisoners were deported from them to the Auschwitz extermination camp and other concentration and extermination camps. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the French established a military hospital in several old white barracks in the city of Compiègne. A year later, when France was occupied by Germany, the Germans turned the facility into a POW camp for prisoners who were "hostile to the regime." Beginning in February 1942, an official decree designated a place for Jews in the camp "for deportation purposes" and "as hostages to the future implementation of reprisal measures." The Jews were concentrated in part of the camp and separated from the French and Russians who had previously stayed there, by barbed wire fences. Over 45,000 people - resistance fighters, Jews, trade unionists and others - were sent from Compiègne and Stalag to concentration and extermination camps in Nazi Germany. 

[1] Official postcard from the Stalag POW camp with the camp's ink stamp. spots. Good condition.