Clothes factory

... Particularly poignant was the plight of Pejsach Kaplan, one of the archivists of the Bialystok ghetto. Having earlier caught a severe cold, after spending a few days in an overcrowded shelter, he sought asylum in a clothes factory where his daughter worked. Although weak and debilitated, forced to lie in bed in the factory, his awareness of what was happening to his fellow Jews in the streets made him compulsively run back and forth to the window of the factory to look outside. Kaplan observed hundreds of Jews rounded up for evacuation to Treblinka. These scenes had a terrible effect on him. Pacing up and back in the long factory hall, he raised his fists, crying, “Jews, let us take revenge! I can’t stand this! My end is near!’’ Following these outbursts, Kaplan went back to bed, no longer able to walk to the window. His wife and daughter never left his side. But when he and his family left the factory several days later when the operation ended, Kaplan had become critically ill. ...