AN APPEAL August 15, 1943 Bialystok Ghetto Resistance Organization Fellow Jews! Fearsome days have come upon us. More than the ghetto and the yellow badge, hatred, humiliation and degradation — we now face death! Before our own eyes our wives and children, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters are being led to the slaughter. Thousands have already gone; tens of thousands will shortly follow. In these terrible hours, as we hover between life and death, we appeal to you as follows: BE AWARE — five million European Jews have already been murdered by Hitler and his hangmen. All that remains of Polish Jewry is about ten per cent of the original Jewish community. In Chelmno and in Belzec, in Auschwitz and in Treblinka, in Sobibor and in other camps more than three million Polish Jews were tor- tured, suffering the most gruesome deaths. BE AWARE — all those deported are going to their deaths! Do not believe the Gestapo propaganda about letters supposedly received from the evacuees. THAT IS A DAMNABLE LIE! The road on which the deportees have gone leads to gigantic crematoria and mass graves in the thicket of the Polish forests. Each one of us is condemned. We have nothing to lose! Do not believe that labor will save you, for after the first liquidation there will be a second and a third — UNTIL THE LAST JEW IS KILLED! Dividing the ghetto into various categories 13 a sophisticated Gestapo method of deceiving us and mak- ing their dirty work easier. Jews, we are being led to Treblinka! Like mangy animals we will be gassed and cremated. Let us not passively go to the slaughter like sheep! Even though we are too weak to defend our lives, still we are strong enough to preserve our Jewish honor and human dignity by showing the world that although we are in shackles, we have not yet fallen. DO NOT GO TO YOUR DEATH WILLINGLY! Fight for your lives until your last breath! With tooth and nail, with axes and knives, with acid and iron we will greet our hangmen. Let the enemy pay for blood with blood! THEIR DEATH FOR OUR DEATH! Will you cower in your corners when your nearest and dearest are humiliated and put to death? Will you sell your wives and children, your parents, your soul, for another few weeks of slavery? Let us ambush the enemy, kill and disarm him, wage resistance against the murderers. And if necessary — DIE LIKE HEROS! Except for our honor we have nothing to lose! DO NOT SELL YOUR LIVES CHEAPLY! AVENGE the destroyed communities and uprooted settlements! When you leave your home — set fire to your households, burn and demolish the factories! Do not let the hangmen inherit our possessions! Jewish youth! Follow the example of generations of Jewish fighters and martyrs, dreamers and builders, pioneers and activists — go out and fight! Hitler will lose the war. Slavery and murder will vanish from the face of the earth. The world will one day be cleansed and purified. For the sake of mankind’s bright future — you must not die like dirty dogs! To the forest, to the resistance fighters! Do not flee the ghetto unarmed, for without weap- ons you will perish. Only after fulfilling your national obligation, go to the forest armed. Weapons can be seized from any German in the ghetto. BE STRONG! A Group of Zabludower Communal Leaders | Right to left: Fishel Chorowski, Shabsai Becker, Nahum Wagman, Rabbi Y. Mirsky, Jacob Chesler, Aaron H. Chesler (father of the famous violin virtuoso Samuel Chesler of New York), Gershon the sexton, and Hershel Chesler. 90 The Bialystoker Memorial Book