Another oppressive development was the order that all gates leading outside the ghetto be locked. For three weeks in November 1942, no one was allowed to enter or leave the ghetto. People who had jobs outside were not permitted to go to them. Moreover, the prac- tice of smuggling food and other necessities inside stopped. This brought intolerable hardship upon a pop- ulation already close to the limits of its endurance. The Judenrat, to its credit, created jobs for the newly unemployed, seeing to it that additional work would be available under its own auspices. People struggled to obtain current work cards, their insurance for survival a little while longer. It was feared the Nazi command was considering evacuating the several thou- sands thrown out of work after the gates to the ghetto were closed. The Judenrat issued desperate orders that everyone must apply for and show up for work. This was the key to salvation. After the gates were reopened on November 18, people with jobs on the outside were encouraged to return to them. Food started becoming more plentiful inside the ghetto. The Jews breathed more easily. On November 2, the day the provinces were liqui- dated, the Nazi command levied a fantastic tax of five million rubles on the Jews in the Bialystok ghetto. It was the Judenrat’s duty to make certain that everyone paid his share. Announcements were posted every day that, read between the lines, made it clear that the con- sequences of not paying these taxes would be death and destruction. At a Judenrat meeting, Berel Subotnik demanded severe penalites — arrest and isolation — for those who refused to pay taxes. Jank!l Goldberg stressed that the poor responded, while the rich sought to place the burden of taxes on the destitute. Various theories arose concerning the Nazis’ motive in reducing the ghetto area. Some felt the local German command wished to keep the ghetto going for a while longer and, as a quid pro quo for this extension, had to take measures that would seem harsh to their superiors in Berlin. Others, including Barasz, felt that the authorities in Germany planned to settle 5,000 Aryans in Bialystok and needed the place for them. Barasz was convinced that if he and the Judenrat volun- tarily surrendered some ghetto territory, it would appease the Nazis. His compromise perhaps delayed the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto. But he failed to foresee that this action and other steps could not ulti- mately save the ghetto and its inhabitants. The end was approaching. Bialystok Ghetto Is Deluged with Jews From the Provinces The mass deportations of Jews from surrounding towns and villages led to many escapes, either at the evacuaticn depots or on the trains heading toward Treblinka. These escapees sought refuge in a safe place — and the only sanctuary in which they had any confi- 78 Young girls of Bialystok being driven into railroad cars destined for Auschwitz. dence was the Bialystok ghetto. Soon many additional Jews were sneaking through the fence and the popula- tion within the ghetto was noticeably expanding. At a meeting of the Judenrat on November 29, this matter was considered. Should the council put a stop to these illegal entries or should they be allowed to con- tinue? The argument for ending the influx was that the Nazi command would view a growing ghetto popula- tion as deliberate sabotage and might launch severe re- prisals against the Judenrat and the Jews. On the other hand, there was a moral imperative for Jews to save other Jews. Rabbi Rozenman pointed out that through- out Jewish history our people did everything possible to save other Jews and, at the very least, did nothing to harm them in desperate circumstances. The Judenrat took the position that if the ghetto had to be liquidated, and that was the probability, at least Jews should go down helping each other.. The Incident of the Wolkowisker Girls In October 1942, orders were issued that girls and women, from sixteen to fifty, must report for slave labor. The specific task was harvesting potatoes from the fields, so the new requirement to enslave women became known as the ‘“‘potato edict.” This was a most upsetting development for the Jews in the Bialystok ghetto. It was known that a similar order had been issued in Warsaw, which was considered the safest ghetto for Jews. The result was that many were sent out of the Warsaw ghetto never to return. Bialystokers felt the “potato edict’’ was the harbinger of mass evacuations to Treblinka, which by now was understood to be a death camp. The Bialystoker Memorial Book