plant, a felt factory, a belt-manufacturing plant, carpen- try, a bedding-goods plant and a wheel-making shop. The department promoted apprenticeships in electron- ics, brush-making, cardboard and carton manufactur- ing, and factories producing liquor, marmalade and starch. The most important industries directly served the German military and thereby employed thousands of Jews in the ghetto. At first, the means of production were invariably primitive in all sections, but, in time, more sophisticated equipment was either obtained or built. The Ghetto Exhibit — one of the most fascinating but diabolical aspects of life in the ghetto was the dis- play of products manufactured by its industries. This was meant as a showcase for Nazi visitors to the Bialy- stok ghetto. One would think from the masterful way in which the exhibit was arranged, as well as by the sheer perfection of the displayed objects, that one was visiting one of the finest museums in a highly civilized city. It was possible almost to forget that this exhibit was situ- ated in the midst of a human sty, surrounded by barbed wire and maintained by force of arms. In any event, the ghetto exhibit was the pride and joy of the Nazi officials as well as of the Jewish population. After the grim events of November 1942, when the ghetto was taken over by the Gestapo, the exhibit was shut down. The Judenrat also included a secretariat, which car- ried out the clerical functions of the council as well as of the German command, and a comptroller’s division, which did the accounting and bookkeeping for the Judenrat. There was also a fire brigade and a section that dealt with the cost of electricity, water and soap. The above is a brief description of the various organs of the Judenrat within the Bialystok ghetto, composed by an observer on the basis of his personal impressions. THE DEATH OF PEJSACH KAPLAN (Editor’s note: In a letter to the Bialystoker Stimme, written by Refoel Rajzner in the May-June 1946 issue, the author offers the following details about Pejsach Kaplans’s death.) On February 5, 1943, when the Nazis began to liqui- date the Bialystok ghetto, Pejsach Kaplan was in hid- ing, virtually suffocating. At night he risked going outside for some fresh air, but he caught a cold. On the third day of the bloodbath he found it possible to go to the factory in which his eldest daughter Sonja occupied a responsible position. Kaplan, ill with fever, ran from one window to the other, risking a bullet to the head, to see how the empty streets looked and how the Jews sen- tenced to death were being led about. The scenes were horrifying. Groups of thirty to 74 forty people, sometimes reaching one hundred, most of them women, children and the elderly, were taken to the slaughter. The stronger helped the weaker. Many were already half dead, exhausted by hiding for days. Should one dare to fall down and stop on the way, he was immediately shot on the spot. In this way, the Nazi murderers left approximately one thousand dead bodies littering the streets of Bialystok. Pejsach Kaplan, taking all of this in, found it unbearable. He warned his friends and acquaintances that he would not survive this experience. ‘“‘Remember,”’ 6 said to them, “‘when the time comes for taking revenge, pay them back what they have earned.” After the slaughter was over, Kaplan was confined to bed, at first rallying and then relapsing. He died cursing Hitler’s Germany. The Judenrat arranged a large and dignified funeral for Kaplan, unprecedented in the ghetto. Plans were made to eulogize him, but the SS officers interfered. The many thousands who escorted his body to the cemetery went away brokenhearted that they had lost such a dominant figure in their lives, the man who recorded their daily trials and tribulations. May his memory be a blessing for all of us! One of the thousands of starving children in the Ghetto. pee Lae) The Bialystoker Memorial Book