The large scale relocation of Jews into Bochnia by the Nazi's authorities caused panic in the ghetto. Concentration of all the Jews of the district into the central ghetto was always a sign for a large scale expulsion (see page .....................). On the next day the district governor of Krakow arranged for food distribution and housing arrangements for the new refugees. These arrangements calmed down the fear in the hearts of the Jewish community of Bochnia. Unfortunately it was just an act of deception orchestrated by the Gestapo. The manager of the Government-General's affiliated textiles company, came to the ghetto with new production orders. He reassured ghetto Bochnia's residence that in spite of the large scale extermination process that was conducted in the area, the local community would be spared. However, only a few days later, on August 25 1942 a mass expulsion was carried out.

Like in many other ghettos, the Jews of Bochnia received advanced warning of an impending Aktion by people with connections to the SS. The people in the ghetto were informed of the special train that pulled into the station and realized for whom it was designated. In spite of all this, most of the Jewish population of Bochnia still believed that they would survive this ordeal. The large number of Jews employed in the workshops felt secure due to their productive contribution to the war efforts. The local Jews also knew
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Workers were taken straight from the workshops and whole streets in the ghetto were emptied. There was no rule in the method of selection. All kinds of people were taken at random. Even Jews with special permits issued by the SS allowing them to stay in the ghetto were taken away. The shortage of deportees was so severe that policemen had to bring their own parents, wives and children to fill the deportation quota. Many old and sick people were shot during the search conducted in the ghetto by the Gestapo. The number of people murdered in the ghetto during this Aktion is estimated by the hundreds. Many buildings within the ghetto looked like slaughterhouses with their walls all splattered with blood. Garments and talleisim⁹ were scattered in the streets. Religious Jews waited for their death wearing their prayer shawls.

The people were taken to a gathering place (apellplatz) where the SS performed a selection. The children, the aged and the sick were marked to death. The physically fit were supposedly marked for hard labor. The first group with numerous elderly people, women and children were taken by trucks to the nearby village of Bochkov. All the patients of the Jewish hospital together with all the Jewish patients in the general hospital were taken there as well. Upon arrival they were all (1,200 people) machine gunned and their bodies were thrown into a large pit that had been prepared ahead of time for that purpose. The Germans buried them in this mass grave while many were still alive¹⁰ . The able-bodied people were marched in military formation to a waiting train. At the train station they were crammed into freight cars, one hundred people per car. By the train stood SS men and were tearing the children from their parents arms by their hands and feet. Every child was thrown with his head at the train and their heads broke into pieces. The mothers had to observe what was happening (TST4-8). The able-bodied people were shipped to Belzec death camp where all of them were murdered by means of carbon monoxide poisoning in gas chambers. Please refer to the Belzec appendix.

After the deadline the police took all the remaining people in the ghetto to the Judenrat building. There they had to present their special permits approved by the Gestapo. The Judenrat President informed the survivors that they had to pay extortion money. The very few people that were left in the ghetto were requested to pay for their right to survive (TST5-8). In a cynical way people called it shechita gelt (slaughter money), as if they were requested to reimburse the murderers for their expenses performing the aktion.
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9 - Talleisim - prayer shawls (Hebrew)

10 - The aussiedlung in Wieliczka and in Bochnia took place simultaneously. Both were orchestrated by the same Nazi headquarters in Krakow and both were extremely similar in their method of execution. The description in TST10-15 of the murder of Jews in the woods near Grodkowice more than likely resembles the Murder of the Jews from Bochnia near the village of Bochkov.

Almost the whole Judenrat was taken to Belzec on the last transport. The fact that Judenrat members joined the transport convinced many people that it was safe. At that time the Nazis were sticking to their stories about sending people to new settlements in the East. Such an action came to reinforce their claim(TST6-4,5). Sala Grayver was shot to death by the SS on the first day of the Aktion. The German chief of labor in Bochnia was an SS man. Grayver did not pay any attention to him counting on his close contacts with the Wehrmacht headquarters in Krakow . During the Aktion when Grayver realized that his workers were going to be sent on a transport, he tried to call the Wehrmacht for help and as a result he was immediately executed. Upon completion of the expulsion quota the Bochnia ghetto was sealed off. The gates were guarded, armed German guards were posted on watchtowers and no one could leave without special permission. The general consensus in the ghetto was that the people who were shipped on the transport were taken to a labor camp. No one could believe the extent of cruelty that the Nazis were capable of. After the transport had left, local Poles discovered notes thrown by the victims and delivered them to the ghetto (TST1-7). One letter written by a deportee from Bochnia that was sent from Belzec death camp was received in ghetto Bochnia. This letter described the murder of all the people on that transport (TST7-3). Rumors started to circulate of people who were shipped to be killed. Still many people refused to face the horrible reality.

The big Aktion of August 1942 left ghetto Bochnia with about a thousand people and aside from them there were 400 more Jews that managed to hide from the Germans. As the rumor about the completion of the Aktion in ghetto Bochnia started to spread around, thousand of Jews from the close vicinity began to arrive at the ghetto. All the Jewish families in the small communities, that hid before the big Aktion, knowing very well that they will be the first ones to be selected, came now out of hiding. The chief Gestapo officer in Bochnia - Schomburg, published a special permit for all the arriving Jews and those who came out of hiding allowing them to live in ghetto Bochnia. All the workshops were reopened. The local council sold the whole operation (including their Jewish workers) to a few German officers that ran the workshops as a private business. The number of Jews residing in Bochnia grew to 8,000 and the number of Jews employed in the workshops swelled to 3,000 workers. From December 1942 every Jewish worker became the property of the SS. The new workshop owners had to pay the SS for the Jewish slave labor they required (5 zlotys per person a day). (TBB-193)
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Rakowitz Labor Camp
On September 24, 1942 the Germans conducted a round-up in ghetto Bochnia (TST5-8,9/DTS-171). The Germans assisted by Jewish Ordnungsdienst arrested able-bodied men that could not produce worker's permits (proof of employment). The police were searching all over the ghetto. Some people took refuge in bunkers. The police used dogs in their search and discovered some of them. They too were added to the transport. A group of 100 men was held over night in the Judenrat building at the basement jail, and on the next morning (September 25)¹² was shipped off by two trucks guarded by Jewish police to Rakowitz labor camp. The Rakowitz labor camp (Lager) was located at the outskirts of the town of Rakowitz, near Krakow. It was a heavily guarded military airfield surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. All slave labor was executed by Jewish prisoners from nearby ghettos, supervised by Polish camp police. Work included hard labor jobs in construction, sewerage, building a concrete runway and more. While slaving at their work the prisoners received lashings and clubbing. In the camp there was continuous deafening noise of the planes taking off and landing at the air strip. The inmates accommodation area was enclosed with a barbed wire fence and had a German guard at the gate. The camp police were residing in the same area in a separate barracks. A cattle barn was used as residence barracks for the inmates. There were a few barred windows and no electric light (pitch-dark). The prisoners slept on burlap bags filled with wood shavings. Periodically, due to a lack of proper facilities, the inmates were taken to the Krakow ghetto for a bath. Food intake consisted of cold black coffee for breakfast disgusting watery soup and a slice of bread for lunch a piece of dark bread and a cup of water for dinner. In their barracks and at work the prisoners were watched continuously by Jewish and Polish guards. There was a group of Jewish workers from ghetto Krakow which was transported by trucks every morning into Rakowitz labor camp and returned back to the ghetto in the evening. During the winter of 1942 after the work assigned for the camp's inmates was completed the camp was dissolved and all its Jewish prisoners were sent for extermination (possibly Auschwitz).

The Auslaenders
The Nazi's rule forcing Jews to reside inside the ghetto boundaries applied to all Jews with Polish citizenship. This rule did not apply to Jews with foreign citizenship. Jews that had proof of foreign citizenship had to have it approved by Schomburg, the SS commander of Bochnia. Once their document was approved the Jews were allowed to move out of the ghetto and reside in the "Aryan" part of Bochnia. Relocation outside the ghetto had a lot
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11 - Muller was tried in the Nuremberg trials as a war criminal.

12 - According to DTS-171 the transport to Rakowitz took place one day before the holiday of Sukkos. Sukkos 1942 came on September 26.

Schomburg was very lenient in his method of verifying the authenticity of the documents presented to him. It seems that the monitory aspect of the approval was at the top of his priority list. Schomburg approved legitimate documents as well as forged one without asking too many questions. Every official Gestapo stamp on these documents provided him with $50 to $100. Many people that heard of Schomburg's leniency took advantage of the situation. In the process of obtaining such a document every applicant had to use people with connections who also profited from this process. A lot of money was changing hands until a person could find himself "legally" outside the ghetto. The auslaenders' community in Bochnia was not very big but it was noticeable enough to raise some eyebrows in the Nazi's headquarters in Krakow. Later on Schomburg was warned to stop approving so many applications. Many auslaenders were arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo in Krakow and the majority of them were executed. In addition to the auslaenders who lived outside the ghetto there were many Jews who obtained forged foreign documents with forged stamp of the Gestapo. These documents obviously were much cheaper than the ones with the official Gestapo stamp. However the people who obtained them kept residing inside the ghetto and kept them only for possible escape purposes.

The auslaenders' community was instrumental in maintaining contact between the ghetto residents to the outside world or to other ghettos. They helped by bringing different commodities into the ghetto and by that extended the ability of the local Jews to survive. They provided refuge to small children from the ghetto during extermination aktions (children were the first to go in any selection) and later on were active in arranging and running escape routes from Bochnia to Czechoslovakia and Hungary (TST3-8/ TST7-3/TST11-3/DTS-239,240).

The second Extermination Aktion
On November 10, 1942 a second Aktion took place. All the ghetto residents had to come to the appellplatz for selection. The officials of the Judenrat and the high ranking Nazi officers in charge of the preparation for the selection predicted a mild auschidelung. The planned number of deportees for the second aktion was supposed to be relatively small. However with the horrors of the first auschidelung still in their mind, most of the people did not want to take a chance with their lives. A large number of ghetto residents took refuge in hiding places and some even managed to flee the ghetto temporarily to other ghettos in the close vicinity. The ghetto authorities that learned their lesson from the first Aktion did not take any chances either. Workers that were labeled vital for the operation of the workshops were taken by trucks with their families outside the ghetto for the duration of the Aktion that lasted two days. According to DTS-204 most of the ghetto population was transported to death camps in open freight cars, while hundreds of people were killed at
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A short time after the second Aktion the Jewish population of ghetto Bochnia grew again until it reached about 5,000 people. In order to understand the phenomena of constant growth of the ghetto's population one must comprehend the Einsatzgruppen method of operation. This group of professional murderers numbering a few hundred people used to attack one population center at a time. Desperate Jewish families used to escape from one ghetto to another in attempt to avoid pending extermination. Since the Bochnia ghetto maintained its existence while many Jewish communities had vanished, it became the escape destination for many refugees (DTS-234,235). Another reason for ghetto Bochnia to be chosen as a preferred location was its SS commander. The Gestapo chief in Bochnia SS commandant Schoemburg, a 60 year old German, gave decent treatment to the Jews of Bochnia and did not show any anti-Semitic behavior. However when the order came to liquidate the ghetto he was very compliant.

Ghetto Bochnia as a Labor Camp
Muller, the new Lagerfuhrer decreed that all men and women alike would have to work in the workshops. He ordered to divide the ghetto into two sections. The able bodied people with workers' permits would be located in ghetto "A" and the non-able bodied, the elderly, the disable, the children and all people without a worker certificate would be located into ghetto "B". Many people had to relocate from one side of the ghetto to the other in order to comply with the new decree. A dividing fence was erected and Jewish police were stationed along the fence to enforce the separation and to prevent crossing over. Ghetto "A" consisted of: Kowalska Street, Niecala, Kraszewska, and Bracka while ghetto "B" consisted of: Galasa-Piotra, Pod-Lipka, Leonarda and part of Krzeczowska Street. The meaning behind this division of the ghetto was obvious. The Jews in Bochnia realized that residency in ghetto "A" gave them hope for survival and the residence of ghetto "B" were doomed. However Muller allowed the families of workers to reside with them in the ghetto of the living (ghetto "A"). As expected every person without a job was lining in front of the Judenrat office in hope of employment. Desperate people paid heavy prices with their last money to acquire the right to work. Entire families had to relocate to new apartments within the ghetto before the dividing fence was sealed. In many cases members of different families had to reside in the same apartment. The ghetto's hospital was located in ghetto "A" and in ghetto "B" there was only a clinic that operated two hours a day. The Germans tightened the security around ghetto "A" while the security in ghetto "B" remained unchanged.
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Underground Operation
Prior to the war there were a few Zionist youth organizations active in Bochnia. The most established organization in town was the Hebrew Youth Movement Akiba. This organization was active in Bochnia since 1932 (and even earlier as a general Zionist youth organization) and was also the most prominent youth Zionist organization over the whole Galicia region. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, the Akiba members organized an underground movement JWO (Jewish Warring Organization) which united within it other political streams as well. The center of the underground operation was in the city of Krakow. The Akiba movement branch in Bochnia was operating in correlation with the headquarters of the JWO in Krakow and some JWO leaders were residing temporarily in Bochnia or taking refuge there. The Hachshara center in Bonarka that was
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13 - A few Jews used to act as brokers and risk their lives for a small fee.

Akiba members in Bochnia took part in the underground movement from the very beginning of its formation. Dolek Libeskind and Gola Mirra, from the leaders of JWO, pay visits to Bochnia and a constant contact was maintained by messengers (PHV3-68). From November 1942 the Bochnia underground Akiba cell was located in ghetto "B" (TST10-15). The operation of the Bochnia cell was documented in The Justina Diary and the document was hidden at the Montelupich prison in Krakow in April 1943. Unfortunately the part of the document covering the Bochnia operation got lost (JD-134). We do know however some details about its activities from other sources.

We are aware of underground activities in Bochnia from 1940 (TST1-3). Money and unknown articles (possibly false ID documents and weapons) were shipped from Krakow to Bochnia by messengers who used freight trains for transportation. After the Bochnia ghetto formation we know of recruitment of new members to the JWO within the ghetto residence. We also know of Aryan papers given to the underground members which enabled them to move freely outside the ghetto or to escape during an aktion (DTS-212). After November 1943 the underground cell members resided in ghetto "B" since they did not make any attempt to obtain work and as a result were not considered as productive Jews. They maintained contacts with Polish underground organizations. In the summer of 1942 the group dug a large underground bunker as a means of survival during an aktion. This bunker was camouflaged very well and was equipped with wooden bunks. The cell members had a plan to dig a tunnel from their residence under the ghetto wall to the Aryan side of town but it did not materialize. Some of the JWO's members from Krakow escaped after December 22 to Bochnia and found refuge there. We know of a young lady, an Akiba member, who resided on the Aryan side of Bochnia (possibly as an auslaender). She was taking care of Jews who were hidden in a bunker and (she) was killed in Bochnia on April 1943 (JD-148). The underground cell in Bochnia was discovered and most of its members were captured (TST10-15).

It was on Friday night February the 26, 1943 (DTS-207,212)¹⁴ . The Jewish police locked them in the Judenrat prison in two separate cells (for men and women) and the JWO's members were interrogated through the whole night by Simchah Shapiro, the head of the Krakow district Jewish police. Savage beatings were inflicted on them in attempt to force them to reveal the names of other JWO members. At 8 o'clock Saturday morning (the next day)
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14 - According to JD-117 the bunker was discovered on March 13, 1943. In JD-134 it is mentioned that the JWO members from Bochnia were locked in the common prison cell on the same day. It is possible that the prisoners had been kept in isolation before joining their friends in cell 15. In JD-117 it is indicated that political prisoners were kept on the ground level of the prison for 2 to 3 weeks before being put in the common cell. The difference of timing (February 26 to March 13) fits this pattern perfectly.

The JWO commander responsible for the Bochnia - Wisnicz area was Hillel Wodislawski. Hillel was also a member of the JWO headquarters. On February 26 he was out of the bunker and was saved. The Bochnia cell did not cease to exist and in May 1943 when Shimshon Deringer and Gusta Davidson (Justina) escaped to Bochnia they gave them refuge. A short time after that the JWO's leaders were transferred to a bunker in the woods near Bochnia. From there the JWO kept its armed struggle for quite some time. Until the liquidation of ghetto Bochnia the warriors in the forests maintained contact with the Bochnia cell¹⁵ . For more details about Akiba and the JWO operation in Krakow and Bochnia please refer to the Akiba appendix.
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15 - Dr. Fefercorn from Toronto (who specialized in the history of the JWO) told me that according to JWO’s survivors testimonies the printing of the underground newspaper took place inside ghetto Bochnia.