Collection

Montreal Holocaust Museum

Description Level

Item

Material Type

textual record

Physical Description

Summons, Police : Paper : Printed, Typed : Ink : Beige, Black ; Ht: 19,5 cm x W: 13 cm

Other Title Information

Documentary Artifact

Date

January 24, 1944-January 26, 1944

Physical Condition

Excellent

Language

German

Notes

1 page, double-sided. Folded once horizontally and once vertically. On recto, document requests that the Polish foreign worker Barszynski presents himself on January 26, 1944 between 8:00 and 9:00 at the Schakendorf gendarmerie, to correct his labour card fingerprints. He is told to bring his identity papers and 3 well-lit photographs of himself. On verso, there is upside-down text on the top half of the page, so that when folded, the document serves as both envelope and letter. Summons is addressed to the farmer Otto Haupt, in Dünen, East Prussia. The upper circular stamp is from the postal service, and the one on the bottom left, with a Reichsadler in the centre, signifies that the document was mailed under the auspices of the Reich military police. Narrative: The donor, Aba Beer, under the false identity of Karol Stefan Barszczy?ski, worked in Eastern Prussia from 1942-1944 as a Polish forced laborer. This allowed him to escape Nazi-occupied Lwów during the 'Great Aktion' in the ghetto, when between 50 000 and 60 000 Jews were killed or deported to Be??ec. Aba was born in 1922 in Bielsko, Poland. In 1939, he moved east with his parents and sister, settling in Przemy?l. In the summer of 1942, he was included on a transport of 1000 Jews to work as slave labourers in the Janowska concentration camp, near Lviv. He escaped and pretending to be Polish, volunteered to go to Germany as a labourer. He worked in a restaurant in East Prussia until January 1944, when he was arrested for not wearing his badge. He was imprisoned in a castle in Ragnit, and then interned in a prisoner-of-war camp for Russian soldiers. He escaped the camp, joined the Polish partisans as a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), and was liberated in Hela, May 1945.

Accession No.

2014.05.05

Name Access

Beer, Jeffrey

Places

Djunnoje (Dünen), Russia (Germany), Europe

Archival / Genealogical

Archival Descriptions

Repository

Montreal Holocaust Museum

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