July 23: “I Can No Longer Bear All of This”

Adam Czerniaków, the leader of the Judenrat, or Jewish Council, of the Warsaw Ghetto for three years, committed suicide on this date in 1942, one day after mass deportations of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka extermination camp began. The Nazis had ordered him to compile the deportation lists, and threatened to shoot hostages, including his wife, if he didn’t cooperate. Czerniaków was able to obtain exemptions for a handful of individuals, including sanitation workers, but could not gain an exemption for orphans from the Janusz Korczak’s orphanage. “They demand me to kill children of my nation with my own hands,“his suicide note read. “. . . I am powerless, my heart trembles in sorrow and compassion. I can no longer bear all this.” Close to 300,000 ghetto residents would be shipped to the gas chambers over the course of two months in the single largest Nazi liquidation of Jews. Czerniaków kept a diary about life in the ghetto from September, 1939 until his death; it was published in 1979.

“My act will prove to everyone what is the right thing to do.” —Adam Czerniaków