Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
found his daughter.” Bitom is a mining city in Eastern Upper Silesia, Poland, con- tiguous with the larger city of Katowice and in an area viewed by the Nazis as a vital resource because of rich coal deposits and a highly developed industrial base. Although Bitom’s Jewish men were compelled to perform forced labor and Jewish property there was confiscated as early as 1939, ghettos were not created until relatively late — 1943, three years after the Warsaw ghetto was erected and two years after the ghetto in Ludvipol. 4 Food rations were significantly better than elsewhere and Jewish movement less restricted as well. In early 1940, factories in Eastern Upper Silesia supplying shoes, clothing, and other basics for the German army employed more than six thousand Jews who were designated as es- sential to the German war effort and spared deportation; thousands of other Jews there did forced labor on roads and other infrastruc- ture projects. In 1942, the Germans began deporting local Jews to Auschwitz, just fifteen minutes by car from Bitom today. In August, more than twelve thousand Jews from the area were transported. Tens of thou- sands still had work permits, however, and the Jewish survival rate there was about 50 percent higher than elsewhere in Poland at that time. In June 1943, the final liquidation of Jews began in the Bi - tom area with the deportation of more than thirty thousand Jewish residents to death camps. Some members of Dror attempted an act of resistance, firing on Germans from hidden bunkers and killing or wounding at least two SS officers. Ironically, the last Jews from Eastern Upper Silesia were sent to Auschwitz the same month that Ludvipol was liberated, January 1944. After the war, Bitom was returned to Poland in compensation for territory in the Ukraine.
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