Miriam Wattenberg • 20 november 1940

• Miriam Wattenberg was een Joods meisje dat in 1940 in het getto in Warschau terechtkwam. Dankzij de Amerikaanse nationaliteit van haar moeder kon ze in 1944 naar de Verenigde Staten vertrekken, waarna ze haar naam veranderde in Mary Berg. Ze hield een dagboek bij van 1939-1944, dat na de oorlog gepubliceerd werd. Het fragment hieronder gaat over de oprichting van het getto in Warschau.

November 15, 1940
Today the Jewish ghetto was officially established. Jews are forbidden to move outside the boundaries formed by certain streets. There is considerable commotion. Our people are hurrying about nervously in the streets, whispering various rumors, one more fantastic than the other.
Work on the walls — which will be three yards high — has already begun. Jewish masons, supervised by Nazi soldiers, are laying bricks upon bricks. Those who do not work fast enough are lashed by the overseers. It makes me think of the Biblical description of our slavery in Egypt. But where is the Moses who will release us from our new bondage?
There are German sentries at the end of those streets in which the traffic has not been stopped completely. Germans and Poles are allowed to enter the isolated quarter, but they must not carry any parcels. The specter of starvation looms up before us all.

November 20, 1940
The streets are empty. Extraordinary meetings are taking place in every house. The tension is terrific. Some people demand that a protest be organized. This is the voice of the youth; our elders consider this a dangerous idea. We are cut off from the world. There are no radios, no telephones, no newspapers. Only the hospitals and Polish police stations situated inside the ghetto are allowed to have telephones. The Jews who have been living on the Aryan side of the city were told to move out before November 12. Many waited until the last moment, because they hoped that the Germans, by means of protests or bribes, might be induced to countermand the decree establishing the ghetto. But as this did not come to pass, many of our people were forced to leave their beautifully furnished apartments at a moment's notice, and they arrived in the ghetto carrying only a few bundles in their hands.
Christian firms within the limits of the isolated Jewish quarter are allowed to remain temporarily if they have been there for at least twenty-five years. Many Polish and German factories are situated within the ghetto, and thanks to their employees we have a little contact with the outer world.

November 22, 1940
The ghetto has been isolated for a whole week. The red-brick walls at the end of the ghetto streets have grown considerably higher. Our miserable settlement hums like a beehive. In the homes and in the courtyards, wherever the ears of the Gestapo do not reach, people nervously discuss the Nazis' real aims in isolating the Jewish quarter. How shall we get provisions? Who will maintain order? Perhaps it will really be better, and perhaps we will be left in peace?
This afternoon all the members of our LZA group gathered at my home. We sat in a stupor and did not know what to undertake. Now all our efforts are useless. Who cares for the theater these days? Everyone is brooding over one thing and one thing only: the ghetto.