"I am writing this letter to you from a concentration camp in Hungary" - 'Tzror Yedioth' - first testimonies of the ...

"I am writing this letter to you from a concentration camp in Hungary" - 'Tzror Yedioth' - first testimonies of the Holocaust of European Jews from the Jews of the occupied countries

 "Tzror Yedioth 12" - One-time publication published by the secretariat of the United Group of the Pioneer Committee, Tel Aviv. October 20, 1943 - Letters and reports in real time received in the Pioneer Committee, from European Jews under Nazi-occupied lands in various months in the years 1942-1943, about persecution and mass murder of Jews in camps and under Nazi occupation in Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, England, and France. One of the first testimonies of the atrocities of the Nazis, which was exposed in Eretz Israel about the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe. Extremely rare.

The harsh letters clearly and harshly reveal the atrocity committed by the Nazis, and they were written at the time of the occurrence. They are written in the first person by Jews who at the time of writing were still under persecution and a daily threat of extermination hovered over their heads. The contents of the letters clearly show the shock, fear, and great difficulty, in the face of the harsh reality that in those months seemed like an eternity. We do not know what happened to the writers, and whether they survived the Holocaust or not.

We will quote some of the important letters.

Instance letter sent from Budapest on August 7, 1943, from an active member of the Mizrachi youth movement in Poland reads: "No new decrees have been prepared against the Jews today. Recruitment to labor camps continues. The age is 21-42, and there are rumors that on September 2, 42-48 year olds will also be recruited. The leftist elements and especially the youth are cruelly persecuted. Hundreds are imprisoned every week, tortured terribly, and dozens are executed ... "

A letter sent from Poland on August 20, 1943 reads: "You ask me if I know anything about the Warsaw Defense War, yes friends. I know not only about the last Defense War at the time of the liquidation of the Horshey Ghetto, I also know about the Defense War in Lvov June 1943, Krakow March 1943, Warsaw April 1943, etc. I now collect all the material with detailed dates of the days of the murders, exact numbers of each and every slaughter, and also the exact places, all the burial places, mass graves, hundreds of "under ages" of Hitler. I also have photos, I already have about three hundred pages. Also listed are the names of the Gestapo who were in the cities and who committed the murders. I also have a list of Poles and Ukrainians who voluntarily helped the German murderers by informing and abducting Jews. The places of the camps where our brothers located and tortured are: Majdanek, Opole, near Sosnowiec - Birkenau. Near Warsaw are two more labor camps. I estimate the number of Jews in Poland at one hundred thousand ... ".

In chilling letter sent from Budapest in the month of Av 1943, it is written: "My tears welled up when reading your letter from the 11th of Sivan this year ... I remembered those days we worked together in the summer 1931 ... we were so happy, we had still European Jewry the source of our people. We still had the Hebrew youth. And my world? I was then still a young boy, full of freshness and creativity, I had a family, parents, brothers and sisters, friends and girlfriends. And now? While I'm reading your letter? We are poor and destitute, without European Judaism, without the Jewish youth in those Polish towns, we are orphans without a father and a mother without a relative. Bereaved from a son and a daughter, and i found after seven sections of hell, after the Soviet inferno and after the murky valley and the valley of weeping, Hitler's Poland - on foreign soil. After many wanderings and upheavals, after smuggling three borders, I stand on foreign soil, in a land on which the evil hand of the murderer is also raised... ",  And goes on to describe the cries of the 'Shema Yisrael' of the Jews at their execution, and describes how the Jews sang the song of revival in their last moments, and asks that camps of heroes be organized to avenge the revenge of the murdered.

A letter sent from Athens on the 14th of Av 1943 describes the intensification of persecution in Greece and the obligation to wear the yellow badge: "In June 1942, 500 of the Jews of Salonika were sent to hard labor ... In March 1943, all the Jews of Salonika were forced to put the Star of David on their clothes, leave their homes inside the city and concentrate inside the ghetto. On March 14, three thousand old men, boys, women and girls were suddenly taken from the ghetto and put in closed wagons of cattle ... A total of 53,000 of our brothers were expelled. And now no Jew remains in Thessaloniki and in all the cities of Macedonia. To this day we do not know where they are sent and what their fate is. It is impossible to describe to you the conditions of the voyage. We have a fear that twenty percent of the passengers will remain alive when they arrive in their place ... Now no Jew is left in Thessaloniki ... houses of worship have been lost. Destroyed the home of our lives ... our Torah books. All the books of the community were burned, and all our property was taken ... ".

In a letter sent from Hungary on September 6, 1943, the writer talks about the discriminatory treatment of Jews coming from the city of Zvia, and that the hundreds of refugees who came from this city were concentrated in the camps: "... I know a little about their situation here and the situation in the camps. One thing is already clear to me: there is a terrible distance between the lives of the local Jews and the refugees ... ". In the same letter, he notes that the possibility of immigrating to Eretz Israel in those days is a 'dream': "Aliyah. What should be written in this sad chapter? We wait and wait patiently, but we no longer have many hopes. In our hearts, of course, there is always hope to immigrate, but almost only in a "metaphysical" and unrealistic way ... ".

Another letter dated 8.31.1943 dealing with the 'situation of the Jews in France' describes the ongoing deportations from Paris, and the police search for children to ban them: "An indescribable panic gripped the families. The parents try to hold the children together so they can take them with them in a frightened escape ... ", and more.

13 p. 32 cm. Stencil print. Very good condition.