The Little Smuggler

[2] Only those with access to smuggled food, and the very rich able to afford to buy provisions on the black market within the Ghetto at exorbitant prices, stood a chance of survival.

For most, children were the best hope for bringing supplies over from the "Aryan side" as they could slither undetected through small openings and sewer lines on their way to and from the Ghetto.

[4] Already during the Holocaust the poem "Mały szmugler" enjoyed a sufficient degree of fame and popularity to be translated from the Polish into Yiddish and, set to music, performed to great acclaim by Diana Blumenfeld.

[6] However, the Warsaw Ghetto was never liberated; it was "liquidated" by the Nazis in various stages over several months beginning in July 1942, with the result of the hundreds of thousands of residents who had not previously died of starvation or disease — men, women, and children — having been me­thod­i­cally murdered in organized genocide, while the actual municipal structure of the whole precinct was razed to the ground.

[7] The author of the poem, Henryka Łazowertówna, together with her mother, Bluma Łazowertowa, were themselves killed in the gas chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp.

Borwicz was at the time the head of the Kraków-based Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna (Central Jewish Historical Commission), under whose auspices he published the book.

Pod pachą zgrzebny worek Na plecach zdarty łach I młode zwinne nogi A w sercu wieczny strach.

I tylko jedną prośbą Na wargach grymas skrzepł Kto tobie, moja Mamo Przyniesie jutro chleb.

[14] Through walls, through holes, through sentry points, Through wires, through rubble, through fences: Hungry, daring, stubborn I flee, dart like a cat.