Josel Zelikow (1930 - 1943)

Born 1930 in Białystok, Białystok, Podlaskie, Poland

Died 7 Oct 1943 at about age 13 in Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bielitz, Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich

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Biography

Josel has Polish roots.

Josel Zelikow has Jewish Roots.

Josel Zelikow died as a result of persecution during the Holocaust.

Josel was born in Białystok, Poland in 1930 to Sroel and Rywa Zelikow. His life was tragically cut short in 1943.

This child was named on the BIALYSTOK CHILDREN'S TRANSPORT LIST FROM THERESENSTADT [SIC] TO AUSCHWITZ, DN/A 10/05/43.

See: Transport of_Białystok_children, Wikipedia.

The list contains the names of children aged six to twelve sent from Białystok to Theresienstadt, and then to Auschwitz by order of Adolf Eichmann; the children were killed on Erev Yom Kippur, 7 October 1943. ^[1]

Influenced by strong protestation from the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el Hussein, that these Jewish children would soon be adults reinforcing the Palestine Jewish community, Eichmann canceled the entire operation to ransom the children in exchange for prisoners of war on express orders from SS Chief Himmler.

Transport of Białystok Children

On 16 August 1943, the Nazis entered the Białystok Ghetto and used tanks and artillery against the remaining 40,000 Jews.

By 17 August 1943, the Białystok Ghetto was in flames after the Jews who were being deported out of the Ghetto to their executions in Treblinka started an uprising. The Schutzstaffel took 2,000 children, tearing them away from their parents.

On 20 August 1943, after the Germans suppressed the uprising, the children were forced on trains out of Białystok and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp, arriving about three days later. Rumored negotiations for the release of these children along with others (up to 10,000) failed when money could not be secured by underground forces. The children were boarded on another train.

On 5 October 1943, the Białystok children and their caretakers were told that they would be sent to Switzerland in exchange for German prisoners of war. However, since no prisoners or money were ever exchanged, the train went to the Auschwitz concentration camp where all passengers were murdered in gas chambers.

On 7 October 1943, the eve of Yom Kippur, 1,196 children from Białystok Ghetto in Poland and 53 doctors and nurses from the Terezín Ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who accompanied them to the end, were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz the day they arrived.

Sources

1. ↑ We Remember the Children, oral history

• Josel Zelikow, entry in Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, United States Holocaust Museum (https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=4075903 : accessed 28 April 2024)

Josel Zelikow, entry in Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, United States Holocaust Museum (https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=4075903 :