Simon Karski was 10 years old as he stood with his Grandfather watching the construction engineers under the protection of armed guards begin to unload their equipment from the trucks. He didnt understand that the home he had known all his short life was soon to become his prison. It was November 1940 and the ghetto that had been established one month before in his home city of Warsaw in Poland was about to show signs of becoming more permanent with the building of a wall complete with guard posts and checkpoints. "What are they doing Grandpa?" asked Simon. "They are preparing to finish the job." replied his grandfather in a weary voice. "Come lets get you home to your Mother". Although he didnt yet realise it, Simon was about to cross the threshold into manhood even at this early stage of his life.
In the year since the Germans had arrived in his land things had changed so much and life was becoming more difficult by the day. Everything was regulated so much more for the jews than it had been before. The universal joke was that soon you would need a permit to visit the toilet! Now the building of this wall was making things impossible. Men were being cut off from even going to their places of employment. They could no longer go out and sell their goods or for that matter bring in the goods that were needed to live a normal life. Slowly and surely in the months that followed, the life was being sucked out of the community.
Simon and his young friends became adept at finding ways in and out of the ghetto. It was essential to smuggle goods in as the daily allowances were nowhere near enough for the inhabitants to survive. More and more people were being rounded up from around Poland and shipped into the ghetto. Even with the smuggling there was widespread hunger and children were starving to death. Medicines were almost non existent.
Months turned into years and the daily struggle for survival became constant. Even in this strange and terrible environment where people were being crammed more than seven to a room they learned how to adapt and to a certain extent, cope with the atrocities that were being inflicted on a daily basis.
And then came the deportations and disappearances. Soldiers would come in the night and take people away. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Both young and old, men and women, anyone could disappear at the hands of the nazi occupiers. As the rumours spread about the terrible fate awaiting those who were taken, Simon began to realize what his grandfather had meant when he spoke those words to him. "they are preparing to finish the job".
As news filtered back into the ghetto it soon became clear that the rumours were indeed true. The jews were being taken from Warsaw to Treblinka.But Treblinka was no ordinary concentration camp, it was purely an extermination camp. It was literally a highly efficiant killing machine. The remaining inhabitants of the ghetto had no choice. They would have to fight to the very last for their own survival. At the young age of 13 Simon shot a man for the first time in his life as he defended the barriers with his fellow Jews. For three long months they held out against the nazi murderers. But eventually the last pockets of resistance were overcome and the Ghetto was razed to the ground along with most of its inhabitants.
Simon was one of the lucky ones. Although gravely wounded, the knowledge of the alleys, tunnels and sewers that he had attained during his three years of smuggling enabled him to escape from the ghetto in the last days of the terrible onslaught. He was taken in and hidden by a friendly polish family with whom he remained until he was well enough to join the resistance once again in the struggle against the Germans. He survived to witness the utter destruction of the German Reich and the execution of its evil leaders. He had lost his entire family in Warsaw but in 1950 at the age of 20 he eventually arrived to start a new life in Israel.
Simon Karski was 73 years old as he stood with his 10 year old grandson watching the construction engineers under the protection of armed guards begin to unload their equipment from the trucks. It was the summer of 2003 and Simon now lived in the village of Zufin near the Palestinian city of Qalqiliya. A city that was gradually being turned into a ghetto by the building of this barrier. "What are they doing Grandpa?" asked Simon's grandson. "They are preparing to finish the job." Simon replied in a weary voice. A great feeling of sadness washed over Simon as his thoughts turned to the last barrier he had watched being built, and he knew that this time would be no different.
