Calel Perechodnik

Calel (Calek) Perechodnik (; 8 September 1916 – October 1944) was a diarist who joined the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Otwock Ghetto during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. His wartime diaries were published posthumously as Am I a Murderer? (?) in 1995 by the Karta Centre of Warsaw.

Biography As a child, Perechodnik lived in this wooden building in Otwock. The former Oaza cinema in Otwock, run by the Perechodnik family, later rebuilt as a theater and now undergoing renovation.

Pre-war life A secular Jew, Perechodnik was born in 1916 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Otwock, south east of Warsaw. He earned a degree in agronomy at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and a master's degree at a university in Toulouse, France. Perechodnik's wife Anka (Chana) née Nusfeld was also from Otwock; she ran a cinema named Oasis with her two brothers. Calek and Anka's only daughter Alinka (Athalie), was born on 19 August 1940, a year after the German invasion of Poland.

Jewish Ghetto Police In 1940, Perechodnik and his family, along with the other Jews of Otwock, were forced to by the Germans occupying Poland to relocate to the Otwock Ghetto. To provide for himself, his wife, and their daughter (born in the ghetto), in February 1941 Perechodnik joined the Jewish Ghetto Police organized by the Judenrat on German orders. There are several theories as to how he died. One states that he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide after the Uprising failed. Other claims that he was killed by pillagers after the uprising. Another account (stated in the letter of Henryk Romanowski to his brother Pesach Perechodnik, following the memoirs in the book) claims he was burned alive in a bunker, unable to get out because of the typhus. He was aged 27.

Am I a Murderer? Clandestine photo showing layover yard in Otwock on 19 August 1942. In the distance, Jews sit on the ground overnight, while awaiting transport to Treblinka extermination camp.

Perechodnik wrote his memoir between 7 May and 19 August 1943 in Warsaw, during his stay at the home of his Polish rescuer. One of the first clandestine operations of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) in Warsaw, was to assassinate its commanders. Perechodnik's account therefore, needs to be seen in its proper perspective. His memoir describes such events as his and his father's compliance with the Polish radio broadcast command to go eastward to fight in 1939, the formation of the Judenrat in Otwock, Himmler's visit to Warsaw, the death of Czerniakow, the rounding up of Jews in the ghettos; life in, and escape from, a work camp; the experience of being hidden in Warsaw, the beginning of understanding of what was happening in the death camps, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. His information is now considered by various researchers and experts on the Holocaust to be remarkably accurate, and according to these researchers, the notes show proof that the Jews at that time knew what was happening.

Shortly before Perechodnik died in 1944, he entrusted his manuscript to a Polish friend. After the war ended, the memoir was given to Perechodnik's brother, Pesach Perechodnik, who had survived the war in the Soviet Union. The original copy of the memoir was presented to the Yad Vashem Archives, and a copy was given to the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, which today is the Jewish Historical Institute. This document was first published as a complete book in 1995 by the Karta Centre of Warsaw.