Dawid Sierakowiak

Dawid Sierakowiak

(This is the only known photograph of Dawid Sierakowiak, It was taken on his last day of School inside the Lodz Ghetto in 1941.)

Dawid Sierakowiak was born on July 25, 1924 in Lodz, Poland.

He was the Son of Majlech Sierakowiak and Sura Ajdla née Churgel.

He had a Younger Sister, Natalia (Nadzia) who was born on July 12, 1927.

Dawid was an Avid Reader interested in Foreign languages.

He studied English, French, German, Hebrew, and Latin.

After Graduating from Elementary School, he received a Scholarship to continue his Education at the Second Male Junior High School of the Society of Jewish Secondary Schools in Lodz at 21 Magistracka Street (now Aleksandra Kamińskiego Street).

Dawid was also part of the Jewish Scout Organization Hashomer Hatzair.

Dawid started writing a Diary on June 28, 1939.

He started it a few months before World War 2 began and continued writing a detailed account of the War, the German Occupation, the Lodz Ghetto and the death and hardships he experienced.

On September 1, 1939, when Dawid was 15 years old, the Germans invaded Poland and occupied Lodz.

The Germans renamed Lodz to Litzmannstadt (after German General, Karl Litzmann who fought in the area in World War 1 and was a Nazi before he died in 1936.)

Dawid and his Family were forced into the Lodz Ghetto on February 8, 1940.

They lived at lived at 5/7 Spacerowa Street.

Inside the Ghetto Dawid attended a High School until the School and all Schools inside the Ghetto were closed in October 1941 when the Germans deported 20,000 Jews from Germany and German-Occupied Czechoslovakia.

The deported Jews lived in the Closed Schools.

On October 24, 1941 Dawid began working at the Saddlery Department at 4 Szopena Street.

When Dawid was 17 years old on October 23, 1941 he wrote the following in his Diary:

“I'll start my work in the saddlery workshop tomorrow….My student career has been suspended, at least for a while….The main thing now is to make an income and survive poverty.”

In August 1942 Dawid was posted as an Office Worker (German: Brüoangesteller) in the "Arbeitseinsatz" of the Personnel Department (Personal-Abteilung), at 11 Lutomierska Street.

In September 1942 Dawid’s Mother, Sura, was deported from the Lodz Ghetto and gassed at the Chełmno Death Camp during the Gehsperre Aktion (Curfew Action) in which the Germans deported (13,000 Children and 11,000 Elderly) from the Ghetto to the Chelmno Death Camp.

At Chełmno the Germans used Gas Vans to murder the Men, Women and Children.

On September 1, 1942 Dawid wrote the following in his Diary:

“The first day of the New Year of the War brought horrible news early in the morning that all the Hospitals in the Ghetto were being emptied by the Germans. In the morning all the areas around the Hospitals were surrounded by Guards and all the sick, without exception, were loaded onto trucks and driven out of the Ghetto. Because we already know from the stories told by those brought into the Ghetto how the Germans “deal with the sick” a great panic has risen in the city. Scenes from Dante took place when the sick were being loaded. People knew that they were going to their deaths! They even fought the Germans and had to be thrown onto the trucks by force.”

On March 6, 1943 Dawid’s Father, Majilech died of Starvation inside the Ghetto.

Dawid’s last Diary Entry was on April 15, 1943:

““Again out of impatience, I feel myself falling into melancholy. There is really no way out of this for us.”

Dawid Sierakowiak died of Tuberculous inside the Lodz Ghetto on August 8, 1943.

He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Bracka Street in Lodz.

He was 19 years old.

Dawid’s Sister, Natalia, was deported from the Lodz Ghetto during the Liquidation of the Ghetto in August 1944 and murdered in the Gas Chambers of the Auschwitz Death Camp. She was 17 years old,

Five Notebooks of Dawid’s Diary were discovered by a Polish Gentile, Waclaw Szkudlarek, who originally lived in one of the Apartments that was evacuated to create the Lodz Ghetto.

Szkudlarek returned to his home after the Russians liberated Lodz from the Germans in 1945.

Two of the five notebooks that Dawid kept as his Diary have been lost.

It is believed they were burned by occupants of the Apartment during the winter of 1945 when there was no heating fuel available in Lodz.

The first two Notebooks were published in Poland in 1960, edited by Holocaust Scholar Lucjan Dobroszycki, himself a Survivor of the Lodz Ghetto.

 In 1967 a leading Lodz Journalist, Konrad Turowski, purchased the three surviving Notebooks and was preparing then for publication when an outbreak of anti-Semitism under the then Communist Regime in Poland blocked the publication.

Years passed before a full version of all five surviving Notebooks were finally published and made available to the public in Poland.

An English Language Version of Dawid’s Diary was published in 1998.