'We don’t want to be buried alive' : the circumstances of the transfer of the inmates of the Central Shelter for Jews in Warsaw to Broszków

The Central Shelter for Jews in Warsaw, founded in the 1840s, served orphans, the poor, mentally ill and elderly persons. In December 1933, the Warsaw City Council moved the inmates from the new building at Leszno 127 to a palace in Broszków near Siedlce. The move, stemming from financial considerations in the first place, was a source of serious controversy among the Jewish masses. The papers carried stories of the tragedy of several hundred old men and women denied the care they needed, including a sizable number of deaths, seeing the actions of the city elders as a manifestation of a desire to eradicate manifestations of Jewish civic life. The problem was compounded by the unclear scope of the city’s authorization to use the assets of a foundation transferred to it on condition that the status of the shelter be preserved. Furthermore, the scandal surrounding the evacuation of the shelter’s inmates to Broszków coincided with a period of political crisis. The new city authorities recognized the „Broszków eviction” as one of the matters requiring an urgent resolution but the actions they took encountered a highly critical response of the society. The author looks at these matters based on materials published in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish press and reports of the Warsaw City Office and the audit committees established in the mid-1930s. The termination of the existence of the oldest care center for elderly Jews in Polish lands is reviewed in the context of local and national politics, the economic situation in the years of the Great Depression and the sentiments of the public articulated by newspapers and magazines.