Calel (Calek) Perechodnik was a Jewish policeman in the Otwock ghetto. Within his role, he took part in an Aktion (forced deportation) in which 8,000 of the city's Jews were deported, among them his wife Anna and daughter Athalie. Calek, certain they would be safe, took them out of the hiding place in which they had been located, and led them to the deportation square, where they were put on trains and sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. Calek remained alone, consumed by guilt and, after several months spent in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw, penned a combination of a confession, a ringing indictment, and a diary - which he dedicated to his wife and daughter. The text Calek wrote is one of the most graphic, honest, and jarring texts produced during the Holocaust period.



Featured guest: Dr. Amos Goldberg, Professor at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University, and head of the Research Institute for Contemporary Jewry. Author of Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing during the Holocaust, 2017.