A town called Luck

Tomorrow night, on Wednesday 11^th April, for Yom HaShoah, I am participating in the Yellow Candle project that helps remember individual lives of the six million Jewish people who were murdered in the genocide we call the Holocaust.   

I took a candle at random from the hundreds given out at shul on Sunday morning.  

All it said on the little card was this:

Remembering Perla Kardasz of Luck

 Who perished at Luck

 1942

Aged 8

I wanted to know a little bit about the child I was remembering, but this is all I could find out about Perla’s life.  She had two parents who were called Jacob and Tzippora, and a sister called Nechama.  

Her parents must have had enough money to put a pretty bow on her head and have her picture taken when she was around two, and that picture was kept by her aunt, along with details of her address, and when and where she was murdered.  

I looked up the strangely named town called Luck, and I found out how Perla died.

Luck was a town in eastern Poland that according to a Polish census of 1931 was 48.5% Jewish.

On August 19 1942, 17,000 Jews were rounded up by Nazi Orpo police and local Auxiliary police over a four day period.  They were assembled in the town square and taken by trucks to the Gorka Polanka forest.  They were shot into the prepared trenches.   Local residents were required to help dig the trenches beforehand and to bury the bodies afterwards.   Thousands of Jewish men, women and children were executed at point blank range.  

Among them was a little girl called Perla Kardasz.

Testimony given by Perla's aunt

A German Orpo policeman near the mass grave at Gurka Polanka after the murder operation