Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides

Polenaktion: The Karp Letter

One of the Polish Jews deported in the Polenaktion (Polish Action) on October 28, 1938 was forty-six year old musician Mendel Max Karp, who had emigrated from the village of Ruszelczyce in Poland and was living in Berlin. On November 17, 1938 in the Polish border town of Zbąszyń, he wrote a detailed letter to his nephew in the United States about his experience. Here are excerpts from the letter:

… we were taken from our beds and detained by the police… In Berlin, only men between the ages of 15 to approximately 90 were subject to this action. At our apartment, the police officers presented us with a form that stated that we were to leave the territory of the Reich within 24 hours. We were not, however, granted this period of time and had to follow the officers as soon as we had dressed and were given next to no time to take along clothing and linens. I was forced to leave Germany meagerly clothed and with just a few Reichsmarks…. In other cities and provinces of the Reich, entire Jewish families were arrested…

One truck after the other left the barracks courtyard with us in them, a long chain of monstrous vehicles snaked … through the city, accompanied by the deafening din of sirens, sounded intentionally to alert the population of Berlin to our forced deportation. The people amassed in the streets, witnesses to the “historic” expulsion of the Jews from Germany.

Once we arrived at the tracks in Treptow [a train station in Berlin], we got out of the trucks, which, by the way, had no seats, and in which we had been thoroughly jostled. We were glad to be standing on solid ground again.

Before getting on the trains, we were divided into groups and had to hand over our passports. In the meantime, a police regiment had marched up in front of us and was just loading their weapons, demonstrated to us intentionally. …

After … [the rain stopped] …. The police regiments gradually withdrew, and a few officers then stood still, while we were forced to slowly march forward. We now realized that we were being pushed over the unfortified border. First we passed a boom gate, moved across no man’s land, and then passed another boom gate, whose colors that we could only faintly make out in the darkness revealed that we were now entering Polish territory.

Not far from the frontier, we stopped in front of a Polish border house, the end of our procession still being in no man’s land. Two border guards came out of the building and were astonished to see an almost endless mass of people standing before them. We had to march another several hundred meters until the entire stream of refugees was on Polish territory….

In the meantime, new “refugees” [driven out of G.]) kept arriving, including entire Jewish families from various German provinces, who had been picked up at the border with all of their belongings. The image that presented itself was heart-wrenching and many stood with tears in their eyes.

The crowding in the courtyard and barracks grew worse and worse. Everywhere one looked, there were despairing and weeping people; among them one also saw Jews … praying, standing near trees and in the barracks ...

Karp then details the consequences of deportation for many of the people: death, suicide, madness, and serious illnesses. He writes about relief operations with the arrival of medical personnel from Warsaw, the distribution of food and clothing, and the assistance of some Christian families. However, any hope of a quick return to Germany ended with the assassination of Ernst vom Rath in Paris on November 7, 1938. Karp endured eight months in Zbąszyń. It wasn’t until the end of June 1939 that he was able to return to Berlin in order to organize his emigration. He completed all the necessary paperwork to emigrate to Shanghai, but the outbreak of war in September disrupted his plans. On September 13, 1939, Max Karp was once again arrested, taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and murdered on January 27, 1940.

Discussion Questions

1. How does Mendel Max Karp’s description of the deportation process reflect the Nazi regime’s intentions not only to expel Jews but also to publicly humiliate and terrorize them?

2. What can Karp’s detailed account tell us about the psychological and emotional impact of sudden, forced displacement on individuals and communities?

3. In what ways does Karp’s letter highlight the roles played by non-Jewish individuals and organizations in responding to the humanitarian crisis at Zbąszyń?

4. Considering Karp’s efforts to emigrate to Shanghai and the interruption caused by the outbreak of World War II, what does his story reveal about the limited options and desperate circumstances facing Jews trying to flee Nazi persecution?

Sources

“We were being driven like hunted animals!” (n.d.). Jewish Museum Berlin. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/max-karp-polenaktion

Mendel Max Karp | Stolpersteine in Berlin. (2025). Stolpersteine-Berlin.de. https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/en/holzmarktstr/70/mendel-max-karp

Polenaktion: The Karp Letter

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