At the beginning of the 20th century there live about 60.000 people in the East-Polish town Bialystok. Three quarters of them are Jews. This made the town the biggest Jewish community in Poland and there were Jewish schools, theatres, museums and libraries.
The normal life ended in September 1939 when the German occupation. Due to the division of Poland one week later the control was handed over to the Red Army. The Russian soldiers oppressed the Jewish population as well and the Jewish culture was forbidden. Refugees searching for protection were directly sent to work camps in Siberia.
In July 1941 the Germans returned to Bialystok and the systematical genocide of the Jewish population began. Children were sent to Theresienstadt and about 30.000 people were killed during the first two months. A ghetto was founded and everybody hoped to find work in the textile factories to save one's life. But in 1943 the remaining Jews were killed. The Jewish Bialystok only exists in the memory of the few survivors who managed to escape.