The Nazi Atrocities Revealed in Invisible Ink

Postcards and coded letters sent from a concentration camp written in urine reveal the secret experiments performed on human subjects.

Lola Bergman's postcard sent from Krakow to Jakob Rosenblum in Bucharest. The Yad Vashem Archives.

In a small museum in Poland there is a display of letters which reveal information on a series of Nazi experiments on humans subjects. These letters were written in invisible ink made from urine in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The medical experiments were performed on Polish political prisoners. The letters were donated to the “Saints Under the Clock” museum in Lublin in Eastern Poland, by the family of one of the former prisoners, Krystyna Czyż-Wilgat.

During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany conducted medical experiments on humans – not only in the Auschwitz camp, but also in Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, and others. Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp for women in northern Germany. Between 1939 and 1945, some 132,000 prisoners passed through the camp, including about 40,000 Poles and 26,000 Jews.

At Auschwitz, brutal experiments of marginal medical value were conducted, such as attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of children. At Ravensbrück however, the experiments were designed to improve the health of German soldiers. Modern penicillin was not yet available and many German soldiers died of gangrene caused by infected wounds. In the attempt to find alternative medicines to cure infections, the Nazis implanted bacteria into the leg bones and muscles of soldiers by inserting pieces of wood or glass into the wounds. The human victims of experiments in the lab were called little rabbits. The experiments were also conducted on 74 Polish women, young and healthy, whose names appear in the 27 letters that contain hidden messages about the horrors of the experiments they were part of in the camp.

In the concentration camps it was forbidden to hold any personal belongings. Correspondence was permitted under strict regulation and with the scrutiny of censorship. It was possible to send letters from the camp that contained neutral information that was approved by the censors, but several prisoners managed, through the use of invisible ink made of human urine, to inform their families and the world of the shocking medical experiments being conducted.

The brilliant idea to write using urine as ink belonged to Janina Iwańska and was carried out by Krystyna Czyż who had a very clear and beautiful handwriting. Their extraordinary intelligence and love of literature was the key. In her first letter to her brother, Krystyna mentioned the period when they would read books together. She particularly emphasized the book, “Satan from the Seventh Grade,” by the Polish children’s author Kornel Makuszyński. In that novel, the hero sends a letter in which the first letters of each line of text, when put together, form a secret message. Krystyna also placed the words “letter,” and “urine,” in the overt text. Krystyna’s brother understood the intentions and knew what to do. That was how their secret correspondence began.

One of the envelopes containing text written in human urine from the Ravensbrück women's camp between 1944-1943 — One of the envelopes containing text written in human urine from the Ravensbrück women’s camp between 1943-1944

Janina Iwańska planned to escape the prison and wrote a secret text on the envelope containing a letter addressed to her father. The letter itself contained some clues indicating that the envelope held secret information written in invisible ink. Since the letter did not have a censorship stamp, it was likely smuggled out by prisoners working in the factories outside the camp. Once the letter reached its destination, the recipients still faced the task of reading the invisible text. The usual method was to heat the pieces of paper with the hidden text using an iron. Thanks to the encrypted messages, the list of 74 women from Lublin who had undergone medical experiments by Nazi doctors in Ravensbrück was made public in the first few years following the end of World War II. In addition to information on medical experiments which included the intentional infection of wounds for the sake of testing new drugs, the letters also contained information about the camp’s operations, punishments and executions.

A letter written and sent by Janina Iwańska from the Ravensbrück concentration camp to her father on May 6, 1943

In 1995, Yad Vashem received a postcard containing a message written in hidden ink to add to their collections. This seemingly innocent postcard was sent by a woman from Krakow, Poland, to Bucharest, the capitol of Romania in 1943. It contains a secret message written in invisible ink describing terrible conditions in a concentration camp. The postcard is part of a collection of letters and postcards, yellow patches and other objects which were donated to the Yad Vashem Archives as part of the estate of Theodore Feldman, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who passed away in 1993. According to the donor of the collection, Elisheva Ezri, Feldman’s daughter, her father purchased the postcard in a small town near Bucharest. On the postcard, in addition to the addressee and the address, there is a short text is spread out along two lines and written in German: “My dear, I’ll remember you with love. Lola, Krakow, 20.8.1943.”

The back side of Lola Bergman's postcard sent from Krakow to Jakob Rosenblum in Bucharest. The postcard is kept in the Yad Vashem Archives and is an integral part of a collection of letters from the Holocaust period. — The back side of Lola Bergman’s postcard sent from Krakow to Jakob Rosenblum in Bucharest. The postcard is kept in the Yad Vashem Archives and is an integral part of a collection of letters from the Holocaust period.

The sender of the postcard was Lola Bergmann of Krakow. Her address did not contain a street name. The recipient was Yaakov Rosenblum, who, according to the address, lived in the Jewish ghetto in Bucharest. The invisible message included was sent by a man called Otto. The text, written in invisible ink, was in German and contains inside information about one of the concentration camps in the area, incuding details of a well-organized underground movement. The letter even contained a request for aid and equipment suitable for advanced underground warfare conditions, which lends to the theory that this was a part of an espionage operation on behalf of the Allies.

The front of Lola Bergman's postcard sent from Krakow to Jakob Rosenblum in Bucharest. The postcard is kept in the Yad Vashem Archives and is part of a collection of letters from the Holocaust period. — The front of Lola Bergman’s postcard sent from Krakow to Jakob Rosenblum in Bucharest. The postcard is kept in the Yad Vashem Archives and is part of a collection of letters from the Holocaust period.

The postcard bears the stamp of the Romanian censor, indicating that it had indeed reached Romania, but it is unclear whether it was read by the addressee or not. According to Elisheva Ezri, Feldman himself made the secret text visible by heating up both sides of the postcard with a household clothing iron. If that is the case, it can be concluded that the postcard did not reach the destination or that if it arrived, it seems that it was not clear to the recipient that it contained a message written in secret ink. In addition, the ink may belong to a group of chemicals that can be removed and then made visible when it comes in contact with another chemical. There are many materials and recipes for manufacturing hidden ink and many methods for making the hidden text visible. The use of secret ink for transmitting secret messages was already well known during World War I, and the censor was alert to this even during World War II. Across the postcard is a thick, light brown line. This line attests to an attempt to discover the hidden text using chemical material. Was the hidden text of the postcard visible and therefore caught by the censors? Or was it able to evade censorship because censorship checks could not identify the secret ink?

The contents of the hidden text and its interpretation, including the attempts to discover the identity of Otto, were presented at length on pages 6-7 of issue No. 7 (fall 1997) of Yad Vashem Magazine.

The Golem: Super Villain or Super Hero?

The creature made of clay was brought to life by the name of God to protect the Jewish people. Did it fulfill its purpose?

Melody Barron | 03.06.18

Throughout Jewish history, there have been different incarnations of the Golem – an amorphous creature made of mud or clay that was given life using the extended name of God. Some have painted the Golem as a hero, coming to life just in time to save the Jewish community, while in other stories the Golem is depicted as a murderous villain and uncontrollable demon.

Though there have been many iterations of the Golem, in the classic telling of the story, Judah Loew Ben Bezalel, the late 16th century rabbi known as the Maharal of Prague, was said to have formed a Golem out of clay after deciding that the Jewish community was in need of a defender against rising anti-Semitic attacks. The Maharal brought the figure to life using magic rituals, Hebrew incantations and by placing the ineffable name of God in the clay figure’s mouth. Thus was born the Golem of Prague whom the rabbi named Yosseleh.

Jewish museum with a statue of the Golem in Úštěk

Yosseleh the Golem possessed a unique skill set. According to the classic tale, the Golem could make himself invisible and summon the spirits of the dead. Defender of the Jewish community during the week, the Maharal allowed Yosseleh to rest on the Sabbath along with the rest of the community. He would deactivate the Golem every Friday evening by removing the name of God from his mouth.

According to some of the legends, one Friday, the Maharal forgot to deactivate the Golem. Yosseleh, in a fit of rage, ran amok, damaging the city and causing physical harm to the unfortunate people who happened to be in his way. The Maharal, realizing what happened, ran out into the streets and managed to deactivate the rampaging Golem and put an end to the destruction.

An alternative end to the story of the Golem explains that the threat of anti-Semitism had passed and the clay protector was no longer needed. Rabbi Loew quietly removed the name of God from his mouth and the Golem was deactivated forever. The mute presence of Yosseleh, simply disappeared from community life, and the clay form of the Golem was put in storage in the attic of the synagogue where it still believed to be resting today.

Old New Synagogue or Altneuschul Prague as photographed by Øyvind Holmstad

The Golem, a creature shrouded in mystery, has drawn continued interest over the centuries. The story of the Golem has been reenacted and reinvented many times and has served as a source of inspiration for artists, sculptors, scientists, movies, books, dramatic productions and comic book heroes.

There is much speculation as to whether the Golem was a benign creature expected to obey its creator or if it was a monstrous creature, prone to fits of rage and destruction. The Golem’s silver screen debuts came in a series of movies produced between 1915 and 1920. The most popular film in the series was a silent horror film where the Golem is used without the permission of Rabbi Loew by his assistant. The assistant, not knowing how to properly control the Golem, sets the Golem on a destructive rampage in which a man is killed and fire is set to the synagogue.

In 1925, in the Land of Israel, the Golem was adapted for the “Habimah” stage. In the original performance, the Golem, brought to life to protect the Jewish ghetto, was treated with much suspicion by the local community. The Golem turned his frustration at being different back onto the community and used his tremendous strength, the very thing that was supposed to protect the Jews from anti-Semitic attacks, to murder the Jews themselves. In the face of the evolving catastrophe, the Maharal was forced to return the Golem to the lump of dirt from which he came.

The Golem took to the stage many times in the years following, enthralling the community in the Yeshuv.

A poster advertising a performance of “The Golem’s Dream,” at Habimah theater, from the NLI Ephemera collection.

The Golem returned to the public in later years in the form of a Marvel comic book where the Golem, “The thing that walks like a man,” was featured as the great defender who draws his strength from the truth and has the Hebrew letters אמת (truth) emblazoned on his forehead.

Elie Weisel, in his retelling of the classic tale, wished that the Maharal would have allowed the Golem to continue his work as defender of the Jews.

“Ah, if only the Golem were still among us… I would sleep more peacefully. Why did the Maharal take him from us? Did he really believe that the era of suffering and injustice was a thing of the past? That we no longer needed a protector, a shield?”

While the Golem has captured audiences worldwide, there is no proof that the Golem ever existed. Aside from the fact that the story requires a firm belief in the supernatural, Rabbi Loew himself, the purported creator of the Golem, never mentioned creating a Golem in any of his writings.

Real or not, the existence of a creature fighting in defense of the downtrodden in the spirit of truth, carries a universal message that has inspired audiences across the globe for centuries on end. Who knows? Maybe someday the Golem will return to defend the truth in an ever evolving world.

This post was written as part of Gesher L’Europa, the NLI’s initiative to connect with Europe and make our collections available to diverse audiences in Europe and beyond.

How the German-Jewish Refugees Flourished in the Kenyan Farmlands

These rare photos show the story of the Jewish refugees who settled in Kenya in the 1930s.

Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia | 29.05.18

When the first Kenyan Jews settled in Nairobi in 1903, it didn’t take long before they became a proper community, but they remained a small community of just a few dozen people for several decades.

All that changed when the Nazis took power in Germany and an exodus of German Jews found themselves seeking refuge in places they never would have expected.

Granted, the influx of Jews to Kenya was small, but that didn’t stop them from having to go through the British Colonial Office that was in charge of immigration to Kenya. In order to gain immigration status in Kenya, one had to be registered as a farm manager- something that was hard to come by for the Jewish immigrants and which limited their ability to settle. The local Jewish community worked hard to encourage Jewish immigration, but found much resistance from white European settlers and from the Indian community in East Africa that had backing from the British Colonial Office. Obviously, the opinion of the indigenous black population was not considered.

While the Jews of Nairobi were working hard on the local immigration initiative, British Jewry in England started their own widespread settlement campaign for thousands of Jews to relocate from Europe to the Kenyan Farmlands. They would settle in the White Highlands, which had already been designated for colonial farms.

In August 1938 the British initiative was registered as a private company limited by shares under the title Plough Settlements Association LTD that had an initial capital of 25,000 pounds. One of the partners for the British company was the JCA – Jewish Colonization Association – or as it is commonly known by its Hebrew initials: יק”א.

The initiative was presented as a colonial and financial enterprise and the hidden idea of rescuing Jews from the European continent was kept under wraps. The immigration activists met with established farmers in Kenya, the British Colonial Office officials, and other officiants in order to study and ready the ground, and gain traction and support for the immigration initiative.

The Jewish immigrants were not able to purchase farms upon their arrival, nor could they find ways to work on the farmlands where they could train as farm hands in order to eventually become farm managers. Many of the requests, and their rejections, were kept in the initiative’s archives.

This article is based on the Jewish Colonization Association archive kept in the Central Archive of the Jewish People.

Photographs courtesy of David Lichtenstein, Sydney, son of Henry (Heinz) Lichtenstein, a farmer in Kipkarren, Usain Gishu province, Kenya.

How a Man Named Saul Became King for a Day in Poland

This is the legend of how a tiny Torah was commissioned by a Jew who served as king of Poland for just one day.

Chen Malul | 28.05.18

סודות כתבי היד העבריים

The Torah scroll dedicated to Rabbi Saul Wahl

A Jewish King in Poland? An oxymoron if ever there was one. Yet, at the National Library of Israel, we have a small and rare Torah scroll, no taller than 10 centimeters, dedicated to one Saul Wahl, the crowned Jewish King of Poland- for just one day.

Saul Katzenellenbogen was born in 1541 into a well-off Jewish family from Venice. His father, Rabbi Samuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen, was the chief rabbi of the prosperous Venetian Jewish community. After growing up and receiving his education in Italy, Saul was sent to Poland to teach in one of its prestigious yeshivot.

Saul’s religiosity did not prevent him from entering more earthly business ventures. He entered the trade business and in 1580, Saul moved to Krakow to run the salt mines of the King of Poland that were leased out to make a profit for the monarchy. Saul was extremely successful in his time in the salt mines and quickly became a close and loyal adviser to the king.

Stephen Báthory, the king to whom Saul Katzenellenbogen advised

However, this is not the whole story. How could it be? Well, when you combine the real story behind the man, and the legend of the man, the combination makes for a story so fantastic, it is almost unbelievable.

When the king of Poland died, a painful war of succession began. The holy constitution of the Kingdom of Poland determined that a new king can be coronated only after he is elected by the lords of the court – a process that must not take more than 21 days. The Polish lords sequestered themselves and tried to make sense of the process, but the deliberations went on and on and instability reigned. There was no hint of a resolution on the horizon and the deadline to crown a new king was coming due.

In order to uphold the sanctity of the constitution and to keep the kingdom from falling to anarchy, an ingenious idea was proposed: Saul Katzenellenbogen, the late king’s trusted adviser and loyal friend, would be crowned temporary king for one day. They reasoned that, because everyone knew Katzenellenbogen to be an honest man, he would not consider usurping the throne nor would he stay upon it longer than was necessary. Thus, Saul Katzenellenbogen became Saul “Wahl,” which means “The Chosen” in Polish, and he was crowned king.

As the newly minted king of Poland, Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen wasted no time. While the lords continued agonizing over the selection of a new king, King Saul put out multiple decrees aimed at improving the status of the Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland.

At the end of his first and only day as king, King Saul was asked to decide between the final two royal candidates and it was his choice that brought about the coronation of King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland.

The tiny Torah in the National Library’s collections dedicated to King Saul Wahl gives veracity to the idea that there really was a temporary Jewish King.

However, there is no true historical evidence to support this. The legend of the Jewish King of Poland comes to us from non-Jewish sources and may indeed be a fabrication, but does that truly matter?