Efraim Barasz

 Chairman of the Bialystok Judenrat     

Efraim Barasz was born in 1892 in Volkovysk, Bialystok district, into an affluent and prominent Jewish family. Barasz had both a Jewish and a general education, studying in Germany and earning an engineering degree there. 

He joined the Zionist movement while still in his youth. During World War One he lived in Russia with his family, returning to Volkovysk at the war’s end. He became a businessman, was active in many Jewish institutions, and chaired the local Zionist organisation.

Moving to Bialystok in 1934, Barasz kept up his activities in Zionist affairs, and was appointed executive director of the Bialystok Jewish community, a post in which he excelled because of his initiative and his organisational talents.

He visited Palestine in the early 1930’s in order to prepare for his family’s immigration there. His son, whom he had enrolled in the Hebrew University, joined the British forces in the Second World War and became one of the first Jewish fighter pilots from Palestine.

At the end of June 1941, following the German occupation of Bialystok, Rabbi Gedaliah Rosenmann was appointed chairman of the Judenrat, but in actuality it was Barasz, the deputy chairman, who was in charge, both of the first Judenrat and its successor a month later.

Many of the members of the Bialystok Judenrat had previously held major posts in the Jewish community. The ghetto in Bialystok established on 31 July 1941, held about thirty-five thousand Jews, Bialystok came to be incorporated into a district that was joined to East Prussia.

In the autumn of 1942 the Bialystok region was subjected to deportations and the liquidation of ghetto’s, although the Bialystok ghetto itself was not affected.

Barasz was aware of the mass murder of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen, of the deportations, and of the destruction of Jewish communities, but he believed that work would “serve as a protective shield,” as he put it “Our main rescue effort has to be based on the establishment of a highly developed industry.”

Barasz felt a new security for the Jews of the ghetto when the German military authorities indicated a possible future order for the manufacture of boots for the German army. Summoning the Jewish Council, he told them, as the protocol of the meeting recorded, that he was certain “that this order for boots will protect the ghetto from calamity.”

He therefore demands “that industry be assigned top priority in Jewish Council activities.” Five months later, the order for boots arrived. “This is sufficient to ensure our security and that of the ghetto.” Barasz told his fellow Jewish Council members.

On the 21 June 1942 Barasz spoke at a mass meeting of the Jews of Bialystok:

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/barasz.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009