Serving of meals in Opole ghetto

This is a picture showing people in Opole ghetto, Poland, after a serving of meals. My father had this photo taken by a local Jewish photographer in June 1941.

My parents, Wilhem and Johanna Schischa [nee Friedmann], were deported to Opole ghetto in Poland from Vienna on 26th February 1941 and died a year later in either Belzec or Sobibor concentration camp.

My father asked the photographer in the ghetto to take pictures and paid him for his services. He sent those pictures to his relatives in Vienna, to show them what life in the ghetto was like that way.

The daily serving of soup wasn?t enough to survive and the 12,000 people who were captured in Opole ghetto had to find other ways of getting food. My parents received parcels from their relatives in Austria. In his letters to his relatives my father expressed both his thanks for all the parcels they sent to him and my mother, and his fear of an uncertain future. In a letter from 1st April 1941 he wrote:

?My dear ones,

Yesterday we received your 10th parcel. Contents: tin of sardines, dessert; the milk was confiscated. We truly appreciate your efforts. If it weren?t for you, we would be in a bad way. I pay 1 zloty for regular parcels; cakes cost 4,80 zloty, so please don?t send sweets any longer. Flour, bread, a bit of sugar, lemons, oranges, pasta and other small things are free. A spirit stove would be a real blessing, but a liter of spirit costs 7 to 8 zloty, so there's no way. 1 zloty is worth half a Reichsmark. We had doughnuts and long plaited buns made from all the flour you sent; what a delicacy that was! Yesterday we had a truly delicious meal as well, vegetable soup with noodles and farfelakh, made from the ingredients you sent. We preferred it to meat.?

Photos from this interviewee