Natan Abbe

From Wiki 5A

Natan Abbe was born to Carola and Israel Abbe in 1924. Natan grew up in Lodz, Poland. His father, Israel, owned a haberdashery store, where he sold gloves, hats, and other accessories. Natan had two sisters and a younger brother. Lodz, Poland was the home to over 233,000 Jews was a large, fairly liberal city. Lodz was a major center for the textile industry. It had a diverse population of Jews, Poles and Germans that lived together in relative peace.

When the Germans occupied Lodz in September 1939, Natan was a fifteen years old and was a schoolboy. Anti-Jewish restrictions were immediately enacted. Jews were forbidden to go to religious services, their radios were confiscated, they were subject to curfew, and they were forced to wear the yellow star. Jews were also banned from most professions. On February 8, 1940, all the Jews in Lodz were forced to live in a run-down part of the city. On May 1, 1940, the overcrowded ghetto was closed off. Living conditions were horrible. There was little food or medicine, no heat, and inadequate sanitation. People were falling dead in the street from disease, starvation, and exposure. Still, the basic appearance of a normal inner-city life was maintained. Schools and hospitals were still functioned. The Germans constantly harassed the Jewish residents that lived in the ghetto. The Germans were raiding their apartments, randomly seizing people on the streets, and subjecting them to horrible indignities. People were shot for the no or littlest reasons. Young children were often became the sole support of their family. They would smuggle themselves out of the ghetto in order to find food and bring it back to their starving parents, brothers and sisters. Natan was shot to death in late 1940 by a German soldier at the ghetto gate. He was sixteen years old when he was shot. Note: this is a real story that happened to 6 million Jews during the holocaust.