(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1942, on the first day of Purim, Jakub Lemberg was executed together with his family in the Nazi ghetto in Zdunska Wola, Poland.

Lemburg, a 43-year-old internist and pediatrician, was head of the Judenrat in Zdunska Wola and thus it was his task to do the Nazis’ dirty work, such as putting together lists of his fellow-Jews for deportation.

He revealed himself to be a man of exceptional character and courage, and the circumstances of his death, as recorded in Louis Falstein’s The Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland, should not be forgotten:

The Gestapo chief ordered Dr. Lemberg to deliver ten Jews to be hanged for the ten hanged sons of Haman. Dr. Lemberg replied that he could deliver only four Jews: himself, his wife and their two children. Hans Biebow, “the Butcher of Lodz,” seized Dr. Lemberg and turned him over to the executioners, who killed him in the cemetery.

The Zdunska Wola ghetto was liquidated five months later. And in 1947, Biebow got his.

Here’s an image of Lemberg testimony (in Hebrew) from the Yad Vashem database.

On this day..

• 1921: George Bailey, the first Englishman hanged by female jurors
• 1950: Rosli Dhobi, Sarawak patriot
• 1423: William Taylor, Lollard
• 1942: The massacre at the Pit
• 1962: Kelly Moss, restless of spirit
• 1401: William Sawtre, Lollard heretic
• 1871: Ma Hualong, Dungan rebel
• 1886: David Roberts, dutiful son
• 2006: Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri
• 1974: Salvador Puig Antich and Heinz Ches, the last garroted in Spain
• 1585: William Parry, Vile and Base
• 2005: Han Bok-nam, whose death was illicitly filmed