Upper Silesia is a wartime administrative designation that becomes consequential when officials use it to classify Greek Jews and discuss where they might be sent. Its sparse appearances connect geography to bureaucratic responsibility: the district name is invoked as a reason for where the group belongs, even as the people making decisions struggle over what to do with them.

Administrative Classification

In a telephone exchange, a voice from Warsaw tells the narrator that transportation is unavailable to collect the Jews and that, administratively, they belong to Upper Silesia. The voice then directs the narrator to dispose of them. Upper Silesia is not described as a landscape here; it functions as a jurisdiction within an institutional explanation that converts human beings into an administrative problem.

The Proposed Camp

The next morning, the narrator summons local officials to a meeting and explains the order. The fire chief proposes calling the head of a camp that could take the Jews, but interrupts when the narrator says he has already spoken with a man at Chelmno: the fire chief argues that they should contact a camp in Upper Silesia instead. The participants trade suggestions based on their chains of acquaintances, yet the narrator eventually tells them that every possibility has been considered and the order to dispose of the Greek Jews is unequivocal. The meeting ends without a solution to the central question of how to carry it out.

Narrative Significance

Upper Silesia’s role is defined by this contrast between administrative belonging and practical action. The district is invoked both as the official classification of the Greek Jews and as a possible destination for them, but the conversation offers no account of a successful transfer or a final outcome. In the meeting scene, its name belongs to a network of offices, camps, orders, and indirect contacts—a geography through which responsibility is discussed while the human consequences remain at the center.