Bialystok and its Destruction

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The Outbreak of the War

Even a week before the outbreak of the war, the tense situation was not felt in Bialystok. Living conditions were normal; everyone went to work. A part of men of all ages had left with the Red Army. Those who stayed in the city had a pleasant time. The city was flourishing in the Soviet way: There were big stores, places that provided diversion and entertainment, and other things. People enjoyed themselves and would never have believed that Bialystok would be taken by the Germans in just a week.

I still remember the last Shabbat. I go to a restaurant with my friends for a glass of wine, and then as usual I go for a walk with them in the forest. There we lingered until one o'clock in the morning, and later, when I get home, Mom opens the door for me and says:

“Tomorrow you have to get up and go to work!”

I get undressed and go to sleep, but I can't fall really asleep yet. That's when I'm jolted awake by a loud impact of a bomb that has fallen nearby. I get dressed, run out into the street and see a few people asking each other:

“What happened?”

The answer, “probably maneuvers!”

So people can go back to sleep; no one expects that there is already war.

We stop for a bit and see a bandaged person running, shouting: “A bomb has fallen! There are dead people there! It's war!” We don't believe it. I run to check it out. I reach the second street on Nayvelt [New World, Nowy Świat]. The small Pyotrokovski Street

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is already half in ruins.

I run into the collapsed houses and step on a naked woman, whom I can barely recognize as a human being because she is lying between a pile of bricks and is covered with dust.

People are running with shovels to dig out the buried people in several houses. Wounded people can be seen. The window panes of all the buildings on the street are cracked. Homeless people drag themselves desperately with their luggage to a garden on Nayvelt [Nowy Świat]. With their belongings, sleepy, confused and nervous, they are sitting in the garden.

German planes are already circling, every few minutes people run to the bushes to hide there. At dawn, a bomb had already hit the garrison by the forest, killing many Red Army soldiers who had been sleeping there unsuspectingly. In the civilian houses in the area there are many victims. Leaflets are already being distributed to register for military service at the Voyenkomat^[a].

One goes there to register, but meets no one, everything is closed. Party members with rifles keep order in the street. The war can already be felt now.

Molotov's speech is posted outside, in which he reports that the Germans have attacked us barbarically and we must defend ourselves. It is already clear to everyone that this is an illegal invasion by Hitler's Germany. The youth and the elders decide to leave with the Red Army.

Trucks from organizations and factories take the workers who want to go deeper into the Soviet Union.

The mood is depressed. One asks the other, what will happen?

The Red Army is leaving us! During the one-week German occupation in 1939, the Jews of Bialystok had already felt what Hitler's Germany meant. Even then, Jews from the municipal office had been murdered in a bestial manner in the courtyard, and those who had been mortally wounded had been buried while still alive. During this week,

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they had also looted the Jewish stores in the evenings during closing time. Therefore, everyone walks around with questioning looks and bowed heads.

I run to the train station. The trains are crowded with women and children. Everyone is leaving to escape and not to see the Germans. I come home and suggest to my parents to leave; my brothers are not at home. As I sit and think, tears come to my eyes. As a returnee from the “Polish-German war,” I know what war means.

Then my younger brother, Nyome, comes in. He sees me sitting there depressed and says, “You’ve already been to war, and you're still sitting there in such a daze? Come on, let's escape deeper into the Soviet Union!” I answer him, “Yes, take my bicycle and go! I will be able to walk better than you, because you are weaker!” Nyome takes my bicycle and says goodbye to everyone. We have not seen him again.

My second brother, Beybe (Leybl) has left from a factory in a truck. I say goodbye at home and assure [them]: “I have returned from the last war, so this time we will also meet again!” I receive a bicycle and together with other thousands of young people and elders, with all who can muster the strength, I ride deeper into the Soviet Union to help defeat Hitler's Germany.

On the Highway, we are going from Volokovysk towards Minsk, deeper and deeper into Russia. The further we go, the more we meet thousands of men, with women and children, moving along. A part is already on the way back, with the statement that it is impossible to go on, because the highway is bombed and there are already many fatalities there. We are not deterred by this. We go on walking, already sensing the German planes, incoming low, literally as low as man’s height, firing their machine guns into the civilian population.

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Where people are hiding, in the trenches and in the rye field, there are dead and wounded. After such a shelling, a comrade comes running to me and shouts, “My wife and child are lying in the field; dead!”

A woman lies in a ditch. A child of one and a half years crawls on her and screams crying: “Mama!”. From the cornfield a crying voice yells, “Tovorishtshi spasaytye!” (“Save me, comrades!”)

It tears the heart. We approach a beautiful young girl lying there with a leg shot.

She asks to be taken to the hospital. Lightly wounded men limp and drag themselves forward. Farmers' carts carry nearly unconscious, wounded people. This is how the German air fleet accompanied us on all highways, leaving such pictures after each bombing.

We decide to continue on side roads, because it is no longer possible to go on the highway. But even there the planes do not let us live. They bomb us so violently that during a bombardment in the forest the whole earth shakes under us lying on the ground.

We continue on the highway again.

Dead bodies are lying everywhere. A 30-year-old boy is lying there with a bullet through his leg, he is bleeding. He begs me to save him. But no one comes, everyone just walks forward absent-minded. On the highway, overturned tanks and trucks block the way, everything stops and jams for miles until the way is cleared.

The Red Army soldiers want to get to Minsk as soon as possible in order to resist there. The Red Army men are completely absorbed by this thought. On the highway there are many coats, the best skins, new boots. Nobody pays attention to them. All of them have only one goal; to make their way as quickly as possible to the Soviet Union and help with the resistance there.

We go through Volkovysk . The city is on fire. The Red Army soldiers are still fighting in the city. We hear the shots and impacts. That's all that can be heard. The night falls. We ask the Red Army men to take us on their trucks; we are going with them together, now.

Suddenly—

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from the nearby houses on the highway they shoot at us! The trucks stop, everyone gets off them and the Red Army soldiers position themselves to fight. We also receive rifles. We see searchlights circling around us, we are surrounded. We open fire and manage to break through and continue, but the way is blocked by burned trucks, tanks and all kinds of automatic weapons.

Everyone, civilians and military, continues to walk. We no longer pay attention to the dead and wounded. We meet familiar comrades, a greeting, a question, an answer, and we walk on. We leave the highway and walk again on side paths. We take edibles from the dropped packets lying on the highway. I take some cookies and canned food. Meanwhile, I meet two Russians from Gomel who last worked in Bialystok. We become friends and walk together, but the bombings do not allow us any rest. We are tired from all that and sit down to eat something.

The Russians are unpacking schnapps. One Russian does not sit down, but is looking for something. I ask him, “What are you looking for, why don't you sit down to eat?” He answers me that in 1928 he was exactly at this place and also drank schnapps. He left a glass behind at that time, which he is now looking for, because it is difficult to drink from a bottle with four people.

But he can't remember exactly the shrub, it's been too long, he has forgotten the external features...we laugh, sit down, drink from the bottle and eat canned food.

After dinner we move on. Night falls. We head for the highway, it is quieter at night. The highway is continuously packed and clogged with military of all formations. We are taken on a vehicle. We drive. The forests of the area are still burning from the bombardments during the day and from the battles we fought against the enemy incursions of the Germans above us.

We drive a whole night in the direction of Slonim on different ways. As soon as it gets lighter near a village, they open

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Bazarna [Market] Street, the town clock and the little stores, the Polish Church and the way to the German Street

The central Vashlikover [Wasilkow] Street (Mitskevitsh)[1]

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The old “Hegdesh” [asylum for poor and sick Jews] on Sisurazer [Surasker] Street; in the Moyshev-Skeynim [home for the elderly], the People's Kitchen and the Reading Room

Once, this was the “Tank Fisher Hoyf [Yard]”, where you could walk through from the fish market to Zurazer [Suraska] Street[2]

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fire on us. The bullets fly in the direction of the trucks on which we ride. We turn into the nearby forest. But there a German outpost is positioned, blocking our way. As soon as we regroup in the forest, he gives a signal and a hail of bombs pours out of the planes. The forest is already on fire. We are positioning ourselves for battle. Tired of the road and the battle, I say to my comrade, “I'm going to sleep; let the bullet or the bomb hit me while I'm sleeping!” And I show him the place where I am going to sleep.

When I get up at dawn, I find burned trucks in the forest; civilians and many soldiers are camped there. I look around - none of my acquaintances is among them, I am left alone. I walk around searching and see groups of people camped there, but I don't know anyone. A captain of the Red Army and several soldiers laager there, I ask him to take me to the front. He replies:

“Bring a compass and we will go together!”

I run to look for a compass, but no one has one. I continue searching in the forest, no acquaintances here.

In between, I hear a woman's voice: “Water!”

I look and see a woman from Bialystok lying, half fainted, also going along with the Red Army. I hook her under and lead her to just a little water in a puddle. She drinks her fill and thanks me for saving her life. She asks to be allowed to walk with me. Her strength is fading.

I see that everything is desperate here, you have to go on. But the forest is surrounded by Germans, you can't get out. In the distance I see railroad tracks. I take a chance and slowly slide on my stomach to the rails, maybe it is possible to break out of the encirclement. As I approach, I see a bombed, overturned train. On the side several dead men and women and on a wagon lie some bicycles.

I take a bicycle and go to a village to find out where I am. As I enter the village, a farmer's wife comes to meet me. The first thing I do is ask her for food. She gives me a jug of sour milk, which I drink in one go, and ask her where I am.

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She answers that there are already Germans in the area and that we are 5 kilometers away from Slonim. My heart sinks. From a hill I see in the distance people walking in black clothes and I realize that they are Germans. I decide to walk through forests and fields to avoid them and make my way deeper into the Soviet Union. When I have left the village and walked 100 meters, I hear from a bush: “Stoy! [Stop]!” I look around and see a major from the Red Army and two soldiers hiding there. They ask me what I did in the village and I tell them. They check my documents and see that my document says “Yeyrev” (Jew); they are sure that I am not a spy and release me.

I ask them for the way to the Soviet Union, they show it to me. But I see that it is impossible to go further. Germans are lying in the bushes and shooting from ambush. As I stand there completely alone and desperate, I think about what to do now. I put the bicycle aside and walk slowly on. There I meet two Jews from Slonim. They suggest I go with them to Slonim.

I explain to them that the Germans are already in Slonim and they will shoot us as Jews; we had better go through forests and fields to the Soviet Union. They talk at me for a long time and try to convince me that the Germans are not doing anything there, one can go into the city. For lack of food and other things I have no other way out and have to go with them to Slonim, which is already occupied by the Germans.

While walking with them, I still try to convince them to make their way to the Soviet Union, but it is not possible. After a few kilometers you can already see Slonim and the Germans walking around there. It becomes melancholy and depressed. A hot day, the sun is burning and all thirsts [for water]. The fields are green, but instead of grain there are burnt trucks

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and tanks. I throw away the coat I am carrying and go to the city. From afar we hear, “Halt! Hände hoch!” [ “Stop! Hands up!”] I see shiny revolvers being drawn and pointed at us. “Stehen bleiben!” [“Freeze!”] We stop; looking over wordlessly. I sense death. We are searched and led to a yard with our hands raised. There they ask us immediately: “Jews? They're about to be shot!” and laugh sadistically. We do not answer. “Jews?” they shout at us again. The other two say—Jews. I know what's coming and answer: Poles, and pretend that I don't understand German. Immediately the Jews are “taken care of”. They are placed facing the wall and told that they are about to be shot. They plead, cry, that they should be allowed to live. They tremble with fear all over their bodies. The Germans discuss how they will murder the Jews. I continue to pretend that I don't understand German. They call in an interpreter. I speak in Polish and the interpreter translates into German. They talk for a long time. The first thing they do is beat me until I bleed and say that they will also shoot me. I remain completely indifferent. After all, I have prepared myself for this and I already regret that I let them talk to me. Such beautiful weather, such a world, I haven't been able to enjoy it at all, and soon it will all be over....

While I remain in mortal fear and brooding for a while, the German begins to inflict various sadistic taunts and blows on me once again. After that he tells me to leave and shows me the direction. Slowly, as if not surprised by this, I begin to walk and look around to the rear to see if there is no shooting, because usually they order to walk and then shoot from behind. After walking two hundred meters on a long road in the direction of Slonim, I hear a shot. Not far from me falls a Red Army soldier who manages to still shout “Voda!” [“Water!”]. I continue walking towards the city, take out my Soviet passport and my military book and tear it up so that I can continue walking

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as a Pole without documents. I did not suspect that from behind I was still being watched by the German who ordered me to leave. When he sees that I am tearing something, he yells from afar “Stop! Freeze!” I stop. He runs to me with his shiny revolver and asks me what I tore. I continue to pretend I don't understand him. He hits me again and takes me to a house where many civilians are sitting. He brings me to an officer and tells him everything that happened. The officer asks me what I tore up. I pretend not to understand. He orders me to sit apart and tells the soldier to go away. I am a little relieved, maybe with time he will forget what he was going to ask me. While sitting in the house, I see a Red Army soldier being brought in. The officer orders him to be shot. A German leads him away. A shot is heard, then another.... When he returns, the German laughingly reports how he shot him. The officer pats the German on the back with satisfaction. In the courtyard other civilians are tormented, they are led away and shot without questioning them. I realize the misery I am in.

When night falls, a woman who knows many languages goes around and interrogates those who have survived. She examines the hands of each one to see if he is a worker. Some she releases, others she lets lead away, which means their death. She comes to me and questions me. I answer in Polish that I am coming from work, was sent to Russia and am on my way home from Minsk to Bialystok. She looks at my hands, they are dirty, all this time they were not washed. She determines that I am telling the truth and lets me go to Slonim that night.

It is dark. I don't know where to go. Then I see Jewish writing on a door. I go into the corridor, knock on the door and ask to be let in. From the other side of the door I am asked, “Do you have a document?” I answer, “no.” They are afraid to let me in. I go to sleep in the corridor, at the foot of the door, my head rests on my hand. At dawn, a Jew wakes me up and questions me. They are

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all scared, they are afraid to let anyone in without a passport. They give me food. All day long, the neighbors hide in the attic. Through the cracks we see how Jews who are picked up on the street are beaten until they faint. Screams from Germans and pleading voices from defenseless Jews. This is the situation of Slonim in the first days under the Germans. The town has 60 percent Jews. I sleep in the house for a few days, they bring me a bed. It is decreed that until 30 years Jews must sleep in the Synagogue. When some of them are taken out, some come wounded by blows and some do not come back at all. I learn that one can get “travel papers” to go home and decide to turn back to Bialystok. The German is everywhere anyway.

I arrive at the municipal office, the courtyard there is full of people. Papers are handed out at tables and people enter that they are on their way home. The Germans dump the leftovers on the ground after the meal they received from nuns. Like wild animals, we throw ourselves on the ground and eat them, mixed with sand. I have to stand and wait for two days and receive a paper. People faint from hunger. A lad from Bialystok has gone blind after not being given food for 7 days. After he is given some food, he comes to. Human corpses with already rotten limbs are brought to Slonim. They are covered with flowers and buried in large “fraternal graves”. I go to see if perhaps among them is my traveling companion. But there is no face to be recognized. In masses Red Army soldiers are led from the battlefields and forests. Among them are wounded and weak who can hardly walk. They support each other. The mood is depressed. The Germans are even giving travel papers to Moscow (it seems that they have hurried a bit…).

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Under these conditions I leave Slonim together with several more Bialystokers.

On these hottest days of the year, without food, completely broken and depressed, we, one from Volkovisk and a comrade from Bialystok, Feyvl Yoskulka, decide to return to Bialystok on foot. The heat burns like fire. Hungry and thirsty we walk on the highway. Every two meters there are dead bodies not yet cleared away, broken and burned vehicles and tanks. Many groups of people go there, each of them somewhere else. The whole Highway is crowded with German military of different formations. When they see us pass, they shout from the line, “Jews!” Each of the Germans pulls himself up like a dog on a chain, pointing his hands to his neck, as if to strangle and shoot Jews. We walk depressed, thinking that every minute we are threatened with death by these wild animals. No, they are even worse than animals, because a satiated animal does no harm to anyone. People are stopped all the time. Some are shot, others are forced to bury the dead and then murdered as well, then people are let go. These are still “good Germans”.

All along the way, the villages are burned, some completely and some partially; only chimneys remain and here and there a chicken or a wandering cat walks out, which has not yet forgotten where its home once used to be. We take food from the cellars where the farmers keep potatoes. We take a few raw potatoes, not many, because we don't have the strength to carry them, and go on. From a distance we see the Germans stopping a group of people, checking them, taking them away and shooting them on the side; for no reason, just because they are Jews; or else, if they have short-cropped hair, because they are Red Army soldiers. We hide and when the Germans have passed, we crawl out of our hiding place and go on. We see the Jews and Red Army men who have just been shot. One minute

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earlier they were alive and dreaming, now their parents are waiting in vain for a letter from their sons...

We manage 35 kilometers on this day. Night falls, it's approaching closing time. We drag ourselves to a few houses where Jews live. This is Zelve [Zelva]. Once a large shtetl with many Jews, now only a few wander around in fear. We go to sleep and at dawn continue on our way to Volkovisk. On the highway are driving trucks with prisoners. From the trucks we are asked: “Kuda nas vzyat?” [“Where are they taking us?”]^[3] We are afraid to answer because the Germans might shoot us just for talking to prisoners. Red Army prisoners are led on foot, Germans pass them on bicycles and shoot any prisoner who cannot or barely walk and falls back a little. The Germans first give the prisoners a short break in the middle of the road, then order them to get back in line, and finally shoot into their group for no reason. Others, observing this, hide in the overturned trucks and tanks, but they are shot into. By the time we reach Bialystok, hardly a few of the tens of thousands of prisoners will remain...

We go to a village and ask for food. The farmers say that they have nothing, because so many people pass through and they have to give something to everyone. But here and there we get a piece of bread. They tell us that the Germans are killing all the Jews in the shtetlekh and in many shtetlekh the Poles are helping to do it. We go on and towards evening we arrive in Volkovisk, which is completely burned. The comrade from Volkovisk takes us to his parents, who live in the burned bathhouse, because there are no apartments left. His mother cooks some food on a brick in a piece of tin and asks us to sleep on the ground. In the morning we say goodbye to them and leave Volkovisk.

In Horodok we see in the distance the burnt sawmill. I inquire with the Khayot family, our acquaintances. They tell me that my brother Nyome was there and persuaded the youth, no one had

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to flee with the Red Army. Beybe was also with them, already on the way back, with his hat shot through. Because of the rapid encirclement, no one had been able to make it to the Soviet Union. I am only 40 kilometers short of Bialystok. I sleep through the night and then set off once again.

What the Germans Did Shortly after They Entered Bialystok

Four kilometers before Bialystok we can already see the church spire. We feel happier to finally be in the city after such a walk. Our feet are lifting with more courage and we are already going faster. When we turn from Varshavske [Warszawska] Street, we already see the burnt municipal office, a few civilians, but no Jews. The streets are full of German military. I hurry through the side streets to our house. Only two weeks “the German” is here, and already such a great destruction! The very next day, after the Germans entered the city, they surrounded the entire Synagogue courtyard and Surazka, Legyonova [Legonowa] and Pyaske [Piezza] Street all the way to the woods, with troops walking around with their sleeves rolled up, weapons in their hands and grenades in their belts. They entered the small Zalevne [Zalewna Street], Genshe [Gesia] and Pivne Street and other surrounding alleys, invaded all the houses where Jews live, drove the men out and filled the [Great] Synagogue with them, which they set on fire with the living Jews inside. About a thousand people perished. Jews they encountered in the streets were shot. Some of them they threw alive into the burning Synagogue; one German grabbed the head, another the legs, they took a momentum, and the Jew was already lying in the flames of the Synagogue, writhing in pain. Some in the Synagogue who did not want to be burned hanged themselves by their trouser belts. A Christian sneaked along

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and opened the side door of the Synagogue. Thirty Jews escaped outside and told what was happening inside. It was the “strozh” [janitor] of the Synagogue who had done this. But there were also people who even showed the Germans where Jews lived.

But that is not all. The Germans go into all the alleys around the Synagogue, throwing detonation grenades into the houses, shooting the women, and impaling the children on their bayonets in front of their mothers. Many Jews are shot as they try to crawl over fences to save themselves. This lasted for a whole day. All the small streets around the Synagogue burned.. The atmosphere is mingled with gunshots and screams.

Exactly how many Jews perished is not known. Many are carrying charred or half-burned people who were brought out. The Jews in the other streets who were in hiding were not harmed, but each of them had a missing family member. Many of the rescued come out with only what they had on their bodies.

A few days later, the Germans went house to house in the remaining streets, pulled out the men, lined them up, and asked, “What are you, a worker or an intellectual worker?” The men didn't know what to answer. Should they say an 'intellectual worker'? That was no good, because as a 'scholar' you were [with them] a communist whom they would shoot. Should they say an 'ordinary worker'? Then you would clearly be a communist and would also be shot. They were at a loss. Everyone stated exactly what they were not, hoping to save themselves. But, it came to the same thing; whatever they said, they were arrested, led through the streets. They were ordered to sing Jewish songs and dance, with various tricks. We do not know where they were taken. They were immortalized under the name of Thursday because this happened on Thursday. The woman who lost her husband or son that day was now called

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“di Donershtike“ [The Thursday’s]. If one told that she was one of the “Thursday's”, one knew what that meant.

Every day Jews were seized at work. It was considered the greatest luck if one came home from work and had not been beaten. There was no more talk of getting paid for the work. In some places one was given a bit of soup to eat for a whole day's work, and if there was anything left over, and if it happened that one was allowed to take something for the second time, one brought some of it home for one's wife and child. Many Jews from the Synagogue courtyard, who had only been able to save their bare skin, began to look for work in order to have something to eat.

But for the Germans, this is still nothing. On the second Shabbat, the streets are cordoned off and all men who went to work were arrested. In addition, they go from house to house and take out all the men, without distinction whether young or old. They are all driven to the “zawierzyniec”, to the park in the forest, where the football field is. They are beaten and tortured in an inhuman way. Their screams can be heard far into the forest and in the city.

Before that time the “Judenrat” had already been formed [with its seat] in the house of the old people's home, Kupyetske [Kupiecka] Street 34. One runs to the Judenrat and asks to mediate so that the arrested Jews are released. The Judenrat sends principals to the then head of the city. The latter orders them to sign a document stating that the Russians, before leaving the city, had set fire to the Jewish quarter with the Great Synagogue. They, the Germans, had only extinguished the fire. At gunpoint, the Rabbi, Dr. Roz[en]man, signs the document. But that's not all. “The Executioner” demands tributes of several kilos of silver and a few million rubles. Then, he announces, he will release the Jews. Having no other choice, the demand is published by the Judenrat. Women go about the city, crying and pleading: “They don't want gold, [only] silver and money, save our husbands and sons!”

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Rings, silver candlesticks and everything that can be given are brought to the Judenrat. On the door of the Judenrat there is a large poster: “All administrators of stores and institutions or directors of factories who still have 'government money' from the time of Soviet rule must bring it as a tribute to the Judenrat, otherwise they will be expelled from the Jewish community”. Several days in a row, everything they have is brought in to save the people, even more is collected than “the German” asked for. They bring it in, and the answer is: “Tomorrow they will all be released!” But the Germans have already killed them, and until today one still waits for the “tomorrow”. Later we learned that they were taken outside the city to the road between Vashilkove [Wasilków] and Pyetrashe [Pietrasze Forest] and shot there. Not one of the 3000 Jews, young and old, has come back as of today. The women whose husbands and children were arrested on that Shabbat were immortalized with the name “Shabesdike” [The Shabbat's]. From our family, among the “Shabbat's” were the brother of Khlavne's wife, the brother of Genye and Khayim Velvel, the brother of Feyge Bayle. That's all I remember. I and Beybe managed to lie hidden in the attic that day and not get between them.

In all the commotion of people standing next to the Judenrat, shocked, silent, looking at each other with questioning looks as to what to do, a comrade joins them, Epshteyn. He sticks a small note on the door of the Judenrat that one should not bring consecrated rings and silver candlesticks as contribution, because it will come to extermination anyway, unless one offers resistance. They read the little note, which is barely visible next to the big poster with the “Exclusion” and they say: “ Resistance “. That's another blow, like the one people got when the Russians withdrew on all fronts, “how can we Jews offer

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resistance?”… Comrade Epshteyn later perished in the battle with the Germans, when he was with me as a partisan in the forest in 1943. He was Feygl's friend, the son of Khaye the Grober‘s [digger], who had a store at the city gate [?].

The new legal decisions against the Jews do not come to an end yet. Jews are forbidden to walk on the sidewalk, all Jews must walk on the pavement, near the gutter or in the gutter. The sidewalk is only for the Germans and other nations.... Very few Jews are on the streets; at work they are grabbed and beaten. The gathering point for all is at the Judenrat. The situation is

Nyome Kot, perished in detention camp

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to “Shteyn”^[4] and “Batshnitse” [Bocznica]. But only a few hundred are taken, the others are beaten because they crowd. There is no bread at all. People trade with each other, one has flour and needs groats, the other has potatoes and needs milk for a small child. The person who arranges the barter also earns something for it.

When I came home from the walk, the first thing I had to do was lie down in bed. While walking I did not feel the pain in my feet. I had walked with impetuosity, but as soon as I crossed the threshold into our apartment, I could no longer take a step and had to lie down. At home I met my parents, Leyble and my sister. Nyome did not return from his walk. I learn from my comrade, who had gone home with him, that an old woman they met on the way had asked Nyome to help her carry a package of things. In the package of things Nyome took from her, she had put in a military shirt, many of which were lying on the highway. The Germans later stopped [the small group] and searched them. Based on the shirt, they mistook Nyome for a Red Army soldier who had changed clothes and took him [and the comrade] into custody. My comrade suggested that he escape, but Nyome was very exhausted, had swollen feet from marching and could not run away. Nyome stayed in the prison camp, the comrade fled. I did not receive any further news about him. Because of the stupidity and naivety of a woman at such a time, Nyome got into the prison camp and suffered the fate of all captured Red Army soldiers, 99 percent of whom were shot or starved to death. So this is how Nyome's life ended in July 1941.

There was not a bit of food at home. After we left our parents and sister alone, they could not stock up. I had to look for work as soon as I had finished that long walk. I get a job with a German, whose room I have to fit out, and I steal half of the flour,

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he gives me for clay[making] and take it home. It will be a feast of joy, we already have something to eat! A few “cookies” instead of bread, and flour boiled in water, this is the food in those days.

Every day you have to get out of the house, squeeze in between thousands who want to get work just for a meal. Three of us go outside, me, father and Beybe. Sometimes one of us gets a job, sometimes none. The one who makes it eats up and brings the leftovers home for the others.

Next to the Judenrat there is already a new notice: “All Jews from the age of 14 up to the highest age, men and women, must wear a yellow Star of David 10 centimeters wide and long on their hearts and on their shoulders. Jews without a yellow Star of David will be shot!” This again hits everyone like a bomb. One of the Judenrat goes out into the streets and shows how the yellow patch must be worn. Everyone looks for yellow linen, one dyes white linen yellow, but is ashamed to go out on the streets. Therefore, many just sit at home for weeks. But it all helps nothing, if you want to go out, you have to turn on [the patch], otherwise you can pay with your life. The Jews themselves have to make sure that everyone wears it. One from each house puts it on, goes out into the street, and comes back shortly after. I can't go out with it. It's terrible to see everyone walking with the patches on their shoulders, and in the front additionally sticks the other half of the pain.You try to make it beautiful, but nothing comes of it - a patch remains a patch. Gradually you get used to it, too, because there is already a bigger worry: Jews are being locked up in a ghetto! We absolutely do not know how we will live there, what we can eat, because already people are starving.

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The Ghetto

The whole Jewish population is now occupied by one issue: Where will the ghetto be? How will people live there? How many streets? What will one work with? What will one live on? But “the German” doesn't leave much time for reflection. Unpleasant decrees are pouring in, one after the other. One is just still in the process of clarifying how one will live with the one decree, when the next one already comes. In the four years of German rule, there will not be a minute's peace!

Jews carry beds and bundles of belongings from all corners of the city. All move to Kupiecka, Nowy Świat, Tsheple [Ciepła] Street and the whole surrounding area, which is not the ugliest of Bialystok. It is said that it was the Judenrat that enforced it should be in a nice area of the city. It cost money again to bribe the city commander. The Jews themselves build a large fence in all the streets of two and a half meters high, and half a meter of barbed wire is added on top. Two gates are built as an exit, one on Kupiecka and one on Yurovetske [Jurowiecka] Street. A small square on Zhabe [Żabia, Frog] Street serves as a cemetery, which, if you look, is getting more crowded with every passing day. When someone dies a “normal” death-that is, dies because of the conditions in the ghetto—they say, “that Jew is a wise man!”

All Poles and non-Jews must leave the streets designated for the ghetto. They are given apartments in another part of the city. The 60,000 Jews are herded across to their neighborhood. They are not allowed to occupy more than 3 meters per person, but gladly less. Two or three families move into a single room. They are separated by a door or thick walls. All Bote-Medroshim [Houses of Studies], all stores, where there is space, are occupied. There is no place for the population. School buildings, which are located in the ghetto, are also occupied—there is no need to study anymore... Furniture is carried to the attics—there is no place for it in the room—

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or is left in the former apartment. The richer Jews rent carriages, for which the Poles take a piano or things from the beautiful bedroom. “It doesn't matter,” they say, “you don't need it anymore.” The burned-out Jews carry nothing with them; the poorer population from Khanaykes [Chanajki] or Pyaskes [Piaski], carry as much as they can on their shoulders or on a handcart.

In the “ghetto”—a horrible picture. Everybody is dragging. Small children, old Jews and Jewish women, who were bedridden before and can hardly walk, have to carry bedding, beds, dishes and wood. That' s how it goes for a few days. At the same time, Germans with cameras have positioned themselves in the streets and are taking pictures. All the courtyards are full of dumped furniture and things. There are fights, unwanted people come in and you have to live with them, Poles join in, beat and rob in the yards, and no one can defend themselves. But, everything is transported across. The towage comes to a halt, the fence is put up, we are already sitting there locked in, with a guard of Germans around us, and can no longer go out.

Before the time of the move, Poles come and bring a little potatoes, greens and ask for suits of clothes each for 20 kilos of potatoes. I myself sell a suit of clothes and shoes and get 25 kilos of potatoes, 3 kilos of peas and a little flour. Most of the time you stock up for a few weeks. What you have, you give away to get a little bit of food. We don't know how long we have to stock up for.

You are not allowed to go further than the fence. After 9 o'clock in the evening, you are not allowed to go out on the street at all. At night, people meet and talk about how they will live under such conditions. There are thefts, mostly of food. Everyone lives close together, one blames it on the other, one does not know each other and so it comes to arguments, until people no longer speak to each other in their apartments.

A Jewish police force is to be established. Anyone who wants to can register for it. It is rumored which elements want to become policemen now, probably

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the worst, from the underworld. But, when the Jewish police, who call themselves by the German name “Ordnungsdienst”, show up with their green hats, everyone is surprised: it is precisely the scholars, the graduates of high schools and merchants who are known as “intelligentsia”.

Some of the people go to work outside the ghetto early in the morning, with slips of paper in their hands that allow them to pass through the gate. On the way back they bring some vegetables they bought or got at work. Inside, behind the gate, the family of the lucky person stands waiting to see what he will bring from work today. A new kind of poor emerges: Those who ask something from the one who brings something inside. Early in the morning the Germans come and take Jews to work. At least girls go, men are afraid. Maybe one will not come back. The girls try to please.

“Today I put on the blouse, the German took me and not the other one”... “I am blond, he always chooses me”...These are the conversations you hear at that time.

In the ghetto, a pood [16,38 kg] of flour costs $3. Bread is baked sequentially in the bakeries that are located in the ghetto. The person who bakes takes a loaf of bread for himself from the baked goods. Gradually, more and more Jews go out to work. Factories are established in the ghetto where work is done for the Germans. Everyone has to work, there is forced labor for children from 14 years old and older men and women up to 70 years old. Everyone wants to get a job outside the ghetto, because there you meet with the population, which trades for leather and suits for food, which you carry in [to the ghetto]. One sells more to another, and gradually a trade begins between the people, which causes the price of food to fall.

A Jew who goes to work is given 250 grams of bread for 2 days by the Judenrat.

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People with handcarts drive flour from the Judenrat to the bakeries and also earn something. Others risk their lives. Children as young as 10 sneak out through the fence onto the street and run into a village to exchange something for food. Leaving the ghetto is sentenced to death. That's why children go, because it's easier for them to sneak out. The one who doesn't work in the ghetto sells his stuff to the one who works outside, and so they both earn. One gets edibles for his stuff and the other gets something for carrying the edibles in and doing the transaction. In this way, one gradually gets used to it, and soon even a small store opens. Here people bring in surplus goods, and the store then sells everything individually to the population. On the “Nayvelt” [Nowy Świat], Prage's garden, a market is created where middlemen buy in large quantities what they then resell at high individual prices. However, as gradually more and more go out to work and bring more in, products become cheaper. Life, you can say, normalizes, provided that there are no more unpleasant dispositions.

Early in the morning at 6 o'clock, those who work outside the ghetto begin to go out. They have a piece of paper in their hands on which is written on which street they work. At the gate there are two Germans with rifles and two unarmed Jewish policemen, checking and feeling everyone to make sure they are not carrying anything out to sell. People used to put on good suits under their dirty work clothes or tie on pieces of leather or tablecloths to sell them at work. For many, the things are found, they are taken away from them and they are beaten for it, others manage to smuggle [things] through. One asks the other, “[is today] a good watch? Can something be brought out?” If yes, one goes off with it, if no, one carries nothing through that day. It happens that on one day one of the guards does not make a search, but the other one does very well,

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then everyone crowds to the “good German”, getting punches for shoving.

After going through hell, you have to walk on the road where the corresponding markers are. In case you are caught on another road, you will be beaten and searched. If something is found on a person, he is arrested. For a whole day, Jews, children and women, drag themselves along the pavement with bundles, which they carry into the ghetto at lunchtime, from 12 to 2 pm. When you meet a Gestapo agent, you are stopped and everything is taken from you, even money. When you go to work, you are not allowed to take any money with you, because “what does a Jew need money for, when he is forbidden to buy anything, and where does he get the money from, when he is not paid at work”? Patrols of Germans and Poles move along the street. When they see you with a yellow patch on the asphalt of the street, they call you over and ask, “what are you doing here when you work on a different street?” If they only take your money and the bundle you carry, they are good Germans, because others take you to the Gestapo, where you get 20 lashes on your bare bottom. After that you cannot sit for months, but that does not stop anyone; under such conditions you have to continue to make purchases.

No sooner have you bought a bit to eat than you have to bribe your German employer with a few marks so that he doesn't take it away and let you carry it home after work. Fats are carried on your body, under your clothes, but the Germans at the gate pat you down from head to toe and administer blows if you don't stop immediately. Next to the gate are sacks of potatoes, kilos of butter, bottles of cooking oil, chickens. Others carry their goods back and hide them in ruins for the next day. Perhaps there will be a better guard tomorrow, although that is rarely the case. The Germans take away whole carloads of food and sell that somewhere. But if someone managed to smuggle something through, one of the Jewish police comes and demands a part of it, after all, he also has to live. If you don't give him anything, he sends you back to the guard and everything is taken away. This is their income...

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The higher [Jewish] police, the so-called commanders, who are not at the gate, arrest you and make a bigger deal out of it. A group of five people was formed from Zelikovitsh, Kvater, Fin and two others, who usually arrest people in the basement of the Judenrat building. There was the prison that they called “Sing-Sing”. It was where they used to slaughter poultry, on Yatke [Butcher Shop] Street. [The group] would usually come at night, claiming that the Gestapo was calling for you. From there, we knew, one never came back. One of the five used to claim that if you gave him a hundred dollars, he would bribe the Germans and they wouldn't need to lead you to the Gestapo. They often arrested communists and demanded a lot of money. If the Gestapo actually demanded an arrest, then it was all for nothing. The point was that they acted on their own initiative to extort money. A person who bought his freedom from them had to hide all the time, because in their impudence they would otherwise arrest him two or three times.

As for Zelikovitsh, however, these were still minor offenses. As an intermediary between the ghetto and the Gestapo, Zelikovitsh helped himself to a lot of the things that the Judenrat had to deliver to the Germans. He took home skins and silk fabric, but at the same time demanded on his own initiative whatever he wanted. He reached such a status in those days that the Germans chose him as the best Jew and allowed him to go without the yellow patch. However, his business affairs grew larger and larger until they burst. He fell out of favor with Shimanski, who was the city president at the time, and on the occasion of his visit he gave him a beating and painted a yellow patch on his front and back. He conducted an audit [of Zelikovitsh] and found in his apartment, hidden in the walls, a lot of gold, silk and cloth goods. He was arrested and died in prison. The other four comrades were sent to a concentration camp.

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However, they managed to free themselves with the help of money.

Such people—the scum of their own people, who, in view of the already hard, simply inhuman conditions in the ghetto, made life even more difficult for others, were not few in number. The lower-ranking [Jewish] police also used to arrest people, claiming that they were not working and would therefore be put to hard labor. Every day this happened. Now, since the wealthier ones usually bought their way out, they arrested those who did have work. One could not even go out on the street on Sunday for fear of being arrested at work. Most of the time it cost money to get free. This was the income of the Jewish police.

The Judenrat was composed essentially of the former functionaries of the Jewish community who remained after all the arsons and arrests of the Germans: The Rabbi, Dr. Roz[en]man, Engineer Barash, Subotnik, Goldberg, Vishnyevski [Wisniewski] and others. Barash was to be glorified as a man who became the savior of the Bialystok Jews from greatest extermination. But after he delivered people to be shot, he became very compromised and lost a lot of his authority.

The work of the Judenrat consisted of giving in to the Germans in everything they demanded; even in “selling” a part of the Jews for the price that another part of the Jews remained alive. And they [actually] believed that this would succeed. They wanted to gain time at all costs until the liberation of the ghetto by the Red Army. They did not believe the German who said, “in case we lose at 12 o'clock, we will murder all but one Jew 5 minutes to 12!” The Judenrat established factories in the ghetto, implemented

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all the new machines and created huge tailor shops to sew uniforms for the German Wehrmacht, plus shoemaker shops that sewed boots. There were also belt factories and laundries that washed German linen from the front. The greatest tragedy for the workers was when later Jewish clothes from Treblinka arrived for washing, in which the documents could still be seen. The ghetto was turned into a factory where one had to work for 250 grams of bread for two days. However, one did not even get this, if one did not meet the estimated standard. If you were too slow at work, your ration was taken away and it was said, as we were told, “death to him who does not work!” Even older women, old men and 14-year-old children sat with knitting needles and made gloves and socks for them for the winter. Work was done in three rotations, and those who just didn't have a place in the factory had to work at home. So our little sister Raytsele, at the age of 14, had to knit gloves for the Germans, a whole ten hours a day. The standard was calculated in such a way that you could not fulfill it with less time. Afterwards you had to take [the product] to the factory and show the department manager that you had made it well. If it was bad, you had to improve it in your “free time” and did not get a portion of bread. German private individuals also set up factories in the ghetto, they took advantage of the free Jewish labor hands. Giving a little porridge for work was enough, and they were already considered the best workplaces.

In general, it was mainly the richer people who worked in the ghetto, because one could not live on what one got for the work. The poorer part had to work outside the ghetto, doing superhumanly heavy jobs, plus receiving beatings. The one positive aspect was that you could usually buy something and smuggle it into the ghetto, thereby earning a bit. However, since on the

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way the goods were usually confiscated, the fence was undermined in certain places, which were only little guarded. It was agreed with the children that they would wait there and smuggle the things over. Large quantities of food were also brought in on carts of dung or in cesspools. After the dirt had been poured out and the containers washed out, meat, flour and other things were put in. Of course, the Jewish policeman and the German at the gate had to be bribed to let the carts through. The arrival of winter brought a new problem: wood was needed to cook something. However, they did not let anyone bring in wood and even from the factories it was not allowed to take the smallest board. The Jewish police usually searched each worker as he left the factory, even looking in the pockets of his clothes, and threw out of the factory anyone they found with only a few [larger] shavings.

Only sawdust and wood shavings were allowed. So life dragged on until the first winter of 1941, when a new unpleasant order [“gzeyre“] turned up.

Pruzhany is a shtetl next to the Bialovyezher [Białowieża] forests, far from Bialystok, from where the German Gestapo leader Fridel, ordered that twelve thousand Jews be sent. After visits from all the commissions and mediators who had looked around the ghetto, the Gestapo said, “there are too many Jews in the ghetto!”

Very often Germans used to come to the Judenrat in taxis. On this occasion, the Jewish police ordered everyone to stay at home and not to be seen. Barash then usually drove out in a hackney cab and showed [the Germans] how diligently the Jews were working in the factories. When they [the Germans] came in, they would be given presents and measurements were taken for boots and clothing.But this did not help. Their answer was short: “Too many Jews in the ghetto, the non-productive ones must be deported!”

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The Judenrat sets to work: a special office is created to register all skilled workers. The street next to the Judenrat is black with people; all become “skilled workers”. Suddenly, a second rumor, exchanged under the seal of secrecy, but everyone knows about it immediately: those who work outside the ghetto will not be sent out. Immediately, everyone is hunting for a job outside the ghetto. Sinister elements take advantage of this: They demand money for such a certificate. It becomes clear to everyone that the Jewish police will not be led away. Overnight, fresh policemen grow out of the ground, like mushrooms [“bitkes”] after the rain. They already had a name, “the 50 Dolerdikn [Dollar's]”, because only for 50 dollars and powerful patronage you got a green police hat.

The days go by and the rumors change. A rumor is going by that you can save elderly people who are unable to work, if you attribute them to a person who is working [outside]. People are rushing around headless, my aunt Shifre comes running, asking me to register her [ together with my name]. I try to make her understand that this registration will not help unless you get protection or have money to “pay” the people in charge. You can have the best job, and yet you are sent out. But at such a time you cannot convince people, when you are in danger of drowning, you hold on to the straw. I take her to Judenrat, stand in line for a whole day, and then have her register on my work slip.

[The day of] deportation is approaching. Every evening policemen carry out notes from the Judenrat that one should line up at dawn on Fabritshne [Fabryczna] Street, where a special gate has been erected.The notes are distributed according to the alphabet and everyone is now in expectation; also to my letter, “K” -Kot, a note arrives. I come back from work outside the ghetto as usual, but I don't bring more, we will at least be able to eat what is left. My heart is pounding as I enter the ghetto through the gate, I am already tired of answering everyone who envies me my work and asks me if I already have someone registered on my paper.

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Coming home, everyone is sitting there dejectedly, their things thrown about like after a pogrom. Everything is clear to me and I don't even ask. I don't ask for food either. The paper from the Judenrat is on the table; the family has to line up at 5 o'clock the next morning. Even Nyome, who was no longer in the ghetto, was not forgotten by the Judenrat (apparently he had received money from someone for having Nyome entered in his place). Neighbors and acquaintances come in, don't even say good evening, stand in a corner with a sad face and try to comfort: You are working, what does the Judenrat want from you?

I run away to my workplace to ask the Germans to sign that they need me. But I don't meet anyone. Father meets the German [employer] at his workplace, and the latter gives him

My parents

I come back home, we receive advice not to go to line up.

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But, how to do that, when the family's existence in the ghetto is already canceled, the police seize them, detain them and put them up for transport anyway. We pack as much as we can. We have to leave many things behind; at that moment, there is not even someone to whom we can sell them.

There is heavy frost on the road and fine snowflakes are falling. For the last time we heat the room well, we have to leave the wood anyway. Father sits silently next to the stove and warms himself. He coughs a lot, as usual. Raytsele, nestled on the empty bed against our mother, looks at me, looking for a rescue. Mother reminds me, “Did you pack Nyome's suit, too?” It is the only thing she has left of Nyome. In the hardest days of hunger she did not let me sell it but said, “when he comes back, he should at least have something to wear...”

The clock gongs louder than usual after every hour, for it is quiet in the parlor. We only exchange glances. Now the walls are talking, we have been together so long, so long, and now...

The clock strikes 5. It is still dark on the street. We all get up, the neighbors we say goodbye to, shed a tear; they console us with the fact that nobody knows who will have to go next. Those who bring us there take the bundles from us and we, agitated and bitter, leave our home. The furniture and many things remain behind. The pictures on the walls will bear witness that people lived here.

On the streets only people with luggage walk, you don't recognize anyone, everyone is excited, groaning, only their footsteps creak in the snow. We reach Fabrithsne [Fabryczna] Street. There are people from the police who let through only those whom they have called. The others they drive away with sticks. A policeman takes the paper from us and directs us to the place where we have to wait. We put our luggage on the ground. All along Fabryczna Street there are snowed-in people, knocking one foot against the other; there are old people with gray beards, sick people and also babies. We hear

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Jewish women groaning, old Jews reciting psalms and soothing words of endearment from mothers to their young children. All of this is intermixed with beating and shouting from the Germans.

The gate opens and trucks drive in. We are told that the Judenrat had negotiated that we be transported by cars and not have to run on foot (a great boon paid for with much money and favors!). The Germans, along with a Judenrat foreman, start checking the lists. People beg the Germans, they show papers and signatures where they work and that they are needed at work. But, only at a hint from the person from the Judenrat, the Germans let go of someone. The rest are pushed on a truck. The Germans, meanwhile, deal out blows; never do they refrain!...Someone comes up to me. I, father and Beybe are standing, below us, on top of the luggage, are sitting Mom and Reitsele. Father shows his paper and begs, I show my paper and say nothing. How could I beg a bandit?

Mom starts to cry and Raytsele, looking at her, also cries. Seeing the scene and the chaos all around, here letting people go home and there pushing them into cars, I grab the packed things and say to Beybe, “Don't wait for the German's decision, grab packs and run from the square!” Across the street lived my comrade. I threw all the things in to him and hurried home with the family through back alleys and courtyards. Everyone rejoices; we are back in our four walls; father at the stove, the others on the empty beds, which are so dear to us now…

All the other Jews, except for small exceptions, are hoisted onto the trucks and drive towards Pruzhany, leaving behind a lot of bundles. (Shifre with the aunt [sic] were also taken away). Before Pruzhany they have to go through a checkpoint. The trucks stop in front of a small house. The Jews are ordered to get out and go into the house one by one. There the Germans order them to strip stark naked and take away

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what they like. The naked people are beaten, including the women, and they are brought to Pruzhany, traumatized and deprived.

In the shtetl they meet very few Jews. The entire peasant population was taken away by the Germans so that the partisans in the Białowieża forest would not encounter anyone from whom they could obtain food. The Jews occupy these homes but have neither employment nor anything to support themselves. They try to return through various routes. Many of them are seized and arrested. Those who make it back to the Bialystok ghetto arrive with frostbitten feet and other limbs. They do not even find a place to live, because their old apartments are already occupied. They have to avoid saying they are from Pruzhany, so they exchange their surnames and say they are from other places.

The deportations to Pruzhany last for three weeks, and a total of over 8000 people are taken away. Towards the end, a great demoralization arises, because one realizes that the Judenrat selects only poor people and workers from the population, who have no bribe money and no protection. So people stop lining up until one fine early morning the transports are stopped. It is claimed this was achieved by the Judenrat through bribery. In reality, however, this is the result of demoralization, and because, moreover, a sufficient number had already been transported away.

After the evacuations, the ghetto is reduced in size, several streets are excluded (half of Polne [Polna] and part of Zhidovske [Židovska] Street), the Jews, God forbid, should not live too spacious. The opinion spread by the Judenrat is solidifying again that one must work; if we worked more, it would save us from a new “gzeyre”.

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The First Activity of the Underground Organization

However, a small part of the people in the ghetto, mostly the youth, have been brought up in a revolutionary spirit and make a different statement: “We can be saved if we resist, if we go to the forest to fight, unite with all the others who are fighting against the Germans, this is a hard way but an honorable, more safe and humane way that puts us on a par with all the fighting peoples.”

This was understood only by the communist youth and parts of the Hashomer Hatzair. In the most critical moment of our people they united to fight against the enemy; not with work, which only helped people to beg for their lives, but with weapons in their hands to defend their lives!

There also came people of other [political] directions, but not as a whole organization, but privately, with the recommendation of acquaintances who guaranteed us that this person is not a traitor. In case of betrayal, the rule was that one would be shot by one's own comrades. In the beginning, the comrades who joined the organization had very poor military training and hardly any had served in the military. This is the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people. People always looked at military service and its training as a kind of “gzeyre”, and those who could avoid military service did so. Now we were feeling the effects. However, we comrades had a sound mind and the conviction that there was no other way for us.

Where were we going to get weapons? How was that to be organized? These were the most difficult questions for us. Around Bialystok the forests were small, we heard nothing of partisans and

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could not make any contact with them. Our organization decides to form a partisan group ourselves and to test sending out the first comrades. While we are mobilizing the people, our number increases and we divide the ghetto into districts, in each of which a group is formed, from which only one leader meets with the leader of another group. We set up a radio receiver and report on political news at small meetings. But still the Germans are getting ahead. There is no glimmer of hope.

Given our fear of the Judenrat, which arrests those like us for allegedly “bringing harm to the Jews in the ghetto,” we work in the utmost secrecy. Even Beybe (my brother), who also belonged to our organization, initially told me nothing about it. Only before I go out to a partisan group does he tell me that he already knows that I will have to go out shortly. Every member was given the duty to steal necessary parts for rifles from his workplace.

And so I steal various parts of rifles from where I work, hide them and carry them to the ghetto bit by bit. Depending on the possibility, all the comrades do it (if one is caught, of course, he gets the death penalty). In the ghetto the parts are assembled. Those who work in the locksmith's shop in the ghetto, under the leadership of our comrade Farber, secretly produce grenades and smuggle them from the factory to our organization. In this way everything is prepared. My comrade, Motl Tsheremashne, works for the Gestapo; he makes a key to the entrance door to the weapons room, steals out two rifles and pushes them through the fence to his wife, with whom he had arranged this beforehand. Each member risks 100% of his life in the smallest thing he does. So on such conditions, only a small part of the youth, the revolutionary youth, is working. Girls also help. Girls,

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who work for Germans, steal bandages and medicines. Everything is prepared under the greatest risks, we have to beware of the Judenrat, the Jewish police and Jewish spies, who are not missing either.

For many Jews our point of view is still strange. They were quicker to follow the Judenrat's idea that time could be gained by working, although it is clear to see how “living pieces” were torn out of the ghetto and how thousands of the Jews of Bialystok were already missing; of whom it is not even known how they perished. The Judenrat tells everyone that it means nothing, that it will pass. They, the members of the Judenrat, are robbing the Jews of the ghetto, making a good day of it with the loot, and they don't feel comfortable fighting. They think that they can save their own lives by the death of others. But the organization educates its comrades and manages to gradually break down the propaganda of the Judenrat.

There are exterminations and shootings in Slonim, Baranovitsh [Baranovichi], and Volkovisk. Jews come running from mass graves, where they buried whole shtetls alive (the Germans even economized their bullets for the Jews). We believe the people who arrive and report, but the Judenrat keeps feeding the ghetto the same fairy tales, that these are lies and “we stay alive, we just have to work, work some more. No harm is done to those who work”.

On the occasion of the “few” murders of thousands of Jews that happen in Bialystok, the organization cannot yet act; it is simply still very young and does not yet have a “foot in the door” with leaders who can obtain information. However, when our comrade Joschke is arrested, we help him escape from the concentration camp, and after he tells us everything that happened, we decide to resist when there is a shooting in the Bialystok ghetto. All preparations for this are already underway.

The help from the “Polish street” is minimal, almost non-existent. The Polish socialists are silent, doing nothing; the nationalists are

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against the Jews, helping the Germans. We get support only from the Russians who stayed in place after failing to get into the Soviet Union, and from the P.P.R. (Polska Partia Robotnitsha), the Polish Communist Party. But their number is very small and everyone had to be extremely careful, because just for a meeting of a Jew with a Pole, they used to shoot the Jew and his whole family that they found with him.

In the ghetto, not a week goes by without certain arrests to “keep it quiet”. However, until the great extermination, when one has already stepped on one's parents, brothers and sisters with one's own feet, and one has picked them up from the streets with one's own hands and placed them in mass graves, until this time, to express it in the ghetto language, everything runs “normally” and “nothing at all” happens. Not even when the Gestapo leader Friedel demands that three Jews be hanged.

Early in the morning we all go to work with the only concern of being able to buy something and bring it in on the way back from work, but, when we return today, each of us cringes: no one is standing by the gate, no one has to wait, the Germans do not search, there is no line in front of the gate. What's going on? Another news, fitting for New Year, New Year's Eve? It must have been quiet for too long!

As we walk in, we don't see a single soul on the street, a consternation grips us, it chokes us. “What has happened,” I ask a Jew I finally meet as I sadly walk on. “Today three Jews will be hanged in the ghetto,” is his answer. Continuing, I see: Yes, it is the truth, a gallows is already being erected opposite the Judenrat, on Kupiecka Street. It is quiet on the streets. You only hear the banging of the hammers building the gallows. What a good beginning of the new year 1942!

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Why are the Jews being hanged, and who will be hanged, I ask myself, and later learn the answer. There were many workplaces where you were severely beaten up on the day you were assigned to work there. Moreover, at these workplaces you could not buy anything to take to the ghetto for a piece of bread. One could not last long at these workplaces. But Jews had to come to these workplaces as well, and the Judenrat had to provide the necessary number of workers every day.

So the Labor Office used to determine that the people who worked in a factory in the ghetto would go to such a [bad] job one day a week, because the work in the ghetto was considered easier work. People worked there without control by the Germans; there were only Jewish supervisors. The richer Jews, however, did not want to work for Germans outside the ghetto one day a week. They were allowed to “hire” a person in their name (such a person was called “Malekh”, [angel] ). Such a “Malekh” used to cost 5 or 10 marks per working day, calculated according to the number of blows that awaited him at work. For 5 marks one usually got a loaf of bread in the ghetto. However, this was very little for a person with a family. Therefore, it was common to “take” (swipe) something at work if possible. The three people also worked as “Angels” at such a workplace, an edible oil factory that was formerly in Jewish and now in German hands. A few days before the New Year, a balance was taken and it was found that money was missing. The German director was to be arrested. However, the latter knew that the workers usually put nut kernels in their jacket pockets when they left the factory, but this had no relevance to the deficit. This, however, gave him an idea of how to wriggle out of the matter, namely by blaming the deficit on the Jews. He called the Gestapo and instructed them to search the Jews before they left the factory, and sure enough, they found a few nut kernels in everyone's pockets. They were

[Page 49]

immediately arrested, taken to the ghetto and accused of being responsible for the deficit in the factory.

Three young fellows were sentenced to be hanged directly on New Year's Eve, directly opposite the Judenrat, a present on New Year's Day 1942. The Jewish police had to carry out the hanging. The other seven Jews who had worked in the same factory had to stand by and watch. They did not know that they would not be hanged, but waited for it as well.

The young innocent victims were hung for three hours. No one left his house, the streets were empty, everyone sat and talked about the incident. The families of the prisoners stifle the pain inside, you cannot cry out, and to whom? The very next day, the first day of the new year, the ghetto is already gripped by a new grief: An innocent young woman, not long after her wedding, has been killed by a German who shot through her window.

One thing follows another, there is no time to stick to one event when the next one is already happening, especially with an even greater number of victims.

Gestapo leader Friedel does not pause the slightest time. After New Year's Day he demands to hand over 300 women for hard labor in the concentration camp of Volkovisk. This is the first time that women are specifically demanded for hard labor. In the past, people used to say that “women are lucky” because wherever there were seizures and shootings, only men were involved. Girls used to work for Germans and support the families. They were more likely to be let through at the gate and not searched; but now there were no more “unproductive persons” to deport;

[Page 50]

the Germans no longer had such an excuse as justification, so now they turned to women.

As is the way of the Judenrat, it sees to it that the order is obeyed. He decides that from each factory ten percent of the girls and women who have no children should be delivered. They are drawn by lot, but needless to say, only among those who have no money to give to the people who do business with Jewish blood in the saddest days of the ghetto.

Of course, the people concerned do not enter voluntarily, because who wants to go to a concentration camp without knowing whether they will

Raytsele

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women are bought out of prison. This causes great fuss among everyone. Mothers demonstrate in front of the Judenrat demanding that their daughters be freed, but without result.

Our family is also affected again. Raytsele, my little 14-year-old sister, who is just taking her first steps into the world and could have enjoyed her life in normal times, can only develop with difficulty, and now she additionally has to hide at night in the cellar I made for her. At every movement of the door or [audible] search for girls, she turns pale and looks at me with her black eyes that say, “I am young and I want to live, dear Srolke, save me!” I then keep silent—what to say to her?—and avoid looking at her, but her young eyes, full of life, speak to me, demanding without words. Such a feeling stays in your mind and torments you when you remember; constantly you see those eyes before you.... There, maybe it is easier to see dead people, even if they are close to you, than to be such a helpless “protector” of someone who looks at you, keeping silent! I cannot describe these agonizing feelings.

The day of the deportation of the imprisoned women has arrived. Carriages are brought, the police lead the girls out of the prison and load them onto the carriages. With their hair disheveled and dirty because they had not been able to wash for days, frightened and struggling with their fate, the girls still reassure their mothers, who run after the carts with their hands out, screaming and crying. Painful scenes occur. Some girls jump down from the carts and run away, but the police chase after them, catch them and forcefully push them back onto the cart. One girl lies on the ground, wrestling with death. The mother throws herself in convulsions at the murderers; everyone feels the women's pain.

The mothers could still accompany their children to the gate of the ghetto, but not further. Two Germans with guns in their hands opened the gate and let the carriages out. In the ghetto, everything remains

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as it has been. Everyone remains in their grief (Raytsele managed to hide and she stayed at home).

A few months pass, and the mothers demand that those who were deported to work be exchanged, as the Judenrat had promised at the time. The mothers demonstrate, protest; the police disperse them and beat the demonstrators to the bone. Further arrests cause the earlier demands to be forgotten; one must continue to hide.

When night falls and you have to go to sleep because it's closing time, the night life of the ghetto begins. As soon as everything is quiet, people sneak out of their houses, start breaking fences to bring the wood into the kitchen, even destroy [wooden] stairs at night if one is not careful... Still later at night the police go over the houses, drag people out of bed and send them to the Gestapo: they need hundreds of people for the concentration camp in Osowiec.

Well, they don't grab me. From the workplace they don't send me to a camp, but to a German to paint his apartment. To go there by train, I need a special permit with 20 signatures, which takes a whole day. A German leads me everywhere. I walk on the cobblestones, he walks on the sidewalk. Even on the train, a German accompanies me; I am not allowed to ride alone. Everyone looks at me—I don't know whether they feel sorry for me or are disgusted by me—it's one of those things: a Jew with a patch is riding on the train!

Arriving in Osowiec together with another comrade, we do not live in a camp but work in the apartment of a German. The camp where the Bialystok Jews were working in the most difficult conditions was not far from me. The Jews had to endure a lot,

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including on the part of the Poles who were sent to the same camp.

I was free after work, and my only interest was to go there to listen to the Russian prisoners sing. In the evening they sang Russian songs full of sadness, as well as with hope. I used to listen to the songs until late at night. It was a little easier to bear here than in the ghetto, because there was no fence and even the patches had been taken from me. However, after two weeks, I was taken back to Bialystok, while the other Jews who stayed behind in the concentration camp never returned again.

In the ghetto, no profession is considered safe anymore. In the past, skilled workers were envied because nothing was done to them. Now, however, skilled workers are being dragged out of their beds and deported to Germany. The police have learned: What is the point of blocking off the streets during the day and struggling to grab people, when you can get lists of skilled workers, bricklayers, printers and others at the registration office, who can be dragged out of their beds at night without causing a commotion?

No place is left to rest, neither by day nor by night. One is never safe from sorrow and suffering, one lives constantly with fear, at every creak of a door or the running of a person. It is enough to see a person running away or someone knocking on the door at night. Then the youngsters run to hide in the cellar or under the beds and let the old mother open the door. Later, however, the parents are arrested when their children are not found.

Thus begins the winter of 1942-1943.

1. author’s note: military command. Return

1. The Michiecicza Street was on a different place, this is a mistake Return
2. Concerning “Tank Fisher Hoyf” (its real name on an old map was “Rybny Rynek”) we are either dealing with a spelling mistake, or with a nickname, because very close to the place there were military barracks, where maybe tanks were standing Return
3. literally, “Where are they calling us?“ Return
4. As for “Stein’s Factory“ watch this film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gk6ClhJOTY Return

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