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On the basis of this information, the Germans immediately arrested all the Jewish doctors, dentists, engineers, and technicians.

Among those arrested doctors and dentists were the following: Dr. Yitzhak Weinberg, President of the Judenrat, Dr. Yaakov Sedletsky, Dr. D. Cantor, Dr. Berel Velvelsky, Dr. David Kaufman, Dr. Yitzhak Honigstein, the wife of Dr. Golond (who came to Volkovysk to visit her aged mother from far-away Georgia); the dentists: Dr. Shimon Press (dental technician), Dr. David Tropp, Dr. A. Mant (a son-in-law of Motya Marantz), Dr. Rosa Einhorn-Pshenitska, and Dr. Novogrudska-Piesikova.

Among the radio technicians and engineers that were arrested then were: Zvi Roitman, Galiatsky, Palik, and others.

The entire Jewish population of Volkovysk and its vicinity was badly shaken up by the news of the arrest of the Jewish doctors, dentists and technicians.

The arrest were accused of conspiring against the Reich, on the basis that they had a relationship with the partisans. Thanks to strong intervention, the arrested women were immediately released. Among them were Rosa Einhorn-Pshenitska and Novogrudska-Piesikova. Noah Fuchs was installed as the President of the Judenrat in the place of the arrested Dr. Weinberg. The former Secretary of that body. And immediately, the lapse of Dr. Weinberg's authority was felt, which was distinguished by its diligence, and who didn't show any fear for the Germans.

The arrested people were conveyed from the Police station to two bunkers near the barracks.

Zvi Roitman, the radio technician, tells that the morning following the arrest of the technicians, he saw through a narrow window over the entrance to the bunker how the doctors were being led out that morning from the bunker that was opposite theirs. They were being led to wash up under heavy guard. The water happened to be located near the bunker containing the arrested technicians, which created a possibility to exchange a few words with the doctors through the iron bars of the small window. In short words, Dr. Weinberg told the technicians that the doctors were being accused of helping the partisans. He also conveyed that a

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number of the doctors had already been interrogated. In general, the doctors gave the impression that they were not crestfallen, they looked tired, short on sleep, but they held themselves up well. Most important, Dr. Weinberg held himself in a good mood and fresh in spirit. Roitman goes on to say that among the doctors he saw: Dr. Weinberg, as previously mentioned, Dr. Velvelsky, Dr. Cantor, Dr. Tropp, Dr. Press, Dr. Sedletsky, and others. After the men washed themselves, the women were led out to wash themselves. Among the many Russian and Jewish women, Roitman saw Rosa Einhorn-Pshenitska and Sarah Novogrudska-Piesikova.

The men were separated from the women in separate bunkers, but despite this, they did have occasions where husbands had a chance to talk to their wives at the entrance to the bunkers. Food was allowed to be brought into the bunkers only twice a week. The arrested inmates would then lie on their awful bunks, starving, and cut through with cold for whole days and nights, suffused with fear that any minute they would be taken out of the bunkers to an interrogation, or perhaps straight to their death. And this was the way the days stretched on endlessly, in the dark, damp crowded bunkers.

The technicians spent several days in the bunkers – and nobody asked about them, no one came to call them out for interrogation. The Gestapo was in no rush, it felt very secure with the arrested people that were in its hands.

The interrogation of the technicians and engineers began on the third day. The command was seated in a clean, well decorated bunker nearby, where a member of the Gestapo carried out the interrogation. The doctors were taken in there one at a time, each one for several hours, and for several times. The Gestapo exerted itself in several ways to discover which of the doctors had taken care of the wounded partisan. The interrogation was carried out in a sever manner, and also very brutally. The doctors Cantor and Kaufman were the ones who were tortured the most during the interrogation – the first for his firm responses and hard answers; the second because of his athletic appearance (it was a general rule that the Gestapo was especially severe with such Jews).

As the interrogation progressed, the spirits of the doctors fell. They were called for interrogation daily, in order to force a confession out of them. The SS staff had specific evidence that one of the doctors had tended the wounded partisan, but did not know which doctor had done this. For a time, the interrogation didn't make any progress. Each of the doctors said that they knew nothing, and that he had never had any contact with the partisans. The situation became hopeless.

Dr. Weinberg let this be known in the city, and through the Judenrat asked for external intervention on behalf of the arrested doctors. Regrettably, the Judenrat was powerless. The only one who had any access to the three Gestapo men who controlled the city, was Dr. Weinberg himself. They treated him with a certain amount of respect, not only because of him personally, but also because of the money that would be turned over to their hands through Dr. Weinberg. These were the levies of blood and sweat from the Jewish population, that had the purpose of repealing one or another evil decree. And the only liaison between the Jews and the Gestapo was Dr. Weinberg. However, tragically, he himself was on the bench of the accused, under suspicion of having cooperated with the partisans. On average, the doctors kept themselves strong, even though they were physically drained – looking bad, and having aged in appearance – from hunger and sleepless nights.

The interrogation of the technicians and the engineers commenced on the fourth day after their arrest. The first one called was Galiatsky, who after several hours of interrogation and torture, returned to the bunker broken

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and disassembled. The remainder of the occupants in the bunker fell upon him with questions about the interrogation. It became evident that one of the technicians was being accused by the Germans of repairing a piece of radio equipment that belonged to the partisans. The technicians held to the argument that they were occupied for a full day by the Germans and actually had no time to meet with partisans. Galiatsky was able to concretely demonstrate that he hadn't missed even a single day at work.

A couple of days later, the technicians received the good news that Rosa Einhorn and Piesikova had been released. This was the first out of the ordinary release made by the Gestapo. This gave some encouragement to the other arrested people, especially raising the spirits among the doctors. They began to believe that maybe in the end, they will all be exonerated from the charge against them. But, in reality, the circumstances of the doctors became worse, because the medical profession was a free one, and it was not confined to one place, and because of this they were unable to demonstrate that they could not have had contact with the partisans, at the time that the technicians made their case that their work caused them to be confined to one location.

Roitman was the first of the technicians to be released. He was interrogated several times, but being unable to derive any concrete evidence against him, he was set free and even allowed to return to work. Galiatsky was also set free two days after his interrogation, and three days later – all the remaining electrical technicians. It later became clear, that the release of the technicians took place because their employers had mounted a protest because they were needed at their work.

The elation in the city was great, and the mood turned to a glad one. The release of the technicians filled Jewish hearts with a strengthened hope that in the end the doctors would be released – and the Jews breathed a little easier.

However, several days went by, and none of the doctors were released. And when the Gestapo brought in several Jewish doctors from Bialystok to take the place of those who were arrested, the Jews saw a bad omen in this. Everyone awaited further developments with trembling hearts.

A process began to find ways and means to liberate the arrested doctors. Special delegates were sent twice to Bialystok – Sonya Botvinsky and Dr. Kaplinsky's sister – in order to obtain help from the chairman of their Judenrat, the engineer, Ephraim Barash. But the latter let it be known, that unfortunately, he had found that the fate of the arrested people were entirely in the hands of the local command in Volkovysk.

After the first set of interrogations, the arrested people were told that they would be given a week to reconsider their testimony, and if by that time the guilty party would not confess, they would all be found guilty.

It turned out to be possible in that time to obtain contact with a high-ranking Gestapo officer (Clara Niemchik did a great deal to make this possible, thanks to her unsurpassed connections), ;who promised to help in obtaining the release of the doctors. In the meantime, the period of the ultimatum ran out, and each of the doctors, one after another, denied having anything to do with the accusation.

It is hard to understand the reason why Dr. Weinberg did not admit his culpability. Perhaps he thought that the only way left for the Jews was to cooperate with the partisans; or perhaps he was convinced that regardless of which way it went, there would be no end to the issue; and the most important motive probably was that he did not want to place the entire Judenrat in danger. He had the clear and correct assessment, that if he personally

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assumed the guilt, he would put all of the members of the Judenrat in danger, and in the end, also the entire Jewish population of Volkovysk. Regrettably, this also didn't help – and the Germans later exterminated all the Jews.

Dr. D. Cantor (from Lodz) and Dr. Honigstein (from Voltzlavek) were the most pessimistic of the doctors, and also the engineer, Hirsch Putchkernik (from Vilna) – a refugee from the Slonim ghetto, whom the Germans captured while he was fleeing from the Slonim massacre.

Dr. Cantor, broken both physically and in spirit from the torture during the interrogation, had decided to accept responsibility for the guilt, but his comrades, foremost Dr. Weinberg, exerted great energy to force him give up this idea. Dr. Sedletsky was also very badly upset. In this regard, Dr. Tropp stood out as a result of his stoic bearing. In the final days, he was a wellspring of comfort and encouragement to everyone.

On October 11, the bribed high official in the Gestapo was still telling the families of the arrested people that they would be released no later than October 13. On the morning of October 12, the wives was their [arrested] husbands and conveyed these good tidings to them.

At ten o'clock that same night, Noah Schein, a member of the Judenrat came to the house of Joseph Kotliarsky, on the Grodno Gasse, where Moshe Movshovsky and his brother-in-law Moshe Ivensky lived, and ordered all of them to appear very early the next morning at the Judenrat, and to bring along digging equipment. When they arrived in the yard of the Judenrat at the appointed time, on the Neuer Gessel, they ran into other people who were there with digging tools, and other such equipment. All the assembled workers were led off to the Burkehs. There, they were taken to a place, where the head of the military marked off a plot of land on the ground of about ten meters in length and two meters wide. They were immediately ordered to begin digging.

“The pit must be completed by ten o'clock this morning. If not, you will yourselves be shot like dogs,” – the police order reverberated.

Covered in sweat, the young people finished up their work significantly earlier than ten o'clock in the morning. An order was immediately given to quickly run to the Barg, and to lie face down and remain in that position, not moving, until a following order was given.

At the same time, an automobile arrived in front of the bunker containing the arrested doctors, filled with armed Gestapo troops. They led the doctors out and ordered them to remove their jackets, and leave them in the place where they stood. Then the doctors were ordered to get into the automobile.

Volkovysk workers were occupied at that time near the bunkers, and among them Adya^[1], the daughter of Dr. Yaakov Sedletsky. Seeing her father getting into the automobile, she threw herself on him and in a heartbreaking voice, cried. But the Gestapo people forcibly separated them, forever. The doctors were immediately taken to the hillock outside of the city.

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The workers, who in the meantime were lying on the ground in the distance, in compliance with the order of the Gestapo people, heard the arrival of the automobile which passed by near them, heading in the direction of the pit. They lay there for a few minutes, totally lost. Suddenly, the sound of gunfire was heard, accompanied by stifled screams of people.

This lasted for a minute, and it became silent again all around. The workers barely had time to recover from their fright, when they heard an order to return to the place where the pit was located. A bit of fresh earth had been shoveled into the pit…and from the clothing they recognized that these were the doctors…

They were given an order to layer more earth onto the pit and to cover the location with grass, in order that it not could not be recognized that a pit had once been there. They finished their work, and were getting ready to leave this mass grave, when the ground began to heave… immediately the workers were called back and ordered to tamp down the grave with their feet, however stronger and more firmly…until such time that the earth stopped its heaving…

When the wives of the arrested people came to attend the release of their husbands, none of them were alive any longer…

The day that the doctors were massacred was a bitter day for the entire Jewish population of Volkovysk. The Jews of Volkovysk sustained a severe blow from this. They felt abandoned and alone, and they could not find any solace.

With the murder of the doctors, all the Jews understood that they hovered between life and death, and the minutes of their lives were numbered. It could be clearly seen what awaited them in the near future. Fear seized everyone, and each and every person began to think of plans to rescue themselves from a certain death that could arrive at any minute. During the nights, when it was cold and dark outside, this opportunity was used to build hiding places in the dwellings, pits, where it would be possible to hide out in the event of any trouble, each in accordance with the means at their disposal. Others built false compartments between the walls of their houses so skillfully, that they could not be detected from the outside.

Morale could not settle down for the longest time in the city. First and foremost, the remaining relatives of the murdered doctors were completely distraught. A number of them, out of pain and anger, committed suicide.

Shayna Lifschitz, one of our witnesses tells how Fanya Tropp, the wife of Dr. Tropp was left with her two boys, who were seven year-old twins. Under no circumstances could she come to grips wit the tragic murder of her husband, and her single objective was to arrange for the care of her young children, and afterwards to commit suicide.

Dr. Tropp, who had been shot, was in his time, friendly with one of the elected city officials, a gentile named Palko. This gentile was also killed by the Germans, even before the death of the doctors, when he was informed on that he had been a high official in the Soviet regime. After Fanya Tropp was left in the same circumstances as Palko's wife, she approached Palko's wife in the end, and asked her to take custody of her two children. Palko's wife was amenable to taking the two children, but her Christian neighbors gave her no rest, and threatened to go tell the Germans, and she was compelled to return the children to their mother. However, the mother did not want to continue with her life, and had decided to commit suicide.

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One day, she approached a German policeman and asked him to shoot her along with her two children. But the German answered her sharply, that without an order he was not permitted to do anything… being however dominated through-and-through with her strong desire to end her life, Fanya Tropp ran home and took three doses of poison (Luminal) from the store of medication that remained from her husband, and went with her two children to the desolated Schulhof, where she first herself took a dose, and quickly went to give a dose to each of her children. But the two children felt something bad in their mother's behavior. They thought that their mother had lost her mind, and they tore themselves out of her half-dead hands and ran to the neighbors to whom they told that their mother had poisoned herself, and that she wanted to poison them. The neighbors found her half dead on the Schulhof in an unconscious condition. The Germans carried her into the burned out Talmud Torah and shot her there. Milia Shalakhovich, the aunt of the two boys, took them in. Later on, she and the two orphan boys went along with the other Jews of Volkovysk into the bunkers.

The economic conditions in the city became unbearable. Hunger and want grew more and more severe. The Jews were robbed of practically everything they had. In the district, a conflagration of pogroms and slaughter blazed through the Jews. It was felt that the end was nigh.

Liaison with the partisans was also cut, after the Germans discovered their headquarters, and drove them deep into the forest.

The noose around the neck of the hapless Jews began to feel tighter and tighter. One simply did not know when the last yank would come. One had no sense of certainty regarding the following morning, the coming night, and not even with the next hour. One went about in perpetual fear, being too afraid to even lie down and sleep. And when night fell, everyone would go away into all manner of pits and hideouts, taking along only the barest necessities, and spend the long night hours there. People would hide themselves in potato storage pits, or simply in cellars, or in labyrinthine hiding places with secret entrances and exits for this purpose. The most clever and ingenious methods were employed for this purpose. The art of building secure hideouts in bunkers developed quite rapidly under the pressure of need, and became a matter of life and death. For example, in the house of Draznin the Gardener, on the small hill on the Tatarski Gasse, where Roitman lived, a bunker was built underground, where about ten people could fit in. The excavation was about a meter under the surface of the earth, in the form of a longer tunnel. The tunnel was a meter and a half high, the width – two meters. The walls and soffit were covered with wooden planks, and were supported by wooden beams. There were two entries to the hole, one was from a room in their house, there was a small door cut into the floor, which was not noticeable at first glance, and which opened from the inside. A clothes dresser stood on that spot, and the bottom part of the dresser opened in such a fashion that if one went into the dresser, one could go down into the bunker. It was possible to enter the bunker from the yard as well, through a compost heap, and it was possible to exit from there as well. This was one of the various ways in which bunkers and hideouts were built at that time. Remember, that these bunkers and hideouts needed to be built secretly, keeping them secret not only from the Poles and the Germans, but from Jewish neighbors as well. Whatever people had, was stored in these bunkers, in the event of need, to enable them to remain hidden for a longer period of time, if necessary.

Translator's footnote:

1. Called by the diminutive affectionate nickname Ed'zheh in other parts of the book. Return

Late in October 1942, when the cold winds began to blow and penetrate to the bone, when ceaseless rains soaked bodies through and through, and black clouds hung over darkened skies, was also the time of the

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onset of the new misfortune to befall the Volkovysk Jews. It was not a coincidence that the Germans picked this time of year to carry out their murderous depredations. In hindsight, we see that the Germans were depraved murder psychologists, and in all such instances, they would pick the worst weather – such as a great frost or a snow storm, and then carry out their expulsions and slaughters against the Jews, because this would drive the morale of the Jews even lower.

A new order was issued on October 27, 1942 that all Jews must assemble at the Neuer Gessel where passes were to be reviewed. The purpose of the inspection was to discover if there were Jews in the city who were not registered. The elder Shpak did not comply with the order and the Germans shot him for this.

On the last Sabbath in October, the Jews did not yet know what awaited them. The Germans, who had their clothes sewn by Jewish tailors, rushed to retrieve their half-sewn garments from the tailors, and even cut goods that were not sewn. Germans who had left their shoes with Jewish shoemakers came to retrieve them, even if they were only half-ready. However, the Jews did not know the reason for this urgency, and as usual, in their tendency to reach for an optimistic conclusion that everything was going to work out all right, they began to believe the rumor that had quickly spread, that the Germans were packing their things in preparation for a pullback, and it was really because of this that they came to collect their belongings from the Jewish tradesmen.

On Sunday, November 1, when it was routine to have new work allocated for the week, everyone was given the news that there would be no work in the coming week. The Jewish population of Volkovysk did not understand the meaning of this new development and became greatly disturbed.

On Monday November 2, Noah Fuchs, the head of the Judenrat went into the street and informed everyone about the new order in the name of the Gestapo. The order said:

“All the Jews of Volkovysk, rich and poor, young and old, healthy and sick, must gather on this same day, no later than noon, outside the city, near the barracks. It is permitted to take food for two days only. Stores and houses are to be locked up and the keys turned over to the Gestapo.”

As the order did not forbid taking along clothing, everyone, indeed, took along clothing and other valuables, such as jewelry, to the extent that they could carry it with themselves. Whatever else they had was hidden in the houses. The order went on to say:

“Whoever will be found in the city after the appointed hour, will be shot on the spot.”

A rumor immediately spread that the Jews were being assembled at the barracks in order to conduct searches in their houses. Another rumor suggested that from now on, the Jews would live in the barracks, where a ghetto will be created, and they will go to their work from there. These rumors, which spread with lightning speed in those terrible days, acted like an anaesthetic on the Jews, and lightened the burden of even the most terrible misfortunes that befell them.

Our witness Roitman tells us that at the same time that Noah Fuchs had revealed the final order of the Gestapo, he [sic: Roitman] was, as usual, at his daily place of work. He was in the habit of going to work early, and because of this, along with several other workers, he was ignorant of the new decree.

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At ten in the morning, his overseer came into the plant, and told the Jewish workers that they have to go home immediately, because a general search of the Jews was to take place in the city. He and his remaining comrades immediately returned home. On their way home, they already saw how large masses of military were beginning to encircle the streets of the city. They apprehended that something had happened there. They learned about the “good” news, as quickly as they reached the center of the city.

The panic became great. The period of time was terribly short, and people didn't even have the time to think about their plight.

Many Jews had previously prepared a variety of hiding places in their homes and cellars, but the German order was so severe, that people were afraid to risk their lives. Further, it was not evident for how long one would have to remain hidden. Therefore, nearly all, with few exceptions, decided to comply with the German order.

It was not even possible to take all that much food along, first, because there was simply not enough time to buy it as the great panic ensued. People simply did not know what to take first; and secondly, the Christian bakeries, on that morning, no longer wanted to sell to the Jews; and also, there was great fear of simply showing oneself in the streets too much, for fear of being shot.

People ran into their houses and began to pack their valuables, and what could not be taken along was hidden in the various hideaways in the houses. Everyone was harried and worried, being certain that nothing of any good could be expected to come from this last decree, but there was no time to devote to taking a clear measure of the situation.

It didn't take long, and the people began to go out into the streets, heading in the direction of the barracks. They streamed through all the streets in an endless chain – young, old and children. Loaded down with packs on their backs, and children in their arms, they all went in one direction, to Zamoscheh, to the barracks. Even the children carried packs with them.

The long procession of the Volkovysk Jews stretched along the middle of the streets, over the Wide Boulevard, Zamoscheh, Kolyova – to the barracks. Hysterical women screamed, frightened children cried, and others proceeded in mortified silence.

The great stream kept on growing with an increase in people, who joined the procession along its route. The Tatarski Gasse was passed, the side street where the gymnasium was, the Wide Boulevard – everyone, everyone was heading in one direction. The streaming mass was like a single body, dominated by a great feeling of confused dismay and fear, as if their hearts were telling them, this is the last journey.

In this fashion they went, the native-born Jews of Volkovysk, whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers where among the founders of the city, and her best sons. Like sheep being led to the slaughter the Jews went, in the middle of the street, surrounded by military and police standing along the length of the sidewalks.

Along the entire way, the Christians stood on the sidewalks, near their houses, or looking out of their windows, and smiled cynically. On their faces was an expression of satisfaction. They comforted themselves with the prospect that very shortly they would be able to rob Jewish assets.

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At noon, the procession reached its high point. The streets were literally black with the throng of people.

As quickly as the first rows of the procession went through Zamoscheh, near the barracks, and came to the gate that led into the camp, they were suddenly beset with SS troops who began to count them one at a time and drove them into the camp with sticks. The panic became great, but the way back was cut off by the police, which had cordoned off all the sides around the streaming Jews.

At the entrance, the women and children were counted off to the left, and the men to the right. The entire aktion came off quickly, so that there was no time to get oriented, and realize that one was being separated from one's family. Right after taking the count, people were driven into the bunkers, and the gates closed, stifling the painful cries of the children and distraught women.

Shortly afterwards, the workers who had only later learned of the order while at their work, were also transferred to the bunkers, and also the other Jews who had been arrested for a variety of petty infractions of the local German ordinances and were located in the concentration camp at the slaughterhouse. Among them was also our witness, Moshe Shereshevsky.

It was in this fashion that the entire city was emptied of Jews in a matter of a few hours. All the Jewish houses were closed, and the keys were hung on the doors.

Only a few Jews were hidden in their hideouts, but showing themselves in the city would have meant death on the spot.

A terrible sight was to be seen in the darkened bunkers where the Jews of Volkovysk were stuffed and crowded in. People fell down on upon the other. Mothers searched for their children, and children searched for their parents. People looked for a spot where they could sit down, or to lay down one's broken body. Many hours went by before people were able to arrange themselves somehow. From time to time, one would hear the cries of a child in the tumult, or the groans of a woman who had been separated from her husband. Older Jews prayed out loud together.

That is the way the entire day passed. The fear at night was impossible to bear. The wild cries and weeping of the people literally melted the soul. Each and every person wept and wailed about their family. No person was able to sleep. It was frightening. It was impossible to wait until the morning came. Finally, when dawn arrived, an interest was taken in the fate of those members of the family from whom they had been separated. It was in this fashion that it was learned that it was permissible to be re-united with the families. The panic became great. People began to run all over the bunkers, calling out the names of relatives, who had been spread all over different bunkers in great over-crowding. In the end, family members were located, and the task of sorting out the families into the same bunkers was undertaken. It was only then that they began to think about their circumstances and to take stock of these most recent events.

Hearts were sad, just as the dreary bunkers into which they had been crammed were sad. People went about with their heads down and in silence. Outside one could only see the three-tiered barb wire fence that surrounded the camp.

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The Arrival of the Jews from Surrounding Towns

After all the Jews of Volkovysk were already in the bunkers, the Jews from the surrounding towns began to arrive. For the entire night and the next day, they streamed in, escorted by SS troops. They came from all sides, with packs on their backs, and with more luggage than the Jews of the city. However, their families were not broken up upon entering the camp.

The Jews from the towns were taken into a separate block. An entire block of six bunkers was designated for the use of the Jews of Svislucz. A separate block of eight bunkers was designated for the use of the Jews of Ruzhany. The rest of the bunkers was divided up among the Jews of Amstibova and Yalovka. But all these bunkers could not hold all the Jews from the towns. So, the remaining Jews from the towns of Porozovo, Zelva, Mosty', Piesk, Volp, Lisokovo, Izavelin, and other small towns, were put into stables, in which three-tiered bunks had been installed for sleeping.

The camp with the bunkers was found in the place near the barracks in the camp, which had been constructed back in 1941, with the help of Russian prisoners of war. There, were found several tens of underground bunkers deep in the earth. In the year 1941, in the time of the Germans, about thirty thousand Russian prisoners of war lived in the bunkers. Almost all of them died out in the course of a few months from hunger and a variety of diseases. The bodies of these Russian victims were buried in mass graves, with several thousand to each pit.

There were five fields to the Volkovysk Lager, as that camp was called, each separated from the other by barbed wire. Each group of bunkers was a camp unto itself, and part of the larger camp. The entire lager was ringed with a double fence that was three meters high. There was a two meter space between each of these fences, and in between there was nearly a meter of barbed wire that had been laid down on the ground. Watch towers were erected at every intervals of several hundred meters, with large searchlights, and these watch towers were manned day and night.

The large lager was divided into separate blocks. There were from six to eight bunkers in each block.

The Nazis crammed about twenty thousand people into this lager. There were thirteen thousand Jews from the towns surrounding Volkovysk, and seven thousand Jews from Volkovysk itself.

The bunkers were deep cellars, three meters into the earth, which had to be entered using steps. They were about fifty meters long, and ten meters wide. There were two doors in each bunker. A long table and bench stretched from one door to the other. It was dank and dark in the bunkers. Only a small amount of light filtered through the small windows that were in the ceiling.

Along the sides of the bunkers were three-tiered bunks, one on top of the other like floors, which served as sleeping places. One could enter them only in a stooped position.

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Living Conditions in the Bunkers

The Nazis crammed about five hundred people into each of this type of bunker. Sleeping conditions were so crowded that it was not possible to turn over on the other side. There was no place to wash, and no place to take care of one's bodily needs. The outhouse was in the field, and was not arranged to be separate for men and women. In the first days, the women would wait while the men went out first. However, this was not sustainable. In the end, the thousands of people abandoned their modesty. They became used to this as well.

There also was no water with which to wash oneself. There were only a few creeks with stained water, but as soon as this water was drawn, even this water also was insufficient. People would stand by the creeks waiting for water, just to be able to at least get a drink. There was no point to even discussing getting washed. This water was literally a luxury.

Because of these terrible sanitary conditions, a plague of lice immediately developed in the lager. In the first days, people gave no heed to the fact that it was cold outside, and because it was dark in the bunkers, they would go outside and take their clothes off to rid themselves of the lice. After this, epidemics of a variety of illnesses began to break out. Masses of people died each day. When an inquiry was made about how someone was, the answer would be “Thank God, he's passed away already.”

The question of food was the principal pressure point on the people. No food at all was given during the first few days in the lager, and each family had to make do with whatever they had brought along. Nobody had taken more than three loaves of bread, at three kilos a loaf. You can understand that families with grown children had brought along more food with them into the lager, but those with small children, or older people who couldn't carry any packages, had rather little food with them.

Only after several days in the lager, was a small amount of food distributed among the people. Everyone received 170 grams of bread and a bowl of soup daily. You can understand that this was far from sufficient for a single human being. Because of this, hunger became more and more intense, the physical condition of the people deteriorated, and the number of those falling sick rose daily.

The robbery of Jewish possessions and the murder of the concealed Jews

Meanwhile in the city proper, the Nazis opened up the Jewish homes and stores, and emptied them completely. The Poles gave them a great deal of help in carrying out this act of pillage, and the Germans gave them much of the booty, after they had taken the better goods to be sent back to Germany to the German war fund.

Shortly after transferring the Jews of Volkovysk to the lager, the Germans became aware that a number of the Jews had not presented themselves. They therefore ordered Noah Fuchs, the head of the Judenrat to produce the Jews who were missing. In fact, a number of Jews had managed to secrete themselves in a variety of hideouts, which they had previously prepared in their homes.

Following the German order, Noah Fuchs went from house to house, where people were hidden, and called for them to come out from their hiding places, telling them that they would not be able to hide themselves for very long, because the Jewish houses were surrounded by military forces.

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At that time, Kotliarsky, his family, and the family of his aunt, Fruma Movshovsky were all concealed in a bunker he had built between the two walls in his stable. Right after the Germans had ordered all the Jews to go into the bunkers, he immediately decided not to present himself, and hide out until the storm blew over. As it happens, his cousin, Miss Ivensky, who left hiding for a while, was apprehended by a Polish watch guard, and never returned. When Noah Fuchs came around and demanded that people come out, Kotliarsky did not want to comply. His aunt Movshovsky and cousin Ivensky, however, prevailed upon him to do so. They later found Miss Ivensky in the bunkers.

Other Jews, however, did not want to come out of hiding, and remained there, until the Nazis found them and shot them. Among them were a number of families: Mayer Kruss the Smith, with his wife and two children; Mottel Smazanovich (a son of Dodzhkeh the Carpenter); Feygl Beletz (a sister of Yoss'l Beletz), and others.

The bunker of the three brothers, Alter, Yisrael and Ephraim Tchopkin in their brick factory was revealed by informants, and the Germans shot them immediately. Not far from them, the Germans found Shimon Liss (of the bicycles) hidden, along with his son and father-in-law, and shot them as well.

Others, who had been going with the Jews in line, hearing the news that the Jews were accosted at the entrance gate to the lager, and forcibly driven into the bunkers, decided to make a last attempt to escape from the marching rows. However, the Germans chased them down, and shot them on the spot. Among the victims who fell in this manner were: Chaim Ozer Einhorn (Rivka Einhorn's son); Yaakov Weinstein's son (Gisha's); Alteh Weissenberg the Secretary. The Germans shot several at the railroad station, who appeared there in an attempt to escape. Among these were: the brothers, Feivel and Yitzhak Zlotnitsky (grandchildren of Metchik from Zamoscheh); Meir Marotchnik (Son of Jedediah the Leather Merchant) also fled on the way to the bunkers, but his fate is unknown.

When everyone was driven to the bunkers, many elderly and infirm people remained in their homes, because they could not go along. The Germans gathered them all together in the Talmud Torah, and shot them all. Many elderly Jews residing in the old age home were shot then. Among the victims, the following familiar balebatim fell: the elderly Zundel Kaplan (the father of Fanya Tropp and grandfather of one of our witnesses, Dr. Marek Kaplan), Abraham Galiatsky the Barber; Abraham Yitzhak Podolinsky the Carpenter, and many others.

The Difficult Conditions There

Immediately after the Jews of Volkovysk had more or less settled into the dark bunkers, a number of the members of the Judenrat were summoned to the chief commandant Tsirka. Among them were Noah Fuchs and Shammai Daniel. The commandant told them that the Volkovysk Lager was temporary, and from there the Jews will be sent to a large Jewish work camp in transport groups of three thousand people each. The transfer will last six weeks. However in the meantime, order needs to be introduced to the lager.

Noah Fuchs was designated to be the head leader of the lager, and Shammai Daniel his deputy. A Jewish auxiliary police was organized with Khantov at its head.

Each bunker was required to designate its own leader, who had to be concerned with the order in his bunker and the allocation of food. He also had to provide current lists of the people in his bunker.

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After the installation of this organization, a commission of high Gestapo officers came to review the lager.

Among them were also the district doctor and the mayor of Volkovysk, Winter. Seeing the frightful sanitary conditions in the lager, and the lack of water, the mayor promised to provide water to the Jews in the lager with the help of the fire-fighters. He also told the Jews that he would arrange to send in a transport full of potatoes, taken from their own storage cellars, in order to alleviate their hunger.

From all of these promises, all that materialized were several jars of paint to cover the outhouses, and a number of small boxes that contained insecticides in bottles to kill the lice. The water problem was also eased somewhat. But the hunger was not stilled. Bread, in those days, was allocated in the amount of one kilo (a pound) per person for three days. Later on, even this was not given. Sometimes several days would go by, and no bread was given at all. Bringing bread in from the outside was practically impossible. And the little bread that was brought in with the wagons of the Judenrat, was sold for 120 marks a loaf, which most of the people could not pay.

A kitchen was organized. At the order of the Germans, the peasants brought potatoes into the lager, and the kitchen began to function. Sonya Botvinsky was appointed head of the kitchen, assisted by Sioma Gallin and a number of other people. This kitchen was supposed to prepare food for the entire lager, that is to say, for approximately twenty thousand people. Only one portion a day was distributed to people – a liter of soup. Many did not even receive this portion. For this reason, even the kitchen did not help alleviate the hunger very much, which grew more painful each day. Hunger reached the stage where people would fall upon the wagon loads of potatoes that would be brought into the lager, and grab them raw. In such instances, the German guards would attack the starving people who befell the wagons, and shoot them on the spot. Every such transport left behind a field strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. And yet, despite the fact that the people knew what threat awaited them for falling upon these wagons loaded with potatoes, their fear of death was not as strong as their hunger. The act of falling upon these transports of potatoes was repeated a number of times a day, and at the same time, there would be a repetition of the tragic scenes of fallen victims. Among the many who were killed in such incidents were: Notteh Pereminsky, Meir Mitch (Gruna's son-in-law) and others. Chas'sheh Rutchik, the daughter-in-law of Shmuel Chaim the Butcher, fell into the boiling pot and died of her injuries.

The people in the bunkers went around scrawny and faint, with nothing to do for days at a time. The old, the pregnant women and the nursing mothers lay about, starved, on their bunk beds. The appearance of the people became so changed that they could no longer recognize each other.

Disease began to spread with relentless speed, and there were not enough doctors, and even more important, no medication to use. The Volkovysk doctors at that time were no longer alive. The doctors who were active in the bunkers were from the towns: Dr. Yitzhak Goldberg, Dr. Schulman, Dr. Yitzhak Resnick, Dr. Leizer Epstein, Dr. Wallach, Dr. N. Kaplinsky and Dr. Horn. All these divided the work up among themselves. A clinic and small hospital was organized for the seriously ill in one of the bunkers. Dr, Horn was the head of the clinic. However, the efforts of the doctors were practically fruitless, because of the lack of medicine and even bandages.

The lager was still sealed, and no Jews were given permission to leave it and go out to work. The requests by the gentile factory owners did not help, who had a need for the workers, and had asked that they be permitted to return to their former jobs. The Germans officially proclaimed that the lager is sealed because of the

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prevailing diseases, and that nobody may leave the lager, in order to prevent the diseases from spreading.

The death toll among the Jews in the lager rose with every passing day. Daily, from twenty to thirty people would die from hunger and disease. The old and the weak were the principal victims.

A Khevra Kadisha was established in the lager, for which Yankel Tchopkin (“Palteh's”) was the facilitator. The Khevra Kadisha consisted of the members: Epstein the Ironmonger, who was the president of the organization, Rappaport's son from the Cutter's Store, and others. The Khevra Kadisha worked without a stop. The dead were buried in the fields of Vatashchin, about two hundred meters behind the barracks, where a cemetery was arranged. Tens of people were buried at a time in a common grave, without any record, without a headstone.

Among the deceased were: Pesach of the Byers, Reizl (Metchik's daughter) from Zamoscheh; Joseph Meir Levin, from Zamoscheh; Dr. Feinberg's father-in-law and Tzipa Rutchik (the wife of Moshe Rutchik from Zhelenevich). At that time, Yerakhmiel the Tailor was shot in Karczyzna going to work. A son of Leibl Smazanovich-Kvachuk, whom the Germans shot at work, died in a similar fashion.

That is how the situation dragged on, and the fall season did its own part. The rains and snow effectively blocked the way to the bunkers, and in the bunkers themselves the muck would reach up to the knees.

After several weeks of being in the bunkers, the situation began to improve due to a sudden shift in German tactics. The Germans began to compose lists of specific work groups, mostly of those whose work skills they needed for the war effort, and they sent them out into the city to various factories. Initially sixty Jews were selected from the bunkers to be sent out – technicians, locksmiths, bakers and shoemakers, As well as other tradesmen that the Germans needed.

Our witness Roitman tells that he was among the first to be sent out to work in the city. Dodzhkeh Botvinsky was sent out along with him.

The dentist, Rosa Einhorn also was released from the bunker at that time by the Germans, along with her daughter Dora, and they permitted her to practice in her office at Kilikovsky's in Zamoscheh.

All these workers would work a full day at their place of employment, and at night they were taken to a separate lager where they would sleep. They would no longer be taken back to the bunkers at night. They would sleep in the special lager for slave laborers, where there were also Poles to be found. This lager was located in the former municipal slaughterhouse.

The Germans increased the number of Jewish workers whom they let out of the bunkers, a little at a time. The Jews immediately saw a good sign in this for an extension of their lives in the bunkers. Understand that with this change, came an improvement in the conditions of all Jews in the bunkers. The reason was because each of the Jews who worked in the city, did everything they could to obtain additional food for their relatives and friends in the bunkers.

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The Christians, in the meantime, used this opportunity to extort every last cent from the Jewish workers by charging exorbitant prices which they demanded for bread. Paying no heed to all difficulty, the Jews were able to bring additional food into the bunkers for this little bit of money that they were able to earn. Nevertheless, hunger continued to persist, and additionally the cold struck the people as well. There was no firewood for heat, and people would literally expire from hunger and cold. When Jews were caught cutting some of the wood from the perimeter fence, in order to heat a bunker, they were immediately shot by the sadistic Germans.

Daily life in the lager presented a frightening picture. Stirring there began when it was still quite dark outside. The workers had to get up quite early in their ranks in the yard of the bunkers. The women would look for ways to warm up a little bit of water for their young children. A lot of activity would go on at the bathrooms found in each bunker, that simply needed to be used by the elderly and the children. Everybody else needed to go outside and use the public latrine where people would form up in two rows. A group of women would follow every group of men. Occasionally a voice would be heard saying: “Ladies, go along in with the men, why be ashamed, one way or another, they are going to drive us all into the same grave!…”

Each person bedded himself down for the night's sleep as well as possible in the bunkers. Afterwards, some would go for water, while others would go wait in the bread line. In one of the bunkers, Jews in groups of ten would come together for communal prayer. The Rabbis would proclaim a communal fast. Selikhot were recited, prayers were recited fervently, and Avinu Malkeinu was recited, one verse after another, “Our Father Our King, Bring Us Our Salvation Soon.” The Cantor would intone out loud in a weeping voice, and all would respond, weepingly. When the verse, “Our Father Our King, Do It for the Sake of the Infants of the House of Your Rabbis,” was reached, the outcries reached the heavens. And it was in this ways that the Jews stood, oppressed together in the mud, in the half-darkness, someone in a prayer shawl, someone wearing phylacteries, and others without either, and their outcries came from the depths of their oppressed souls.

Towards evening, the workers would return to the bunkers. One might bring along a piece of wood, and another might have had the good fortune to bring along a few onions or a beet, and there were others who were lucky enough to procure bread from the peasants.

As soon as it got dark, the men would come together in the bunkers. Each would light up his corner of the bunker with whatever means were at his disposal. One might have lit a candle, a second a lamp – he had to make use of the insecticide that was in the bunker to kill the lice, and to do this he had to illuminate his corner of the bunker. Then everyone crawled up onto their bunk beds, and it took quite a bit of time until everyone had ordered themselves for the night. There was only enough room to lie on one side, that's how pressed people were from the crowding. A Jew in a corner recited a chapter from the Psalms, another recited the Shema prayer out loud. A woman talked to herself, another kept on shouting: “I want to go home!” A sick man's breathing is labored and he groans, because he has no place where he can rest his ailing bones and no air to breathe. And that is the way we lived from day to day, with the frightening fear of the coming morning.

Rarely did a day go by without a tragic incident.

On November 11, 1942, the Jews were thrown into a new panic. The lager was suddenly sealed and no one was permitted to go to work. After several hours, a command of high Gestapo officers, dressed in splendid

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uniforms, came into the rotten filthy bunkers, in order to investigate the sanitary conditions there. The took one look at the bunkers and declared that “The lager is infested with vermin and therefore must be closed down.”

It later became clear that this entire incident took place because a soldier had fallen ill, and they thought that it was typhus. Fortunately, he got well several days later, and the suspicion that the Jewish lager was a breeding ground for typhus, was discredited.

Sioma Gallin, the director of the kitchen in the lager, was a popular figure among the Volkovysk Jews, and an energetic public servant. He was a cheerful individual, and a sense of confidence and optimism emanated from him at all times. His favorite expression was, “We will annihilate them yet.” The following incident occurred to him: Once, when he had obtained water from a water tank belonging to the fire-fighters, he got into a conversation with the automobile driver who was a Christian, an acquaintance of his, and obtained a small amount of benzene from him for his lighting machine that he used to light the fire in the kitchen, but the Gestapo guards immediately spotted this. SS troops approached him, threw him around, and beat him so severely with their rubber truncheons, that he was left without the strength to scream any longer. When he was entirely swollen up and blood poured from him, he was taken to a bunker. Towards evening, the commandant Tsirka came to the bunker, and inquired about Gallin's health in a warm and concerned fashion. He even took the doctor to task, that he should, God forbid, not ignore him. At about nine that evening, Dr. Noah Kaplinsky visited Gallin, and found him in serious condition. Gallin's breathing was labored, and could barely speak. At eleven o'clock that night, the entire bunker became disassembled from the wild shouting of the Germans, which emanated from the entrance to the bunker: “ Gallin, out! Gallin, out!” The Jewish police from the internal watch ran to Gallin, and informed him that the Germans are demanding that he come outside immediately to them. Everyone raised themselves up from their bunks. A deathly silence enveloped the entire bunker. One could hear how Gallin struggled to get his broken body up from the bunk. Five hundred pairs of eyes were riveted on him. When he finally reached the exit, he turned around to the people and called out in a hoarse voice with the last of his strength: “Jews, All of you be well!” And he vanished into the darkness. A tumult was heard immediately mixed in with the last cries of the victim. Suddenly, the report of three shots cut through the air, and everything then became still. Only the heart-rending screams from his wife marked the fact that Gallin was no longer alive.

Early the following morning, Gallin's body was found at the entrance to the bunker – the tired body of the innocent optimist.

Through a fortuitous circumstance, that night, his own son Izzy, was able to escape from the lager and went to the forest where he joined up with the partisans, and in this manner remained alive.

Sioma Gallin was not the only one who paid with his life this way, having broken no laws. The Germans inflicted this deadly punishment on everyone and anyone whose word, or even glance displeased them.

Because of this, people looked for ways to save themselves from the lager, and to escape into the forest, even under the most difficult of circumstances. Escape, however, was not a simple matter, because even if after one

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had managed to break through the German lines after a great deal of effort, the Poles and the White Russians would then do their bloody work of betrayal – they would inform and turn over every Jew they found outside of the lager, to the police.

Once, the Polish peasants noticed human tracks in the deep snow, and immediately reported this to the Gestapo. A strong patrol was immediately sent out in all directions with tracking dogs, and a large group of young Jewish people were discovered. Seven of them were shot in the forest, and three were brought to the Volkovysk bunker lager, where in the presence of the head of the Judenrat, Noah Fuchs, and many other Jews, they were shot on the spot. The Gestapo ordered that this event be publicized in every bunker as a warning to anyone, that if they are caught trying to escape, they will be shot.

Liova Shkolnik (a son of Shlomo the Restauranteur), together with nine friends, worked out a plan for how to escape from the bunkers. To begin with, they had the opportunity to hide themselves in a secret place on the Neuer Gessel. They waited for some time there, awaiting the right opportunity in order to execute their plan for escape into the forest. The Germans, however, captured them at their hideout, and brought them to the barracks. The leadership of the Judenrat were then summoned from the bunkers, and shot these ten young people in front of their eyes. Among those ten was Nakhum Gershuni.

Among those who were apprehended by the Nazis in those days, mostly because of being informed upon by the Poles, and whom the Nazis shot on the spot were: Abraham Bontshevsky (from Baranovich); Shai'keh Shafran (the Locksmith's son-in-law); Moshe Press (from the pharmacy warehouse) and his wife; Tvarkovsky, the wife of the Hairdresser, Genya (a daughter of Yud'l Beckenstein the Carpenter), with their daughter; Yud'l Levin (who was shot in Zelva), and many others.

A number of Jews, like Yaakov Frei (the Porter) and Shlomo Bayer (a son of Shimon the Horse Trader), fled to the forest and were never heard of again. Others, tragically being unable join up with the partisans, because they could not locate them in the forest, and being afraid to appeal to the Poles for either Aryan papers or food, literally starved to death, after wandering for weeks at a time in the forest. Hunger and cold were so intense, that against their own will they returned to the bunkers. They would usually do this in the evening hours, when they could intermingle with the returning workers. They knew that there were large and well-armed partisan groups in the forests, but unfortunately, when they fled, quite often they were unable to reach the place where the partisans were located. And when hunger literally threatened them with death, when their limbs were frozen through and through, and their bodies exhausted and starved – only then, would they seek the way back to the bunkers. Even after they returned, they would not give up the thought of finding yet a new way to escape. One of our witnesses, Katriel Lashowitz, tells us the following:

He had returned to the bunkers, but the thought of escaping ,yet again at any price, did not stop to eat away at his mind. And one day, when a larger than usual detail of workers was being led out in the direction of the city center of Volkovysk, he decided to use this opportunity to escape yet again. About half way, in the direction of the railroad station, at that moment, a train happened to be passing through. He jumped out of the line. The passing train blocked him, and by the time the train passed by, he was on the other side of the tracks. By the time the Germans realized what had happened, he was deep into the forest. He hid all by himself. Some time later, he met up with several other people in the forest, among them Leonovich, Mushatsky, and others.

Those who escaped from the bunkers organized themselves into a Volkovysk group. The put up tents in the

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thickest part of the forest, and dug underground holes for themselves. One night, they had the opportunity to steal guns from a German arsenal. At that time, Lazarovsky was still baking bread for the lager. They would steal into his bakery at night and get a little bit of bread from him to still their hunger. Also, they would occasionally let themselves into the city, gather up remnants of food from the abandoned Jewish houses that they would find there, and then flee back to the forest.

From their position in the forest, they would organize daring attacks against the Germans who would be riding by on the roads. They would also fire on the Christian provocateurs for their cooperation with the Nazis. They paid no attention to the great danger that lurked about them. They also didn't take account of the cold, which caused many to lose extremities to frostbite, rather they went on with their work of sabotage, principally at night, in order to exact vengeance to the extent possible, for the spilled blood of their brothers and sisters.

This continued for a rather long time, until once a forest sentry followed them and betrayed them to the Gestapo. The police immediately fell on them in a surprise attack, a number of them were shot on the spot, others, among them Benjamin Lemkin, were brought to the bunkers, and were shot in front of the Volkovysk Jews, which they had accustomed themselves to do in similar situations in the past. This never deterred the partisan movement. People who had the opportunity to escape top the forest, would start from fresh to organize and engage in acts of sabotage.

In the lager itself, conditions were not the same in each bunker. For example, the Volkovysk bunkers had a better reputation than those of the surrounding towns. The Germans did this primarily to engender envy among the Jews, and in this manner stimulate them to pay the Germans bribes to give them permission to be moved to the better bunkers. For this reason, the uncertain Jews, with the blade already at their throats, gave away the last of their jewelry and money to the Nazis, that they had so artfully concealed, in order to be transferred to the better bunkers.

A group of girls from Bialystok was also found in the Volkovysk bunkers, that had been brought to Volkovysk for forced labor by order of the Nazis. After they had been driven into the lager along with all of the Volkovysk Jews, the head of the Bialystok Judenrat, Engineer Barash, worked it out for them to be able to return to their home city. Since a number of them had already had the opportunity to go home, the Volkovysk Judenrat used the opportunity to fill out the allowed quota with girls from Volkovysk, because being able to save oneself by getting out of the Volkovysk bunkers and going to Bialystok had always been thought of by the Volkovysk people as a solution, even though the final fate, unfortunately turned out to be one and the same.

In connection with the repatriation of the Bialystoker girls and the filling of the quota with a number of Volkovysk girls, our witness Ida Mazover tells us the following incident:

Two sisters, girls from Volkovysk, were listed in the quota to be sent to Bialystok. The night before their departure, their mother had paid two thousand marks, the last of her means, to save her two daughters. Out of great joy, they could not sleep the entire night, and simultaneously out of great fear that they would not be

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dropped from the list, which would change every five minutes. At the very end, early in the morning, the governess of the Bialystoker girls, Rita Kinishevska, who was known for her cooperation with the Nazis, told them that because there were too many candidates only one per family would be permitted to travel. Both sisters came to their mother, and asked her which of them would then go to Bialystok. The mother was subjected to a severe trial. She had to decide which of her daughters she would send to life, and which to condemn to death. However, she did not want to have any hand in this, and left it in the hands of the two sisters, for them to decide among themselves. Ida Mazover tells, that at the same instant, they both cried out: “I want to live!” The younger sister relented, and the older sister went away. But later, regardless, they were re-united, because in the course of a month's time, the younger sister came to the older one on foot.

The above overseer, Rita Kinishevska, later received an award from the Germans for her cooperation. She would betray the Jews to the Germans and turn them over into German hands. The Jews took vengeance on her, and at one time, they stoned her. The Gestapo protected her, and later promoted her to a higher post in Warsaw.

The well-know depredations began. Around November 20, 1942, the overseer of the lager, Tsirka, arrived accompanied by storm troopers, and informed the gathered assembly of thousands of people that a portion of them would shortly have to leave the lager. They are to be sent, together with their wives and children, deep into Germany. There they are to work and live normal lives together with their families. You can understand that most of the people didn't have much faith in this supposedly good news. Nevertheless, this news calmed some of the more optimistic people in the lager. They didn't have to wait very long for the realization of this promise.

Two days later, the Jews of Ruzhany received an order to be prepared the next day at 2AM to be transported. They were also ordered to prepare an exact list of all the people in their bunker, giving precisely each person's name, age and occupation.

The Ruzhany Jews occupied the bunkers opposite the ones for Volkovysk. They occupied a block of eight small bunkers. Their accommodations were much worse than that of the Volkovysk Jews. The two thousand Ruzhany Jews could not all fit into their bunker at night, because there was not enough room for everyone on the bunks, and many of them had to remain outside. If the hardship in the general lager was great, it was even greater among the Jews of Ruzhany, and especially among the elderly. There were days when the death toll among them reached twenty, and often higher. Now at the transports, they were the first to have to go into the fire.

At the appointed time, two o'clock in the morning, the Gestapo people appeared in the lager and began to drive the Ruzhany Jews out of their bunkers. They were driven out of their bunkers under a hail of blows and shooting in the air, carrying only their barest necessities in accordance with the German order. They were driven together in a spot not far from their lager. There, they were arranged in rows under heavy guard. When the designated number had been arrived at, they were led to the transport wagons, which were standing in the open field. They were driven into the wagons, and the train began to move in the direction of central Volkovysk. The cold on that day reached twenty degrees, and the snowstorm was furious. The outcry and screams of the people literally rent the heavens. This was the first transport from the Volkovysk bunkers.

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By the following morning, the entire Ruzhany block was empty, and the entrance to that lager was locked. It was only three days later that about a hundred young people were requisitioned to “clean out” the block. Among the packages, rags, and various other articles, one could see several tens of scrawny corpses of the sick and weak Jews who were unable to make the journey that night with the transport. The Germans permitted them to have a lingering death, and only when they had all died, did the Germans order the block to be cleaned out.

The dead, just as was done with the hundreds of others who had died before them, were taken outside of the perimeter of the lager, and interred in a common grave.

Three days after the Jews had taken their leave of the first transport, the second transport took place. This second transport consisted mostly of the Jews from Zelva, Porozovo, Mosty', Piesk, Yalovka and Amstibova. This transport was the only one to leave the lager during the daytime. The Jews were ordered to assemble in the place between the lagers for Zelva and Volkovysk, which were separated from each other by barbed wire. They were formed into rows of four, and permitted to stand in snow and mud for a number of hours, exhausted and drained, until they were finally ordered to move from that spot. Almost all of the Volkovysk Jews gathered, not far from their exhausted brethren, and witnessed this frighteningly tragic scene through the lines of barbed wire. It is possible that the unfortunate actually envied the Volkovysk Jews because they had yet remained behind in the lager, even though it was only for a short time. But the will to live was strong among everyone, and every day was considered a great achievement.

While all this was happening, it came to pass that one of the “fortunate” Volkovysk Jews was able to pass something through the barbed wire to a Jew from Zelva. This immediately served as an example to everyone. It didn't take long, and everyone made an effort to give something to the Jews from the province, who were being driven away, and who by the hundreds, threw themselves against the perimeter in order to get a parting gift. Tortured and tired hands by the hundreds tore through the barbed wire and grabbed at anything that they could; for one a dried out crust of bread, for another a potato, yet another, an onion. Being hungry, and fearing the hunger of yet another coming day, they cut their hands on the barbed wire until blood ran, and the gifts given in affection were mixed with blood…

Suddenly a shout was heard from the Germans to put an end to this “farewell blessing,” and the Jews immediately turned to go on their way. This was the same way that, only a few days earlier, the Jews of Ruzhany had gone.

After these initial two large transports, a whole series of new transports began. From day to day, the lager became ever smaller. By the end of November, only six or seven thousand remained out of the twenty thousand Jews, and among them about one thousand Jews from Svislucz.

A little at a time, the bunkers and the stables were emptied of the Jews from Porozovo, Mosty', Piesk, Berestovitz, Lisokovo, Zelva, Rosh, Amstibova, Volp and Yalovka.

A number of days after the Jews departed, those that remained behind would “clean up” the empty bunkers, from which they cleaned away the abandoned rags, broken vessels, and the frozen bodies of people, whom the Germans had granted the “privilege” of wasting away until they died.

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When Noah Fuchs fell sick with a severe lung inflammation at the end of November, Tsirka the lager overseer visited him a number of times, in the wooden building that the members of the Judenrat lived. After one such visit, Tsirka told the doctors, in a cold and serious way well-known to the doctors, that “Fuchs must get well.” An important position awaits him. He has in his mind to appoint him as the leader of a new large lager of seventy thousand Jews…

Where did all the transports go? This question did not cease to natter away at everyone's mind. The Judenrat also made a variety of attempts to establish a relationship with the Polish railroad employees, who transported the unfortunate Jews. It became clear at that time, that the trains were going in the direction of the west. Afterwards, it was learned that they headed north, to Bialystok, Malkin, and finally to Treblinka. At that time, the knowledge regarding that extermination camp was not yet clear. But one thing was already clearly understood – that all those who were going there would never again return.

Like a storm, a new decision by the Nazis suddenly disassembled all the remaining Jews – to eliminate the lager in its entirety.

Noah Fuchs and Shammai Daniel had visited the German labor commissioners several times in Petroshovitsa. They were bribed, and in this manner they influenced the German commander to delay the liquidation of the lager at least until August 1943. They obtained an agreement to leave approximately seventeen hundred people in the lager, all men up to the age of fifty, and are occupied in a variety of the city businesses that are related to the war effort. What was promised in these terms, regrettably they could not expect from the Nazis, who did not keep their word.

Negotiations between the members of the Judenrat and the lager commandant continued for the while. It was able to be worked out that among the seventeen hundred men, it would be permitted to have one hundred women, and nothing was achieved in making arrangements to retain children. Afterwards, it fell to the Jews of Svislucz to receive an order for a quota of several hundred to be counted among the general number of the seventeen hundred men. They were able to effect this, thanks to the fact that Svislucz was one of the richest towns in the area, and would provide a lot of leather to the German command. This concession undoubtedly cost the Jews of Svislucz plenty of money.

The situation became serious. Fate lay in the hands of the members of the Judenrat., as to which people would end up on the list of the seventeen hundred which the Judenrat had to present to the Nazi commander. This means, that the selection had to be carried out by the Jews themselves. You can easily imagine the tumult of those days. A war broke out for life or death, in which every extreme form of human emotion from the human character was exhibited in his struggle for life. On the one side was Treblinka, and on the other side – remaining alive for a period of another six months. The bunkers were seen as a sort of Garden of Eden, and the six months – like an eternity…

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The Confused Struggle Between Life and Death

During those few days, some of the most uncivilized emotions and worst aspects of egotism surfaced and the lowest forms of the human character; yet among others – the noblest human feelings of unbounded sacrifice, from a sense of sacrificing oneself for kin, to feelings of the most committed friendship and deepest love for humanity.

In the course of several days, the Jews besieged the bunker of the Judenrat. Everyone asked for a favor for themselves alone, and afterwards – for his wife, child, brother sister, and so forth. Fuchs and Daniel wrote and erased, and wrote again, and erased again. And when the list was completed, a change came the next morning. And this is the way it went on, endlessly. Today a person was fortunate enough to be included in the list, on the morrow, he would give up the ‘chance,’ because he didn't want to be parted from his wife. Another would go to bed, satisfied that he would remain [on the list], and on the morrow he would be told that he was taken off the list because there was someone more needy. Blood relationship, friendship, begging, threats, screaming, weeping – all these were part of the struggle to try and remain in the bunkers. During this time of the struggle between fear and hope, Tsirka would walk around and cold-bloodedly inquire if the list was complete yet.

It was especially difficult to put together the list of the women. First, because their total number was set at a much lower proportion of the overall total, and second, very few of the women were employed by the Germans in war-related work. When Ida Mazover's mother presented herself to Shammai Daniel, who worked on putting the list together, asking that he only let her daughter remain, the sole member of her family, he refused.

The Judenrat also took a negative view of the privileges granted to Rosa Einhorn, the dentist, by the Germans, through their permission to let her live in the city along with her daughter Dora, and to practice there, and in compiling the list of the seventeen hundred, the Judenrat complied with Rosa Einhorn in her request to put her sister Pes'shka on the list, but at the last minute, Shammai Daniel changed the list, and left off the names of her sister Pes'shka along with her husband, Joseph Yanovsky and their two children. They did, indeed, depart with the second Volkovysk transport.

Those who worked in the slaughterhouse, in connection with export to Germany, were put onto the list of the seventeen hundred. Among them were: Dodzhkeh Botvinsky, Katz, Mordetsky, Galai, Zvi Roitman and Leibl Draznin, the gardener (Roitman's friend, whom he got into the slaughterhouse on the last day, and in this way enabled him to remain in the lager).

On the other side, there were certain strong young men, such as the Gandz brothers, Avreml Yunovich, and many others, that had value to the Germans, and were therefore also included on the list of the seventeen hundred. However, at the last minute, they declined to remain behind in the lager without their wives, children and parents. Also, the few who did remain behind, did so only because of the pressure and demands made of them by their own families.

Regrettably, these very bloody and heated days of conflict and heroism are somewhat stained with egotism, and other bad character traits, exhibited on the part of certain specific people. There was no other possibility to save oneself from death other than through bribery, or a price in gold and silver. And there were people, who during these very tragic moments of struggle for life, of deep confusion, of spiritual embitterment and physical impoverishment – continuously used every opportunity to fill their pockets with money. At a time when hundreds of people could be found in the lager, swollen from hunger, there were others who were in the habit of selling bread for the fantastic prices that only very few could permit themselves to pay. These same repulsive

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people, used their positions in the [Jewish] auxiliary police, to carry out the basest actions against their poor brethren. During the time of the transports, when everyone offered all their belongings to avoid being sent away on a transport, these self-same people extorted money from the unfortunates, promising them that they would get them taken off the list of those being taken away from the lager, but then did nothing. In gathering the throng for a transport, these people were the ones who assisted the Nazis in finding those that were missing from the list, in order to complete the rolls. They thought that by doing this they would obtain approval from the Germans, and in this manner, save themselves and their families from death. Fortunately they constituted a small minority, who did not have the strength to blemish the holy martyrdom of our dearest.

Everyone exerted themselves to try and save their own kin, but not everyone succeeded. Those who did not succeed did one of the following two things: either he decided to go along with his relatives on the transport, or he let them go, and remained behind alone. For example, it was in this fashion that the engineer of the electrical station Rak, whose work the Germans needed, and therefore permitted him to stay behind in the lager, seeing that he was unable to effect the retention of his wife and children, decided to go with his family on the transport. There were many instances like this, and it was there that the noblest sentiments of dedication, and self-sacrifice in the eye of death, were expressed. The phrase –“If we must die – then together” – found resonance among many families.

There were other cases, such as the Meshengisser family, which consisted of a father, mother and four children. The father and the two older sons were given permission to remain in the lager because they had work skills. The mother and the two younger children had to go with the transport. At the last moment, it became possible for the younger son to hide himself and remain behind with his father, but the mother and the youngest son had to go to their deaths. Instances such as these, of dividing and breaking up families numbered in the hundreds. There were also instances where mothers abandoned tiny children and saved themselves. And their were opposite instances, where grown children abandoned their parents and saved themselves.

These individual family tragedies were unimaginably complex. It is no light task to attempt to criticize or justify one or another occurrence of a family forced to break up. Whether it was a mother who abandoned a child and saved herself, or if a husband handled his relationship with his wife in a certain way, not meaning that he did not try with all his might to save her, doesn't mean that the husband abandoned his wife, or that the mother abandoned a child – and does not imply that they should be criticized, or considered as having transgressed against their relatives. In order to arrive at such a conclusion, such as assessing how the situation was handled, one would have to have been a witness to that situation under those circumstances.

At that time, just as before, many people wanted to save themselves by fleeing to Bialystok, where, one heard, that Jews lived more peacefully in that ghetto. A number of people achieved this through a variety of ways, using unusual means. In hindsight, the head of the Bialystok Judenrat, engineer Ephraim Barash was very influential in this connection, thanks to whom a larger number of people were able to get through to Bialystok. Apart from this, one tried to smuggle oneself out of the lager in the wagons filled with excrement that had to be removed from there. In particular, the method of smuggling oneself out in the hearses of the Khevra Kadisha, with the corpses, became particularly favored, for which the smugglers were paid four thousand zlotys (about eight hundred dollars) per person. The hearse from the Khevra Kadisha would arrive at the lager in the middle of the night, covered with bedding, on which the dead bodies were lain, which had been laying in a stable. A few living people were mixed in with the dead bodies. The vehicle would drive to within fifteen kilometers of Bialystok, which was about a two hour ride. There, all the living people were let off the vehicle.

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For the rest of the night, they would conceal themselves in the forest, and on the next morning, one way or another, they would worm their way into the Bialystok ghetto. When the Germans would catch them, they would buy themselves out of it. The Germans would often shoot the apprehended people.

Our witness, Moshe Shereshevsky who saved himself by getting to Bialystok this way tells, that two Germans followed him into the stable, where they hid themselves among the corpses. The Germans wanted to shoot him, but he was able to buy them off.

Among those who Ephraim Barash helped to escape from the bunkers, and those who succeeded in fleeing to Bialystok on their own, were: the brothers and relatives of Engineer Barash; Yenta Patsovsky (the Barber's daughter), whom the Nazis later shot in Katzovshchina; Sonya Botvinsky and his wife and child (they were later killed in Bialystok), Dr. Meisel from Svislucz; the Smazanovich family; Nieta Bliakher (the widow of the lawyer, Leizer Bliakher) with her child; Yitzhak Bliakher (Leizer's father); Avreml Farber; Moshe Rubinovich (the last President of the Jewish community of Volkovysk, who later was killed at Auschwitz); Sarah Peisik the dentist; Engineer Yaakov Shipiatsky with wife and child; Yankel Tchopkin ‘Palteh's’ and family, whom the Nazis later shot in Bialystok; Nieta Gandz (Milia Khvonyik's daughter), and many others. Whomever the Poles recognized along the roads, they immediately turned over into Nazi hands. Khvonyik was among those victims of Polish betrayal.

On the seventh day, the notorious list of the seventeen hundred was finished, and the Nazis ordered the Jews on that very same evening, December 5, 1942, to transfer to bunkers vacated by the Ruzhany Jews, whose fate was no longer known to anyone.

There was a great frost outside. People pressed against the gate to the lager, where SS troops stood with a representative of the Judenrat, and every name on the list was controlled. People pushed, and the sentry watch fired and wounded and dead fell. However, this did not intimidate the gathering, who knew that if one could just get over to the other lager, one would stay there. The intent was to remove everyone left over that very same evening in a transport.

Our witness, Yitzhak Tchopper, tells of the following episode in connection with the transfer of the Volkovysk Jews to the new lager: he happened on that day to be in the city with the potato wagons, and had made the extra effort to bring back some foodstuffs to his family in the lager. On entering the lager, his wife suddenly told him that she was registered to remain behind in the lager. Shammai Daniel had told her that if a number of children will be permitted to remain behind in the lager, he will permit Tchopper's son to remain behind. Tchopper himself was among those registered to remain behind in the work camp. In the crowding at the gate of the new lager, his first effort was to assure that his wife and child would be admitted to the new bunkers,

They stood for three hours in rows, out in the cold, until in the end, his wife and child were admitted to the lager. At 11 o'clock at night, when Tchopper himself was getting ready to present himself for admission into the new bunkers, se suddenly saw his wife and child coming back. She related to him that an SS trooper had prevented her from entering the bunker with a child. For this reason, she was required to go back. They went to the Judenrat, but they could accomplish nothing there. He then got an ingenious idea. He took a sack, and wrapped his son in it. The package looked exactly like a package of merchandise, and it was in this fashion that they got past the Nazi control point at the gate to the new lager.

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One of our other witnesses, Moshe Volsky, who rescued himself from that Nazi Hell and remained alive, writes about the heart-rending scenes of those last minutes before the work camp was sealed off, and the separation of thousands of Jews, who that very night were sent away with transports. Men took their leave of their wives, and children of their parents. Everyone knew that these were the last moments they would ever spend together, and in several hours they would be separated from one another forever.

Volsky was at that time in a bunker with his mother and four sisters. He and one of his sisters were granted permission to remain in the lager. His mother, and the other three sisters were listed to be evacuated with the transport. Only one hour remained for them to be together. The entire bunker wept and wailed. His little sister begged him mercifully to take her along with him. “I would like to live a little longer” – she said. His mother embraced him, and in a crying voice, said to him: “Moshe'leh, my only son, at least you, please remain alive and avenge our blood.” The outcry reached the entire length of the bunker to the gate of the new work camp. Where did the refrain not echo: “They are going to life, and we are going to death.”

The unrest grew even greater near the gate in the last hour. Many who attempted to steal into the lager were caught by the Nazis. Some of them were shot, and others were driven back into the bunkers. People ran back and forth as if they were crazy. They tried with all their might to find ways to save themselves by getting into the Ruzhany bunkers, which at that point had become their sole objective. Those who had small children, fed them doses of Luminal and while the children slept, carried them over packed in sacks on their backs or in valises. There, they put the children on the bunks. Two hours later, Tsirka came into the lager with his henchmen, the SS troopers, in order to take a count. The children had to be given a new dose of Luminal and hide them among the sacks of merchandise. A few tens of older children also smuggled themselves in this way into the Ruzhany bunkers and lay hidden under the mud of the lower bunks.

The counters went from bunker to bunker. One went into the bunker followed by the two others, counting each group separately, using their truncheons at all times to beat the Jews about the head. After they finished their count, they appointed a number of the Jewish auxiliary police to the Judenrat, Tsirka then said that he has the required number. At two in the morning, the members of the Judenrat came into the bunker with the Jewish police and with that the selection ended.

It was in this manner that the “fortunate” seventeen hundred people were separated from their dearest ones on the other side of the lager. A gate connected the two parts. SS troops stood guard at that gate, to assure that anyone destined to go with the transport should not sneak into the other section, where the skilled Jews who were designated to remain in the lager were located.

The first Volkovysk transport left the bunkers on the nights of December 5 and 6, 1942, the fourth night of Hanukkah. The second transport left two days later, on the nights of December 7 and 8, the sixth night of Hanukkah.

Our witness, Zvi Roitman tells that, on the night of the Saturday and Sunday, December 6,1942, the SS Troops entered the city concentration camp, which was located in the old slaughterhouse near the hill of the Gymnasium, and ordered about sixty people, Roitman among them, to quickly dress themselves and follow them to another part of the Volkovysk bunkers. They were immediately led away under heavy guard.

From the wailing and crying that reached them on the way to the lager, the people understood that the expulsion

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from the bunkers had arrived. Even though their nearest and dearest were there, these sixty people were suddenly seized with a terrifying anxiety, fearing that perhaps the Nazis would cast their lot in with the thousands of other [Jews of] Volkovysk, paying no heed to fact that they were all on the list of the seventeen hundred. The more they walked, the stronger became the din of the voices of the Jews. But the cries were no longer from the lager, but from the central [railroad] station. Their hearts became embittered when the Germans ordered them to head in the direction of the central station. Then, it became clear to them that they were being taken to their deaths.

When they had gone half the distance, a policeman ran up to them, and ordered them to turn back to the lager, because they were on the list to remain. As was disclosed later, a mistake had been made in taking the sixty men to the transport.

Transports left the Volkovysk lager for the full three days from the 6^th to the 8^th of December. Only seventeen hundred remained out of twenty thousand Jews in a small part of the lager. All the empty bunkers were immediately hammered shut, and the lager, that only yesterday was full of tumult and motion, took on the appearance of a vast cemetery.

Dr. Noah Kaplinsky, one of our witnesses, tells that he was one of the first who came to look upon the scene of the abandoned Volkovysk bunkers. A frightening picture unfolded before his eyes. At the entrance to the block, near the small house used by the Judenrat, was a veritable mountain of corpses, one on another. Bloodied heads, broken arms and legs, half naked and pushed together bodies of people, who were killed in the final hours by the brutal Nazi murderers. And in and around the bunkers they found many sacks, parts of various utensils. Everything was tossed about and scattered, and almost everything had blood stains on it.

Between the bunkers, an old woman with gray hair ran about, screaming out loud: “Why did they not take me too?” She ran up to each and every person, and implored them, begging to be turned over to the Germans, so they would shoot her.

Out of the bunkers wafted the not-yet-cooled off miasma, laden with the sweat and odors of people that had just been driven out of there.

A group of women, older men and abandoned children remained in the bunkers, who were not in any condition to go with the transport. The SS troops ordered that they be gathered in one bunker, in Bunker “Number Three.”

A few days later, Tsirka came to the Jewish doctors and demanded that they poison all of the old and the sick in Bunker “Number Three.” “You know,” he told the doctors: “we have a quick method. But why should we cause such a tumult…” The doctors categorically refused to do this. “We have time,” the cold-blooded murderer said, with a cynical smile.

Towards evening, the doors to all the bunkers were hammered shut, where they also left vessels with burning sulfur for disinfecting purposes. They did the same with Bunker “Number Three,” where about eighty people

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were crammed in – the old, the sick, and children. This aktion against Bunker “Number Three” was carried out late at night, when everyone was already asleep. These vessels full of sulfur were placed in that bunker, and the doors were well closed up.

What happened that night in that bunker, where approximately eighty people were found, only the hapless victims know. When Bunker “Number Three” was opened two days later, they found dead bodies, a part of whom were contorted in a variety of twisted positions. The terrible suffering was etched on their faces. A few still breathed. A sick little girl still groaned in the silence, and called out in a weak voice, “water, water.” A boy with amputated legs had put his head into the sulfur pot, and the rest of his body hung in mid-air. It appears that he wanted to put out the burning gas with is mouth and remained in that position.

The remaining bodies were emaciated, with open eyes glazed over staring at one point. So did about eighty Jews die, while undergoing terrible suffering from a gas that killed its victims slowly over a period of several hours.

Among those who were gassed were: Abraham Ravitzky, “Tekeleh”; the wife of Yaakov Jesierski the lumber merchant; Zlatkeh Rutchik, “Chana-Dob'eh's”; Mindl Chana Lev's; Pin'iyeh Weinberg (he was blind in one eye), and others.

The new, and last period of the Volkovysk [Jews] in the lager began on December 8, 1942. From the approximately twenty thousand Jews, as we know, there remained seventeen hundred, who a little at a time, began to settle themselves anew. One of the former Volkovysk blocks was designated for the use of these who remained behind, consisting of its eight bunkers and its one small house for the members of the Judenrat. The transfer process was a very long one, and lasted approximately a week's time. First, a German exterminator carried out a disinfection process in the eight bunkers, afterwards, the Jews were transferred from the Ruzhany bunkers to bathe, and from there to the sanitized bunkers.

A few days later, the period of the transfer ended. The Gestapo guard was removed, and Tsirka left the lager. Control of the lager was transferred to the hand of the Wehrmacht, and control of the remaining seventeen hundred people was transferred to the hands of the army.

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