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Fate has burdened us with the difficult and bitter mission, to set before you the awesome and earthshaking story about the loss of Volkovysk, the city of our birth, and of the extermination of its Jewish residents, our brothers and sisters – yours, parents, acquaintances and good friends, at the hands of the despised Nazis, whose like had until now never been seen in the world.

It has fallen upon us, to tell you, and the generations to come, what took place to the residents of Volkovysk in the way of the final awesome tribulations that they endured, the sons of our city that now no longer exists as a Jewish city, as it did from olden times onward.

We present this depressing folio of blood to you, in order to discharge our historical obligation: “Remember What Amalek Has Done To You!” ^[1]

Our entreaty is, that this sad historical record be found in the home of every descendant of Volkovysk in the entire world, regardless of location, and that it be handed down as a legacy from generation to generation.

Adherence to this behest need not be only for the purpose of remembrance, but also in order to know how to react and relate to the murderers, their children and children's children: “A War With Amalek from Generation to Generation.”

And there is yet one further objective before us: This folio will serve as a memorial for the thousands of our brothers and sisters, from Volkovysk and its environs, that were exterminated in tragic, earthshattering ways, in Volkovysk, in Treblinka, and in Auschwitz, in the crematoria of the gas-chambers – and not brought to a proper Jewish burial, and of whom no trace remains...

Their anniversary day falls during the Hanukkah festival! Let every Jew throughout the world, whose origins are from Volkovysk, together with the Hanukkah candles – which themselves are a symbol of out national struggle and national survival – light a Candle of the Spirit in memory of the Jews of Volkovysk that were exterminated, and just like our early elders, who for centuries told our children of our heroic and the glorious history, so shall the Candle of Spirit convey to future generations, this great tragedy of our Days of Blood, “Woe, What Has Befallen Us!”

The material in the first part of the folio, was written by people who themselves underwent all these terrifying events, and were saved only by a miracle, and came to the Land of Israel in order to start their lives anew.

Part of the material was transcribed by us on the basis of conversations we had with eye witnesses.

Tel-Aviv, 1946

Translator's footnote:

1. Deuteronomy 25:17 Return

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From my childhood on, I lived my entire life in Warsaw. I was raised there, educated there, worked there, and together with this, took an active role in the political and organizational life of the labor movement, Poalei Tzion. The war in 1939, put an end to this orderly way of life; it brought us a period of cruel and terrifying events of a nature that is beyond the capacity of the human imagination to conceive of them. I went through the siege of Warsaw; the city was bombed day and night, and had artillery shells rained down on it. Yet, the morale of its citizenry did not fall, and they conducted themselves with honor and heroism. Even the masses of the Jews of Warsaw stood in the front lines and in the first columns. After the capture of Warsaw by German divisions, I became convinced that I cannot continue to pursue my life under the regime of the Nazi murderers.

I left Warsaw on December 21, 1941 with my friends. At night, we forded the Russo-German border across the Bug River, not far from the town of Smiaticz. After blundering around for the night, we fell into the hands of the Soviet border guards in the morning. After a short interrogation and search, regarding the reason that we crossed the Russian border, and our purpose, they set us free. From Smiaticz we walked to Bialystock, where we enlisted to be sent to distant Russian for work. However, we couldn't wait for our turn, because of the extensive anger of the people, and we decided, for lack of alternatives and the poor conditions, to go to a smaller town where we hoped to find an easier arrangement.

We rode to Volkovysk, I and two of my friends: Epstein and Fantofelmacher.

From that hour on, my life and fate became inextricably bound up in the fate of the Jews of Volkovysk. One of my friends and I found lodging at Number 12 Tatarski Gasse on the hill, with the Gardener, Leibl Draznin, and his wife, Rivka Bernstein, at which location also lived Rivka's parents, Sarah Baylah and Reb Naphtali. They were originally from Amstibova. They were marvelous people, with dear souls of great substance. I got used to them very quickly, and their residence turned into my new home. Their children, and they themselves, soothed the yearnings I had for my own home, and for the dear kin that I held most dear. Rivka, was dark-eyed and a pretty woman, full of life and hope for a bright future, a symbol of everything good and charitable, possessing all desirable qualities. And Sarah Baylah, the typical Jewish mother, dedicated, with everyone's concerns on her, a Balabusta of unending energy, who worked from daybreak until evening, the entire time for the welfare of her grandchildren and children.

I obtained work as an electrician in the slaughterhouse, and from that point onwards, my life continued on an even keel, and peacefully in relation to the circumstances about me. Generally speaking, the Jews did not live badly, and the Jewish community of Volkovysk got used to the new conditions imposed by the Soviets. Collective work units were created, cooperatives and collectives. Every Jew found a means of sustenance under the new circumstances.

From a cultural point of view, we felt ourselves better off, more secure and established; there was no fear to appear [in public] as a Jew. We didn't have the fear of Polish anti-Semitism hovering over us. However, fate would not have it this way, because the martyrs sacrificed in the lands captured thus far, were insufficient. The murderers and harborers of [malevolent] designs thirsted for new rivers and cascades of Jewish blood.

The Russo-German war broke out. Volkovysk, by virtue of being close to the border was one of the first to

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suffer from the war. Literally, on the first day of the war, German planes fell upon Volkovysk, and set the entire center of the city on fire, beginning from the small bridge to Zamoscheh, from one side, all the way to Karczyzna on the other side. The entire city was engulfed in flames. The Jewish homes burned for days and nights. The nights were lit up from the flames. The days were dark from the pillars of black smoke from the effort and energies of the Jews being burned up. People totally exhausted and out of energy from too many sleepless nights, ran around as if insane, with their children in their arms, from one street to the next, in order to escape from the tongues of fire and the asphyxiating smoke. The market square stores burns, the Schulhof, the entire Wide Boulevard is surrounded by fire. Botvinsky's house send tongues of flame shooting skyward. The fire reaches the edge of the Grodzhensky Gasse, part of Tatarski, Kosciuszko Gasse, – fire coming from every quarter, and there is no place to hide from it; the tongues of flame spread with lightning speed from house to house, entire streets are immersed in flame, as if they were burning torches. However, it appears that the Nazi sadists are not satisfied with this, because in addition to this, the German planes are dropping bombs on every house, on every wrecked structure. It appears that they had decided to wipe out everything, and not leave any stone standing on another stone. People hide out in the cellars of the burned houses, in the potato storage pits. However, even there, the murdering hand reaches them. They drop bombs on the wrecked homes, and people are buried alive.

The bombing began on the first day. First to be destroyed was Rosh, where they had been working for a week, day and night without stop, on constructing an air field, the bombing did not stop. On Friday, the cruelty reached its zenith. Near Shifmanovich's house, scarred by fire, a bomb hit the cellar underneath the burned house, and over thirty people were covered in earth and dust – men, women and children. This image is etched into my memory to this day. A shuddering picture. It will never leave me, forever. I am hiding in the cellar of a wrecked house, not far from Weiner's house. I hear the droning of an airplane flying very low, seeking targets for its bombs. There is a deathly silence for a moment, the house shakes, I wait with bated breath to see if the impact will reach me. Moments like this took place by the hundreds, every day. Suddenly, there is the noise of the drone of many airplanes – tremendous explosions. Everything is shaking, and once again, it is quiet; one continues to hear the sound of airplanes flying about. I peek outside, and I see a gigantic pit not far from me, created by the bomb that fell nearby, and a cellar that was near this pit, in which people were hidden, was completely covered in earth. The distressed sound of wailing can be heard – Jewish people, save us! Without paying any attention to the deadly danger from the low-flying airplanes overhead, Jews run, boys, the elderly, from their various hideouts, and with shovels and metal crowbars, digging even with their hands, literally cleaning off the dirt with their fingers, and dig out the covered people. Hands, feet, bodies on top of bodies, mothers with children in their arms – all these pressed together and mixed in with the earth. The wailing of the partially buried, begging for help, to be saved from the earth. And those completely covered in earth, partially suffocated, whose cries we are not certain we hear. The feeling of committing one's own life a feeling of kinship, was mixed into the will to survive. The danger is great, the pilots are shooting from the airplanes with machine guns. Despite this, people do not leave their places. Old people with hoary beards dig in the ground and pull out body after body. Were we able to conceive that a time so bad would come, that we would envy those who had the good fortune to be killed in those first days of the war? That those whom we did save, would curse the day of their salvation. And indeed, such an hour did arrive.

The first German patrols entered Volkovysk on Saturday. Everyone of the remaining Jews waited with their relatives in their hiding places, and waited with a fluttering heart of the unfolding of the events. Without victims and plunder, the remaining material assets were not enough. But we were accustomed to victims already; whoever died, was dead. However, whoever remained alive wanted to go on living. Those who were hidden began to confront the depressing results. The lives of the Jews centered on the Neuer Gasse; it was

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the only street that was spared.

Because of the shortage of dwelling space, the crowding was great, several families to a house. A Judenrat was established headed by Dr. Weinberg and Noah Fuchs. A [new] chapter of arrests began, in which it was sufficient for a Pole to inform the police that a Polish Jew was a communist under the Russians, in order to cause him to be arrested, and shot on the morrow. And “good friends” among the Poles were never in short supply at any time – but at this point, a whole stream of prevarications and arrests commenced. On each and every day, buses loaded with Jews accused of transgressions were taken out of the city and to the forest, and there killed besides pits that had been dug in advance, and afterwards, they were buried at the hands of other Jews.

One of my very good friends, who worked with me at the slaughterhouse, was sent out in one of these groups. This was Markus. He was shot immediately in the first days. Despite all of this, people had the will to live. But the belly demands its needs; if so, this need creates a requirement for new sources of sustenance.

Living conditions became harsh, the decrees promulgated against the Jews deprived us of all privileges. Signs were introduced for Jews – the yellow badge. It was forbidden to walk on the sidewalks. Carrying on commerce was off limits. It was forbidden to own land or domestic animals. In one stroke – all forms of making a living were cut off. Despite this, we all lived; there were people who sold off a garment, and from the pennies that they managed to save during the holidays, from work, or black marketing, and there were those who died of hunger. However, despite all of this, they lived, some badly, and some very badly, but they lived; with fear and trepidation for tomorrow, always with an assured sense of hope for a better future. I immediately began to work at the same place I had worked under the Russians, at the slaughterhouse fro export. In the initial period, I was the only Jew working for the Germans. They held on to me because they had great need of me. I worked as an electrician at the side of the machines, and there was no one else to take my place. I excelled at my work, and very quickly, I gained the trust of the Germans that ran the slaughterhouse. The Germans did not install a ghetto in Volkovysk; and not because the Jews of Volkovysk were better than others. The destruction of Volkovysk was so great, that there literally was no place left where a ghetto could be built. In order to put up a ghetto, it would have been necessary to drive out the Poles from a part of the property that remained intact in the city; Zamoscheh, Wola or Karczyzna – and they did not want to do this. These circumstances made it easier for the Jews to find a way to make a living.

However, circumstances got worse from day to day in any event. The levies and taxed imposed on the Jews by the Germans from one side, and the forced hard labor without pay, sucked the vigor and blood from the handful of Jews that survived. Poverty and want grew daily. On top of all this, our lives were made miserable by the auxiliary Polish police, who enforced the German decrees, and even those not promulgated by the Germans, with avenging detail. Every day, searched of Jewish homes were conducted, and they confiscated all items, whether they had any value or not.

In the summer of 1942, when the situation was so serious that the vicinity was plagued with outbursts of pogroms and mass slaughtering, and tides of Jewish blood were being spilled in Slonim, Baranovich, Lida, and many other places – there was relative quiet in Volkovysk. Despite this, a part of the young people perforce understood the seriousness of the situation, and they took stock of the imminent danger that was preparing to arrive. They decided to manifest a strong resistance through attack. We worked in secret, we organized and carried out an explanation of our intent. We managed to generate contact with a larger group of Russian partisans, that was located in the Zamkova Forest. The first ones to establish contact with the partisans were Sarah Rubin and her

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brother-in-law; they were active during this entire period. Once, Sarah's brother-in-law turned to me (this was before we started to work together), and asked me if I would go into the forest to repair a radio there that belonged to a group of partisans. I received this mandate with happiness; and my dream was realized, my desire to participate in a practical way with real partisans. During one of the days at the beginning of the week, I went into the forest, taking along tools suitable to repair the radio. It is superfluous to add that this step was fraught with danger, There was a standing order that any Jew found outside of the city was to be shot. As to entry into the forest, that goes without saying. There, it was forbidden even for non-Jews to enter. Anyone found in the forest or in its vicinity was taken for a partisan and shot on the spot. However, we reached the designated point without incident. A sentry from the partisans waited for us in the forest. I saw before me a sympathetic young Russian boy with a light machine gun in his hand. We identified ourselves, and afterwards we were taken into the depths of the forest to his group. After an hour of walked through byways and various paths, and contact with a variety of sentry posts, we reached a camouflaged location among trees that were low and close together. A number of tents stood on a small square . A campfire burned in the middle of the square, and a cheerful group of Russian men and women soldiers were carrying on a lively conversation. I saw that I was in a different world. The situation that unfolded before my eyes exceeded all my expectations, all the ideas that I ever had about the partisans. The sense of security, the vigor, the tranquility of spirit, all affected me, and inspired me. I presented myself to the commander, a tall pleasant looking fellow from Georgia,^[1] who had the rank of Lieutenant. He was called Grisha. They showed me the place where the radio was, and asked me to repair it, because it had been several days without any news from Moscow, and because of this, they were cut off from the outside world. In a matter of several hours, I returned the radio to its normal state, and it began to function again. As can be understood, the joy was very great. They were very satisfied with the work that was done. This was a great day, and I had sufficient time to engage in conversation, and become familiar with their work. All of them were soldiers of the Red Army that had retreated. There were even a number of Jews among them. They were engaged in a great endeavor. Despite the extent of the work, this was a small group. They subjected the entire vicinity to their program of sabotage. A day did not go by without some incident; here they would tear up railroad tracks, there they would blow up a bridge, they attacked German airplanes and set fire to grain storage facilities. Each time it was something different, and always to the surprise of the Germans. The Germans had the impression that the area contained an entire army, a large force. It reached me, that the Germans at night, had to mount a watch of peasant farmers with staves along the entire length of the rail line, but even this was to no avail. In the mornings, they would find piles of peasant farmers from their district – stuck together like stamps to the ripped up rail lines. The role of young people from Volkovysk was far from minimal in these actions. They provided all the necessary materiel, starting with medicines, and ending with the tools for destruction. One of the most dedicated of the workers in connection with this important work, was the Smith, Bom Zuckerman, Lemkin's son, and others. The freedom, the sense of assurance, and the concept behind this so inspired me, that I was prepared to stay behind with them, and not to return to the city any longer. But here, it was not a case of personal preference; the need forced the issue. They decided that it was incumbent upon me to continue working with the existing group that already existed in the city, whose primary mission was to organize young Jewish men, and in a measured process, transfer them out to the forest. Apart from this: to organize all the young people in the city, in the event of a German action against the Jews, and to be able to mount a defensive attack. We also engages in provisioning the forest with all manner of necessities that they required to facilitate their work. Towards evening they escorted me out of the forest, and we returned to the city. The forest was the province of the partisans. In the forest, they felt safe, and no German had the nerve to even set foot in the forest.

Thanks to my work in the export slaughterhouse, I had the opportunity to procure many different things that

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were needed by the partisans. I was able to obtain the trust of the manager – his name was Talkes; He was, incidentally, the head of the Nazi division in Volkovysk. In the meat factory, I worked as an overseer of the machines and the electrical equipment. All the tools and keys and technical equipment were under my supervision. Because of this alone, I frequently traveled with the permission of the chief, to the storage warehouse (this was a warehouse where good and damaged equipment was kept, that was found in the vicinity after the Russian retreat). I would travel there to take various items that were necessary for the factory. It is understood, that my concern was to assure that there would always be a lack of various items. At every opportunity, I would take thinks that would be useful to the group. Various radio parts, tools, pliers, weapons parts, electrical parts, capacitors, oil, Vaseline and many other necessities. I would bring these things with me to the factory, and afterwards, send them onward, putting them in Sarah Rubin's hands, and she would get them to the right place. Several times, on Sunday, the day of rest, I would myself go into the forest. Largely, this was because I had been designated to communicate a specific mission. I became very friendly with the group. I felt wonderful and safe in the forest. They lived well, at the outset they had plenty of food. The work of the group was divided into two parts – one part dealt with carrying out the work of the partisans in the area of sabotage. The second part , a much smaller one, dealt with obtaining food. They would go at night to the peasants and force them to turn over foodstuffs.

Cooperative endeavor between the youth of Volkovysk and the partisans went on for a long time; many of the young people went into the partisan ranks in the forest. The group grew in recognizable measure. In that same time, conditions in the city grew steadily worse. The fire of Jewish slaughter blazed in the entire vicinity, with mass killings as a daily occurrence. Yet in Volkovysk at that time, there was relative quiet. Occasional survivors, who managed to escape the clutches of the murderers found, for the moment, a refuge and place to rest in Volkovysk. However, we all knew that the evil would not pass us by, that our turn would also come, and the tragic moment arrived. However, to our great sadness, not in the manner we had anticipated; there was not a mass slaughter. A punitive expedition of Ukrainians and Germans did not come to Volkovysk to carry out this work, as they had done in other towns like Dereczin, Zelva, and Slonim, and I emphasize to our great sadness, because in such an instance, we would have mounted a respectable resistance, and it is possible that a part of us could have been saved. However, the Evil began in an entirely different place. The process began in the ninth month [September] of 1942, a week before Rosh Hashana, with the arrest of all the Jewish doctors and dentists. That same night Sarah Rubin came and told me that I was being summoned, and I understood the meaning of these said words, and I immediately went. A Russian girl was waiting for me, and she told me to go along with her, because she is an emissary of the commander. I went without reservation. Any refusal was out of the question, because I was committed to the partisan cause, and where a mission was involved, its fulfillment took priority, and the punishment was death. The truth of the matter was, that the situation was not conducive to thinking things out, because on the following day, I was required to be at work, and that would no longer be possible, and not to show up for work to the Germans was called 'sabotage,' engendering a suspicion that something 'not kosher' was going on, and this also was tied to a death sentence. But a mission is a mission , and not only that – the commitment to the issue, and the desire not to fear going to battle, for revenge that transcends commitment, directed me to do this thing. When we left the city it was dark – the safest time; At night, the Germans were afraid to walk the Piesk Road because of the Zamkova Forest. The roadway was not familiar to me. She was the leader along the way, and I followed in her steps. We proceeded rapidly for a few hours, by different byways and paths, and on the way, many thoughts ran through my mind. In no way could I divine why I was being called for in so sudden a manner. My feelings were varied. Perhaps they want me to remain permanently with them in the forest – that would be good, except for the unpleasantness of being separated from my relatives. And maybe it has some connection to the arrest of the doctors. Or perhaps, they have lost their trust in me, in which case this is my last journey, because in this instance, the partisans don't fool around, and they don't

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engage in extensive investigations. Thoughts by the hundreds consumed me, and with a fluttering heart I awaited the resolution of the matter. In the meantime, the road receded behind us, and we sank into the thick depths of the forest. We encountered a number of partisan sentries, armed from head to foot, and my guide exchanged various passwords with them. At about midnight, we reached the camp. Everyone except for the watch were already asleep. They showed me to a place where I could lie down. Only on the morrow would I be able to talk to the commander regarding the matter that I had been sent for. In the morning, after question about what was going on in the city, and other things, he told me that the radio had malfunctioned, and that I would have to fix it rapidly. The commander told me, that because of the large size of the group, and apart from this, because of the oncoming winter, the position of the group in a small forest in relation to bare trees, was not secure enough, and it is incumbent upon them to move to larger forests, with the intent of going to Bielovez. He told me to get ready, to provision myself with a variety of necessities, and with tools, and in the following week I was responsible to come on the day of the planned move.

I worked there until afternoon, and fixed the radio, and the day and location of the meeting was set for the coming week, at approximately one o'clock, one of them escorted me out of the forest, and from there I walked into the city. I did not know the way very well, because I had come out of the other side of the forest, not far from Rosh. The way was longer than anticipated, and I skipped over the roads, choosing to walk through fields, in order to avoid passing people and buses. When I arrived at the city itself, from the side of the slaughterhouse, very near to Volya, it was already five o'clock. Even before I entered my house, as I was walking along the Grodno Gasse, facing Tatarski [Gasse], I met Fish'keh, a butcher who worked with me. He ran to me greatly upset; Roitman, where have you been? The Chief of Police is looking for you. A cold sweat covered me, and I thought, who knows where evil lurks for me. I told him that I had worked the entire day at Steinberg the Electrician, in connection with repairing a motor in the factory. Having calmed down, he then told me that today, in the afternoon, the Chief of Police was with the manager Taller, and asked that I be called. This was all that he related to me, and I didn't know what to do – or more correctly, I knew what to do – to return to the forest and the group; but [the question was] where were they now, and how to meet up with them? I always went with an escort of other people, who showed me the way, and I did not know the way myself; apart from this, with my disappearance in such a sudden manner, I endanger the members of my household; Draznin and the members of his family are likely to answer with their heads on account of me. And another thing, it was not clear to me that the summons by the Chief of Police had anything to do with what was worrying me. Amidst this plethora of thoughts, I decided to go home, and to see what was being discussed there. When I entered the house, they all surrounded me with one question: Herschel, where have you been? The Chief of Police was here looking for you. I apprehended that the matter was serious, because it was not usual for the Chief of Police (A German Officer, SD) to personally come for a matter of an arrest, but rather to send members of the auxiliary police. It became known to me, that in addition to arresting the doctors, they had yesterday also arrested electricians and several radio technicians, among them: Herschel Galiatsky, Polya, and others. The matter was totally incomprehensible to me. If they were looking for me, and it is possible that something became known to them, perhaps they were investigating me, perhaps I had been informed on, I didn't know what to think. There was no opportunity to think, because when he was in the house, the Chief of Police said that I had until 9:00PM to appear at the police station, and if not — there isn't more to say... the atmosphere in the house was like that of Yom Kippur , Sarah, Baylah and Rivka cried, and were already mourning me, because an imprisoned Jew was 99% certain to be lost. I was already calm, and I decided what was incumbent upon me to do. It was 7:00PM, and I still had two hours time. I hurriedly went to Rubin's brother-in-law to take counsel with him, however to my chagrin, I found not a person, I then went to Bom Zuckerman, and could not find him at home as well. And since I was not able to find anyone, I decided to go to the factory and talk to the machinist and see if I could extract anything form him in connection with the reason I was being sought, and in the event of a danger, I didn't want to return to the city

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not knowing where they where. And that's what I did, and I approached the factory, and the machinist anticipated me, by asking where I had been all day? I gave him the same evasive answer, that I had repaired a motor in the city on behalf of the factory (a burned out motor indeed was at that time with Steinberg). The machinist told me the same thing that Fish'keh did, adding that the secretary to the plant manager was there and she had called for me. But he told her to tell the manager that just now, I had gone to the city to obtain an available machine part. We agreed among ourselves, that in the event that one of us should be absent, the second party would seek an alibi, and indicate that the sought party was away taking care of something, but the rest of his replies were not helpful. As it happens, the replies of the machinist actually proved to be more useful than ever. I decided to go in to see the manager and to advise him of what had transpired, and he liked me and had trust in me. His good attitude towards me, despite the fact that I was a Jew, came from the fact that I was very much in demand to do the work I did, and secondly, he had no one else to take my place. I came to him as if nothing had happened and I said, that the Chief of Police had been looking for me at home, and asked me to come at 9:00PM, with this, I gave the impression that I had been at work all along. He soothed me, and told me that I am very diligent in my work, and there is nothing to fear, that at the police station they will ask me something, and then let me go immediately, and in fact, I calmed down a little, but not because of the word of the manager, because I never believed the words of the Germans. I took comfort from the fact that I was convinced that he believed that his opinion was that I had been at work that day, just like on other days, and that I was not missing from work. In the meantime, nine o'clock had arrived, and it was almost that I had barely left the manager's office, when I see two Polish auxiliary policemen from Volkovysk coming at me, Chmienecki and Mihalczek, saying that they had a warrant to arrest me; they had already been to my house, and they were told that I was at the factory. There was nothing to do; all my plans went up in the void; under the barrels of two guns, it is hard to run away. I had a visceral feeling of regret that I hadn't done so previously, but in spite of this, I felt that maybe it was better this way, because were I to flee, I might save myself, but the people with whom I lived were condemned to be killed on my behalf. It was with thoughts of this kind that I was brought to the police station. There, I met up with four men who had already been arrested, two strangers whom I did not recognize, and: Galiatsky and Polya. According to the reception we got, I caught on immediately that this was not a simple interrogation, as the manager had indicated, but rather something quite serious. One of the three SS men, who were well-known in Volkovysk, the three Angels of Death, in whose hands lay the life and death of the Volkovysk Jews, said to Galiatsky: “Where have you been dog, with the 'bandits?'” (that what the Germans called the partisans). They asked me, why had I come so late? Where was I, I relied on my manager, and I said that I was busy at work, and they ordered me to go outside, and at a designated place where they got into the ordinary taxi of the three SS men, two got in and one drove. The second one, with pistol in hand, didn't take his eyes off me for a minute. We recognized the taxi only too well, it was the taxi with which they would take all the accused Jews of the city, to be taken out and shot with machine guns outside of the city in the nearby forest. They drove with us as well, away from the city. It is easy to understand how we felt. After a short hour of riding in the dark, he turned the car and entered a gate. We did not know in advance where they were taking us, but when the car stopped and they ordered us to get out, and they took us into an underground bunker (a cellar), we saw that we were in the Barracks extermination camp. This was the famous camp that the Germans put up in 1941 using Russian prisoners of war. There, there were tens of bunkers dug deep into the ground, covered only with a roof. At the outset, in 1941, the bunkers held about thirty thousand Russian prisoners of war. After a number of months, a number died off, almost all from starvation, filth and disease. The Russian dead were buried in mass graves, several thousand to a pit, not far from the Barracks near the stream to Kuvia, on the way from the Barracks to the export slaughterhouse. There, beside the Russian war prisoners, all our own near and dear ones found their eternal resting place later, who were fortunate enough to be killed before leaving Volkovysk. In that dark, damp bunker, we introduced ourselves to our new neighbors., these largely being Russians that the Gestapo had captured in various locations, and accused them of providing assistance

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to the partisans. What became clear to us, is that we were also being accused of this in the same manner. It appears that it already was quite late at night. A deathly silence pervaded, all of us were packed together, and we shivered from the cold. Each one of us was sunken in his own thoughts. All of us knew what awaited us, we understood clearly and all arrivals do not return.

The one in the worst condition was me; what I want to say in this way that my ethical position was the worst. From the conversation that was carried on regarding the reason for our arrest, that each of us heard, it became clear to me that we were being [collectively] accused for the repairs that I had made to the radio of the partisans. It is self-understood, that not one of us had so clear position in this as myself. I understood that the intention was directed at me. I was especially concerned about Galiatsky, the oldest Jew among us, a sympathy and concern that didn't stop from our tongues: what do they want from me? I don't have a clue as to what this is all about, Polya would review the facts: if I were at least separated from them, it wouldn't have bothered me so much. I also had to feign ignorance, and was forced to give this impression in order not to arouse any suspicion. I say this with full honesty: I lied in front of my comrades. I lied, not because of any fear, not from any egoistic impulses, and also not because of any fear of death. It was clear to me, that should I confess, it is possible that the other three radio technicians might be set free, but along with this, I would provide credibility for another thing, that the Jews of Volkovysk were providing assistance to the partisans, and it was this that the SS worked mightily to prove with singular focus. This conclusion had the implications of causing extremely serious consequences for all the Jews of Volkovysk. For this reason, I held my own counsel, and concluded it was best to admit nothing. I was resolute in my conviction, that even under the heaviest assault, the most extreme torture, not to say anything. On the following morning at daybreak, we saw through the single tine window that was above the door to the bunker, that was flat with the ground, that the doctors were coming out of the bunker opposite us. They took them under guard to a source of water to wash themselves. To our good fortune, the water source was close to our bunker, and it was in this fashion that we were able to exchange a few words through the iron bars on the tiny window. Dr. Weinberg told us in a few words that they were accused of providing medical help to the partisans. He related that a number of them had already been interrogated. On our part, we related that according to the charge we are being accused of repairing the partisan radio. In general the doctors presented themselves as not having fallen in their spirits. They looked tired, and without adequate sleep. However, in general, they appeared to hold themselves well. Especially Weinberg, who stood looking fresh and energetic. At that time we saw Dr. Weinberg, [Dr.]Velvelsky, Dr. Cantor, Dr. Tropp, Dr. Press, Dr. Sedletsky, and others. Afterwards, when the men had finished washing, they brought out the women. Among many Russian women, and also Jewish ones from the vicinity, we saw Rosa Einhorn and Piesikova.

That's how it started. The days seemed long and endless in the dark, perpetually damp and stifling bunkers, and with ceaseless retrieval that they came to take us, to be questioned and interrogated, and maybe to death. The routine tired us out quickly; at the beginning we would tell one another different things, everyone expressing his latest hopes. Later one, we became tired of this as well, and everyone sat silently, each sunk deeply in his own thoughts. The nights were much worse. We sat or slept on worn wooden bunks, we huddled together from the cold, with heart aching and stomach grinding from hunger. And this is the way we waited in a condition of limbo, with an uncertain tomorrow. We waited a few days, and no person asked about us. No person called to us. The Gestapo was in no hurry. They were sure of us, and we were in their hands. In the intermittent times, we did meet with the doctors. With the proceeding of the interrogation, their spirits fell. They were interrogated each and every day, and during the interrogation they were even beaten. They wanted to force them to confess in this way. The SS had certain evidence that one of the doctors helped the partisans and healed a wounded partisan, but they didn't know which one. The interrogation was stuck on this one unmoving point. Each one of the doctors argued that it was not his fault, that he has no

[Page 10]

relationship whatsoever with the partisans. The situation was without hope. Weinberg let the city know, and asked of the Judenrat to make an effort from the outside, but he lacked resources. The only Jew who had any access to the three men of the Gestapo, whose hand was spread over the city, was Weinberg himself. , to whom they showed some measure of decency, perhaps not because of his own worth, but rather because of the sums of money he brought to them, the various taxes, the pennies from the last sweat of the local Jewish population, in order to at least postpone the enactment of one decree or another. He, the liaison, himself sat in the seat of the accused of an accessory in assisting the partisans. All stood on their morale, that is to say, from an ethical point of view. Because from a physical standpoint, they were already broken by a week of imprisonment. The appearance of their faces was bad. Age had jumped on them, because of a lack of sleep and lack of food. On the fourth day of our imprisonment, they began to interrogate us: the first one they took was Galiatsky, after several hours of being pressured with a variety of questions, and tortured, he returned to the bunker broken and spent. All of us jumped on him to find out what the question were that he was asked. It became clear that one of us had been accused of repairing the radio of the partisans. One of the important proofs in the interrogation lay in demonstrating that we were occupied for every day, working for the Germans, and by such, that there was no possibility of us being in the forest. Galiatsky proved truthfully and with reports that he had not lost even one single day of work. A less pressured situation was created for me, since I was called third. According to the fact that they had called Galiatsky and Polya ahead of me, I arranged my answers in my memory in order to support my 'alibi.' When I was called, I was received by two SS men. After recording my biographical information, up to the day of arrest, one of them said to me: were you not in the forest to repair a radio for the partisans? I felt my heart leap, but I quickly got control of myself, and I quietly answered with wonder in my voice: I know nothing about the partisans, on that day, as on all other days, I was at my place of work, and my manager, Mr. Taller can vouch for me. They showed me implements, pliers, keys, which I recognized quite well, they showed me a piece of antenna wire that I had put in place for the group in the forest. In all of the answers I gave, I was consistent, that I knew nothing of this matter. They threatened me, yelled at me, spoke gently and then badly to me, but always, I gave them the same answer. They pressured me for more than two hours, and in the end, indicated that they wished to terminate the protocol, because everything had been recorded in a typewriter. After a few days, we got a good report that they were letting Rosa Einhorn and Piesikova go free. This was the first instance of good fortune, that people, especially Jews, left the camp alive, and our spirits improved, and the spirits of the doctors improved; they began to believe in an auspicious future where they would be set free. But in this connection, their circumstance was much worse because the practice of medicine is 'free' and their work was not tied to a specific place of work, and because of this, they were unable to prove that they were always tied to their work. By contrast to this, we were all able to demonstrate an unbroken presence at our place of work. Three of my comrades were able to prove this as a mat5ter of the actual truth, and I was able to do so by relying on an agreement with my manager that he would vouch for me being at work on that day. Despite this, the matter did not stop to bore into my mind for even a minute, how do they know exactly how all of this had happened? Various thoughts coursed through my mind. I thought that maybe a spy was in the midst of the partisans, and he relays all of this? Or maybe, there is someone in the city who is really in the ranks of the Gestapo (there were such people in other towns) and tells about everything, but then the question arises: what is the purpose of such an interrogation? Should they not have arrested only me? Everything that I considered in regard to this issue seemed like a paradox to me. A moment of breakthrough occurred: they sent for me a second time, they interrogated me for a short time, and then told me that I was free to go, that I could return to my work. It is hard to describe the feeling of good fortune that welled up inside of me; I could not believe my ears, it was as if I were in a dream. That this was the real outcome, was proved to me only when I made my second pass through the camp, and I was on my way, near the barracks. I thought to myself about the iron of the fate: I am the guilty one, and here I am free, and those that don't have so much as a clue, are still detained. In another day, they released Galiatsky, and three days later, all of the electricians were set free.

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It became clear that it was not our successful justifications that stood us in good stead, but rather the German managers for whom we worked, involved themselves in the matter, and indicated that our work was very critical for them. The elation in the city was substantial, and morale soared; the hope was created that the doctors too, would be released. A few more days went by, but not a single person appeared, the Gestapo brought a number of Jewish doctors from Bialystock for the city, in place of those who were arrested. This occurrence was a bad omen. With a fluttering heart, every one of us waited for the resumption of this issue and how it would play out, and the matter was not long in coming. On October 14, 1942, the Gestapo took a group of Jews for work on a special detail; it took them out to the Izavelin Forest, and forced them to dig a pit. When the pit was dug, they took them away to a distance of several hundred meters from it, a place from which they heard, after barely an hour, the sound of machine gun fire. When they were brought back to the pit, they saw what was covered with dirt, the writhing bodies of the most dear to us; they covered the grave...

There is no secret in the matter any longer, and there is also no reason for it to remain a secret, that Weinberg himself, the Head of the Judenrat gave the medical attention to the partisans. It is only a pity that there were so few like Weinberg! He understood that the only means left to us was to come to the aid of the partisans, and to make common cause with them, and if he did not confess under interrogation in order to save the other doctors from death – as it appears – it was not out of any fear, but because of the clear and correct thought, that in taking the blame on himself, he would be placing the entire Jewish community and Jewish people of Volkovysk in danger, For the sake of truth, this too, however, was of no avail, because in any event, all the Jews were exterminated after a short while.

The day on which the Jewish doctors died was a bitter and abrupt one for the Jewish populace of Volkovysk. With the sacrifice of the lives of the doctors, the end of the Volkovysk Jewry was initiated. The difficult condition became unbearable, the escalation of abuse rose to great heights, and the rights of the Jews and their entreaties amounted to nothing. The entire vicinity was roiled with the fires of Jewish massacres, and it was felt that our turn was drawing nigh. The contact with the partisans was broken off while I was still under detention. When I came out of arrest, I met a Jewish partisan whose origin was from Slonim. He had been with the partisans in the forest the entire time, and I recognized him from there; he related the following items to me, from which it became clear what the reason was for the arrest of the doctors and the electricians: seeing as the Germans could not find a way to take action against the partisans without knowing their exact location, they deployed Ukrainians in their ranks, and sent them into the forest, to pretend that they were Russian soldiers that had remained behind, who were seeking ways to affiliate with partisan groups, and after they found out the location of a group of this nature – they would communicate the details to the Germans. Such was the case with our group; Two Ukrainian spies entered the Zamovka Forest, and ran into a sentry guard of two partisans of our group; the Ukrainians acted friendly towards them, and said that they wanted to join the group, and on the strength of that, they toasted each other.... it is self-evident that the Ukrainians saw to it that the partisans got drunk, and that they didn't; And as the partisans got drunk, their tongues loosened up, and they began to talk about the exploits of their group. They told everything, including the episode about the Jewish medical assistance to the partisans, and the incident of the radio repair by a Jewish radio technician. As soon as this became known to the Ukrainians, they returned to the city, and told all of this to the Gestapo. And this was the day before the arrest of the doctors. At the time that we were in detention, under the direction of the Ukrainians, hundreds of SS troops and Polish auxiliary police surrounded that part of the forest where the partisans were, and with the help of tracking dogs, they found the location of the camp. To their good fortune, the partisans picked up the signs of the incursion very early, and opened up with machine gun fire, however the Germans had superior forces by a significant measure. The band of constriction grew tighter and tighter. They then made a daring move: the threw themselves with

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all their might and shouts of 'Hurrah!' at one point of the chain, and broke through, creating an [escape] route for themselves. As can be understood, in a swift action like this, many things had to be abandoned, and it was from this that the many of the tools and implements came, that the SS showed us during interrogation. The one who told me this was present at that hour when it took place. During that time of retreat into the forest among the trees, the remnants of the group vanished entirely. He climbed up into a tree, and waited until the force of men participating in the encirclement to leave the forest at nightfall, and at night, came into the city. It appears that the partisans transferred themselves to the depths of the Forest of Bielovez, and this was how contact with the partisans was broken, and the Jewish youth began to feel itself even more alone and orphaned. Those that were killed, were killed, and for them there were no longer any questions. But those who survived, also wanted to live. And that is how the saying was created, that until his last breath, man does not cease to struggle for his existence.

The same was true with the our Jews in Volkovysk. The noose around the neck tightened further and further, and the calamity was unquestionably drawing nearer, and the noose was hung over our heads, it was just a case of not knowing exactly when it would happen. With no certainty about tomorrow, for that evening, or even the next hour, caused people to go about in a state of constant fear, they were afraid to sleep in the houses; when it barely had grown dark, they took all their belongings, crawled into a lean-to of wood, a potato storage pit, or a specially prepared hiding place. The Jews of Volkovysk especially had prepared hiding places. The most ingenious methods were employed in this regard; The art of constructing a hiding place or a bunker was done as a matter of preserving life. This was a battle objective of the Jews, and the core of their activity. For example, in our house, at Draznin's on the hillock of the Tatarski Gasse, Leibl, Itchkeh and I, built an underground bunker, in which 10 people could fit. The pit was about a meter underground, in the form of an elongated tunnel. The height of the tunnel was a meter and a half, and two meters wide, and the walls and lookout posts were covered with boards, and leaned against the ends. There were two ways into the pit; one was an entrance form a room; in the middle of the floor, we had cut a trapdoor that was not detectable , and opened from the inside; on top of the trapdoor stood an armoire, and the cover to the bottom of the armoire was opened in such a way, that by entering the armoire, you could then descend into the bunker. The exit from the bunker was in the year, underneath the compost heap, and in this way it was possible to get out through the compost heap. This was just one of the ways in which bunkers were constructed.

As can be appreciated, these bunkers had to be built stealthily, and not only because of the Poles and the Germans, but also because of Jewish neighbors. The bunkers were provisioned with whatever we had, in case it was necessary to hold out for an extended period of time. And that's how will lived for some time longer, and the time would not have seemed so long were it not for the troubles and abuses that continued without let up and without bounds. We were forced to work by day; Each day, the Judenrat received a list of workplaces, how many Jews were required, and where they were to report for work, day in and day out. They performed all manner of hard labor, beginning with tearing down the walls of destroyed houses, and ending with digging trenches, and other types of military-related labor. The bricks of the destroyed houses were cleaned and smoothed; this work was reserved for the girls. The bricks were then sold by the Germans to the peasants. Trains of peasants by the tens, would stream into the city each day and take the remains of the Jewish houses out with them. A large group of Jews, numbering in the hundreds, went every day to work in Petroshovitsa, not far from central Volkovysk; the Germans had a rest and relaxation camp there for the soldiers who returned from the front.

The Germans paid no wages, to the contrary! We thanked God that they needed us to do work. This was the sole consolation and the sole hope, that as long as they had a need for us, they would not dispose of us. The

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Judenrat was responsible for this matter, and was motivated to provide the correct number of people to the requirement. Opposite the Germans, the members of the Judenrat were viewed as the official representatives of the Jews, and after the death of Dr. Weinberg, it was headed by Noah Fuchs by himself. Botvinsky, Amstibovsky and Gallin worked with him. The Jewish police supposedly was there to serve the Judenrat, and the interests of the Jewish community of Volkovysk, but in reality, this was not the case. The reason for this, is that the Jewish police was staffed with people from the underworld; they took advantage of their power and the privileges accorded to them for personal advantages. I especially remember one, Khiller,ימ”ש, who deliberately cause Jews distress, who in his relationship and actions towards the Jews didn't put the Germans themselves to shame. There were many “Khillers” of this nature, who thought they could out-Pope the Pope, and at the expense of other people, they could save themselves.

After the Gestapo released me, I returned to work at the slaughterhouse and packing plant. In the meantime, several other Jewish workers were added, such as: Dud'zhka Botvinsky, who worked with me in the machinery unit, Katz, Fish'keh, Galai, and others. A total of eight of us were employed there. Relatively speaking, we were better off than other Jews elsewhere, because we would obtain provisions from the rejects, such as bones, feet, and like things. I felt well enough in this place; I looked upon the plant as my good fortune. I had worked in the same place for almost two years for the Russians. Consequently, I felt safer there than at home, and I frequently spent the night there, next to the steam stack, I would arrange a sleeping place for myself on a bench, and sleep the entire night; as understood, this was done without the manager knowing about it.

In the late fall of 1942, when the cold winds began to penetrate to the bone, and when endless rain would soak you to the flesh, and dark clouds would blacken the sky, as if it were an added abuse to the general suffering, the first phase of the calamity arrived. It was not an accident that the Germans picked this kind season for the time to implement their satanic plans. They were accomplished psychologists, and in every instance, they chose those times when the ambience was the worst, of hopelessness, fear and piles of snow, in order carry out their massacres and deportations, because at times like this, the morale of the masses of Jews was even worse than usual. On the one hand, there was the emotional suffering because the situation was without hope or rescue, because of the seemingly endless string of military victories of the Germans at that time, when with giant steps, the German divisions sped forward deep into Russia, and when the Ukraine and all of Byelorussia were enveloped in a brown shirt. At the gates of Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad, stood the partisan brigades, and when we saw that the world is being overrun, and we, beneath our wrecked houses, forgotten and rejected by the entire world, without protection, given over to disposal, without worth and having no assets in the face of this gigantic conflict, and when powerful unions, nations and lands fell; and the poverty, hunger, and cold, impaired the strength of spirit, and the will to live fell even further. It was at times like this, and under such circumstances, that the murderers carried out their program of extermination against the Jews without restraint. People were treated like cattle, and more than this, because an animal sensing danger will balk, and does not want to go to the slaughter, but people, even when they see the imminent danger, went into the arms of death, having given up, exhausted and tired. On November 2, 1942 a message was sent out that all the Jews of the city were required to assemble at noon near the barracks, in the camp previously used for the prisoners of war. Everyone was to take food for two days; and any Jew who was found outside the camp after the appointed time – will be shot! This was on a Monday. Even up to the day before, we knew nothing. The morale had actually improved, the Germans who had turned over their garments to Jewish tailors, were in a rush to retrieve the pieces of cut fabric that had not yet even been sewn, and partially sewn garments; Germans who had ordered shoes from Jewish shoemakers got them back incomplete; the reason behind this tumult was unknown. Being great optimists as usual, the Jews explained this in a favorable light; a rumor began to spread that the Germans were packing up their valises

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and preparing to retreat to the rear, and it was because of this they were rushing to pick up their orders from the Jewish tradesmen. On Monday, when the announcement was spread about, I was at work already; it was my habit to get to work early, and so it was that by the time I was at work there was mourning and lamentation in the city already, not only I didn't know, but also others who worked with me, knew nothing. About an hour later, the manager entered the machinery area and said that I was required to go home, because today, a general search of the Jews was to take place; I and the rest of my comrades returned immediately to the city. Walking home, we observed that many Guards were about, and surrounding the city; we caught on that something was afoot, but we didn't know what it was. When we arrived in the city, the depressing truth became known to us; people with knapsacks on their shoulders, with children in their arms, or being led by the hand, streamed for the length and breadth of the streets and roads in the direction of Zamoscheh to the area beside the barracks. All the streets from Karczyzna to the barracks were filled with a living stream of humanity of wailing people. Women, old people, children, old and young with a slow step, stricken in spirit, and in a silence broken only by a wild outburst here and there by crying children, the stream slowly progressed further and further on, to the Tatarski Gasse, it passed the Gymnasium on the hillock, through the Wide Boulevard, through the Kolyuba to the barracks. And for the entire time, the stream moves as if it is one body, one feeling of being stricken, frightened and resigned. Fear of the uncertain tomorrow, what might happen, and no person could know what is imminent. The orders of the Germans were replete with deception and cleverness; the assault, the attack, always came from an unanticipated direction, and always without any apparent purpose. They said that the Jews were being assembled at the barracks in order to conduct intensive searches in the homes at that time; they also said that the Jews would live in the barracks, and a ghetto would be established there, and we would go to work from there. And all of these stories acted as a narcotic to the spirit, and when added to the Jewish conviction, that things would be all right at the last minute, served to facilitate greater calamities.

Bunkers and hideouts were constructed, but almost nobody was saved by using them, because everyone thought of a radical solution to the question of the Jews in Volkovysk. They imagined massacres similar to the ones that had taken place in cities elsewhere in the vicinity, and here came a seemingly routine order to assemble at the barracks. If so, there didn't seem to be any reason to hide, because one could not remain in a bunker for an extended period of time, and certainly not to live there, and so everyone left their homes and bunkers, and went to the barracks. When I returned to the city, I first went home, and there I found everyone ready to go. Leibl had already hidden everything of value in the bunker, closed the false door, and we left. The old couple, Sarah Baylah and her husband, and the young couple with their three children, Avreml, Yocheved and Nioma. Along the way, we met up with other families, the Meshengissers, Itchkeh, Liss, Rossman, Parmalnik, Rappaport, and many others, for whom did we not run into? All, all of them, all of them went. When we got higher, behind the hill, we could see the Christians standing by the houses, they incited us through the windows, smiling cynically, with expressions of satisfaction, they were gleeful about our plight, and were happy at the prospect that the hour was near when they could plunder Jewish possessions. German guards and Polish auxiliary policemen lined the way on both sides of the street driving the river of humanity in one direction. Through a high and wide barbed wire gate, the mass of people entered the camp. This was a camp of several tens of underground earthen pits, constructed five to a row, and the rows were fenced in with barbed wire. A few bunkers comprised a small camp in the middle of the larger camp. The entire camp was sealed off with a double fence, three meters high. There was a distance of two meters between each fence, and in the in-between space, there were piles of barbed wire nearly a meter high. Watchtowers stood in each area at a distance of several hundred meters apart, with searchlights and SS troops. The camp was under guard day and night. The bunkers were dug three meters into the ground, at a length of fifty meters, and ten meters wide. There were triple sets of lighting on both sides, bottom, middle and top, the bunker had no window, and light got in only though the door. On the top expanse, there was only

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the roof. Between 600-700 people occupied such a bunker. When we entered the camp, SS troops stood in front of us, and they separated the men from the women. The bunkers for the men were fenced and sealed off from the bunkers for the women; and we did not know what was going to happen, what will be our fate? Regardless, we sensed this situation was bad. When all the people from Volkovysk were concentrated in this fashion, cohorts of Jews from the environs began to arrive. From all directions, and all roads, the Jews streamed in under the escort of SS guards, and they were driven into the Volkovysk camp. By that Tuesday at nightfall, all the Jews of Zelva, Porozovo, Amstibova, Piesk, Mosty', Svislucz, Ruzhany, Lisokovo and Izavelin had been concentrated in the camp. Twenty thousand Jews had been concentrated in the course of those two days into the concentration camp in Volkovysk. The people cam torn, beaten, and exhausted, they were given no opportunity to take anything with them. The entire way, they went on foot, and only in exceptional circumstances were children brought by wagon. The worst journey was for the Jews of Ruzhany. Along the entire way, they were beaten, and made to run, and those that passed out on the way, were shot by the SS troops on the spot. Each town has a designated place in the camp. On the first day after the concentration, we were notified that we were confined to the camp, and we were to view it as our residence. The women, their husbands and children, were again brought together, and arranged themselves in the bunkers according to their families. The situation was very depressing; there was no food – they didn't take any with them – and it never occurred to the Germans at all to provide anything. The hunger grew more intense from day to day. Hand in hand with the hunger, the sanitary conditions grew worse from day to day; there was no water with which to wash. The few wells that existed served to still the thirst of so large a mass of people. The dirt and filth spread. After a few days, the appearance of the people grew so bad, that they couldn't recognize one another; disease broke out, and there were practically no doctors. The doctors from the small towns put together a dispensary in one of the sheds, but their efforts were in vain, seeing as there were no medicines and bandages. The camp was sealed, meaning that no person could go to work. This, despite the fact that various Germans, the managers of factories and businesses, demanded from the camp command that Jews be permitted to work for them. This matter was done for a practical purpose, that the camp was sealed off because of the diseases that were afoot within, and it was for this reason that no one was permitted to go out, in order to assure that the diseases would not spread. After a few days went by, a kitchen began to get organized; the Germans provided bread; peasants brought potatoes in accordance with German orders, and the kitchen began to operate. Sonya Botvinsky stood as the head and overseer of the kitchen in all matters pertaining to food, while Sioma Gallin and others assisted. This kitchen had to cook for the entire camp, for 20,000 people. During the day, a single portion of one liter of thin soup was given. There was a shortage every day, because the kitchen was insufficient, and complete bunkers of people did not receive their allotted rations. The hunger was so enormous, that if a train car of potatoes came into the camp under a strong guard, people took no account of this, and tore open the car in order to grab the potatoes alive. In instances like this, the SS opened fire, and people fell. But the pangs of hunger were great, and without giving heed to the danger, people continued to run to the train cars. It goes with out saying that the death toll rose with each passing day. Rappaport, as one of the more observant Jews of the city, was occupied with burying the dead. There was a separate group of people, who engaged in the task of taking the dead out of the camp for burial, not far from the barracks, and bury them there in mass graves. After three weeks had gone by, the Germans began to take specific groups of Jews out of the camp for work/ I was one of the first ones. My manager was able to get me out of the camp after a considerable number of tries. He was pressed to have me at work. My elation was great, not only because of my own personal circumstances; I had enough to eat – but because of the idea, that from the outside, I would be able to help my friends. And I had many of these: first, there were all the people with whom I lived, who suffered from hunger along with everyone else. My heart was torn to pieces listening to the children cry without stopping; “Mother, I am hungry.” And the mother, that good Rivka, who did so many favors and good things for other people, who helped me personally so much, didn't have the wherewithal in her hands to even divide up a piece of bread among her

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children. Apart from me, Dodzhkeh Botvinsky also went out of the camp, and we worked together. Bakers were allowed out, those who were to bake bread for the Jews, wagon drivers, and part of the work force that did work for the army, such as: Red Cross and the administration. Rosa Einhorn went out, and others, all together about sixty people. All these people worked at their places of work during the day, and at night a policeman brought us back to the camp to sleep. We didn't sleep any longer in our camp, but rather in a Polish forced labor camp, that was in the municipal slaughterhouse. As can be understood, the situation of the Jews in the camp improved somewhat, because each of us did whatever we could to bring food into the camp. Life got better from the instant that a large portion of the Jews of Volkovysk began to leave the camp to do various kinds of work. Some took advantage of this opportunity, and went off into the forest. Things of this sort cannot be completely described in words. Winter, snow, freezing days. There is no place to disappear into, eyes are on you from all sides. The Polish and White Russian populace turned over every Jew that was found outside the camp to the police. Foodstuffs are not available, the peasants do not which to offer support, and additionally point out infractions to the police. Despite this, a group did go into the forest. By many ways, they [ultimately] did not free themselves from the camp. Many got out with the dead, that is, they pretended to be dead, and naturally, with the complicity of the burial detail and the Khevra Kadisha, they were taken out as if they were dead, together with the other bodies. At a distance from the camp, in a field, they arose, as if resurrected, and ran off into the forest. But what became of this, if not several days later, they would voluntarily, and sneak back into the camp among the people returning from work. And do you think this was for lack of courage, or yearning for the Camp? They returned because despite their best of intentions – and is there any stronger will than the will to live – because it was simply impossible to survive in the forest without food and without nourishment. There were large bands of partisans who had food provisions and who were armed, but where were they? Far, far from the forests around Volkovysk. Despite this, a group of our comrades did establish itself in the forest, they built bunkers in the earth, camouflaged according to the environment. And they were there for a long time, at night they stole into the city, and the bakery would provision them, they collected foodstuffs from the abandoned Jewish homes, and brought them to the forest. After some days, the forest watchman discovered their hiding place and informed the police. The police attacked them by surprise, and a number of the people were killed on the spot. Several escaped, and three were brought back to the camp alive, where they were shot to death at the cemetery, in the presence of the members of the Judenrat, Fuchs. Life in the camp settled into a pattern of sorts. This is not to say that conditions got better, but rather we became accustomed to the tribulations, the hunger, the filth, and we lived as we could, if you wish to call this living by any definition. On December 4, 1942, the camp commander came, an SS officer who commanded a storm trooper division, and told a gathering of thousands of Jews, that part of them will have to leave the camp, they will be sent with their wives and children deep into Germany, and there they will work and live normal lives. And that was the promise of the camp commander. Understandably, no faith was placed in such assurances, however this brought some relief to that segment of the Jews who were of an optimistic inclination. And there was no need to wait for long.

After several days, they ordered the Jews of the vicinity, specifically the Jews of Svislucz and Ruzhany, to pack up their belongings and prepare to travel. It was a freezing day in which snow was falling, and as soon as dawn broke, a large body of SS troops and police came into the camp, and they began to drive the Jews out the bunkers. They beat them with staves and rubber truncheons, and rushed them to the gathering place, not giving them an opportunity to take along anything larger than a small package that could be carried in hand. They were arranged in rows under a very tight guard. When the count of the people was filled, the train moved in the direction of the central station in Volkovysk. At a freezing temperature of 20^oF, with a heavy snow falling, men, women and children, went, half barefoot, in torn and worn rags. The cries and wailing went up into the heart of the heavens. I was then in at work in the packing plant, this is about a kilometer from the track leading to the train station, and from there, I was able to actually see the train with the people

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on the track. The train went along for hours, and we could hear the sounds that continued, unending. From time to time, we heard the sound of machine gun fire. The train reached the station, and there they loaded the people onto transport trains and sent them off, approximately 3000 at a time.

The suffering was immense, and by the method used to transfer the people, it was clear that this was no transfer to Germany to do work. However, we did not know where they were being taken. In every corner, it was clear that this trip was not a trip to life. This situation let to an upheaval, and illustrated the seriousness of the situation. They had barely completed one transport, when we received notification of a second transport.

This was to have been a transport of those people not capable of work, and among them partly some of the able-bodied workers from Volkovysk. The period of the transports had begun: The camp became emptier from day to day. By December 20, only five thousand people remained out of the original twenty thousand. These were largely Jews from Volkovysk and Svislucz. But even with this, it was not over. An order was issued that did not permit more than two thousand Jews, capable of doing work, to remain in the camp, who were engaged in various municipal and military jobs. The situation became serious; the decision as to who would be left in the ranks of the two thousand was put in the hands of the Judenrat. Of importance, these were supposed to be people from Volkovysk, because they were the ones who were employed in jobs of this kind. Among these, were to be included the 'camp people;' these were Jews from various towns that even before the camp was established, were in Volkovysk working on the railroad lines. I, Dodzhkeh Botvinsky, Katz, Sardetsky, Fish'keh, Galai and others had worked all this time in the slaughterhouse for export. I was able to get my former landlord, Leibl Draznin into the plant with me. Leibl and I didn't move so much as a hand without the other. If we obtained any food, we immediately passed it on to Rivka, Draznin's wife, and his family. This helped alleviate their circumstances to a degree. The children did not suffer from hunger anymore. The situation became worse in the extreme the minute we discovered that people who were unable to work, and those not engaged in specific jobs would be compelled to leave the camp to be sent out. Only 2000 people were to remain in the camp. It is understood that there was no room for children in such a camp. We began to make an effort to get Rivka and the children out, so they would not be sent away on the transport. We already understood the implications of this matter; we did not know clearly or with certainty, but we understood that this transport meant death. For this reason, the days before the transfer, especially for the Jews of Volkovysk – because this transport was only people from Volkovysk – very heated. In this transfer – a transfer to death, without doubt – the basest instincts for survival came to the surface; the most savage of instincts, of selfish egotism rather than consideration for the common good. Yet, among others, an extraordinary spiritual elevation, a boundless sense of self-sacrifice, and commitment for their kin, great feelings of affection, feelings of the deepest love and devotion to one's fellow man. Leibl took advantage of every connection to the Germans, and did everything possible to get Rivka and the children to be nominated to stay behind; he convinced the manager of the factory to go to the camp commander, and ask him to let the wife and children of the gardener remain behind (he worked as a gardener at that time). But even this didn't help. They agreed to let only Rivka stay behind. But under no circumstances would they permit the children to stay. You can imagine the condition of these people. They almost went insane, not knowing what to do, seeking advice from each and every person. It was not evident what to do; there were two possibilities: either to travel with the wife and children, or to remain behind without them; or in the best possible case, to convince his wife to let the children go, and stay behind with him. Could I offer advice to him, at a time that I was so close to Rivka and the children that they were no less dear to me than to Leibl himself? And please don't think for a minute that Leibl was the exception here. Every man loved his wife and children, and everyone tried every conceivable way to get his own family out of the transport, however, not everyone had an equal opportunity. And do you think that such opportunity was in the hands of a man and his conscience? No, they were generated only through bribery, and the weight of silver and gold. To our

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terrible chagrin, instances of this nature are found only too often as stains in the history of inflamed days of bloodletting during times of war and heroism. Pure feelings of commitment, affection, and closeness, are sullied by egotism, and the bestial instincts of a certain number of people. We must emphasize this matter, and review it in our minds, because what took place during these days of blood in our midst, needs to be made clear to coming generations. It is on this basis that we have the obligation to educate and teach our children. And it is incumbent upon us to recognize not only that which is good and beautiful, but also the bad and despicable. There were people, who in these tragic minutes, of confrontation with death, of monumentally deep resignation, of ethical suffering and physical wasting, took the opportunity to line their pockets. I will not recall names, because in any event, these people are no longer alive. At a time when the bellies in the camp were swollen with hunger, there were 'people' who brought bread into the camp for fantastically high prices, that only very few were capable of paying. The most despicable of these individuals were the ones who used their positions in the Jewish auxiliary police to carry out their most heinous activities. During the time of the transports, when people used every means to save themselves from being transported, these opportunists squeezed monies out of the unfortunates, with promises that they would get them off the list of those to be transported. During the time of the transport this repulsive group assisted in finding those who were missing to fill out the transport [quota]. They thought that by doing this, they would curry added favor with the Germans, and in this way would be allowed to live in the midst of the extermination. To our good fortune, these were only a small group of the filth of the group, who cannot besmirch the seal of the pure martyrdom of our dearest. I have said that everyone attempted to save their kin from the transport, but not everyone could accomplish this. And whoever did not succeed, did one of two things, either he gave up, and of his own free will decided to go along with his kin, or he left them to their fate, and remained behind alone. For example, Rak, an engineer at the electricity plant, could not arrange for his wife and children to stay. He was designated to stay, because they had a need for him. However, he did not want to stay without them, and voluntarily went with them. It is possible to count tens of such instances, that came to instances of the highest feelings of dedication and sacrifice in the face of death.

The motto spread: If we have to die – then together. There were other instances, for example, as in the case of the Meshengisser family: a father, mother and four children. The father and the two older children, Salia and Liova were selected to remain behind, because they worked, and the mother with the young daughter and son were designated for transport. They tried with all their might, but to no avail, and they went. For the sake of truth, one of the two boys, the youngster, hid himself at the last minute, because it became possible for him to remain behind; and because of this, the mother and one child went, and the father with three children stayed behind. Instances of this nature where families parted and were broken up, occurred by the hundreds. There were instances where mothers abandoned their children in an attempt to save themselves. There were reverse situations, where mature children left their parents and grabbed at a chance to escape.

Enormous complications beyond the imagination confronted individual families. It is far from easy to blame or justify one type of behavior or another in the case where families were broken up and separated. Whether a mother left a child behind to save herself, or a husband behaved this way to his wife, in the midst of trying to save her as well, first by all the available means, this does not mean that one should blame the husband who abandoned his wife, or the woman, her child, or that there was some shortcoming in the way they acted towards their kin. In order to be able to grasp this thing and assess it, it would be necessary to have found oneself in this same place under these same circumstances. All those who were not in the ghettoes, concentration and extermination camps – apprehend these things from a different perspective, from the position of freedom, they do not take into account the negative conditions that caused one type of behavior or another. I will not dwell on these matter any longer. Even though they are of unending seriousness and importance if one wants to assess ands analyze the behavior of the lives of the Jews in countries that were

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captured by the Nazis.

On Sunday, December 20, 1942 we were told that the transfer would take place in a few days. It had been impossible to extract Rivka and the children at that point. A remarkable plan occurred to Leibl in connection with rescuing his wife and children. His wife could stay behind in a totally legal way, but the children had to go; she firmly refused to do this thing; she said that without the children, she had nothing to live for. And so, on Sunday, with the permission of our manager, we took a horse and wagon, and under the pretense (with the consent of the manager, naturally) that we were going to the camp to remove certain articles before the departure, such as pots and other things that the manager had lent for the use as camp equipment. At this opportunity, Leibl wanted to secretly hide Rivka and the children in the wagon among the equipment. When we arrived at the camp, we were distracted by the general suffering, and the fear that reached near panic proportions. In the general camp, there were two separate areas, one separated from the other with barbed wire. A gate connected one to the other. One part, the old section for the Jews of Volkovysk, this was the place where almost all the people designated for transport were located; the second part was where all those required for work were located, the Jewish machinists, assistants, that is to say, all those designated to remain behind. The SS Troops guarded the gate, to assure that nobody sneaked into the second part that had not been previously designated. Leibl got down by Rivka, and laid out his plan for her, but to his great despair, she refused to consent, she didn't want to leave her elderly father and mother behind; she argued that her parents did not deserve to be abandoned like orphans at such a tragic moment. She pleaded with Leibl to try and take all of them out together. We rode home alone, but with the hope of being able to save them, nevertheless. On Sunday night, before the dawn on Monday, we came to our camp, where about sixty people slept, city workers, police awakened us and ordered us to get dressed. They said that they had received an order to bring us to the camp. Under heavy guard, they led us to the main camp, and along the way, the voices of people who had given up hope reached us. We understood that the people were being taken out for transport. It is difficult to describe what was in our hearts at that moment. The idea that perhaps they would take us too, increased our fright, even though we knew we were among those selected to stay among the remainder because of our work. The closer we got to the camp, the cries became more and more distinct. But these cries were no longer from the camp, but rather from the central railroad station. Even more bitter to us, was when we were taken through the camp on our way to the central station; we no longer doubted our bitter fate. But what could we do? To try and extract ourselves from so strong a guard was denied to us. Everyone carried the deep sadness within, that our near and dear ones had been trod underfoot. However, in our calamity, we had one bit of fortune; when we had gone about half the way, a policeman intercepted us with an order for us to be taken back to the camp, seeing as we were counted among those who were supposed to remain behind. Apparently there was a misunderstanding, and we were included with the others to be transported by mistake. When we returned to the camp, and the immediate danger to us abated, everyone saw the true extent of the calamity. The camp, which up to yesterday had been teeming with people, a place where one saw life, heard a din, groaning and noise, was empty now, without a single soul, its appearance like that of a huge cemetery. At the side of the bunkers there was torn bed coverings, clothing, and pieces of cloth. From the bunkers, one could sense the fetid air still, laden with sweat and the odor of people that had just been driven out. One could realistically feel, and it seemed as if one could still hear the screams and cries of the mothers and children. Here, in this camp that had just been emptied, there was a small number of women, elderly people and abandoned children. All those who were not able to go under their own power to the transport, the SS troops gathered into one bunker, and afterwards put burning pots of sulfur into the bunkers and sealed them. The nominal reason for doing this was to rid the bunker of lice. The bunker was sealed for two days, and the suffocating odor of burning sulfur wafted all over the camp. When they opened the bunker, the people were naturally, dead. The Germans referred to this as elimination of lice. In the second section of the camp, where the assisting Jews were assembled, who worked in the various locations, there were

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approximately two thousand Jews, mostly young men and women, almost no children at all. There were a few children that the women had managed to sneak in inside suitcases or bundles in moving over from the first section of the camp to the second. For practical purposes, it was said that there were no children at all. Everyone bemoaned his own fate, and there was enough to cry over. In one case, they had taken his wife, in another, his children, the third, a brother, the fourth, a sister, and so on, without end. I was particularly pained over Rivka and her children. Leibl stayed behind voluntarily; he was spent and broken from his great loss. His conscience nagged him for not joining them as well. After a few days, everything returned to an ordinary pace of sorts in relative terms..Everyone inured themselves to their pain; everyone made peace with the idea that he had lost everyone who was dear and beloved to him. There were those who took comfort in the hope that maybe they would not be exterminated, and that perhaps the camp commandant had told the truth, that they were being taken to do work. This feeling of conviction, and everyone's hope, acted as a healing agent, and served as a narcotic to the spirit, and enveloped the tragic facts in a mantle of illusion.

About two thousand people were left, almost all of which worked in the various different places outside the camp. All of them slept in the camp, including all of us who at one time had slept in the city, at the Polish workers camp. In the morning, Polish police would escort us to work, and at night, they returned us to the camp. The material condition improved, and food was not lacking as was the prior case, all those who came in contact with Christians during working hours bought necessary foodstuffs either with money or by barter. People did not lack for food to eat. We learned to live for the day, the person became like an automaton, all hopes and desires evaporated, only one instinct remained, the instinct to survive and to be able to witness vengeance. This will became sharpened and strengthened precisely in the hour when the danger to life was great. It goes without saying that under such circumstances, there was no room for ethical rules and social niceties. A principal ideal was to eat, and to eat well, this was the only issue in life. Despite the fact that from a material point of view things improved, the condition of the camp and the circumstances under which we lived became more and more worse. Because everyone had to leave and go to work, there was no one left to look after the sanitation and order in the camp. In the evening, on return from work, food was prepared individually or in small groups. The simple things to prepare a warm meal were missing. There were no ovens.

Outside, in front of the bunkers, on days of intense cold, when the temperature was between 15 and 20^oF, and when the snow crunched underfoot, and a cold snowy wind cut to the bone, with teeth gritted tightly, a fire was lit for the entire day, after hard labor, between two bricks, with damp wood that used to be gathered during working hours and brought into the camp. The eyes would crawl out of their sockets by the time we had the privilege of seeing a few boiled potatoes or a little bit of groats. It is easy to understand that after this kind of an evening meal, amidst fatigue and dwindling energy, people were not too concerned about cleanliness. It wasn't only that they didn't clean out the bunker itself, but also the bedding on which they slept. Leibl and I continued to work at the export slaughterhouse; our situation improved somewhat; it was easier for us to get a hold of food, and apart from this, the working conditions were much better and easier. Evening upon evening, we were brought back to the camp to sleep, and in the morning they took us back. We were very isolated; he because his family was driven out, and I was also under this impression because of the bad news that I would receive from my home in Warsaw. I received a letter illegally from Warsaw, in which I was informed that they had driven out my mother and sister, and one of my brothers. Regarding Treblinka, we had finally learned something; The Polish railroad employees and locomotive drivers who traveled these lines, told us bit-by-bit about electric wires, and murders with electric current, about lime pits into which tens of thousands of people were thrown. You can appreciate that despite all the trouble we had gone through up till now, and despite all the tribulations we had endured under the Germans, we did not want to believe these things at all. The mind simply could not grasp it. Generally speaking, we believed that the

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gentiles were intentionally spreading stories of this kind about, in order to aggravate us. In the camp, Leibl and I were devoted to one another; and the calamity that we shared, drew us even closer together. And this was not only in our case, but with everyone, where a greater feeling of friendship and relationship manifested itself. I was at that time very friendly with Meshengisser; Sali was a very good friend of mine, and tried by every means to help them out, given that their material circumstances were worse than mine. From the desperation of the circumstances in which we found ourselves, came the idea in connection with procuring Aryan papers, and thereby flee the camp. This was not one of the easiest things to do, it was dependent on large monetary outlays, and not many had the means to do this. Apart from this, it was wound up in great difficulties, because the Christians recognized each and every Jew and in every place they ran into them, they would inform on them. In the meantime, I created a plan for myself, in the event of a final transport, how to extract myself and run away from it. And I began to put my plan into action. The plan called for finding a small area, in the slaughterhouse for export, in which two or three people could hide for an extended period of time. I found such a place. Up above, on top of the slaughterhouse buildings, on four pillars, stood a large water tank that was surrounded by walls, in order that the water not freeze during the days of the winter, and between the walls and the water tank was a space of about a half meter around the water tank. This entire empty space was filled with straw, and there was no need for anyone to pay any attention to it, or go there. With it, I related the plan to the machinist who looked after the factory machines, and I was good friends with him; he promised to assist us for the time we would be hidden there. In the time that we planned to be there, he had to concern himself with getting us suitable [travel] documents. I made all the preparations, gathering a large quantity of food, and various items of clothing, shirts and other things. We took care of all the arrangements, and made it possible for us to remain concealed for an extended period. But fate didn't want it this way; not everything in life goes according to plan. From the extremely bad sanitary conditions in the camp, a typhus epidemic broke out; people sickened by the tens each and every day; and for the first time, the sick would not leave the well; they were afraid that the SS would find out, and seal off the camp and this would bring death from typhus and starvation. Much later, when the epidemic began to claim large numbers of victims, special blocks were set aside for the sick, they were the same earthen bunkers, but only for the sick. Leibl and I both fell sick with typhus; Dr. Epstein certified that we were ill, and we were taken to the sick block. Dr. Epstein was the most senior in this block. The conditions in this block were no better than those in the block where the healthy people were. We sizzled with a high fever for three weeks; there was no medicine; each patient was given over to the good graces of the Lord; either he would recover from it, or he would die, all according to chance. We hadn't completely recovered yet, and the temperature hadn't dropped even halfway from the point of delirium – when an order came that on January 26, 1943 the entire camp will be liquidated. Volkovysk and its surroundings must become Judenrein. As usual, we were promised that we were to be taken to a different labor camp, and there we will live ordinary lives in better conditions. On the evening of January 26, the camp was surrounded by reinforced guards of SS and German Army troops, and began the work of driving us out. The order said that the healthy ones will go on foot to the train station, and the weak and elderly will travel in automobile conveyances.

I see that last night in Volkovysk as if through a dark cloud; I lay sick, not completely conscious, totally bereft of any resources; the block was dark, and half the occupants were fevered; everyone was consumed with preparation for the transport. The word transport was recalled by everyone, and the fear it engendered was etched on everyone's face. I was still; various ideas, unconnected to on another, flitted through my mind. Transport, hideout, bunker, death, life, all of this filled the corners of my mind, and I babbled words that were incoherent, I spoke words without meaning. The friends that sat with me looked upon me pitifully, and attempted to help me in every way possible. The auto transports arrived. Liova and Sali carried Leibl and I to the vehicle, and took us together with the other people to the train. The auto sat by the train for a long time, and the assessment of the train car was that it was dark and dirty. The following day, at daybreak, when my

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senses began to return to me, I saw the extent of our destruction: in the crowding of 60people to a car, we lay pressed and bent up one against the other, rays of light streamed in from tow tiny barred windows. The air in the train car was suffocating and rank, despite the fact that outside it was bitter cold. Thirst tortured us, and their was no water container. In the meantime, the train began to distance itself from the place where we had lived, moving with speed into a future that was not known to us. At the same time that others passed out from the heat and thirst, to my satisfaction, I felt my strength beginning to return to me. My mind was focused on me, and I became physically stronger. Some inner strength from below strengthened me against the seriousness of the circumstances. On Thursday, the train stopped moving; with bated breath and a fluttering heart, everyone waited for a resumption of the issue at hand. From the eyes of everyone, you could read the question, where have we come to? The doors opened noisily, and with our departure from the train car, we heard a menacing guttural voice: “Schnell, schnell, alles raus! Paketten lassen! Upset, disturbed and intimidated, everyone jumped as quickly as possible from the train car. Those that couldn't, whose strength abandoned them during the trip, were thrown from the cars.

We went forward for the length of the path in a specified direction. From the rear we were pushed with blows and terrible beatings. The screaming and the tumult were so awful, until we filled all the spaces, frightened and confused. Several tens of meters ahead of us, stood a few SS officers, one with a short stick in his hand, who looked over each person that passed by, and then indicated with his stick in which direction to proceed – right or left. The young and strong were gathering to the right – and to the left, the older and weak. The ones on the right were arranged in rows of five, the ones on the left simply gathered together in an amorphous crowd. Leibl and I, both weak, stood on our own two feet with difficulty, as would be the usual case after a severe illness, approached 'The Broker' that is the doctor, if you will, who was doing the selection, the winnowing. As we approached him, he threw us a glance and indicated with his stick that we should go to the left, to the side of the weak and the old. It was hard to know which was better, but the heart foretold that the place indicated for us was a bad one. And inside a moment, in an instinctive manner, without taking account of the consequences of what I was doing, I said to the SS doctor that I was an electrician, I know how to do good work. He looked at me a second time, and asked me my age, and indicated to me to return to the right. He did not permit Leibl to come along with me. All of us felt that those assembled to the left were in a worse situation, but even we didn't know what they would do to us. All of us were full of worry, despite the representations by the SS that those not feeling well would be taken ahead by automobiles to the camp, and that the healthy and young would walk on foot to the camp.

The screams and weeping were awesome. People ran from one group to another; under a rain of blows, several ran from one group to the next, out of a desire to be together with a wife, or a sister, and in the ranks there were 180 people, most of them from the first train cars, because these got off first onto the platform, and I was among them, from the first train cars, because I had been taken to the train as a sick person on a bus. An irony of fate – as a sick person, I now found myself among those standing to remain alive; and young men, such as – like young lions, who worked with me, such as: Katz, Mordetsky, Botvinsky, Siroka, and hundreds, hundreds of other healthy people, were sent to the left, because the quota of those people who would be allowed to live had already been filled.

180 people, we walked under heavy guard to the camp.

The camp was located about three kilometers from the Auschwitz railroad station, and it was called Birkenau. The Poles called it Brzezinka. Tired and spent, we were brought for the length of the way, to the steel and concrete perimeter that glistened in the distance from the rays of the setting sun, to the extermination camp, notorious for its sorrow, Birkenau.

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Every minute, buses passed by our field of vision, crammed and packed with the Jews of Volkovysk, ours, our friends, dear ones, beloved ones. After each auto passed us, we no longer doubted at all the fate of those people. And not only those of us who were walking had given up hope, but from every passing bus, anticipating their end, there came heartrending wails born of hopelessness and lack of any alternatives. The road was littered with letters, pictures, currency, and torn clothing. They wanted to show, at least in this way, their protest against the monumental evil and sin that was being committed against them. The buses were escorted by the SS on bicycles, and behind all the buses, as an ending to the caravan of death – a Red Cross ambulance rode – the very white vehicle with large red crosses on all sides, that to the observer was there to serve as a visual narcotic, a device to calm the innocent martyrs – that is to say, that this ambulance was standing by to render assistance in case of an accident. The truth was, that the ambulance transported canisters of the poison gas, 'Zyklon,' in place of bandages and medicine, that was used to poison ans suffocate tens of thousands of Jews.

Yes, their fat was swift and bitter. We felt that the minutes of their lives were numbered. We, who were fortunate enough to have been designated by fate to live, had no illusion that life in the camp was going to be good for us. We knew that what awaited us was a hard, driven existence – but at this instant, we didn't believe that a time would come when we would envy these [victims], who were privileged to die immediately, without such extensive torture and suffering.

We entered the camp. Long rows of wooden bunkers, partly built, long and wide, without windows, and mine among them, better suited for horses, surrounded by electrified fences of barbed wire three meters high, imbedded in steel and concrete bases. We entered one of the blocks where we received the first assignment.

Jewish detainees in striped uniforms search us in a set manner, and took everything from us. After the task of taking away our things, we were brought into the cellar. We stood in a freezing cold for five or six hours, gritting our teeth, and we waited for our turn to bathe. We certainly were not distinguished guests; many transports such as ours, arrived every day from all parts of Europe. Our turn to bathe arrived at midnight. And in this way, we also waited naked in the cold corridor, until we entered underneath a shower as cold as ice. Our clothing was taken away – and in their place, we received old, worn rags. Without jackets, frozen and without strength, they first drove us outside again. We thanked God that we had survived the ordeal, and here they brought us to complete the remainder of the additional formalities. We entered one of the bunkers, where we were registered in detail in ledgers, questioning each of us in detail, and transcribing it in German, afterwards, they tattooed a serial number on everyone's arm. From that moment on, we ceased to be human beings with names: we had become living numbers. Carrying out the formalities lasted until 3-4AM; the purpose of this was the intake of the transported individual. Before morning, we were taken to “sleep” in a half-darkened block, whose air was fetid and asphyxiating, and with our entrance, that there is some forced suffocation in this place, because there was nothing to breathe. For the entire length of the block, against each wall, three-tiered bunks were built out of bricks, one above the other. On the bare concrete surface, dressed in rags, with shoes on their feet, people were in a deep sleep, pushed up one against the other, but it was not quiet.

There was no opportunity for extensive reflection; we had not been brought there for observation and thought. The shout of the head of the block was heard: “Vshitsi na Buksi” (everyone to the boxes) – and immediately there opened up a hail of blows with truncheons over our heads, such that everyone sough to quickly find their way to the inside of an box, by crawling over the bodies of the sleepers, and especially not to stand up in passing, and especially to avoid being hit. In the boxes, we also didn't get a good reception. We were hit and beaten on all our extremities in order to keep the new arrivals at a distance, and disorient

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him. As to sleep, there is nothing to say; before we managed to warm ourselves up properly – we heard the call to get up, and they shouted, everyone outside. We were the novices, they were called 'Greens' by us, and these required a beating in this manner. It is necessary for them to feel the meaning of Auschwitz and Birkenau on their hides. And this was the order of the day for every new transport that arrived. And there was someone to look after this, to make sure that it all took place. The designated block people and servants were appointed to do this. At every opportunity, and instances where there was no special reason, they were beaten about the head with truncheons. And unceasingly, we heard the refrain, “You have been brought here to live!” And it was from this that we began to perceive that one is not brought to Birkenau in order to live. And the longer we thought about it, out thoughts were confirmed more and more. More that it could astonish and anger us – but later on we grasped the matter – that among those who made are lives miserable, were also Jews. We did not understand why, and to what purpose, that in addition to the travails of one's own brother, that a Jew should be prepared to strike a fellow Jew. However, the matter became clear to us, that these were the scum of the Jewish populace, that in their souls and polluted hearts, a beast lurked deep in their core, and this was the hour in which it could show its horns. Egotistic and sadistic tendencies came to the surface. They wanted to purchase their own lives at the expense of the lives of hundreds of other people. In order to curry favor with the SS, they murdered and tortured their own brethren. It was like a Sabbath in the ambience of the Good Lord, on the day we finished the formalities, and passed through the ranks of transit, in order to get settled in Auschwitz. We had three days of quarantine of sorts. This was not to enable us to regain some energy, but rather to sap us of our strength even more, before we went to work. During those three days our entire lives passed before us. From morning until late at night we stood in the frost and snow, believing all sorts of things. From all directions they beat us, and on top of this, hunger pained us to the point of death. A piece of bread of 150-200 grams in the morning, and a liter of watery soup at noon, and in the evening, only a quarter of a liter of cold tea. This was the daily ration. Our strength was sapped, and one could only stand on one's own legs with difficulty. It was no wonder that everyone waited for the moment when we could all go out to work. We thought that once we started to work, they would treat us differently. We began to work. On Monday morning we were attached to different work groups, and we went out to work. In an arrangement of five to a row, we went off to work each day to the strains of a large orchestra. However, we had been mistaken in our belief that from now on things would get better. We worked at various forms of hard labor; building bunkers, digging for buildings, on roads, and other varieties of work, connected to the construction of the camp.

Half naked, we stood from morning until night in freezing snowy days with the shovel and spade in hand under these conditions of negligence; if they would have at least given us some rest at work. The kapos and the trustee prisoners looked after that (with the permission of the SS). They beat us terribly and cruelly. And whoever couldn't stand it, or perform his work, was taken care of on the spot, such an individual was brought back to the camp dead. Day in and day out, the work group brought back dead bodies to the camp. Everything was done according to a precise deliberate protocol; at the entrance to the camp, it was forbidden for anyone to be missing, whether alive or dead, just so long as the count was full. A kapo that brought in the largest number of dead was designated as an excellent kapo, and his reward was a bonus of extra food. The kapos were Aryans, mostly Germans, who were in the camp on criminal charges. These people held life and death in their hands over us. It is no surprise, that as a result of working conditions like these, and it was no better in the camp, that our people began to break down. First it was from a morale point of view, and later from a physical point of view.

The general situation: the news that we received on a daily basis from new arrivals, from all ends of Europe, on the unending victories of the Germans, indicated that our circumstances were beyond hopeless. Many thought that there was no point to resist, because regardless of what we did, we could not hope for salvation.

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From the second side, a life without purpose in the camp, the beatings, hunger and relentless pursuit, the low morale, lack of sanitation, and many other reasons, brought about the condition where people wanted to die. And whoever want to, found an easy way. Many ways led to a release of this kind. At that same time, in Birkenau, there was a block called “Seven.” Everyone who wanted to find a redemption from his suffering simply had to apply to that block. This block was called the block of the sick, and there it was possible to “recuperate” quickly. From time to time, after the block filled up with people, in the space of a few days, vehicles would come at night to empty out the block, and the people were taken to the crematorium. Even though people were registered there every day, there were tens of volunteers. They could not stand living anymore. They no longer wanted to resist, or they simply had no more strength to withstand the torture. And this was not the only way to get out of the misery. At night, people would run into the wire – as we called it, that is ti say, those who could no longer carry the burden of living, would run into the fence at night, and by coming in contact with the electric current – would be killed, or he was shot by the SS guards, in accordance with their duty. Similar to the seventh block for the men, the women had block “Twenty Five.” The lives of the women did not differ from the lives of the men. The same condition, but the relationship to them was much worse, because of their generally weaker physical stature, they were more often unable to fulfil the physical demands of the labor in the same way as the men. If, after being in the camp for a while, a man could obtain something additional, that was called “Organization” – but most of the women were unable to achieve this, and were given only the ration of food allotted to them. Apart from this, the sanitary conditions of the women's bunkers were much worse than that of the men. And it is necessary to add to this, that the women were broken more often than the men. It was possible to see this from the rate of suicide among the women, which surpassed that of the men. The leprosy (?) and dysentery reached epidemic proportions, and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of women. Block 25 was always full and overcrowded, and was called the Block of Death. Every woman who went into the block did not come out alive. I once was given an assignment to work near that block, and I saw how tens of women were lying with arms and legs stretched out, near the block near death, and from time to time, the overseer of the block would come close to them, and move the heads of the half-dead with her foot, to ascertain which of them was already dead, so she could make out a death certificate. A sort of belt was thrown around the head of the dead, and in this manner, they would be dragged across stones to the cave of the dead. This work was carried out by women, the notorious daughters of Slovakia.

The selections were a forgettable event in the camps, with men as with women. There was not a Jewish holiday when the Germans didn't arrange for a selection to take place on the same day. Fear of the selection would destroy the equanimity of anyone who had been in the camp for the entire time. The motive of this process was known to everyone who was in Birkenau. The meaning of a selection was clear, and they would gather up the men, and a doctor would come, and looked at each individual with an eye to determining who would live and who would die. If a man was weak and incapable of doing work, his sentence was to death. In every selection of this kind, fifty percent of the Jews were registered to go to the crematorium. And two or three days did not pass before they were exterminated. The worst of it was, that everyone who was registered in this way, knew that he would be incinerated or gassed in two or three days.

Weeks went by, and circumstances did not change. We, that is to say, the people from Volkovysk, dwindled and went. Cedars, like Motkeh Koval, Shmuel Bayer, Ginsberg, Amstibovsky, Offenberg, Shereshevsky, Fish'keh the Butcher, Noah Fuchs, and tens of others, flickered from day to day like candles, and died in various ways.

On one of the days of hard work, in moving parts for the bunkers, and amidst exhaustion and oppression – we received the gladdening news that part of the men from our transport, and from Grodno and Bialystock,

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will be sent to Buna to do work. My number was also among the fortunate ones. We did not know the type of work we would be doing, or what the conditions were like there, but as one, we were satisfied that we were leaving this Hell, and we could not imagine that there could be anything worse. Immediately on that day, we traveled to Auschwitz, where we underwent a physical examination. We were there for a few days, in which we rested a bit, and we then traveled to the Buna camp. Buna was a city in which they were building plants to produce synthetic rubber. 80 men traveled to Buna. We received without any sign of welcome. The Polish Commissar of the block gave us a speech, and promised us that we would not leave there alive, and finished by saying that Poland would erect a monument to Hitler for this alone, that he had helped to exterminate the Jews of Poland, a thing that the Polish people had carried in their souls for lo, these many years. This commissar was a famous Polish sports figure, a boxer. After assurances and encouragement of this sort, we went to work on the second day. There was not much to be disappointed in his words. The work was indeed very hard, much harder than in Auschwitz. After a few days, we realized that we wouldn't be here either for any length of time. In one way it was better for us here, in that we received food that was a little better. And then an incident took place where all the members of a transport caught typhus, and the entire camp was suspected of having this disease. And for this reason, we remained solitary in the block for a period of a week – we were idle – and this wasn't all bad. We rested in part, but after a week, an order came to have us returned to Birkenau as being suspect of carrying typhus. Just our bad luck. We knew what awaited us in Birkenau as sick people. If they were sending healthy people to the crematoria, what chance do sick people have? It is hard to describe our state of mind and the pain that we felt as we got on the train to go on our trip. Everyone was bitter-hearted, everyone counted off the last minutes of his life. Among ourselves and to each other, we had conveyed our last wills. We ate the portions of bread that we had quickly, to at least die full. However, not everything went according to plan with the Germans, and as it happened, when we arrived at Birkenau, instead of taking us to the crematorium, they took us to the camp and we remained alive.

In a short time, during which we were absent, there had been changes. In the same block where we lived, that originally held 800 people, there remained only 300 people. The rest were exterminated. Of the 180 men from Volkovysk, we saw almost none of them. We were detained in camp for three weeks, as suspect carriers of typhus, in a separate block. After three weeks passed, we resumed going to work. The hard labor began again, in various forms. I suffered through various forms of hard manual labor for four months. I was able to familiarize myself with the various aspects of the camp, and succeeded in getting myself attached to the electrical division. This was a great accomplishment, and was an issue that could decide between life and death. The facts proved that those who would survive were those, first of all, with skills in the various trades, because skilled work is always easier to do than hard manual labor. Even though they were small in number, several people from Volkovysk also were able at that time to join up to do other work of a lighter kind. Some as carpenters, others as cleaners – those that worked on cleaning out packages from all the train cars that arrived. That was called “Canada Command.” A number of doctors got work in the hospitals: Marek Kaplan and Epstein; one joined the orchestra, and a few others to other places, and that was all. For others, luck didn't work out, despite their skills and abilities. A famous musician from Warsaw, named Wiener, was with us, who had already traveled the world, had led an orchestra and had appeared in a number of European lands. The war brought him to Volkovysk, and from there he came with everyone else to Auschwitz, and did the hardest labor. Once, he was hit so hard, that he volunteered himself for Block Seven. He told me that he didn't want to suffer any longer, and he said it was madness to suffer, if there are no prospects to be set free one day. There were others who were unbending, and fought stubbornly to survive. Among these was Dr. Epstein, for example. In the first times, he slept in my area. He stood at the edge of annihilation. He was a bona fide 'Muslim;' a person who seemed to be made from only skin and bones was called a 'Muslim,' a living skeleton. He bore it all stubbornly, and maintained his position until they employed him initially as an assistant to the physician, and after a while, when he had a chance to demonstrate his skills, they

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appointed him as the doctor. From that time on, his condition improved.

My work in the electrical division afforded me the best opportunity to become more informed about life in the camp and how it was managed. As an electrician for the arrangement and repair of electric lights in the camp, and for the SS, I had freedom of movement throughout all the camps. In Birkenau, there was not one specific camp. There was a whole row of different camps, built one next to the other. These buildings took up an enormous amount of area, and gave the impression of an entire city. Birkenau consisted of ten camps or more, separated from one another by electrified fences. Each camp had its own name; first according to the alphabet; A, B, C, D, and secondly by the type of people concentrated there. There was a quarantine camp for new arrivals. There were particularly poor conditions in that camp, because there they provided the means to sense the purpose of the extermination camp. After that, there was a Czech family camp, where the Germans brought about twenty thousand Jews from Theresienstadt, keeping them all together, giving their women and children especially better conditions, forcing them to write letters to Czechoslovakia that their circumstances were good, which made it easier for the Germans to round up the Jews of Czechoslovakia. Afterwards, when they no longer needed them, they poisoned them with gas and incinerated them in gas ovens. After it came the camp for the women of Hungary and Lodz. Then a work camp for men, then a 'Gypsy' camp, in which there were Jews from Lodz, Radom, Skarzhiski and other towns, brought together from other camps. There was a camp for the sick, and a camp for packages, where the Germans, with the help of prisoners, counted and packaged the contents of the goods brought by the Jews into the camp. And the Jews brought a lot, and that is no wonder: up to the last minute, the Germans misled them and fooled them by cunning means, causing Jews to drag along full chests and valises full of the most precious valuables, beginning with clothes and ending with a variety of household utensils. They believed that they were bringing this to work, because this is what the murderers represented. What's more, at the hour that the transport from Holland arrived at the Auschwitz train station, the Jews asked through the windows of the train cars – have we arrived yet at “The Auschwitz Factory?” Because that is what they told them in Holland, that they were going to work at a big factory. All of these bundles were counted, and every day, trains filled with Jewish booty – trains full of shoes, white goods, clothing, bedding, and other things, it really was a gigantic factory, of extermination, pillaging and murder.

These camps stood next to one another, each camp consisting of thirty and some blocks, Each block held between four and five hundred people; in the event of a large influx of people, even up to eight and nine hundred people. To the right of these camps were two large camps for women, and to the left of the camp, they were building a gigantic camp to surround all the previously mentioned camps – “Maxsik”^[2], as it was

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named by us. In this camp the Germans concentrated the women from Hungary during the great transports from Hungary.

Opposite all of these camps, by row, stood five large crematoria. Five wide and tall smokestacks spanned and watched over the camp, from above a grove of trees that concealed the secret of the attainment of twentieth century civilization. Five smokestacks that never vanished from the horizon of our life in the camp for two years. Day and night they belched forth fire and smoke, in to the high blue heavens. Here, tens of thousands of Jewish sacrifices were bound to the altar. Thick black clouds of smoke hid the golden beautiful sun during the day, and red shooting flames lit up the dark nights. “Bad Anstalt” was written beside the entrance to one of the crematoria. “Soap Can Be Obtained Here,” was written beside the entrance to a gas chamber. “Pack Your Belongings Neatly, so nothing will get lost,” they warned, and so up to the last breath, until they felt the burning gas beginning to press on the lungs, until the minute that they lost consciousness, they didn't stop to deceive them and lead them astray. And there were those who were so sent, who took the opportunity presented to them, and they rose up – there were many occurrences like this. In one incident, there was a woman from France, who when already in the gas chamber, forcibly took the pistol from the head of the troops of the camp, and shot him with his own pistol. Apart from him, several other SS troops were wounded. In instances of uprisings, the SS went took everyone into the bunkers, pushing with their rifle butts. When the bunker was full of people, they sealed it hermetically, and the SS then piped in gas through a special opening into the bunker, and after a few minutes, everyone was dead. And after this, the bodies were burned in the crematoria. Complete mountains of ash and human bones were created; in the construction of roads, they used the ash from people as a covering under the bridge. The various roads and alleys in the camp were “decorated” with human remains, Jewish remains. The supply, or more aptly, the supply of the amount of human ash, exceeded the demand for building requirements in the camp; then the ash was transported in mechanized vehicles to the Wesel River and dumped there; It was in this fashion that they tried to cover up the traces of the enormous killing [they had done]. When the transports arrived from Hungary, the crematoria could not meet the demand, and accordingly, they dug huge pits next to each crematorium and burned thousands of people in them at a time.

Despite the severe policing of the camp, an underground carried out its work. There were several organized escapes from the camp, as well as other instances of uprising.

The uprising of the Sonderkommando crematorium took place in the summer of 1944. People were being burned daily then. Part of them managed to escape. In 1945, a second uprising took place, and two crematoria were blown up.

During my entire time in Auschwitz, I carried within me a plan to escape. Many people conceived escape plans, but to carry out such a plan was not one of the easiest things to do. It was difficult to extricate oneself from the talons of death. In the meantime, I fell sick with a lung inflammation, and I lay with a high fever for several weeks, and once again luck was in my favor, and I got well. I then continued to weave my dream of escape.

In the month of June 1944, I brought my plan to fruition with tow of my other friends. We had escaped from the camp for several hours already, when the SS, assisted by Polish prisoners succeeded in catching us. They brought us back. To relate how they treated us is entirely superfluous. It is enough to mention that by the time

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we got back to the camp, even our friends didn't recognize us. We thought we were sentenced to be hung, but to our good fortune, we paid for what we did with receiving a beating only, whose consequences we continued to feel for several weeks, and we were sentenced to the S.K., that is to say, the punishment division, such that for the remaining time we were in the camp, we had to work at especially hard labor. From that time on began a chapter of especially hard times, working hard ground, digging tunnels through swamps. They stood with truncheons over us to speed the work along. Inside the camp, we were kept separate from all the other prisoners that we knew. Our block was shut off and left alone. We could only live from the rations that were given to us. I suffered like this for close to five months, I was certain I would not be able to stand it in the coming winter. Fortunately, the time of liquidation of Auschwitz and Birkenau arrived, and even the SS were sent off in transports; after Oranienberg, Sachsenhausen, we were brought to Dachau, a branch in the Dachau vicinity. Our transport, consisting of about a thousand people, began to build a camp there for itself, and this was November 1944. From that point on a new chapter of different troubles began in our lives.

From the Volkovysk transport, Joseph Kotliarsky and 'Nioma Levin from Svislucz came with me to Dachau. We didn't know at all whether other people from Volkovysk survived, who were in Birkenau up to the last minute, and were then sent away in other transports. Only after the liberation – when we came to Israel, did we come to known that Kossowsky, Epstein, Marek Kaplan, Tchopper, and Hochberg from Warsaw who came to Auschwitz on the Volkovysk transport, were located in various parts of Europe. Apart from this,. Joseph the Dyer, Makosov, Lotte Wolfowitz from Dereczin, and one Munyaker Gershon survived.

Only a few young women from Volkovysk survived: Kaplan's sister, Shayn'eh Lifschitz, Sulka Lifschitz from Slonim, Chas'shkeh Boyarska, Gendler from Slonim, Alta Shidlevich from Svislucz. They are about the entire number who survived from the Volkovysk transport.

My memoir on the life of the Jews in the ghetto and the camp has a very narrow perspective. They are merely isolated lines in the shattering portrait of the Holocaust. It is but one drop out of the oceans of Jewish blood that were spilled during the course of the six years of the war. They are but excerpts from the awesome tragedy of the nation of Israel.^[3]

In order to create an accurate picture, in order to know and assess the extent of the sorrow and annihilation, it is perforce necessary to multiply the dialogue many times.

Auschwitz-Birkenau – There was the instrument where almost the entire Jewish population of Europe was

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intermingled and exterminated. The story of Auschwitz is the story of the eradication of European Jewry.

My memoir is only a story of the life and extermination of a small group of Jews from one city; and how many cities and towns were there like this in Poland alone...?

The chronicle of this great Jewish tragedy are a matter for research and education, because it is on this base that we will educate future generations, how to hate and fight all manner of evil and sin, that they should be stout-hearted, and guard the rights of the Jewish people with honor and pride, that other forms of Auschwitz and Treblinka will never arise again.

The embers of the coals continue to smoke, the stench of the burning bodies is still about us. The cries of suffering mothers and children who had no recourse rings in our ears, and even after the liberation, Jewish martyrs continue to fall.

Alta Shidlevich, a young woman from Svislucz, when she came to Auschwitz with the Volkovysk transport, suffered for two years in Auschwitz, and afterwards, in tens of other camps in Germany, and she was lucky enough to come out free, traveled back to Poland after the liberation to discover, at least, if there were any traces of her family – was killed in Poland only because she was Jewish. And this was not an isolated incident, day by day there is testimony given on acts of murder perpetrated against Jews in various cities and towns of Poland.

And here are the remnant of the refugees, Jews, broken and exhausted, homeless, knocking at the gates of the Land of Israel in order to start here anew, wanting to build a healthy life on strong foundations. They want to be men among men, because their contribution to the development of human culture is not small by any means; they demand their right to live just like other nations – and the gates of their homeland are closed to them seven times over! Warships and His Majesty's crusaders keep watch lest any Jew who had the nerve to survive Hitler, try to enter the Jewish homeland, looking finally for a place of rest. Various committees have been created to “investigate” those refugees that require a home – if they really are serious about starting to live an ordinary life, if the tragedy was really that big. Six million Jewish martyrs are not enough for them! It is therefore incumbent upon us to stand at the watch, it is up to us to protect our rights. Absolutely nothing will stand in our way. The image of the contorted faces our beloved and cherished ones who were exterminated, perforce will always hover before our eyes. This issue will give us strength and resolve to realize our desires and ideals.

The Great Synagogue of Volkovysk

1. That is Russian Georgia, or Gruzinia. Return
2. In the last phase of the war, when the armament industry required more and more slave workers, the deportees kept alive because they still were able to work, were transferred into a part of the camp which was called “Mexico”. This section of Auschwitz-Birkenau was not completely finished. The inmates waited for a further transport to one of the labour camps. Since they should not remain in Auschwitz, they did not receive a prisoner's number typical for Auschwitz.
   In this new camp section, the indescribable conditions which had such horrible consequences in the Birkenau women's camp and the gypsy camp, went on just the same. The lack of even the most primitive hygienic installations, the absence of water caused a high rate of mortality.
   In the camp jargon, the new section was called “Mexico”. The inmates neither had prisoners clothes nor blankets. They received blankets of different colors and styles from the stock-camp section “Canada”, where all goods of the deportees were collected. Covered with all these blankets, the prisoners in that camp section appeared like Mexicans. Return
3. As it is known, on the occupied territory during the World War II, Jews and Gypsies were the only two nationalities that were condemned by the Nazis to utter extermination. Till recent times 400,000 Jews have been supposed to have perished. The latest investigations give reasons to draw the conclusion that the number of perished Belarusian Jews constituted more than 800,000 people (E. Ioffe. “But still how many Jews perished on the territory of Belarus in 1941-1945”. The Belarusian Historical Magazine. 1997. N 4, p. 49-52).
   A total of 384,784 people were moved out to Germany for forced labor. Of them 260,000 did not return. How many of them perished? According to some data, more than 100,000 perished “osterarbeiter" were from Belarus. Proceeding from all the said, one may conclude that in 1941-45, Nazis and their accomplices exterminated no less than 2.3 million Belarusian civilians.
   On the occupied, and bordering on the front-line territory, around 300,000 people died from starvation, air bombings, artillery bombardments, due to living conditions and exhausting work. Return

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