The Holocaust

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(Provided by Natan Krupinski, born in 1905, lived in Wysokie–Mazowieckie before World War Two and during the Nazi occupation. Taken down by D. Kogan)

On the eve of World War Two, 500 Jewish families lived in Wysokie–Mazowieckie, numbering about 2,500 people. The town was taken by the Germans on September 10, 1939, and was promptly set on fire. They forced David Biadak to go back to his burning house, where he was incinerated alive.

All the Jewish men were herded into the church on September 12, and kept there for three days, with no food or water. Afterwards, they were sent to Zambrów. On the way, the exhausted Berl Vaynberg, Moyshe Grushko, Dov Balamut, and Gershon Friedman were shot and killed. Moyshe–Hirsh Kiviaku had a nervous breakdown and hurled himself into a well, where he drowned. Once they arrived at the Zambrów barracks, they had to file between rows of Germans, who beat them with sticks and tortured them. They were incarcerated in Zambrów only briefly, and then sent to Łomża. Some of the arrestees were able to escape from Łomża, and others were deported to Germany.

An order on September 19 forced all the Jews of Wysokie to leave the town by 3 p.m. of the next day. The Jews were frantic, having no idea where to run. They all fled with no possessions except for the clothes they wore; everything that had survived the earlier fire had been robbed by the Poles and the Germans. The Jews of Wysokie (except for the men who had been taken away earlier) ran to the nearby towns and to Bialystok.

On September 26, 1939, according to the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, the Germans left eastern Poland, and Wysokie passed under Soviet authority.^[1] The Jews expelled from Wysokie were able to return home, as did those who were deported to Germany. The Jew Sokhovolski was shot and killed by Germans on his way back to Wysokie.

The Soviet authorities helped the Jews of Wysokie to rebuild the burned town, and before too long it once again numbered 1,100 Jews.

On June 24, 1941, two days after the onset of the German–Soviet war, the Germans reoccupied Wysokie.^[2] The second phase of their murderous regime began with the following decrees: all Jews had to wear a special insignia; kosher slaughtering was prohibited; Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks; Jews were obligated to cut their beards; every morning,

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the Jews had to gather in the synagogue square, where they were beaten, abused and cursed. All, including women and children, were then taken for forced labor. Several Jews were arrested on the pretext that they were Communists. Among these were Shimon Tenenboym, who was publicly tortured to death. Shmuel Grinberg was deported to Bialystok, where he was shot to death.

On August 4, news came that the Germans had deported the Jews of the nearby cities and towns to an unknown destination.

On August 15, the Judenrat was ordered to have all the Jews assembled in the marketplace the next morning. Everyone panicked, as news from other locations had made clear the significance of this order. Many of the Jews fled from town.

On August 16, all the remaining Jews of Wysokie gathered in the market place at the designated time. The German commander, together with the Mayor and Chief of Police, selected several craftsmen from a prepared list; they were immediately released. The rest of the group were ordered to remain there, under heavy guard, until a sanitation committee would come from Łomża, supposedly in order to evaluate the health of the Jewish population.

The crowd of exhausted, desperate Jews was forced to wait for 24 hours. At 7 the next morning they were notified that the committee was unable to come due to traffic problems. It later emerged that the committee had been busy deporting Jews from other towns.

The first Aktion, and information that the Jews in ghettos would be safer, led the community leaders to request the establishment of a ghetto in Wysokie.^[3] This was achieved after much effort.

On November 23, 1941, Jews from the nearby towns of Jablonka and Kulisz were sent to the ghetto in Wysokie. The ghetto now contained 1,350 Jews. Several days after its establishment, the Germans ordered them to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles. The fine was the revenge of the German commander for the fact that he had commandeered a pest–infested apartment in a building in a Polish neighborhood where Jews had never lived; he vented his anger by punishing the Jews.

There were no large–scale Aktions in Wysokie for some time, but isolated Jews were victimized. On June 16, 1942, Leyb Wieszwa was arrested for buying an animal. He was sent to Łomża, and shot.

There were more and more rumors about ghettos that had been liquidated in the Warsaw area and elsewhere. These rumors were soon confirmed by refugees from various ghettos who fled to Wysokie. The sense of impending doom steadily increased in the ghetto. Five hundred Jews secretly left the ghetto. On the night of November 1, the ghetto was surrounded by Germans and Polish police. Wagons arrived shortly afterwards, and the Jews, who had been taken out of their houses, were "loaded" and deported to the labor camp at Zambrów.

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When the ghetto was terminated, the Germans and their Polish helpers collected all the sick Jews from their homes and the hospital, took them to one place, and shot them.

In this way, the Jewish community of Wysokie–Mazowieckie was exterminated.

The Jewish History Committee
M. Turk^[4]
Chairman

[Pages 169-173]

On June 22^nd 1941, at 2am the Germans attacked the USSR. The next day our little town was already in the hands of the Nazis, and all the Jews of Visoka and Yablonka were ordered to work on the roads and to carve out stones under the supervision of German citizens equipped with clubs.

In August 1941 the Ghetto of Visoka was set up and Jews from the nearby small towns of Yablonka-Koscielna, Kulesze-Koscielna, Visung (Wyszonki?), Dabrowa and other were brought in as well. These Jews (2,000 people) were stuffed into the three ghetto streets, cordoned off with barbed wire. The ghetto had four gates that initially were guarded by Jewish police and later by Poles. Every day, the ghetto residents were taken out to work on the roads and after a 12 hour workday, each received 200 grams [7 ozs.] of bread and diluted soup or coffee.

Using different tricks I was able to sneak out to get food for my family – my wife and four kids^[2], my brother and his family (living in Visoka) and my parents^[3] (staying in the Zambrow camp). This went on until September of 1942.

On September 1^st the Germans were looking for me in order to kill me for selling my horse. I knew I had to flee the ghetto. Three of my children (the older ones) wanted to join me, but I took with me only my son Moshele-Chaim, 12 years old. In the village (where I was hiding) the rumor that the Germans had ordered 600 wagons to get the Jews out of the Visoka Ghetto had spread. From afar I was able to see the bicycles rushing towards Visoka to surround the ghetto and prevent Jews from escaping.

The next day, on November 2^nd, in the morning, the Germans, assisted by the Jewish officers, had kicked the people out of their homes, had badly beaten them and the crying and yelling were sky high. Many managed to run away to the forests and fields. But the cold and frost, hunger and persecution by the locals made it unbearable and many turned themselves into the Germans.

On November 7^th I decided to go to Visoka, to my house, and get some belongings to take with me. Polish officers noticed me and informed the German Gendarmerie, who caught me, beat me until I was bloody and jailed me. I found Berka Shorshevitz (a Visoka resident) there, over 70 years old, who was hiding in the forest for some time, and had returned to Visoka and turned himself into the Germans. Within two days the jail was full of men, women, children and elderly people who chose to turn themselves in instead of dying out in the cold. From the Visoka jail, the Jews were transferred to the Zambrow Camp. They walked 19 kilometers (~ 12 miles) by foot, hungry and freezing,controlled by wooden clubs and dogs. On January 10^th, 1943 the Zambrow camp was closed down and the Jews were sent to Auschwitz. From that time on, every Jew caught was shot and before his death was forced to dig his own grave.

A Christian from the Dabrowa-Koscielna village told me that after the Zambrow camp was closed, 14 Jews were captured. They brought them to the Jewish cemetery and ordered them to dig a big grave. They were all shot on spot. Among them were Ezra Lev, his wife and son (“sha'an” or watch maker), two sisters (from the Wilamovski family) and their children. When they were walking towards the cemetery one girl approached an officer and said: “Mr. Yaroshevitz, you have children yourself, do not kill us.”

Yosel Zevische, a butcher from Visoka, hung himself with a towel in the Gendarmerie cell. Yankel Verobel (the tailor), his wife and child Yoelke-Itzele were hiding in the Falazi village. He was working for the farmers. The Gendarmerie found out. They caught him, put him on a wagon and brought him to a field not too far from Dabrowa-Koscielna, gave him a shovel and told him to dig a hole. He noticed they were about to kill him, so he threw the shovel at the feet of the Gendarmerie officer and started running away. They caught him and after cruel torturing they cut his body into pieces and buried him with his wife and son in one grave.

Zalman Susne of Visoka hung himself after staying in an attic at Stack village for some time. In the Schianzki village close to Yablonka, two Jewish families were hiding: Zlata and Motel Segal and Moshe Vizikevitch and his wife. They were informed on and the Polovka (field Gendarmerie) got to their hideout, ordered them out and [ordered them to] undress. They were made to stand by a wall while naked and were shot dead.

In the Stadrove village (near Yablonka) they found, towards the end of 1943, Kayla and Mordechai Segal. They were taken down from the attic where they were hiding and were shot. They left behind a six month old baby girl. A Christian women took the baby to her house and raised her. She is with the girl at Alek. She refuses to return the girl. She wants to immigrate to America.

Hazkel Segal and Moshe Vireszva are buried near the village of Falk.

Kadish Kojul and his niece Manes are buried in the Rambik forest. Not too far away from the forest Motel Nachman Segal's brother is buried.

In 1944, two weeks before the liberation, my brother Yeshayahu-Itzchak, his wife Faigel, their daughter Sara, 19 years old, and their son Avramaleh, 9 years old, were murdered.

[Pages 174-183]

The Zambrow Camp had 17,500 Jews. The young prisoners were digging holes in the ground not knowing who they were destined for. The conditions were very harsh. Food was limited to a two pound loaf of bread made of bran and chestnut flour for 12 people a day, and a half liter [16 ozs.] of soup made of rotten potatoes with no salt. In the morning it was rare for anyone to get any warm water. Twice a day the Gendarmerie officers, with help from the Jewish police, who had a banner on their sleeves reading “supervision,” would kick the people out of their barracks (“blocks”) to stand naked and barefoot for two hours outside. Due to the cold, their faces swelled and became yellow.

Initially, they separated children from their parents. The outcry was sky high and the horror was so bad that they had to return the children to their parents.

The daily death toll in the camp was 100 people, mainly old people and childrens. The camp was divided into seven barracks. The human density was unbearable. Fourteen people had to sleep on bunks designed for six. There were cases where mothers killed their children out of desperation.

My family was 17 souls. When I was unable to see the suffering of my children and parents, I managed, using nepotism, to work in the kitchen for a few days. I worked from 4AM to 7PM. I had to carry water and ensure that the kitchen was clean. The Camp manager Block inspected the kitchen and was very pleased with my work. The next day they wanted to replace me with someone else, but the person in charge of the kitchen, Pesach Skabronk, claimed “If you remove Sokol from the kitchen, we'll be doomed.” Thanks to him I was able to stay in the kitchen until the camp was closed. For my work I received three liters of soup. Any food I could get like beets, radishes, potatoes, etc. I brought to my family. My wife used to give to the children first and take the remains for herself. When the Germans and the Jewish police were not looking, we would collect the potato skins mixed with sand and cook them.

When the Zambrow camp was done with, they separated the old, sick and children from the rest of the population, about 800 people; that is, anyone who was not able to walk with the transport, and moved them to a specific “block,” the hospital. In the last days, the Germans Bloch and Shandler and Dr. Knot (of Lomza) administered some medicine to the sick – a teaspoon of poison – and they all perished. They were buried in Zambrow next to the Russian cemetery. Many dead people were left on the bunks. I was removed from Zambrow on January 15^th 1943. They brought us to Chizev ( Tshizeva?) on farmer's wagons. It was extremely cold outside and on the way to the railway station 120 people froze to death. Many who disembarked from the wagons to the road to take care of their biological needs froze to death on the spot from the cold and from being weak.

As I was running after the wagon to take care of my children, I suffered more than once from being hit by the Germans' clubs, till I saw stars. The sleigh my wife and my elderly mother were riding in had turned over and they fell into the snow. My wife told me “If it wasn't for you I would be free from the trip to Auschwitz and could remain buried under the snow.” I picked up the sleigh, put my children and aged mother in it and the trip continued. It was so freezing cold that the children were not able to cry anymore. We rode the whole night and traveled 22 kilometers (14 miles). My mother moaned “I wish I was staying at Zambrow.”

At the Chizev railway station there was lots of fuss. The Germans were hitting the Jews on the head with clubs and forcing them to go into the cars. I wanted to save my family from the beating and rushed them into the cars. These were horse [cattle] cars and they stuffed ten [?] people into each of them, locked them and installed barbed wires around them and without food or water we were transferred to Auschwitz.

On January 17^th 1943 we were brought to Auschwitz, to the “Judenrampe.” When the car doors were open, the S.S. people with clubs in their hands were standing there shouting “Raus!” (Out!). The S.S. doctor was selecting people with his bamboo stick in hand, male and female separately. The males that were deemed not fit to work, and woman and children were put into the black cars (cars of death) that drove them off not too far from the gas chambers. They were ordered to undress and angry dogs attacked them, tore their flesh and chased them into the gas chambers. They stuffed up to 2,000 people into the two chambers, and if more people were still available they threw them on top of those standing inside. After 10 minutes of death throes, death had saved them of their misery. With gas masks on their faces, the S.S. people hermetically locked the doors, screwed them tightly, and placed a ladder three meters [10 ft.] high, where a porthole (small window) was located. With a hammer they hit a valve/cover and the gas (in the form of a dry grey powder) poured over peoples' heads. The screaming heard for kilometers died away after 10 minutes. Dead silence. A special company opened the door, dragged the dead bodies out and put them on a wheelbarrow – 30 bodies on each wheelbarrow – and carried them away to the pits. There they laid the corpses layer by layer on some branches and the Lieutenant Commander Steinberg^[2] poured gasoline on them and lit the fire from four sides by himself. While doing it, he used to say “The burning Jews are the headquarters of the heavens.” In each fire 2,500 corpses were burned. Outside of the camp there were three big pits. In two of them they burned the dead and in the third one they raked away the warm ashes and carried them away on wagons to the field or threw them into the Wisla river. After the corpses were removed from the gas chambers, the “barbers” would cut the women's hair and the “teeth pullers” would remove any gold teeth from the dead people's mouths.

In one case a beautiful French woman was hiding in a pile of goods. They noticed her after the whole group had been suffocated to death in the gas chambers. She pleaded with Lieutenant Commander Steinberg “I'm young, beautiful, I'd like to work, leave me alive.” “Get dressed,” the German told her and as she turned around to take her clothes, he shot her in the back.

The S.S. commander Moll^[3] said “All the Jews of Lodz came to my factory” and indeed under his orders 60,000 Jews from Lodz were killed.

My wife was burned on January 17^th, 1943 together with 16,000 Jews of Zambrow in the pits of Section Number Two.

The men that remained on the “Ramp” were divided into two groups, one on the right and one on the left. I was among the group on the left, not knowing what my fate was going to be. As I was standing in the lines of five, my son Moshele-Chaim jumped in front of me and said “Daddy, I want to be with you.” He was bleeding and had lost the bread in his backpack. “Where is the bread?” I asked him. “A German beat me with a stick, and as I suffered that blow, I lost the bread.” For three days he had not eaten. “Daddy, I still have one slice of bread.” I snuck him into my line. He was shaking out of fear. As soon as the camp doctor saw him standing in line, he shouted “Heraus!” (Outside!). Like a bird the child flew out of the line and I have not seen him again since. From afar I saw my second son Itzele, nine years old, putting snow into his mouth in an effort to stop his hunger. I also saw my 70 year old mother with her eyes closed. Two women supported her with their arms. When my wife saw me from afar, she didn't care about the beatings the Germans gave her [for stepping out of line] and with my eighteen month old son Menachemke in her arms, she ran to me to say her farewell. “Forgive me” she said with the remaining strength she had, knowing death was close, and returned to her place. I was frozen like a fossil. They walked me to the camp. This is how my family was lost in twenty minutes, a blink of an eye.

They brought us to Block 20, beating us continually. After some time they took our clothes and we were ordered to stay outside in the biting frost (January 18^th, 1943) for several hours. Many froze to death in the deep cold. Then they brought us to the bathroom and tattooed a number on the left hand. My number was 88966. For them I was not a human being but a number. When they yelled at me to get beaten, they were not calling my name but my number. The Jewish “Capo” – Merva of Makov (?) – trying to please the Germans, ordered me to “bend down” and with a thick stick he beat me very hard. This is the way we lived – hunger, fear, cold and beatings were our daily treats. Many signed up to Block 7 at their will, the block of death. This was the block they used to take people to the gas chambers, this is how we were shaking (?) in the claws of death and we were hoping.

On January 18^th 1945 in the evening they took us out of the camp and made us run to Austria through Czechoslovakia. It was freezing cold and the snow reached our hips. 50% of us, who had no strength left to walk, died on the road. In Czechoslovakia they brought us to train cars, one hundred people in a car, and brought us to Austria, to camp Mauthausen.

On January 26^th, 1945, they cut our hair. They took our clothes and left us naked. A new death camp; here the situation was worse than in Auschwitz. We were catalogued again; I got the number 120298 carved in tin. For two weeks we were there in cold and hunger. They forced us to stand outside for a whole day freezing with only our underwear covering our flesh. The body turned blue from the cold and tents of people were dying every day.

After two weeks they were ordered to give us striped clothes (like prisoners) and to move us to a new camp, Ebensee^[4] in Austria. Here we worked in the forest, digging tunnels out of the mountain rocks and building warehouses. The situation at Ebensee was worse than the two previous camps. Nine people received an 800 gram loaf of bread a day, and one potato skin soup bowl was dealt to ten people. We ate in turns. We were standing in a circle and one by one each got one spoon of the soup. Once I got extra bread and margarine for my work. I sold it for a pair of shoes; otherwise my bare feet would have frozen.

We spent three winter months at Ebensee, working on stone mining, with our feet in water, under very harsh conditions and hunger and cold. Then they selected one thousand of us, myself included, to be transferred to camp Wels, where we labored fixing train rails that the Russians had dismantled. On our way to work and back and during work we were badly beaten. Twice a day we received a quarter liter of soup and a one hundred gram [piece of] bread. After four weeks of labor only 300 people remained of the 1000. As the war front got closer to Austria, the red army on one side and the American army on the other, they moved us back to Ebensee.

At Ebensee, our suffering had reached its peak; I ate live worms, soft coals, nibbled on bones, and chewed-up bitter grass (called “malitz,” used to feed pigs) to fill out my stomach. My legs became swollen; I had my skeleton only. With my last strength I was able to hold out until May 6^th, Liberation Day by the Americans. I am confident that were the Americans late by three to four days, I would not have testified here in front of you.

Three months after liberation, people were still running around naked, with swollen legs, covered with wounds, enraged in madness, unstoppable out of happiness.

Immediately, as the Americans entered the camp, they ordered the local Germans to remove three thousands corpses that the Germans did not have a chance to cremate and bring them to burial: Jews, Poles and Russians separately. The Jews' burial places were marked with a Magen David – the Star of David. This cemetery is by the Ebensee camp in Austria.

All hospitals were crowded with camp survivors. All were sick, exhausted, had intestinal and stomach ailments from the eating rush they suffered after the liberation. I was sick too.

Going through Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Upper Silesia^[5], I got back to my hometown of Visoka Mozovietsk. On August 1^st 1945, my feet were again on Visoka's ground.Out of my family of twenty, and from closer and more remote relatives – another thirty – I alone remained.

On November 2^nd 1942, I was taken from Visoka and on August 1^st 1945 I returned there. Two years and two days I was in Auschwitz. When I came to my hometown I saw the destruction that the Germans with their Polish aides had done to us. I also found the Gentile “goy” that lead me to the death camp. I went to the place where my house used to stand, to the place where my kids used to play, I went to the places where my brother's house used to stand. It had all been turned into desolation. I was told that my brother Ishayah-Itzchak and his family were killed two weeks before the liberation. I was left alone with no family or relatives.

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(Presented by Mazur, who was born in 1899, lived in Wysokie–Mazowieckie before the war and during the German occupation, and was in the Zambrów labor camp. He survived in the forests around Wysokie–Mazowieckie. Protocol written by D. Kagan)

The camp was established on November 2, 1942, and existed until January 11, 1943. It contained 14,000 Jews who were collected from the entire region. People were not sent to hard labor, but the Germans contrived various ways to torture the prisoners. One of the worst chores was the daily “strolls.” Regardless of the weather, all the Jews in the camp, including the old, the sick, and small children, were forced to take the terrible “strolls,” naked and barefoot. During these murderous “entertainments,” the weak succumbed. The food rations were appalling: it was almost impossible to survive on 150 grams of bread and half a liter of water daily. People went to any lengths to obtain a piece of bread. Those who were caught at this crime were severely punished by 25 or 50 whippings. Only death released these people from the horrible torture. Thirty deaths a day were common in the Zambrów camp. These conditions continued for two and a half months, when preparations began to transfer the Jews to a different camp; the camp commander promised that it would be a labor camp. To this end, all the craftsmen were registered, supposedly to work in the new camp.

The relocation of the Jews from the Zambrów camp in Oswiecim took place during January 11–17, 1943. All the women, children, elderly, and those who were feeble were gassed on the day of their arrival and were incinerated in the crematorium. Over time, the men were murdered by “selections” in which the weak were sent to the gas chambers.

This horrific news was brought by the Wysokie resident Sokol, who succeeded in surviving the hell of Oswiecim.

Evidence by Yellin, Chairman of the Jewish Provincial Historical Commission, headed by M. Turek

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(Presented by B. Fuks, on behalf of the Historical Commission of the Bialystok region, headed by M. Turek, on January 26, 1947)

Zelda Katsarevich was born in Wysokie–Mazowieckie in 1906, and lived there until World War II. During the Nazi occupation, she and her three children managed to hide in the Wysokie forests for a long period of time. When she submitted this evidence, she was living in Biała Podlaska.

Zelda recounts that the Pole Iwonicki (aged 55) and his son–in–law Jan Ruszkowski (aged 24), residents of Jabłonka–Dobka village (in the municipality of Piekuta, Wysokie–Mazowieckie county), collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. Jan Ruszkowski was also a Gestapo agent.

After the liquidation of the Wysokie ghetto, she and her children – a girl of 12, a girl of 8, and a boy of 6 – went from village to village in search of refuge.

In April 1943, she and her children were hiding in Jabłonka–Dobka, in the hayloft of the peasant Iwonicki. Early that morning, one of the children fell ill and could not continue walking; she therefore decided to spend the day in the hayloft and leave at night. All four burrowed into the hay.

After some time, Iwonicki came in but did not notice them. Later, his son–in–law came to take hay for the animals, and discovered the mother and her three children. He immediately closed the door. The mother wept and begged him to let them stay in the granary until nightfall, or let them leave immediately. Ruszkowski responded, " I've already killed many young Jews and Jewish women; you and your children will also not escape me."

He left the barn and locked the door from the outside. He then went to the village elder and requested a wagon. The latter refused, saying that all the wagons were in the fields and in use by the laborers.

Ruszkowski and Iwonicki took the unfortunate mother and all three children into a room with broken windows. As one child was ill, the mother did not try to escape through the window frames but persuaded her 12–year–old daughter to jump out, thinking she might be saved. The girl jumped. However, Ruszkowski noticed her, and brought her back to the room after beating her severely. He now brought his own wagon. When the mother adamantly refused to get on, Ruszkowski and Iwonicki beat them savagely.

The murderers brought the mother and children to Piekut and turned them in to the German gendarmerie. They were then thrown into a cellar, where they remained all day. In the evening, two gendarmes and two men in civilian clothes took them out of the cellar and led them to a grove

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two kilometers from the village. Once they were in the middle of the grove, all four were shot in the back. The mother and her children collapsed on the spot.

The mother's injury was not life–threatening, and she only fainted. When she opened her eyes she saw that the Germans were still there, and immediately shut her eyes. One of the Germans came near and shined a flashlight on her face. She held her breath, so that he wouldn't notice she was alive. She was bleeding all over. The sick child, whom she had kept with her while they were going to the grove, lay at her side. All four were tied with kerchiefs. The German tore off the kerchiefs and muttered, Die Juden sind todt (the Jews are dead).

When the Germans left the killing ground, Zelda gathered her strength and went to check on the children. She touched them and realized that they were all dead. She couldn't move from the spot for hours, but sat near the beloved bodies, wailing quietly. She finally parted from them and with her last shreds of strength made her way to Jabłonka, to the house of the priest, Kruszkowski, who had helped her several times previously. He was kind this time as well, took her in, and hid her. She lay unconscious for eight days.

The priest hid her for two months, until her injuries healed a bit. She then went to the village of Zarzyski; she found refuge for six months with the peasant Drangowski.

In November 1943, she returned to the forest, where she found other Jews from Wysokie. Zelda hid in the forest until Liberation.

[Page 189]

Four days before Rosh Hashana, 1939, the Germans entered Wysokie. The entire town was burned down after a fierce battle between the German and Polish armies near the village of Goląsza. During the battle the residents hid in the deep trenches on the landowner's property. The first shots rang out at 2 p.m., and by 5 p.m. the town was in flames. As the Germans were overrunning the town, they threw a Molotov cocktail into each house. Those in the trenches witnessed a terrifying scene: the entire town was burning. Plumes of fire rose to the sky on all sides. People spent the night in the fields. In the morning, the Germans gathered all the men over age 17, and assembled them in the church,

[Page 190]

which had escaped the flames and was intact. The Germans displayed cruelty towards the Jews from the outset. That first day, Avraham Moshe Balamut and his son Berl were murdered. About 200 Jews spent two days in the church, with no food or drink. The other men managed to escape and found various hiding places. The women and children roamed the fields and the town's ruins.

Those in the church were taken out two days later (including some Poles), and sent to the barracks at Zambrów. The Germans switched off the lights in the barracks so that the new arrivals would fall into the vast open cellars as they walked in. Several were killed in this manner. Some of the arrestees were taken to Stawiski and placed in the church. The next day, they were taken to Lyck, near Koenigsberg, where they were imprisoned for 24 hours. Many Jews from other towns were already in Lyck. From there, they were taken to Schtablak 2, where they were kept for two weeks. The Poles in the camp abused the Jews and removed their clothes. A few weeks later, the arrested Jews from Wysokie were returned to the town.

They found about 20 families in the destroyed town. These lived in the Kapitovsky house, the Segal house, the Tarbut school, and the Skavronek house. The Russians had already entered the town by this time. Many families also found refuge in the villages of Miesta and Vloysta.^[1] The Russians did their best to house the Jews in peasant homes; those who wanted to rebuild their homes were given some construction materials.

The following families were able to rebuild their homes: Leyzer Yellin, Shmuel–Nachman Blumshteyn, Ayzik and Shlomo Zolotolov, Zbitse the butcher, Trastenovitsh the carpenter, Khayim–Velvl Wiecha, Avraham Herts, Meir Zolotolov, Lima Goldman, Alter Zak, Yehuda Zakomovitsh, Yitzkhak Vayzenberg, and Shmuel–Ayzik Yellin. The burned synagogue was not rebuilt, and the Jews gathered in private homes for prayers. Shmuel Grinberg was the residents' representative to the Soviet authorities. Once the Soviet regime stabilized, the craftsmen resumed their occupations. Some people found employment with the new regime, and many were storekeepers. The Russians also established a school for the Jewish children, but the teachers and educators were not Jewish. The young people were drafted into the Russian army, and some were pressed into building defenses. Most of those who worked at the defenses stayed in the town. At the outbreak of the Russo–German war, the Nazis quickly conquered eastern Poland, and the Russian army hastily retreated. Some of the Wysokie residents left the town along with the Russians.

On July 22, 1941, the first day of the German offensive, the Luftwaffe bombed the Russian airport in Wysokie. The next day, July 23, the Germans came to Wysokie from Zambrów. As they arrived, they promised the Jews' representative that they would not be harmed. For a few days, there was no authority in the town. Zaremba continued as mayor,

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and the Jews asked him to restore some order to the lawless town. At that transitional time, Rabbi Alter Zak was very active, and organized vital activities to ensure the townspeople of elementary services.

A few weeks later, the Jews asked the Germans to establish a ghetto in their neighborhood, as protection from the rampaging Gentiles. The Germans agreed, and the ghetto soon extended from Yakobi's house to Bielski's house, the location of the main gate. The fence continued along Mistka Street, between the houses of Vrubel, the cobbler, and Aharon Leyzer, the carpenter. This was the location of the second gate. The fence surrounded the entire market square. The third gate was on the “Hoyfishe Gas,” near the butcher shops. The old cemetery was inside the ghetto. The fourth gate was near the bridge of Mordechai, the blacksmith. The left side of the “Hinter Gas” was inside the ghetto, and the right side was outside it.^[2] The ghetto was established a few days before Yom Kippur. Christians who lived inside the ghetto exchanged houses with the Jews who lived outside it. The few Germans in the town (about ten) were quartered in the Kapitovski house, on the Szepietowo road.

At its establishment, the ghetto housed about 2000 people. This included Jews from the surrounding villages of Kulish, Jablonka, Dąbrowa, Vishang, Pingot, and Tatara.^[3] The German authorities ordered the Jews to elect a 13–member Judenrat. The members were Rabbi Alter Zak (Chairman), Avraham Herts, Fishl Segal, Meir Mayzner, Betsalel Tenenboym, Hersh–Yitzkhak Trastonovitsh, David Mazur, Eliyahu Vansover, Barnholts, Pesach Skovronek. Ya'akov Melnik, Shmuel–Ayzik Yellin, Tankhum of Kulish, and Chava Yellin as secretary.

All Jewish men and women over 15–16 were forced to wear a yellow patch on their outer clothing, front and back. At first, they also had to wear a yellow band on one sleeve.

Rabbi Alter Zak and Avraham Herts (who was fluent in German) represented the ghetto. Avraham Herts died in the ghetto in the late summer of 1942, and was eulogized by Rabbi Alter Zak. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery outside the ghetto.

How did the Jews in the ghetto make a living? Two oil presses were opened, one at the house of Ayzik Krupinski and the other at the house of Efrayim Shtern, the carpenter. According to orders, the ghetto had to supply about 250 laborers daily for road–building and tree–felling in the forest. Jews were hired during the harvest season, to gather the crops on the landowner's property in Szepietowo, in exchange for fresh produce. Craftsmen (cobblers, tailors, furriers, carpenters, tinsmiths, and others) would go to the villages to practice their trades, using permits the villagers obtained from the Germans. They would buy goods and sell them to the villagers in return for fresh produce. The Germans established a Jewish militia in the ghetto. Among its members were Shmuelke Sosna, Hershl Zilberfenig, and Pesach Dalangvitsh. Moshe Brenner and Yudl Zak were appointed commanders. There was no electrical lighting in the ghetto; kerosene and candles were used throughout its existence.

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One evening in the late summer of 1941, German gendarmes appeared in the ghetto, announcing that at 7 a.m. the next morning all the ghetto inhabitants had to gather on the square of the Polish school. Everyone appeared the next morning. The men were sent to various tasks, while the women and children returned to the ghetto.

That day, refugees from the region (Czeszów, Tykocin, Rotka, Zarumb, and Zambrów) came to Wysokie. They told us that the Jews there had been rounded up and shot dead, and the bodies had been flung into pits dug earlier. Everyone was terrified, and began thinking of ways to avoid this fate. Rabbi Alter Zak went to see the landowners around Szepietowo, Szczeczin, and elsewhere, and asked them to take young Jews as laborers on their properties. Once they agreed, all the young people over age 17 left to work on the estates. Each group of fifty included a cobbler (a highly desirable profession).

The youthful energies of the young people found an outlet in singing and dancing every Sunday; it was so infectious that the Gentiles in the area would come to have fun with the Jews.

About a month later, there came another order to assemble. This time the young people did not obey. Instead, they fled to the nearby forests (Masuria, Szepietowo, etc.). Only the middle–aged and the elderly gathered in the market square. Nothing happened this time, either, but the women were ordered to weed out the grasses between the square's cobblestones. A third order to assemble also proved to be a false alarm. Two people were sent to work at road–building between Ząbrowo and the Tykocin junction, near Bialystok. The Germans ordered the destruction of the old roads and the construction of asphalt pavement instead. Work in the quarries was primitive: no cranes were used to raise the rocks. Everything was done by hand: quarrying the stone, taking it up to the smasher, removing the gravel, etc. All the labor was forced, without pay. Food for the laborers was supplied by the Judenrat. The abusive German overseers could be bribed with boots, fabric, or meat, so that they wouldn't torture the workers. Craftsmen and others who made their living independently paid the Judenrat a ransom to be released from the forced labor. This eased the job of the Judenrat. This work continued up to the liquidation of the ghetto. People who were old, poor, and had no family, stayed in the firefighters' hall and subsisted on community funds. The Judenrat did its best to minimize the numbers of people concentrated in one place and made sure that some of the single persons would be taken into homes.

With the onset of winter, heat in homes became a necessity. The laborers chopped firewood from the roots of the thick trees in the Masurian forest. The wood was distributed by the Judenrat.

There were many examples of bravery and of people risking their lives in the ghetto. Especially noteworthy were the physician, Dr. Golda Zak, and Rabbi Alter Zak, chairman of the Judenrat. Dr. Golda worked long hours taking care of the sick and the feeble, free of charge. She worked to the limits of her strength during the cold winter nights.

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Dr. Golda Zak (may God avenge her blood)		Rabbi Alter Zak (may God avenge his blood)

On Sunday, November 1, 1942, about 300 wagons arrived in Wysokie. The Germans said that they were meant to transport seedlings for new forests. A few hours later, many armed Gentiles began to congregate at the ghetto's fence. This seemed suspicious, and that evening some of the ghetto's residents fled to the forests. Naturally, no one slept that night, fearfully awaiting the next day.

At 4 a.m. the next morning, Monday, members of the Judenrat and German policemen went through the ghetto streets, ordering everyone out to the market square. Hundreds of Gentiles waited around the fence, anticipating the loot. Some of them laughed happily at the misfortune of the Jews about to be executed. Some time later, several hundred Germans appeared. The young people were working on the roads outside the ghetto at the time.

The Germans forbade the Jews to take anything with them, and ordered everyone onto the wagons. The Germans tried to calm the Jews, telling them that they were being taken to Ząbrowo, but no one believed them. Everyone knew that this was the last road. When the Jews arrived in Ząbrowo, they were ordered into houses that had already been designated for them. As noted, the young people were outside the ghetto that day, and did not know what was happening. Suddenly, that morning,

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the German foreman appeared. A few moments later, about twenty Germans, armed with rifles, came, and ordered the 40–50 laborers into a truck. None of the laborers escaped, as they were surrounded by Germans. They were taken to Rudki and imprisoned. Additional Jewish laborers from Wysokie were occasionally brought in. They stayed there from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., when they were taken out of the prison, loaded onto wagons, and tied hand and foot with ropes; this operation was carried out by Poles. The convoy left Rudki for Zambrów, accompanied by an armed guard of Poles and Germans. As they traveled, the Germans spotted a few Jews on foot and began to chase them. The prisoners made good use of the situation, and managed to loosen the ropes with their teeth; about ten prisoners were able to escape. The Polish cart driver looked the other way, and the guys jumped off the wagons and ran to the village of Kuski, near the forest. The armed guardsmen shot at them, but missed.

Those who escaped from the wagon included Leymke Plishka, Efrayim Mazur, Ayzik Sokal, and Ya'akov Tiktshinki. They hid in the forest all night and headed to Wysokie the next morning. Near the village of Galasza, they met Fishl Segal and his son, Pesakh. Leymke Plishka had a loaf of rye bread that he had received from a Gentile. The Christian Susaski, of Wysokie, reported that he gave Segal clothes. The first snow of the season fell that night, covering the fields. The next day, Motl Pianka met his parents in the forests near Wysokie–Wróble. They went on through the Masurian forest, where they met about 150 Jews. They dug bunkers and trenches under the trees in the forest, camouflaging them with a covering of branches. Days were spent lying in the forests. They emerged at night to buy food from the villagers. This went on for ten days.

In mid–November, the forest was surrounded by a company of German soldiers, with Polish helpers. They shot at the bunkers, and ordered everyone out. They shot Fishl Segal, David Guzovski. Avraham–Yitzchak Biedak, and Yente Shereshevski, who were all killed on the spot. Others were injured, and, due to lack of medical help, suffered for days until they died. The rest, about 120, were taken to Wysokie and kept all night in a crowded room where they could barely stand upright. They next day, they were taken to Zambrów on wagons. Their despair was so great that no one tried to escape. In Zambrów, they were kept in barracks, with no water, and one loaf of bread for eight people. Most of them fell ill with jaundice and dysentery; many died of disease and exhaustion.

They were kept in Zambrów until January 15, 1943. That night they were taken by wagons to Czyżew . By this point, their clothes had become rags; some were naked and barefoot. David Yakovnitser and others died en route of the cold.

In Czyżew, they were packed into rail horse cars, and taken to Auschwitz with no food. They managed to break open a door; Shmuel Sosna, Hershl Virubnik, Hershl Zilberfenig, Dalangevitsh, and Itsl Volmer (Vafnitsky's grandson) jumped out of the rushing train. Itsl Volmer was the only one who survived.

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They reached Auschwitz on January 17, 1943, and were greeted by severe blows. Some of the men were taken to forced labor. These included Leymke Plishka, Shlomo Zolotolov, Avraham Berl Sokal, Yisraelke Yellin, Ben Shilem, Yankl Dalangevitsh, Bendet Pianka, Avraham and Shlomo Tenenboym, Chayim Kaviar, Moshe Yosl Kasyar, Eliyahu Hershl Krupinski (son of Ayzik), Khayim Shaklo, Moshe Perlman, Shiyeh Segal, Yankl Zlodka, David Kiyek, Yeshayahu Vizenberg, Simkha–Velvl and Yehuda (Yudl) Zak, Meir Plishka, Hertzke Skvornek, Meir (son of David) Yakovtsiner, Pesakh Vaysbord, Shlomo Klodo, Hilel Shrenits, Khayim Velvl Wiecha, Simkha Sokal, Eliezer Hakhlovski, and Leyzer Khamilevski.^[4] All the others – the elderly, women, and children – were taken to the gas chambers. The doors shut hermetically once people were inside, and they were then asphyxiated by gas introduced into the chamber through the window. The bodies were moved into pits, and covered in chlorine. Those who survived had their arms tattooed.

Life in Auschwitz resembled life in the barracks. Each person received ¼ kg bread daily, thin soup, coffee, a spoonful of jam, and cheese. The prisoners cleared forests, built roads, and did construction. Those who were too weak were shot or sent to the gas chambers. At the morning roll call, people were examined to see whether they were strong enough to work. Anyone who was infirm or sick was sent to the gas chambers. The few who survived stayed in Auschwitz until January 19, 1945. That day, they were marched to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria, where they worked at digging tunnels. The food ration was steadily reduced from a daily 250 grams of bread to 70 grams. Conditions continued to deteriorate as the Allied powers approached.

Most of those who remained alive in spite of the hells they had undergone largely emigrated to Israel, and now live and work in the free State of Israel.

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