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In 1941, I was in Stanislavov when the German-Soviet war started. I was sent there by the Soviet authorities to recruit workers, especially Ukrainians, to work in the oil fields of Baku, Kavkaz [Caucasus].

After that, as part of the powerful flow from the bloody catastrophe, I was dragged into many fronts with the Red Army, in the first and second Ukrainian general front.

In 1943, when Vanda Vasilevskaya formed her Polish legions, I was assigned to the first Polish army named after Tadeus Kosciuszko. With them, I entered Poland via Volynia.

While I was stationed in Kiverts, near Lutzk, I decided to try to go to Lanovits and visit my hometown.

I had no concrete information regarding the extent of the catastrophe that occurred. Polish theaters performed shows of burning towns and villages, street murders, and specifically, of murdering Jewish victims. Soviet newspapers described harrowing facts of the German occupation in their typical Russian exaggerated and bombastic style. I believed some of it and disbelieved some of it. I could not imagine the terrible truth because I probably did not want to believe it.

I just did not have the proper background facts to have a real idea about all this.

It was a summer day. The black earth of Volynia carried its smell which reminded me of my home region. My heart longed for my hometown of Lanovits.

I was an officer in the Red Army. I knew that it would be difficult for me to obtain army leave from my responsibilities. But I went to my superior commander and told him what was going on in my heart. I begged him to permit me to go to my hometown to find out who of my family and friends survived. Perhaps they needed help or protection. Maybe their lives were in danger or they were starving.

To my surprise, he not only granted my leave request, but he also

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selected two armed soldiers as guards. The war was still waging here and there, and you could not know exactly where the danger was.

I left from Skiverts to Lutzk, from there through Rovno, Kremenec to Lanovits, all by horse and wagon.

While in Lutzk I ran around unhindered through the town looking for Jews. The town was in ruins. I saw no civilians on the streets. Other than the Red Army and Polish soldiers, who were stationed around the city in the woods and suburbs, there was no living soul in the city and the surrounding areas.

But I had met someone on the train, an older, lonely looking man, who was totally enveloped in dense fear. I recognized him as a Jew. He told me he was Yosef Kaplan from Pomieruwka region of Poznan. With the first occupation of the Germans, he escaped to Volyn and survived the entire occupation period in Lutzk. A Polish family dug a shelter for him in their yard, near a path, and fed him there throughout the war period. A few days ago, the local Ukrainian authorities slaughtered this Polish family. He was now alone, waiting for an opportunity to return to his hometown and search for some remnants of his past. He knew nothing of the extermination. But as we walked the streets of Lutzk, he came to realize that the town was no more: neither its houses nor its Jews.

We did not see Rovno nor Kremenec. We rode with captured vehicles, and people passed without stopping. The sounds and noises of war were still clearly heard. No one was allowed to stop.

I arrived in Lanovits at about one in the afternoon. The Red Army trucks in our group continued to Jampol while we left them at Wolica near the train to Lanovits.

As I walked into town I met Theodora Godamsky, the sister-in-law of Korczaczikh. She recognized me immediately and fell faint. Her husband arrived, saved her, and we were asked to come to their house. The house was still standing next to the house of Itzik Eliyahu in the blote [area of the muddied lake].

Godamsky warned us to be extra careful because Ukrainian bandits roamed around the area killing Russian and Polish officers.

We spent the night in their house. The woman took extra precautions to ensure that our visit not be known to her Ukrainian neighbors. She feared arson. This was true for the entire Lanovits that remained standing and was tightly occupied by the local Soviet authorities.

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Itzik Eliyahu's house was completely overgrown with grass. The rest of the houses on the street were destroyed. Ruin lay everywhere, and we remember that here there was once plentitude.

The next morning, I went to the office of the Soviet commander, located in the old school. I asked the commander for an additional guard. They did not want to hear about it. And at the same time, they also suggested I not “crawl” anywhere. I must get out of here. The main thing was, they were not responsible for us.

Despite his warning I went into the town.

From Godamsky, I learned that the Ukrainian families: Horutz, Primas, Somolitsky, and Butenko served in the local German-led police force and were at the head of the Ukrainian extermination bandits who slaughtered Jews. The local police force consisted of only two German gendarmes, and the killing was largely done by the Ukrainians. (It is interesting that Butenko is now a priest in Wyszehradzka, and the main bandit, Mishka Horutz, tried to escape, and was not even tried in the courts for his crimes.)

I first visited the town's mass grave. It was dangerous to do so. That same night, the Ukrainians in nearby Kozatsky murdered a Russian officer. I went to the mass grave regardless, to be with my dear relatives and friends who perished there.

Alexander “the blind one” was still alive, and he recognized me. He cried bitterly and begged me to leave the area. I approached the graves. The earth beneath me was still rumbling, as if the dead had not yet settled in and the Jews still wanted to live. There were lives of young children and girls and women and men. I became hysterical, and prostrated myself on this “warm” earth, then fainted and … I later revived in Godamsky's house. No one told me who had brought me back here.

In the meantime, I heard that a Jewish young woman lived in the area, and Pavlushe's son, and a local Russian officer, who had come to Lanovits, told me about her. I visited Mikita Diduch, and he told me that the young woman was from Wyszehradzka, presently living in the house of Ilka Diduch.

I went there and found her sitting on a couch, thin, exhausted. She was frightened by me, because she did not recognize me. She spoke Ukrainian, spoke haltingly, and continuously claimed to be Ukrainian.

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When I calmed her, and she felt comfortable with me, she admitted that her name was actually Sobol, and she lived near my aunt's house in Wyszehradzka. (She now lives with her husband, Moshe Fuchs, in Israel.)

We sat and talked for a long time. She told me that she recently arrived from Vishnevets, where she was hiding during the entire time of the extermination. She told me of the tragedy of the Vishnevets and Wyszehradzka Jews who all perished in the Vishnevets ghetto.

I left the Diduch house to visit Boshke, the “felsher” [country doctor]. He told me that all the Jews were led to their death through a field next to his house. As they passed his house, these Jews threw their money into his garden so the murderers would not get it. He told me that he regarded this money as “holy” and donated it to the Red Army to “fight the Nazi beast.”

Boshke added that from the grave, in the final minutes before the shooting, Yoelik Korolke succeeded in escaping the shooting area by quickly jumping the fence. However, the Ukrainian guards noticed his escape, laughed, and cried out: “You had the audacity to escape!” and then they shot him. (Boshke's wife told me that weeks later she found a number of gold rings in her yard. She told me, “These are stained with blood. I don't want them, take them.” I did not accept them because of the blood.)

Lanovits was a simple town surrounded by hills and greenery that were witness to a Jewish tragedy. Now, Lanovits was no longer. There was no one to turn to. I went to visit Zuber, the felsher [country doctor] who used to live under the same roof as Chaim Nosson. He was no longer alive. His 24-year-old daughter, a local teacher, told me that she noticed that the Ukrainian students in her school often wore blouses, dresses, and slacks that used to be worn by Jewish children. When Mishka Horutz's non-Jewish daughter appeared in school in a blouse, the teacher recognized it as having been worn previously by Necha'le, Chaim Nosson's daughter. The teacher asked the student where she got the blouse. The student answered, “My father bought it for me.”

Zuber's wife told me details, as she cried about the Lanovits tragedy. She described how hard the Jews had to labor, unloading coal and clearing snow, and how Richter, the local German murderer, beat the Jews for every small infraction, tortured them to death, those who were already depleted and destined to be executed. She insisted that I go with her to the nearby well to witness with my own eyes where Ukrainians threw live Polish children into the well only a few days earlier.

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A terrible smell rose from the depth of the well. The air was filled with the smell of decay and death. Among the bodies were Wodos's six children. All six drowned together. It was said that the Ukrainians, at the urging of the Germans, attacked the Poles and did their duties: burned the veterans alive, shot, killed, raped their wives. They even ruined and uprooted their cemeteries.

Zuber's wife pointed out the most important fact. As soon as the Germans left the area, the Ukrainian authorities let it be known that Jews were now free to come out from their hiding places. These Jews, tragically beaten and distraught, allowed themselves to be convinced and left their hideouts. These survivors were soon murdered by the Ukrainians so that there would be no witness to Ukrainian collaboration with the Germans. Mordechai Liverant's sister, David Lipe's daughter, and others whose names I do not know, were all killed by them.

The hunched cobbler Levitsky, a passionate Communist under Soviet rule, became a serious German collaborator, who, with his own hands, murdered many Jews.

When the ghetto was liquidated, Chana'le, Chaim Nosson's, was able to hide herself. She remained alive, and went to Levitsky, their neighbor and her father's good friend, and begged him to help her find a hiding place. He threw her out of his house and informed the thugs of her whereabouts. They killed her on the blote [muddy lake area] near Godamsky's house.

Levitsky now lives in Lanovits, and goes about freely.

I next visited Fenin, the Soviet district chief who served here in 1939. I asked him to arrest these bandits. I gave him names and addresses. He replied, “At the moment we are still weak. They are still killing our people. We will deal with them in due time.”

He next took me to the old school now in a prison and showed me that the place was filled with many bandits. It seems that they had already started to take care of the situation.

On the third day, I went to our house which we had previously been sold to Khilos. The house was intact. Mindel's house next door was torn down. That house was in Ukrainian possession and so was left standing. At Khilo's restaurant, I met the hunched Ukrainian tailor. He came over to me and screamed:

“Too bad you left town, otherwise we would have shot you, like a dog.”

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I grabbed my revolver ready to shoot him, but those present stopped me. But he was arrested very soon. On my return to Poland, I wrote to the Lanovits Russian authorities the facts of this case. I was called as a witness to his trial. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

I was about to leave Lanovits, when, by chance, I met Uliana, the domestic that had previously worked for Golda Bernstein. She cried bitter tears as she told me the following details, that in June 1941, when the Soviets left Lanovits but the Germans had not yet arrived, the Ukrainians established their own local authority and forced thirty-four Jews out of their homes, took them outside of the town, and murdered them. She remembered some of the names: Zalman Parnes, Uziel Rabin, Yisroel Katz, Yitzhok Buchstein, Pesach Buchstein, Yosel Margaliot and Burhe, Nachum Veiner, Uziel Reichman, Yitzchak Melamed, Nachum Kerper, Bentzia Katz (Luzek Betzak's), his nephews Yosel and Yoelik, Benyik Gurvitz, and Berchik Davidson.

They broke the hands and legs of Berchik Davidson and left him lying in the field. Uliana found him, took him into her house and tried to care for him. But the following day the attackers returned to her house, dragged him out, and shot him at her door.

She, with her own hands, dragged him to the Jewish cemetery, and with the help of a few Jews, gave him a Jewish burial.

I left Lanovits broken spirited. I had to sneak out of town like a thief. My life was in danger.

Later, I visited my tragic hometown twice more because I was drawn to it. But I believe I reported all that happened to me and all those whom I met there.

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