Darkness and Desolation (cont'd)

The Jews of Braslaw and Environs

In his memoirs, Chayim Band of Braslaw describes the first days of the war:

On the morning of June 21, we heard about the German invasion. The same day a mass meeting was held on the shore of the lake. The Soviet party and government officials gave us their solemn assurance that the enemy would be driven off and the people had therefore nothing to fear. The next morning, Soviet military units – tanks and artillery – were indeed seen passing through Braslaw in the direction of the front, but in the evening the picture had changed and the retreat towards Russia began. Military and government officials and their families made haste to leave the shtetls. This had a terrible effect on the Jewish population. Plunged into despair and uncertainty, they waited to see what would happen next. Many of the youth left their homes, some on foot or by whatever means they could muster, and headed for the former Polish-Russian border.

Some Jews consoled themselves and others with the thought that they knew the Germans from World War I days, that they were a civilized and cultured people and one could learn to live with them, as the German axiom goes: “Leben and leben lassen” (Live and let live). Reality however, was to prove otherwise. . . . Meanwhile, the German army continued its advance eastwards, destroying in its wake the demoralized and disintegrated Soviet army. Several days after the outbreak of the war, the Germans entered Braslaw and conquered a large portion of the surrounding district.

The non-Jewish inhabitants welcomed them with bread and salt, thereby manifesting their joy at having been liberated from the Russian yoke. The Poles elected a special council to facilitate collaboration with the Germans. Among its members noted for their anti-Semitic activity were the Chief of Police, Jasinski, the mayor, Kowalski, the Prison Superintendent, Szliachczik, a Volksdeutsch (local German) and notorious sadist, as also the teacher Pawlik and his wife, both local Germans and others.

1. All Jews were to be registered and forced to wear the yellow badge.
   
2. Directions about the movement of Jews.
   
3. Ghettoes were to be established
   
4. Transfer to all Jews from villages and shtetlach to ghettoes.
   
5. Establishment of Judenraten and a Jewish police force.
   
6. Confiscation of all Jewish property.
   
7. Prohibiting Jews from practicing their occupations.
   
8. Introduction of forced labor.
   

On my hands I carried my nephew to the cemetery and brought him to burial. When I undressed him I counted eighteen bullet holes on his body … I cleansed him, kissed him twice and took leave of him forever.

These round-ups seemed to be a favorite German pastime, designed not only to frighten the Jews but also to humiliate them. Niuta Kantor describes a day which is indelibly printed on her mind. The Jews of the shtetl had again been driven to the shore of the lake, and the Poles, especially teachers, government officials and the youth – the “cream of the youth” – gathered dressed in their Sunday best and looked on with glee at how the Germans humiliated the Jews. They were hoping, it seems, to witness their liquidation. “One can just imagine,” writes Niuta, “what we looked like in their eyes, if our death – the death of men, women and children – was to them nothing but a bit of fun.”

Slawa Pincow in her testimony tells that the Polish intelligentsia of Jod petitioned the local German authorities for the right to liquidate “their” Jews. And so began the cruel decrees and persecutions. To facilitate their rule the Germans ordered that a Judenrat be elected. It consisted of ten men: Itzchak Mindel acted as chairman, Chayim Munic as secretary, and its members were Gerszon Klioner, Mazeh, Rafael Fiszer, Fridman, Szeinkman, Leib Valin and others. The chairman of the Opsa Judenrat was David Lewin and in Jod there were two members, Peretz Skolnik and Elijahu Razin.

The first decrees introduced were as follows:

-- All Jews had to wear the yellow badge on both front and back.
-- They were forbidden to use the sidewalk but had to walk in the middle of the street.
-- All relations with the non-Jewish population were to be severed.
-- Jews were forbidden to visit a cinema, theatre or similar places of entertainment.
-- In front of every Jewish house a signboard bearing the word “Jude” had to be hung.

The Nazis did not lack Polish collaborators and partners-in-crime from every walk of life: from Jasinksi, Chief of the Braslaw Police, to the local non-Jewish population. When Jasinski was finally brought to trial at the instigation of Niuta Kantor who accused him of murdering innocent people, the true face of these Polish collaborators came to light.Anatoljusz Zawacki, a witness at Jasinski's trial testified:

The people were brought to the station – about eleven of them. They were locked in a coach. At nightfall they were let out, driven a short distance away, and shot. The children of my family saw all of this. The next day, I came across a German cleaning his rifle and he said to me, “I am cleaning the weapon not for a parade. I shot some Jews yesterday.”

The Jews of Braslaw groaned under the inhuman decrees – the heavy levies imposes on them by the Nazis. Desperate, they assembled in the synagogue where Chaim Szolem Bor made an impassioned appeal, concluding with the traditional Hebrew words Tsdaka Tatsil Mimavet (Charity saves from death). The men and women thereupon took off their ornaments, jewelry, watchers and other valuables and handed them over to the Germans. In Dubene, all agricultural produce and household animals – cows, goats, chickens, etc. – were confiscated. Seventy-year-old Zechariah Maron, most distressed by all this, dared to resist. A tall strapping German caught him by his sparse grey beard and began to shake him from side to side. The proud old Jew, being short of stature, took a leap and spat full square into the German's face.

On July 19, 1942 – in order to intimidate the Jews – the Germans, aided by local collaborators, surrounded the Jewish village of Dubene and murdered four Jews. They then assembled the rest in the synagogues – men separately and women and children separately – ordered the men to crawl on all fours, then drove a number of them to the cemetery, where they tortured and shot them. When the Jews were later brought to burial they were unrecognizable, so brutally had they been beaten. In all, twenty Jews were killed that day. Motke Rosenberg of Opsa tells how as a child of ten, he saw the Nazis force Jews to crawl and eat grass on the marketplace, all the while beating and kicking them. Mosze-Aaron, the butcher, was tied to a horse and dragged through the shtetl. Herzl Sznaider the shoemaker was tortured to death on the pretext of hiding skins.

The Jews of Jod were the first of the Braslaw district to be murdered. It was the winter of December 1941 – the month of the festival of Chanukah, the festival of lights and miracles. The Jews lit the third candle and as they uttered the blessing, the hope that a miracle would descend on the entire House of Israel – as in days of old – and on them too, flickered in each breast. But no miracle came. . . . A few days earlier they had been ordered to get ready for transfer to the Szarkaiszcina ghetto. They packed prepared food and other necessities but on December 19 they were taken to the ready-dug pits, ordered to undress and shot. The same day and at the same time as the Jews of Jod, the Jews of Kislowszczyzna and its neighboring small yishuvim were killed – all in all over 500 Jews. Some managed to escape prior to the massacre and hid with peasants in nearby villages.

The Jews were “on the move” – a mass exodus but not to life or freedom. The Jews of Jajsi were brought to the Braslaw ghetto, the Jews of Slobodka to the ghettoes of Vidz and Braslaw. The Opsa Jews were transported to the Vidz ghetto. Some managed to bribe the local police to allow them into the Braslaw ghetto where conditions were said to be more tolerable, and because they wanted to be with their relatives. The Jews of Budene were driven from pillar to post – from Braslaw to Vidz, from there to Swiencian and to the labor camps of Miligan, Wewie, Zezmer, Vilna, Oleina and Kaiserwald – until Auschwitz and Ponar.

All “actions” (round-ups of Jews in the ghettoes in order to send them to labor or death-camps.) expulsions, murders and denigrations were carried out with typical German punctiliousness and swiftness, after secret planning. Peasants with wagons or sledges, depending on the time of the year, would be mobilized from nearby villages to load the Jews and transport them to far-away places. The police and gendarmes were not mere onlookers but active and zealous participants in the expulsions carried out by the Gestapo. They would urge the Jews with blows and vituperations, forcibly drive them from their homes at a moment's notice so that they would have no time to take along food and clothing for the road. The Lithuanians in particular “excelled” with their bestiality. But the local population too was not found wanting. The non-Jews stood around, watching, waiting to pounce on the Jewish possessions left behind by their owners. Mire Lotz-Szneider in her memories of that time, writes:

Sarah-Disel, wife of Szlomo Lewin, was a dressmaker in Dubene who employed a young apprentice, the daughter of the peasant Dragun from the village Raugiszki. The night before the expulsion of the Jews, Dragun came to the Lewin family and offered to hide Sarah-Disel and her two little girls – Chayele and Szeina Rivka – so that only Szlomo would meanwhile enter the ghetto. Naturally this offer was accepted with great joy. Dragun's sleigh was loaded to capacity. With heavy hearts the mother and children bade farewell to the husband and father and rode away in the hope of finding a temporary haven until the evil days would soon pass. On the way, as soon as they entered the forest, the peasant killed the mother and her two little girls, and rode off with their belongings.

Our house was situated in the “useless ghetto” which meant that we were the first candidates for death, and yet we wanted to stay there and live in our own home. My father went to seek advice from Rafael Fiszer (Folke Lanes), a member of the Judenrat, only to be told, “We are all sentenced to death!”

The ghetto was crowded to overflowing, several families living in each house. Medical services were not available and medicine was at a premium. People died of typhus, pneumonia, filth and hunger. This was indeed the beginning of the end – the physical annihilation. The non-Jews knew only too well how to exploit the situation. They acquired everything, whatever the Jews still kept – clothing, furniture, etc. – for a song, all the while saying, “In any case you'll be killed, so what do you need these things for?”

On Wednesday, the 18^th day of Sivan, the year 5702, equal to June 3, 1942, the ghetto awoke to the sounds of heavy shooting and frightful screams, drunken oaths, the wailing of the hunted, beaten and wounded, the smashing of doors and windows, brute orders to get out of the house – quick – curses and blows. The killers rummaged and sniffed into every nook and corner to try and ferret out a Jew hiding somewhere. Liuba Byk testifies:

It was the eve of the massacre. Police were brought into the shtetl from all around and the entire ghetto was surrounded by guards. Our house was the first in the ghetto. At about two in the morning, we heard the sound of heavy footsteps, a door wrench open. Two policemen rushed in, started to beat us, and flung us down the stairs. They did not let me take my three-year-old daughter with me, but brutally murdered her in her sleep. I was driven out of the house at the end of a rifle butt. I saw them kill my sister Rosa and her two little girls right next to the barbed wire of the cordoned off ghetto, near our house.

They drove us to the Folkshul. On the way, they shot Mendel the locksmith. I spotted my uncle Rachmiel and followed him. Suddenly he drew me and a few other members of our family into a cellar beneath Rosin's flour store. It was pitch dark inside. I could only feel the huddled bodies crouched against the stone walls. Now and then we heard footsteps above us, followed by shots. Each time a child began to cry, it was silenced forever. . . . We had no food or water. We had to relieve ourselves on the spot. The stench alone was enough to suffocate anyone. We lay in this living grave for three or four days. Again we heard footsteps. We'd been discovered. We heard shouts: “Verfluchte, stinkende Juden, Heraus!” Once in the fresh air, I lost consciousness. Someone gave me a drink of water.

The Jews of the shtetl were taken to the ready-dug pits, forced to undress, and were shot. The massacre continued for three days. Then the Germans began mopping up operations. They searched, hunted, and dragged the Jews out of their hiding places. To help them in their fiendish task they enlisted a non-Jew who was fluent in Yiddish, and also forced some of the victims who had been caught hiding to walk through the ghetto, escorted by police, and exhort the Jews to come out of the bunkers, solemnly promising them – in the name of the Germans, that there would be no more shootings. Some, naïve enough to believe them, came out and when all had been assembled in the Folkshul building, they were led to the pits and shot. Peasants from the neighboring district later told that the earth above the pits heaved for three days on end, and the blood kept oozing out, so that the Germans had to dispatch peasants with horse-wagons to cart more soil to cover the pits.

Some, no longer able to stand idly by and watch the agony and suffering, bravely resisted the murderers, knowing full well the fate in store for them. Thus, Mosze-Boruch Bank, while wrestling with a gendarme, bit his finger clean off. For this he was meted out the age-old punishment: he was tied to the tail of a horse and driven through the streets until he gave up his soul. Neftl Zalman-Jankel's (Fiszer) and Avremke Fiszer too grappled with the fiends, but what could people armed only with fists do against murderers with rifles and revolvers. Abraszke Ulman took on three policemen single-handedly, killed two, but was fatally shot by the third. In a letter from the front, Peretz Lewin describes his encounter with some young Jewish fugitives from Braslaw at the Minsk railway station:

I spoke with a young fellow of nineteen, but his voice was like that of an old man . . . “Very few remained alive after the first massacre,” he said, “except for those who managed to hide, who escaped to the forest earlier on and joined the partisans, or who were kept hidden by peasants in cow sheds and all manner of hideouts, these peasants virtually risking their own lives and the loves of their families by harboring Jews.”

In his book, Destruction of Jewish Vilna: Khurbn Vilne (p.160), Sh. Kaczerginski recounts the testimony of Sasze Tempelman, former teacher of the Braslaw Folkshul:

Two months after the first massacre of the Braslaw ghetto (on the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th of June 1942), the Germans brought fifty Jews from Opsa (20 kms from Braslaw) and created what was known as the “second ghetto.” This ghetto lasted seven months. In March, 1943 the Germans slaughtered the remaining Jews. Some put up a stand. The resistance took place in a house occupied by ten Jews. They barricaded themselves and held off the German police with rifle fire. When their ammunition gave out, the enemy charged the house, but as the first German entered, he was shot dead. One of the Jews donned his uniform, took his rifle, went outside and opened fire on the Germans. The house was then blown up with hand grenades.

Moshe Kahanovich too, in his book, La Lucha de Los Guerrilleros Judios en La Europa Oriental (The War of the Jewish Partisans in Eastern Europe), published in Buenos Aires in 1956, vol. 1 p.497, describes the last stand of the Jews of the second ghetto in Braslaw. A third version is by those who survived the massacre. Thus, it is told that Melech Munic of Opsa, a tailor employed in a workshop along with several other artisans, mobilized some Jews and got ready to put up a stand. They prepared home-made ammunition, consisting of iron implements and buckets of unslaked lime. When the first German entered the house, they threw the lime over him. Melech Munic then shot him, dressed up in his uniform, and went outside and began shooting at the Germans. In the end, he was fatally shot. The Jews inside the house kept up the shooting until the last bullet, and were then pelted with hand grenades. Lieser Bielak, it is told, fought back during the liquidation of the second ghetto; he shot a German and two policemen, escaped and managed to hide for a while, until in the end, he was handed over to the Germans by a peasant for a few kilos of salt. After the war and the liberation of the Braslaw district, Mosze Milutin, a young partisan, and Abraham Bielak, avenged his death and shot the vile traitor.

Motke (Max) Fiszer, Baruch's son from Braslaw, who relates his experiences under the German occupation, concludes his testimony with the question: Why did the Jews not resist? – I have no answer to this question, neither for myself nor for anyone else, but I believe that it could perhaps be explained as follows: in the first place, the Germans wore us down through suffering and torture, stripped us of all we had, threatening us daily with death. And then there is the human will to live, with its eternal hope for a miracle, that things must take a turn for the better. Human ties too – concern for children, parents, the sick, the weak – more than once quelled the will to fight, as did the belief that this was a punishment from heaven. And how dare man pit himself against God's will?

Max Fiszer's words are but partly true, for despite his aforementioned reasons, there were incidents of resistance and heroism, and not all had lost the will to fight. True, mass uprisings were few, but everywhere -- whether in the camps or the ghettoes -- there were incidents of spontaneous and sporadic resistance, not to speak of the vast partisan movement which spread and grew and played so crucial a role in the victory over the Nazi beast. It should, however, be mentioned that the most weighty reason of all for the Jews' passivity was the devilish cunning of the enemy designed to weaken their resistance. The oppressors kept telling them, via the Judenrat, that nothing would happen to them, that they were a much-needed work force, and so on. And here it is difficult to entirely absolve the leaders of the Jewish community, the Judenraten, who indiscriminately swallowed the Nazi lies.

This clearly emerges from the testimony of Yerachmiel Milutin. He tells how a resistance group comprising ninety-five able-bodied young men, most of them former Polish soldiers, was organized in Braslaw. Its initiators were Gerszon Klioner, a member of the Judenrat, and Alexi Wasilewski, son of the Greek-Orthodox priest, employed in the Braslaw town council and trusted by the Germans. Yerachmiel was the go-between and Wasilewski even showed him the cachet of arms and ammunition which lay waiting to be handed over to the fighters. However, immediately after the chairman of the Judenerat got wind of this, he fought it tooth and nail, and in order to avoid civil strife, the plan was abandoned. Wasilewski also exerted himself on behalf of Russian war prisoners. He supplied them with forged documents to enable them to obtain work as local residents. Finally, he was denounced by a traitor, arrested by the Germans and shot in Glubok.

We wish to end the chapter on life in the ghetto under the Nazi heel, with its privations and hunger, denigrations and death, with the words of Mira Lotz. Her fate as a child was the fate of so many children like herself, as also of adults, who shared with her the burden of those dark days. “I witnessed,” she writes, “the death of thousands of people, my family among them. I envied the dead, and yet I alone remained alive. . .”

A special chapter in the road of suffering may be found in the innumerable accounts and testimonies of many of our countrymen. For months on end they wandered, driven from pillar to post, here by day and there by night, seeking a haven for themselves and their children, where they would be safe from the claws of the Nazi beast. Moving in its simplicity is the story of Sarah Katz-Mowszenson. Hounded and driven, in rain, snow and frost, with an infant in her arms, often without food or water, she wandered – together with her cousin Benjamin who later became her husband – from place to place, at times with nowhere to lay down her ailing and aching body. Days, weeks, months, years, amidst suffering and tribulation, hunger and loneliness, filthy and louse-ridden, uncertain of the morrow, they finally lived to see that happy day – the defeat and demise of the Nazi beast – and the day of reckoning when they could avenge themselves on the local hooligans and murderers who helped the Gestapo kill Jews and wipe out entire families and communities.

It was not always easy to track down these collaborators, for after the war they assumed the mien of pure, innocent lambs. One example was the bloodthirsty butcher and murderer of Jews, Foikste. But thanks to Sarah and her husband, Benjamin, he was caught and received his just desserts. Such instances of whitewashing were legion, as may be seen from the trial of the war criminal and murderer Jasinkski, mentioned earlier, and on which we wish to elaborate somewhat. From the account of Niuta Kantor, we learn of the ways and means whereby these former murderers tried to whitewash themselves. We have in our possession official documents and reports of court proceedings of Jasinkski's trial, which took place in Olsztin and Kiszalin at Niuta's insistence.

These documents not only reveal Jasinki's brutal attitude toward the Jews of Braslaw and its environs, but also bring to light the various stratagems, threats, and bribery that some Poles resorted to in an attempt to defend this murderer. Another ugly feature of the trial was the patent bias of the Polish law courts which tried to shift the blame onto the innocent victims. The war seemed to have changed nothing – Polish anti-Semitism was as alive as ever. Apart from Jasinski's trial in which Niuta played so vital a part, we wish to dwell briefly on her experiences in Nazi-occupied Braslaw, followed by her life in hiding in a village with a peasant who, at the behest of the local Catholic priest, hid her and an entire Latvian Jewish family. After the war, when Niuta returned to Braslaw from the village where she lay hidden, the wife of the Polish watchmaker Krzyzanek, told her that she had watched through her window the liquidation of the ghetto. Jews in the hundreds had been assembled in the courtyard of the Folkshul and in a large hall adjoining the church. They had been kept there for three days without food or water. Then, fainting and half-dead, they had been driven to the pits -- Niuta's mother and sister among them. She had also seen Rabbi Zahorie and his family walking with the rest – the Rabbi, calm and serene, at the head. This dark picture had not been, however, without its flashes of light, of goodness. True, there had been non-Jews who helped in the killings, but also many non-Jews who had helped save the hapless Jews. And this is their story.

Many a Jew, faint with hunger, hounded by fear, wandering over fields, forests, dirt tracks and farms in search of a place where he could find a potato or a piece of bread for himself or his children, was taken in and cared for by a kindhearted Christian. There were many such people whose self-sacrifice we now wish to record – Poles, Russians and even Lithuanians – who risked their lives and the lives of their families in order to save the Jews. True enough, they did so for various reasons: from humanitarian, to a sense of victory of the Christian faith over the Jewish one, to a fear of the morrow which could have brought back the Russians who would wreak vengeance on the Nazi collaborators. Often it was simply a matter of gain, of money, of possessions. Whatever the case may be, we wish to stress time and again that many Christians, especially village folk, helped Jews in their darkest hour of need. This is borne out by the testimonies of Slawa Pincow, Niuta Kantor, Chayim Dejcz, Hanka Gurewicz, and many others.

We recall with deep gratitude all those who placed their own lives in jeopardy to save Jews from certain death. There was the Szczerbinkski family that hid Yetta Fisher and several members of the Grawetz family from Dwinsk for quite a time; the family Kizlo, especially the peasant Michal, who saved Niuta Kantor and the Barkan family from Latvia. With much warmth and affection we recall the Kandzilewski family which for many months hid Sarah Katz-Mowszenzon, her husband and their small child; Jozefa Siewickaja and the Catholic priest who, despite every danger, hid and cared for the Gurewicz family – the mother Rachel and her two daughters, Hanka and Riwetka. How can one ever forget the two sisters Amalia and Jadwiga Czesnowicka and their brother Alfons, who saved Mendel and Masza Maron and also Tewie and Motel Fiszer (Baruch's sons), Chana Fiszer and Motel, son of Zalman Yankel? With reverence we recall Stanislaw Szakiel who hid and cared for seventeen Jews, among them Lubowicz, his wife Chanah and their two children, Leibel and Shaul. With gratitude we mention Wasil Iwanow and his daughter Irina who kept Chiena Band hidden in their home, without the knowledge of the rest of the family, particularly their own son, a policeman.

With deep regard Slawa Pincow mentions Jaszka Arciszewski, better known as “the father of the Jews.” Slawa, her husband, brother, father and stepmother hid for some time in the home of the pious, kindhearted Wasil Brezko, until . . .

Due to the growing activity of the partisans, the Germans began to burn down villages in reprisal. Wasil warned us of the impending danger before he and his family abandoned their home. Father then turned to us and said: 'Children, you are young and must escape. I cannot keep up; my strength has given out. Perhaps a miracle will happen?!' He then placed his hands on our heads and with tears in his eyes gave us his blessing, just as he used to do on the eve of Yom Kippur. . . . The night was bright from the flames and the dazzling snow. We ran for our live . . .When we reached the edge of the forest, we cast a glance backwards towards the spot where our parents had remained, and saw that all was aflame.

No miracle had happened. . . .

On that night, in those flames, the souls of our father Reb Chayim Szalom and our stepmother Gitel ascended to heaven.

How can one remain unmoved when reading about the Kowno woman who, while in hiding together with the Gurewicz family, was forced to strangle her three-year-old child lest his ceaseless crying give them away; or the Jod couple, Chayim-Leiser and Chawa Cipin, no longer able to bear the loss of their three little girls murdered by the Nazis, one day took each other by the hand, came out of hiding, and gave themselves up to the Germans. Horrifying in the extreme are the accounts of those who passed through the labor and death camps. Still only children or adolescents, they walked every path of pain, suffering, hunger, loneliness, and desperation. Particularly shattering is the tale of Rivka Rukszin-Maron. In simple words she describes her experiences during that grim period:

From the day the Germans entered Dubene until their defeat, I walked an endless road of tribulation and suffering, more than once seeing death before my eyes. I lived in the ghettoes of Vidz and Swiencian, passed through twelve concentration and extermination camps. On that long and tortured road I lost my parents, brothers and all my relatives, and only my sister Reisel and I remained alive. And in the camps – humiliations, hunger, sickness, forced labor, blows, until finally – murder or the gas ovens.

In Camp Miligan we struck a bit of 'luck' as it were. We met up with our family. From there we were sent to Camp Wewie, where we worked laying railway line and then off to Zezmer, another camp. Over many long months we managed to collect a little flour. Father baked matzah for the Passover, but three weeks before this festival a selection was carried out and my mother, my father, and my brother, were sent to Ponar. That was a terrible day. I can still see the children wrenched from their mothers and their heartrending cries keep ringing in my ears. We were put into goods trains and taken to Auschwitz. A trainload of people arrived there before us and they were let out of the coaches. We heard their cries and weeping. Auschwitz would not accept us. I am certain that the Germans were not frightened off by our cries and laments. It was quite simple: the camp was full, the gas ovens overloaded, and there was no room for us . . .

We moved on to Stutthof. Heavy, thick smoke belched from the chimneys of the gas chambers, which worked day and night. Three or four times a day there would be roll call, and each time we had to stand for hours on end in one spot in all kinds of weather. One day when the Germans took down the names of people selected for work, mine was among them. I even managed to smuggle my thirteen-year-old sister Reisel through the gate. We were taken to a camp near Danzig where we stayed for ten months, digging trenches.

I was one of a group sent from the Vidz ghetto to work in Camp Miligan. Among us were a few Jewish girls from Dubene. We left the ghetto on foot but were later put into cattle trucks and brought to a camp fenced off with barbed wire. It consisted of barracks with three-tier bunks. Ita Kulak, the woman in charge, noticed that there were many young girls among us. She warned us to say when being registered that we were over fifteen years old or we would be sent to an extermination camp. In Camp Oleina, my two little brothers and four-year-old sister were forcibly taken from us. I cannot describe our sorrow and pain, the cries and screams of the children at parting. . . . And so only my mother, eleven-year-old brother, Berele, and I remained.

Every day, goods trains would take us to work. Our guards were German soldiers assisted by a multi-national police force, among whom was a young Pole, Janek – a kindhearted fellow. One day our train stopped midway and remained standing for a long time Janek told us the reason for the hold-up: a train with many coaches packed with Jewish children. We looked in the direction that he pointed and saw hundreds of children's hands stretched out through the window bars. We knew the fate of these children ended at the death camps; alas, we could do nothing.

In 1944 we were transported to Kaiserwald near Riga. Here our heads were shaved, our old rags replaced with striped uniforms and wooden clogs. We were each given a triangular piece of cloth to cover our heads, a louse-ridden blanket and of course, a number. Mine was 6757. Every day there were roll calls. From time to time the Germans would come and sort us – right or left – to life or death. From across the barbed wire we would often see little Berele. He told us that the grown-ups took pity on him and often gave him a little food. Once he even tried to throw us a piece of bread, but it stuck in the barbed wire. He was upset and Mother cried.

Shortly afterwards a truck arrived at the camp and took away the remaining children and so we no longer saw Berele. Only Mother and I remained. . . When the front began to draw nearer we were transferred to Stutthof, an extermination camp fenced in by several rows of barbed wire. Every half-hour there was roll call. One day, while standing in the queue for our food rations, we heard piercing screams coming from the front of the queue. It turned out that the kapo had plunged a young girl into the pot of boiling soup. Later we were dished out soup from the same pot. On a certain day, when sent out to work at a different place, I saw a huge pile of shoes – children's and adults'. I rummaged and found a pair of good, almost brand new shoes, which I later exchanged for a loaf of bread.

We worked in a labor camp near Swiencian, laying railway line and paving highways. The food barely sufficed to keep body and soul together. On the eve of Chanukah, along with many others, I was transferred to the Vilna ghetto. The Germans put many people who had been brought from the provinces into the same camps. We were singled out for special hard labor. The conditions were intolerable.

In the spring of 1943 the labor camps were liquidated and all their inmates removed to Ponar. My father and brother were assigned the task of burning the bodies of the murdered, until they too were ultimately killed in Ponar. My mother was murdered in Zezmeri.

We were put to work paving a highway between Zezmeri and Wewie, two shtetlach (distance of twenty-five kms) away from each other. We dared not raise our heads for even a second for fear of the shouts and blows of the overseers. We worked long hours. In winter, in particular, life was hard. We had to dig under the snow to get to the frozen earth, stones and sand. Our daily rations: 200 grams of bread and a little soup made from rotten cabbage. We were not guarded, but we were counted mornings and evenings, with the warning that if anyone were found missing, all would answer for it.

Towards the end of 1943, we were transferred to Oleine in Latvia, an SS camp fenced round by the inevitable barbed wire, and surrounded by watchtowers. Germans with bloodthirsty dogs trained to only attack Jews were constantly on the prowl. And then there were the Jewish kapos, among whom Danziger distinguished' himself with his brutality. Any Jew who happened to cross his path he beat up mercilessly. One day my mother Rachel-Leah was his luckless victim. He kept beating her until she fell down in a faint. She died the next day. We returned from work one day, dropping from exhaustion, and were immediately driven out of the barracks for roll call. Our children were taken from us and loaded into trucks which stood waiting at the gate. The cries and wails rose to heaven. The peasants in the neighborhood heard it. Did God hear it too?

The children, eleven of them from Dubene, were taken to Auschwitz. My father David could not bear to part with his little girl Sarah-Zelda and went along with her. . . . A few months later we were transferred to Kaiserwald, another barbed-wire camp near Riga. At the large barracks, our new home, we were ordered to wash, our heads were shorn, and we were given camp clothes in exchange for our former rags. These rags meant nothing to me in themselves, but I was terribly upset and wept bitter tears because of the few family photographs which I had carried with me in all my wanderings and guarded with my very life. They were all I had left of my home, my childhood and my dear unforgettable ones. . . . It was the end of 1944. The Soviet army advanced and frequent bombings were heard. The night sky was lit up with the fires raging in nearby Riga and all around. The Germans decided to liquidate the camp and we were evacuated to the shore of the Baltic Sea and from there to the death camp Stutthof. In one corner of the camp, where entry was strictly forbidden, thick black smoke coiled without a stop. That was the end of the road – the crematorium. Roll calls and selections were frequent. Those ordered to the left were sent to the gas chambers. Wagons went round the camp to collect the bodies of those who had died of hunger or disease. We envied the dead, for their suffering had ended. . . . A month after our arrival the Germans came to recruit the able-bodied for work. Of the several thousand inmates a mere few hundred were chosen, I among them. We were put into goods trains and driven to an unknown destination. We knew that once again we had been snatched from death; for why else had we been removed from Stutthof?

We were brought to Sofinwald and set to work helping Dutch and British war prisoners with their building operations. We lived in plywood huts. In winter the thin walls would be covered with thick layers of ice. We slept on the earthen floor. . . . The builders built houses of brick. We carried bricks and cement from the railway coaches to the building site on our shoulders. We also had to dig for loam to make bricks ourselves. The food rations were meager but there were an endless supply of blows. In this task, two SS women named Erika and Walita excelled, as did a Jewish kapo from Hungary.

We had uncanny 'luck.' Our entire family was sent to the Vilna ghetto. I was very young and worked near the railway station. Again the rounding up of people began. People were shoved into coaches, my sisters among them. Pandemonium broke out and many escaped. I did too. But we were caught just outside the ghetto gates. My parents were given the option of redeeming me for a bribe but as they did not have the money, I was put back in the coach with my sisters. We were certain that we were being taken to Ponar but were brought to Estonia instead, to the labor camp Wajwary.

Everything was strange and unfamiliar – the language, the landscape, the surroundings, all except for the same barbed wire fence, the same guards, and in the barracks, the all too familiar emaciated faces – skeletons – hunched, dejected, half-dead with faded glances. . . .

The work – to cut down railway tracks; the working day – long and hard, punctuated with merciless beatings at the slightest pretext; the food – a piece of bread and a bit of soup. . . . The punishment for attempted escape was twenty-five lashes. Not too bad, I thought. One can't die from it, so I decided to run away. Again I was caught, and two months later transferred to Narwe, another camp. There to my great joy I met up with my father. Conditions here were even worse – we had to dig trenches. Winter came and we, cold, half-naked, starved, overseers beating mercilessly. . . . My father became ill and was put into a hospital from which he never returned. I came to visit him one day only to be told that he had died. I leaned against the gate and wept and wept. . . . Once again I ran away. . . . A few days later I was caught.

Paniker, the camp commandant, at his wits' end, shouted that he was sick and tired of my attempts at escape and that he was going to hang me. . . . I lay in the attic and watched Herr Paniker and his Jewish assistant Diler prepare the gallows for me. I saw them test the rope, the beam, and the stool on which I was to stand before the hanging. . . . I was led out. I was shaking with fear and Paniker had to support me. I was placed on the stool, the rope round my neck, was given a push and fell to the ground! Once again they tried, and once again I fell to the ground, this time in a faint. . . . When I came to I saw Diler standing over me and heard him say: “You're alive, alive!” At roll call that evening I received twenty-five lashes and once again fainted.

Mira Lotz, one of the 'lucky' survivors, writes:

In February 1945, when the front began to draw near, we were ordered out of the camp and driven on foot, in deep snow and frost, in the direction of Berlin. Many died on the way. Those who lagged behind were shot. We were kept in a camp near Launberg for a whole month. We slept on the frozen earth, consumed with lice and hunger. Hundreds died every day. . . . When the Red army began to approach we were driven onwards until we came to a village, Chinhof. There we were locked in large barracks together with Russian prisoners-of-war. But a miracle happened! The Russian war prisoners recognized the approaching Russian tanks by the sound of their motors. They flung themselves at the gates, pushed with all their might, and forced them open. We were free! I cannot find words to describe that moment. After so many nightmarish months, years, when the borders between life and death had become blurred in my mind, and suddenly: free, free, freedom!! At that moment I became aware of the abysmal, horrible disaster.

Before my eyes flashed my loved ones – relatives and friends – who had been taken from me one by one and I realized that only I remained alive. Lonely and alone, amid hundreds such as I, hardly able to stand on my feet, barely human in my concentration camp clothes with the yellow badge – the shield of David – on my sleeve, with a number – 40630 – a shaven head, wooden clogs on my feet, and wrapped in a dirty blanket. . . . The Russian shoulders gaped at us in horror. . . . This was March 10, 1945 – two months before the war ended. And finally, I returned to Dubene, the place where I was born. The village had been burnt down, destroyed, annihilated. I went to the cemetery but found only smashed tombstones, fragments scattered among the tall wild grass. . . . This is the story of my life. Can I ever forget it?

I will always carry in my heart the memory of my dear ones, the innocent, who were murdered and burnt only because they were Jews.

January 1945. For three weeks on end we were driven westwards. Those who could not keep up were murdered on the way. I, though scarcely able to drag myself along, had to support my thirteen-year-old sister, Reisel. Not far from the German village Kulka we were locked in large barracks where we stayed for two months. Of the 3000 people who set out on the march only 500 survived. At night the Germans used to open the gates, probably to let in the biting cold, which would pierce through us. In the morning we would get up covered with snow. Every day the dead frozen bodies were removed from the barracks. Our daily rations consisted of 100 grams of bread and two potatoes. One day, at midday, the cook, an Opsa woman, came to tell us that we had been liberated by the American army. We greeted the news with apathy as we had no strength even to express our joy.

The Germans gathered about 2000 of us for roll call, kept us standing for two days, and then began to drive us. We went along byways, fields and forests. We spent the nights in barns, granaries or any other outbuildings. On the way, we scavenged anything that could serve as food. Those who fell behind, the weak, the ill, were shot on the spot and their bodies thrown by the wayside. Our numbers dwindled daily. . . . Hungry, louse-ridden, barefoot, covered in rags and half-naked, half-dead, beaten, we prayed for death. I recalled my childhood, the days of my youth, the place of my birth, and in my heart the thought kept gnawing: This is the end. . . .The march lasted one month and a half. Of the 2000 men who set out only 160 remained. On the outskirts of Salzburg we met up with soldiers of uncertain origin – some spoke Yiddish, some Polish. Then we learned that they were Americans, and we were free! We wanted to fall at their feet and thank them, but they would not let us – they were appalled at the sight of us.

We were driven to the ready-dug pits in batches. It was no use crying, shouting or pleading with God. Many infants were thrown into the pits alive. Some, not yet dead, grappled with death. The murderers did their work and left. Evening came, darkness fell. I tried to lift a hand, stretch out a leg, and felt that I was not hurt, but was lying in the blood of my dear friends and on a pile of dead children. With my last strength I crawled out of the pit and made for the nearby woods. For three days I wandered, naked, bloodstained, and famished, until I spotted a barn. I crept in, burrowed into the hay and waited. At dawn the peasant came to fetch some fodder. He was startled to see me but knew at once what I was doing there. He went out and after a while came back with an army coat and a pot of boiled potatoes. I felt alive again. The peasant, Juzef Orlowski of the village Zwirble near Belmont, hid and kept me for two years until a neighbor told him that the villagers knew that he was harboring a Jew. He advised him to send me away or hand me over to the police. Juzef told me of this and said, “I want you to live. I will dig you a hole in the pigsty.”

I lay in that hole for eight months. One morning the Germans came. They drove everyone out of the house, lined them up ready to be shot, and demanded that they hand over the Jew. Jezef's wife thereupon fell to their feet crying, and said, “Do you think that a swinish Jew is dearer to me than my husband and my eight children?” The Germans left and I knew that I too had to leave. I set out to look for partisans.

Abraham Bielak, a mere eighteen-year-old when the war broke out, soon began to feel the weight of the Nazi iron yoke: life in the ghetto, in underground hideouts (bunkers or shelters as they were called), the hunger and want, watching his sister smother her child to death with a pillow so that its crying would not give away all the inmates of the bunker. One cannot gloss over or fail to be moved by the tale of Feige-Tsippe Toker-Bielak who, as a child of eight, had known the loneliness and want, the hunger and misery of those trying days. Her testimony speaks of the anguish of a child who had to console her father in his lonely hideout where he suffered acute mental torture in his longing for his children. She writes:

When I saw Kalkowski's house form afar I went up and knocked on the door. It was opened to me at once by the housekeeper, but when I asked to see my father, she told me that he was not staying with them. I began to cry. She then took me in, drew away a curtain and told me that I would find him on top of the oven. I saw him and knew that he was no longer in his right mind. He was tormented by the thought that he could not help us and had to send us, his two children, into the ghetto alone. He wanted to save us but had neither the strength nor the means. I clambered up to him. We embraced and wept silently. After a while I asked him, “Father, why did you call us?” “I want us to be together,” he said. I then told him that in the ghetto, conditions were better than here, and that if one has to die, it is much better to die in the ghetto, among Jews. We both cried.

In the night he woke me and told me that he wanted to go and see Yerachmiel and his children, and my little sister. I loved my father and could not oppose his wishes. He cried without a stop. The peasant went outside to see if the coast was clear. We thanked him and took our leave. We met up with Yerachmiel and two children, the third child had died. . . . On Purim of 1943, the last remaining Jews in the ghetto were liquidated. My sister, my father and I were with Yerachmiel in his hideout. My brother was in the ghetto in Bogomoloski's house, together with some others. They put up a stand when the Nazis came to take them to the pits. Among the brave Jews was my cousin Leiser Bielak, a Polish ex-solider. He shot a German, a local policeman and wounded another. The German then hurled hand grenades into the house and it caught on fire. Leiser, though wounded in the hand, managed to escape. My brother and all the Jews inside the house burnt to death

We recall with pride the brave young partisan Tewie Bielak, who with his self-sacrifice and iron will, wrestled mightily with the enemy forces. Szleimke Ichilczik (in the book Ghetto and Forest by Mosze Shutan) tells of him:

Tewie was a member of a partisan group in Vilna. He used to move about freely as an Aryan in the city and supply the partisans with arms. He was tortured to death by the Gestapo without betraying his comrades. The last time Tewke went outside the ghetto, two agents caught him. They caught him at the last moment near the secret entrance, with one foot was already inside the ghetto. He did not even manage to turn round, when they pounced on him, twisted his arms backwards, tied him, searched him, found his revolver and took him straight to the Gestapo. He was soon brought back to the ghetto, to the Jewish criminal police, to Gens. This is what the Germans often did – implicating the Jewish police in the investigation. Weiss, the Gestapo chief of the Vilna ghetto, stood over Tewke and belabored him with a rubber truncheon. He wanted to know who had sent him and where he found the firearm. Tewke lay bound on the table. He kept silent. He did not utter a word. He did not utter a groan.

Gens, who stood aside, intervened. He delicately took the truncheon from the Gestapo chief's hand and began to fleece Tewke alive. Purple and red stripes swelled up on Tewke's writhing body, blood oozed from his every pore – but Gens beat and beat – so long and so furiously that he broke out in a sweat. Even Weiss, the Gestapo chief, could no longer stand it. "Throw away the truncheon!" he shouted, banging the door and stomping out. Gens finally appeared from the interrogation chamber – spent, disheveled, flustered. His eyes full of hatred, he stared at the Jewish police, who jumped to attention. With a pained contemptuous look he met their quizzical frightened, cowardly glances. "Rigged out like a bunch of morons – Idiots!" he hissed through his teeth. At the door, he paused for a second, turned round and flung at them, "A son, a son like this, I should have!" And the police, insulted, stared at him in amazement, puzzled at his words, they shook their heads and concluded that perhaps Gens was not in his right mind at that very moment.

In his book Partisans on the March, Sz. Kaczerginksi depicts the struggle waged by the partisans in the Natsze forest, in which Gerszon Jankelewicz (known as Welwel-Gerszke) heroically fell. Originally from Braslaw, he married, lived and worked in Lida during the last few years before the war. In the summer of 1942 he escaped from the ghetto into the Natsze forest and joined the partisan regiment Katowski. He was soon appointed company commander. At the beginning of 1943, he derailed two German military trains near Marzinkanz. He took part in killing traitors and in many operations. On September 9^th, he and three partisans set out on an important mission. On the way they happened upon twenty-five German soldiers armed with automatic weapons and in the unequal fight, two partisans fell. One of them was Gerszon Jankelewicz.

Diverse and fruitful were the operations carried out by Faiwel Trok of Jod in the fight against the Germans. In June 1942, Faiwel escaped from the Vidz ghetto and joined the partisan unit Ponomarenko which was active in the Glubok district. He took part in an attack on the garrison stationed in the shtetl Komaj near Haiduciszki (Haidutseszok), in blowing up the railway bridge Woropajewo-Glubok and destroying the Polish-Nazi bands in the Szamic forests, and in countless other partisan ambushes. In March 1944 he was sent on a so-called 'economic mission.” He was attacked, surrounded by German soldiers, and fell in the skirmish. Another brave partisan was Abraham Wilkicki, a young man from Jod, who escaped from the Kazian ghetto and finally lost his life fighting the Germans. As a member of the unit “Spartak,” he participated in all its operations and battles. In one of the battles he was wounded in the hand and foot and remained lying in the field. With his last strength he crawled into the bushes to hide. There his comrades found him and took him to a place of safety, but as no medical help was to be had, he soon contracted blood-poisoning and died on January 13, 1943.

The tale of Pinchas Jaffe and his 15-year old son from Bildziugi is one of courage and heroism in the fight against the German hooligans and especially their local henchman. Pinchas and his son fled into the Zachowszcsyny forest near the Kazian prior to the liquidation of the Jod Jews. Both were armed. In the forest they met up with Jews who had escaped from the ghettos of the nearby yeshuvim and they formed a partisan unit. In the village Zalesia they shot the German collaborator Oberjan and burnt down his house and all his property. They also avenged themselves on the family of the peasant Abramei, who had handed over to the Germans several Jews from Jod who had survived the massacre. For a similar crime the partisans killed the Soltys (administrator) of the village Bujewszczyzna. In June 1942 this unit was incorporated into the partisan regiment Ponomarenko led by Meirson, which in turn combined with the Russian division of the same name active in the Danilowicz district. In July of 1942 the Jewish regiment attacked the village Korsunki, near Jod, as it was a nest of samachowcy (local youth who organized themselves into units in order to help the Germans fight partisans and Jews). The Jewish partisans, in a combined operation with the Russian regiment of the Spartak division, attacked Jod by night and burnt down the house, along with their inhabitants and German accomplices, including two German officers who happened to be there. One of the buildings set on fire was the headquarters of the district command. This act of revenge was the brainchild of Pinchas Jaffe and both he and his son Motel distinguished themselves during the attack, winning warm praise from the leaders of their unit. When Meirson, the partisan leader, decided to leave the Kazian forest and cross over to the base of the Ponomarenko division active in the Danilowicz district, Pinchas Jaffe and his son and several other Jews decided to remain and continue their punitive acts against German collaborators. The group sowed fear among the Germans of the district so much so that a price was fixed on the head of this brave partisan. On December 15, 1942 Pinchas and his son Motel came to the village Bujewszczyzna to carry out an act of revenge against a German accomplice. Not finding him at home they decided to spend the night in one of the hamlets. The peasants got wind of this and in the night forcibly entered the house where Pinchas and his son were sheltering and caught them. Motel was burnt alive and Pinchas handed over to the Germans. He tried to escape but was shot.

Benjamin Dubinski too can serve as a symbol of Jewish courage. With gun in hand he fought against the Nazi military units and their accomplices. Benjamin was born in Vidz in the Braslaw district, and later moved to Jod. He and some friends fled to the forests of Milik between Jod and Pohost. After the massacre of the Jod Jews in December 1941 they joined a group of escaped Russian war prisoners and together began to comb the district for arms. In May 1942 they returned – armed – to the neighboring forests and formed the partisan unit named Szirokow, after their commander. It was headed by Dubinski who had proven himself in an attack on a German garrison stationed in the village Achremowcy near Braslaw. The Germans retreated and the partisans took booty, arms, and ammunition. Dubinski also distinguished himself in a battle near the yishuvim Perebrodz-Zagorie against the Germans and their accomplices. In November of 1942, Benjamin set out to avenge himself on a peasant who had killed Jews from Bildziugi. He took with him several local Jews who had been hiding and wandering the forest. They did not find the peasant and decided to stay the night at an inn. The local peasants tipped off the Germans, who attacked the inn by night. After a brief fight all the partisans perished.

One of the first independent armed fighters was Szolem Munic. He began to organize fighting units immediately after the Germans entered his district. Szolem, a coachman from Jod, his wife and child, and a group of youths, had fled to the Kazian forest in 1941. At that time there were no partisans as yet, nor had the Jod ghetto been erected. The youths, led by Muic, began to scout for arms among the peasants who were known to have collected and hidden large quantities of arms and ammunition left behind by the retreating Soviet army. This youthful group avenged the Jews handed over to the Germans. They shot the traitors, among them the peasant Stanislaw Kowalonek who denounced the family Halper and Szeine Rubaszin, and the peasant Fiodor Racznikow, who had betrayed the Mindow family and Chawah Munic. The group operated as an independent partisan unit. When escaped Russian prisoners of war began to gather in the forest (summer of 1942), they joined the by now experienced Jewish fighters and together launched large-scale plans to obtain food and ammunition, and to form the regiment Jaczminow which in time grew into the brigade Szirakow mentioned earlier. Szolem Munic was appointed commander of a division and his task was to provide the unit with arms. While on these missions he wreaked vengeance on the peasants who had handed over Jews to the enemy. He was later accused of indiscriminately murdering peasants and as a result, relieved of his post and placed in charge of obtaining provisions for the regiment and the families of the fighters in the partisan camps. His wife and children were among them. On one of his journeys in the villages he came upon a group of Germans. Szolem and his comrade Sztein perished. This took place in the Wirow forest in February of 1942.

We cannot help but recall Szimon Zilberman, the young man from Jod who on December 17, 1941, immediately after the first massacre, fled to the Kazian forest. He spent the entire winter of 1942 there, together with others like him, in search of ammunition as well as tracking down the peasants who had betrayed Jews to the Nazis (his family had perished in this way). In the summer of 1942 he was admitted to the Spartak brigade which arrived from the eastern regions. Zilberman partook in battles against the enemy garrison from Vidz, Opsa and others, and in attacks against the villages of Usiecza and Wasewicz. Since the unit was in need of a cobbler (he had been a cobbler journeyman in his youth), he was forced to ply his trade and was sent to repair the partisans' shoes in the house of the forester (lesnik) Kowalionek. One fine morning in the January of 1943, the Germans attacked the forester's house. Our partisans succeeded in breaking through the German lines, but Ziberman and Abraham Yair were trapped and burned alive in the house together with the forester.

Thrilling is the story of the partisan Alexander Dagowicz who fought valiantly side by side with scores of Jewish fighters. The battle in which the cold-blooded murderer and ringleader Ditman was caught deserves special mention. He was taken prisoner by Dagowicz and later handed over to the partisan punitive division. A rich fighting history is that of Chayim Burt of Braslaw who began his career as fighter in partisan units in the Braslaw forests, and then joined the ranks of the Red Army and finally, on his arrival in Israel, fought in the Palmach for the independence of Israel. Brave and indefatigable was Benjamin Mowszenzon of Rymaszan who joined the Soviet police for the specific purpose of catching the local gangsters and murderers who killed his family and many Rymszan Jews. He carried out his duty with the utmost diligence and together with Soviet punitive units discovered and destroyed the nests of scores of German collaborators who had helped to massacre hundreds of Jews. Abraham Bielak of Braslaw writes about himself, his brother Tewis, his relatives and friends with whom he fought:

In the Kazian forests we were joined by Jewish fighters and also by Russian soldiers who had escaped from German captivity. Soon afterwards I was appointed leader of a group of partisans of the second division, and Yerachmiel Milutin, the deputy of an intelligence group. In practically every combat operation I went with Mosze Milutin. Vidz, we were told, was teeming with gendarmes and local police who harassed the peasants in the vicinity, accusing them of helping the partisans. They would confiscate their possessions and even burn down their homes. We decided to teach them a lesson. Hundreds of us partisans, led by our commander Strikow, set out against the German uniformed men. We also had to occupy the pharmacy and take medicines. In a surprise attack we killed many but there were casualties on our side as well.

Three times we came to the village in order to settle scores with the traitor and his sons. There were three of us – Yerachmiel Bielak, Mosze Milutin and I – as well as the partisan Pietka Kaszrowski. Twice we returned empty–handed, as not all were at home. The third time we found them all together. We were prepared for we knew that they would put up a fight or try to make a run for it. Three of us took up strategic positions outside and I entered the house. They recognized me at once, knew the purpose of my coming and tried to escape. I shot the one son; the second son, Alioch, who denounced and surrendered Jews to the Germans, was shot by my comrades. Poor consolation for the dead, but nevertheless, revenge! . . . After the war my brother Mosze and Yehuda Garber transferred the bodies of Leiser and Chontsze Bielak to the pits and buried them there.

Epilogue

In Braslaw everything remains outwardly as it was; the mountain did not split in half, the waters in the lakes flow calmly, exactly as though nothing had happened. And yet, terrible things happened here which are difficult to speak of and even more difficult to put on paper. The first Friday after the Germans entered Braslaw they rounded up all the Jews, drove them to a marshy swamp in the Dubkes forest and kept them there for a whole day. While they stood thus in the swamp, whoever wanted to loot their homes, did so. When they returned, the shtetl looked as if after a pogrom. Feathers were flying from the torn bedding exactly as described in Bialik's City of Slaughter. On the way to the swamp Szlomo, the ritual slaughterer, and Chayim Milutin tried to escape and were shot dead on the spot. Later another thirteen Jews were shot when their overseer, a Pole, wrote down that they had been idling when they should have been working. They had been loading logs at the railway station. The remainder were shot in the wholesale massacre on the 3rd of June 1942. Until then, life for these Jews had been an eternal hell.

Once, on a Friday night, the Germans put the ritual slaughterer Singalowski on a motorcycle and raced with him through the streets of the shtetl. They finally let him go. Next it was decreed that Jews could not walk on the sidewalk, had to wear the yellow badge on the left-hand side of the breast and the right shoulder, and eventually all the Jews were shut up in a ghetto. The ghetto was on Pilsudski Street, and was cordoned off with barbed wire. (Our family lived together with Chienke and Gerszon in Stawski's house.) Jews were forbidden to speak or trade with peasants. The Jews of the ghetto were forced to do unskilled menial labor, such as washing floors for the Germans, loading logs onto trains, knitting woolen socks and gloves. They received 15 deko (150 grams) of bread each day. They lived by bartering with the peasants; everything was bartered, from clothing to furniture – a bench, a wardrobe, a table. It was forbidden but everyone did it. To aggravate matters, the Germans imposed heavy collective fines in the form of gold, fur coats, ladies' coats. The Judenrat and Jewish police collected these on behalf of the Germans and carried out all the Germans' decrees concerning the Jews. The Judenrat consisted of 14-15 people, the most senior member being Mindel the hardware merchant. Some of the others were: Levi Itsche Wainsztein, Mazeh the teacher, Szeinkman the advocate. The policemen were Alter Arliuk, Lieb Valin and others.

The Jews in the ghetto sensed that their days were numbered. Some began to prepare hiding places. Since a faint hope glimmered in their breasts that perhaps some would outlive the dark times, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, they did nothing to defy the enemy so as not to precipitate the wholesale slaughter. All this, however, was to no avail. At dawn on the 3rd of June, the Germans, assisted by the police and Braslaw peasants in the service of the Germans, began to drive the Jews out of their homes. The Jews were assembled in the building opposite the Greek Orthodox Church, stripped of their clothing down to their underwear, brutally beaten, and then led to the ready-dug pits in the forest on the way to Dubene, past the pasture land used by the Jews. Mothers carried their children. No one cried. For three days the blood oozed from the pit. Peasants in wagons carried sand and poured it on top but the blood kept flowing.

Many Jews took refuge in the hideouts they had prepared in advance. For three days the police looked for them. Anton Burak, a tall non-Jew and a policeman, who worked at the brewery and was fluent in Yiddish, would enter the homes, go into the yards and say, "Jews, come out of your hiding places. There will be no more shootings." Some obeyed, came out and were at once led away to the pits to be shot. Germans and police would enter the empty homes and fire at random into the walls and floor, into the yard. The little children hidden in the bunkers, frightened, would start crying. In this way they caught the Jews. Some who started to run were shot while trying to scale the barbed wire. A day before the massacre the Germans sent about eighty young people to Slobodka, ostensibly to work there. Later they were sent back to Braslaw and immediately taken to the pit. The Jews from Opsa were brought into the now empty Jewish ghetto. They too were shot a year later.

During this operation a Jewish fellow killed a German who came to drive them out of the house, donned his uniform, took his automatic rifle and went outside. A policeman was coming towards him; he fired but missed, and was caught. Another fellow killed a German and two policemen with a pick. The Jews who hid during the first day of the massacre fled to the forests. For hiding a Jew the peasant would be shot and his house set on fire. For catching a Jew the reward was three kilos of salt. There were many instances of peasants catching Jews and handing them over to the police. For spending the night some peasants demanded five rubles in gold. There were also instances of peasants hiding Jews or giving them a piece of bread. Maszke Slawa Chayes and Mendke Chayim Itziks lay hidden in the home of two young peasant women until the arrival of the Red army. They had no money nor any belongings with them. Later these peasant women took in more Jews from Braslaw. True, some of these Jews did pay something towards their keep. Thus they saved six people. The Braslaw deacon in the church died of apoplexy the day the Jews were being shot. Some Catholic priests urged the peasants who confessed to harboring Jews to give them food and clothing. The local Catholic priest supplied David of Bizne and a young boy with crucifixes to wear round their necks.

Had the partisan movement existed at the time many more Jews would have been saved, but this movement only emerged in our district in 1943. And so isolated Jews escaped by hiding in the forest, bushes or similar hiding places; of our close relatives – no one remained. Those who remained alive returned to Braslaw, claimed a little money and left Poland. The graves of the martyrs, the “pits” as they are called in Braslaw, were fenced around with a few sticks and barbed wire.

This in brief is the story of Braslaw. It is no of use to cry; on the contrary, we must live to spite our enemies.

“Am Israel Chai”

Yours,
Chayim.

In the presence of eyes
Which witnessed the slaughter,
I have taken an oath: to remember it all.
To remember, not once to forget.
Forget not to tell anything to the last generation.

The sun sets in flames
'tis almost gone from sight
So melts my dream
So comes the night …

Oh Heavenly Father. . . .Is that all?

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