MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

Chapter 8.C

The summer 1940 was coming to an end.  The Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur came and went.  If at the previous New Year and Yom Kippur the Jews were grateful to the Bolsheviks for coming to us instead of the Germans, that gratitude disappeared due to the living conditions under them. If it sounds ungrateful, one has to consider the fact that we did not know the situation under which the remaining Jews of Poland lived.  That is under the Nazi regime, as the Bolsheviks prohibited any criticism of their allies, the Germans.  Secondly, the Nazi persecution of Jews did only assume the immense scale up to the time of their attack on the Soviet Union.  As in the previous year, Jews were forbidden from being absent from work and we considered it a desecration of our holidays.  I had to work but like the others I fasted that Yom Kippur.  We were entering the second year of Bolsheviks domination.  By winter 1940-41, the former petty merchants slowly found their niches in the Soviet economy.  Some got jobs with the government and some managed to eke out a livelihood by being middleman on a small scale.  It was a precarious way of getting by under the constant threat of being sent to Siberia.  They used to buy something from former merchants who managed to salvage something of their merchandise and resell it to someone who needed it and was willing to pay the price.  The life of the middleman, or as the Bolsheviks used to call them “Speculants”, was a hazardous one, the unfortunate one that got caught paid dearly.  In general, people were getting by as if sitting on a powder keg.  In a sense, in order to exist, everybody was breaking the law.  It was only a question of how soon one will get caught.

Among many proverbs going around at that time, was one that categorized the Soviet population in three groups. Namely: one that was already in jail or Siberia and is out for now, one that is in now and one that will be.  Taking in consideration the unofficial figure of imprisoned people (there was never an official) in the Soviet Union at any time that stood at fourteen million, the proverb was very close to reality.  The Bolsheviks did not celebrate Christmas.  Instead they celebrated New Years for three days.  It was one of the two long holidays in the Soviet Union; the second was the anniversary of the revolution. Those celebrations we used to spend in the main office of our business organization drinking vodka but being careful not to overdo it in case one might slip a word that can later deeply regret.  This is how we welcomed the year 1941.  Officially the Soviet policy towards Nazi Germany did not change but one could feel unspoken change.  The Soviet paper eased up on the praise they used to heap on Nazi Germany and their victories in North Africa.  In general Germany stopped being mentioned so often in the paper.  One could even hear from time to time a not so complimentary remark about Germany from an Easterner.      There were some Jews and non-Jews in Shershev that were working in or around Brest-litowsk.   Where they worked or what they were doing they were under orders not to say, which in itself was no surprise.  As everything was a secret in the Soviet Union, but rumors were circulating that they were building fortifications.  That winter, that is February 1941 I turned eighteen years old.  I considered myself grown up earlier but now I was grown up formally.  I recall that night laying in bed wondering as to what the future holds for me.  I, in all my naivety and youthful dreams still intact, made a resolution to dedicate my life to my people, the Jewish people.  How long this resolution lasted, I do not know, but taking in consideration my situation then and the events that followed I would say not too long.  Would the events that followed taken an other course, or if not, at least not in such a scale that shook the world and in its process destroyed a thousand year old Jewish life and existence in Europe, maybe many others dreams would have had another ending among them maybe mine too.  One has to admit that the Soviet propaganda had at times an effect on certain segments of the population, especially on the youth.  Their movies used to depict their heroes in a bright light and young people tended to fall for it.  Their patriotic and idealistic songs used to seize young and dreamy hearts and move them to tears.  I, myself, with so many unpleasant encounters and experiences with them used to catch myself being carried away with their songs.  The reality however, used to bring me back to consciousness, back to my senses.  And so did the winter 1940-41 pass.  The holiday Pessach, (Passover) was approaching, the second under the Bolsheviks.   The preparations to it were not easy, in fact, even harder than for the previous one.  It became more difficult to get white flour (wheat) for matzos as well as it’s baking.  The Kosher butchers were being persecuted even more as they were interfering with the government agents in buying up cattle.  The procuring of hops and honey for making mead too became a problem.  Somehow it was done.  Actually we had the best commodity for obtaining anything we needed, much better than money or anything else.  It was Polish, pre war vodka.  Much higher priced than the Soviet one.  Of course one had to be careful for as I mentioned several times earlier it was punishable with jail.  But what was legal in the Soviet Union?  This was the life style and we ha to live by it.  In general the holidays, under such conditions had lost much of its importance and holiness.  But Jews have held fast to it as if with clutches.  Even though we had to be at work, never the less we celebrated the “Seydorim”, the festive meal eaten on the two first nights of Pessach as kosher as in the pre war years.

I have already mentioned the large Soviet military forces that were stationed in Brest-Litowsk proper and in the military barracks near Pruzany.  I also mentioned the secret fortifications that were being built in and around the Brest-Litowsk fortress.  I will also inform the reader that near Pruzany and its outskirts the Bolsheviks were busying in building two military airports, stationing in the town an entire air force regiment wing.  The airman, the most privileged part of the Soviet armed forces, quartered themselves with many Jewish families in Pruzany, and it helped them economically.  To point out the intensity with which the Bolsheviks were building those two airports will suffice to say that not only did they employ every available and willing to work man there, but they brought two thousand short term criminals from inside the Soviet Union to help with the work.  Among the men from around Pruzany that were employed were some from Shershev that used to commute daily back and forth.  They used to relate about the magnitude of the construction that was going on there.  We, the inhabitants of the area, did not know if that’s being done due to the nearness to the border vis-à-vis Germany or is it taken place right across the entire Soviet Union.  We did not have to wait long for the answer.  The school year 1940-41 ended Friday the 20^th of June.  The very same day in the mid afternoon my sister Sheva came home from Pruzany after graduating the final year of the Soviet high school.  That night we had the traditional Friday night meal not having the slightest inkling that his was our last truly Sabbath meal.  The next day, Saturday, I went to work like every other Soviet employee.  After work we all had supper together.  During supper my sister told us that a couple days earlier they, the students, were informed that the not out of town students will have to gather Saturday evening in school from where they will be taken to the unfinished yet airports.  There they will undergo certain exercises that will go on through the night.  She, my sister, expressed her delight for not having to participate in those exercises thus coming a week end earlier.

There was no mention in Shershev schools about semi military exercise, so we accepted my sister’s remarks light heartedly not giving it a second thought nor did we wonder or question the reason of the exercise.  As for me, it left my mind the moment we finished the meal when I stood up to announce that I am going to the boys.  My first visit was at my friend Kalman KALBKOIF, from there we went to Itzik MALETZKY (MALECKY).  To our question if he wants to go for a walk he replied that he is that night on duty in the power station.  Here I will mention that in Shershev we used to have power from dusk to midnight.  As Itzik was only one year older than I, thus being almost nineteen, he had no authority to start the motor.  It was his older brother, by two years, Nachum who went to start it.  Not wanting to leave our friend alone the boring three hours from nine to midnight, we decided to come along and spend the time in contest with the huge and loud motor to see who can be louder.  As of lately the motor became capricious due to the shortage of proper replacement parts.  The large diesel motor had to be started with the help of a tank full compressed air that propelled it at first.  That night, like some nights in the past the motor would not start.  After three or four tries the compressed air was gone and the motor remained silent.

In the night of the 21^st and 22^nd of June 1941 the couple streets and lanes of Shershev were enveloped in darkness.  All that was visible were the pale light in the windows coming from the kerosene lamps.  For the Jews of Shershev, the Jews of the Soviet annexed Polish territories as well as the Jews of all Eastern Europe, it was the last night that they went to bed peacefully.  For ninety five percent of them that night never ended.  In June the twenty second the sun rises early in our parts of the world.  So it was on that memorable Sunday June 22^nd 1941.  Being the only free day of the week people were not in a hurry to get up and out.  When I got out in the street at nine I noticed a couple groups of people talking with interest but not with concern about the few carts with workers that left for Pruzany this morning but were turned back three kilometers short of their destination, despite the fact that they worked in the construction of the military air ports.  This calmness did not last long.  A rumor spread that last night the nearby town of Pruzany was bombarded which nobody was willing to believe.  Shortly after we could see the entire party leadership gathering in their office which was in Joshua PINSKY’s home.  While inside the meeting was taking place the many militiamen were going from house to house announcing that a general meeting of the entire population will be soon taking place in the market square.  Indeed the population started to gather immediately.  At eleven that morning all the big shots in shtetl with the first party secretary in lead appeared on the podium. “BALABUTKIN” the first secretary began with these words: “Today at the crack of dawn the aggressive Nazi army attacked the peaceful Soviet Union.  The Nazi beast stuck its swine’s snout in our Soviet garden.”  From there on he continued in promising to pay Germany back for its aggression and how the Red Army will make ash and powder of them and so on.   The first two sentences got stuck in memory.  The rest is a blur.  After the speech the crowd drifted slowly away.  Small groups of people remained to discuss and speculate as to what the near future will bring.  For me and my friends that was the second time in this many years that we were going through such exciting moments.  In contrast however, to the situation almost two years ago, this war was promising to be a more balanced one than the Polish-German.  Indeed, we have seen and heard of the ability of the German army, not only in comparison to the former Polish army but even to the French modern and mechanized army and its Magino line as well as the British at Dunkirk, not to mention the rest of Europe that fell to Nazi Germany.  But we have also seen the huge numbers of Soviet tanks and large army that appeared a much better match than all previous opponents.  The general opinion in shtetl was that in the worst scenario if and when the Red Army will have to retreat a bit we can decide when the time comes, so far we have nothing to worry about.

That late morning and early afternoon many planes flew over the skies of Shershev.  They flew too high for us to be identified.  Walking with my friends in the street I remarked that today the Soviet flyers are paying back the people and the country for the good life they had in the Soviet Union.  There was no doubt in our minds that those were Soviet planes going back and forth on bombing missions behind the front lines and must be taking some loses.  It never dawned on us that those were German planes that are flying unchallenged with impudence over the Soviet skies.  The last couple hours of that Sunday afternoon passed in suspense and expectation not knowing of what and why.  The Moscow radio gave little information about the situation on the border and we, so close to the border, less than eight kilometers as the crow flies, could not comprehend the unusual quiet.  At about six in the late afternoon, as if carried by a whirlwind the news spread that the Easteners, that is those that came to us from the Soviet Union are leaving town.  As if to confirm that fact I got to the market place in time to see that the Easteners are coming from all directions, the single ones and the married ones with their families.  All either empty handed or with tiny suitcases or knap sacks.  They climb in panic into the overcrowded open trucks that seem to be ready to spill over.  There is a shortage of drivers.  A couple of militiamen go to Eli NEIBRIF’s house and bring him.  He, Eli NEIBRIF, was one of the drivers in the supply organization that I worked for.  He refuses o go unless Noah HOFMAN will come along.  Noah HOFMAN was one of the porters in our warehouse and used to travel with Eli NEIBRIF to Brest-Litowsk for merchandise.  A couple militiamen go and bring him. He climbs aboard one of the dangerously overloaded with humanity trucks and they all depart.  The local Jews are numb at what they see.  What is happening here?  The huge Soviet Union with its mighty army is going down without a fight?  Her representatives are running away the first day of war being a hundred kilometers by road to the border or front leaving us Jews to the mercy of the Nazis?  What will happen to us?  Is it possible that the Soviet Union will fall apart even faster than Poland?  Suddenly the scorned upon and despised Soviet Union became dear and loved by us. In an instant we forgot the bad times and askance looks we gave them.  We would give everything to have them back.  With broken hearts laden with despair we waited for further developments.

We lived at that time with my grandparents KANTOROWICZ.   As everybody else I too left my friends and the group of people that was dispersing from home with heavy hearts, as if the nearness of ones own and dear ones would offer some kind of protection and comfort even strength for the days to come.  Before dark, my father sent me to his brother Reuven’s house. As Reuven, did not come home for that Sunday from his work place in the military barracks near Pruzany.  We were all worried about him.  My aunt was alone at home with the children. With her were her three children, Michlah, two years younger than I, Shalom, a year older than my brother Liova (Leibl) and Shevah, who was five at the time.  As downhearted as we were, I found my aunt and children in a much greater despair bordering on panic.  The fact that my uncle was not with them certainly did not help.  Half an hour after my arrival we heard a tremendous explosion.  It came from the air and from the ground with a momentum that shook every house in shtetl.  Looking out the window I saw brightness like a ball of fire that reached high over the horizon that came from the direction of Pruzany.  Even I with no idea of explosions and never saw one until then, could tell that it came from a great distance away and was of a gigantic force.  We all got scared but I, having been sent by my father to be the “man” in the house, tried hard to hide my fear and lamely assured everybody that there is nothing to fear about. When the second explosion was heard my cousin Shalom, who just turned thirteen, began begging his mother and children to lay down with him on the bed, then maybe when a bomb will strike it will kill us all bringing an end to our fear.  We slowly began to move to the bedroom.  By the time we entered it a third explosion was heard.  This time the other two joined him in crying.  Not my aunts and not my clumsy attempt to quiet them down did much good.  They slowly subsided only because the explosions ceased.  We sat like this by the light of a kerosene lamp until the two younger ones, drained, fell asleep.  It was midnight when my aunt told me to go home.  I did not need much coaxing wanting to be with my parents.  I left quickly.  As I was going home though the dark and silent streets, I had the eerie feeling that the street is already devoid of its inhabitants.  At home, except for my younger eleven year old brother Liova and my two little sisters Sonia, nine and Liba seven, everybody was up, sitting around the living room table dimly lit by a kerosene lamp.  Their lips barely moving they spoke in whispers as if the Germans were already in the next room.  The few hours of night left, passed in anxiety.  We were in the street early and so were many of the Jewish men standing in small groups or going from group to group hoping to hear some news.  All one could hear were assumptions to which I could have come myself.  One prayer was on the lips of all the Jews; we need a miracle that the Bolsheviks should come back, now they would indeed be welcomed and appreciated.  To the concern of the approaching Germans I also resented and grieved over the fact that while we will be absolute losers, the non-Jewish population will have a double victory.  Not only will they get rid of the Bolsheviks but they will also see the downfall of the Jews for whom they carried an ingrained centuries old dislike and outright hate.

That Monday too, began with a beautiful sunrise, although the mood of the shtetl Jews was weighed down as if by a heavy stone.  At ten o’clock in the morning one of the trucks that left yesterday returned with the Soviet bureaucrats.   This one too was fully loaded with the same men, but only the men, there were no women or children among them.  For a moment the Jews of Shershev thought that their prayer has been answered.  If I may be forgiven the L’Havdill distinction I would say that if the Messiah, for whom we Jews have been waiting for a millennium, would have come he would not have been welcomed with more joy than that truckload of Bolsheviks.  They in return did not accord us any attention just went into their party office and shut the door behind them.  After a few minutes they sent a couple of their own men for Srulkah (Israel) MAYSTER, the blacksmith, and ordered him to break open the safe from which they needed to retrieve some documents.  Apparently in yesterday’s rush to leave, they mislaid or lost the combination.  Now they had to break the safe open.  For the constant hammering they needed several men that kept on coming and going.  From them we found out that they just came for those papers and will be leaving again.  The exhilaration soon changed to despair.  While this was taking place planes were continually flying overhead.  This time we knew whose they were.  Still the presence of the Soviet bureaucrats was a sign that the Germans are not on the outskirts of the shtetl.  At noon we heard the clatter of metal over the cobblestone street and in the market square appeared two Soviet tanks that came from Kamieniecker Street, the closest direction to Brest-Litowsk.  The tanks were covered with a thick layer of dust which was no surprise coming from that direction, the short cut direction to Brest-Litowsk that was sandy and in summer a dusty stretch of road.  What was said and disturbing was the sight and number of tank crews that were sitting all over the tops of the tanks.  Every available space on each tank was taken up by a tank crewmember that was covered with the same thick layer of dust as the tank itself.  All that was visible from under the dust was pairs of eyes turned towards the sky watching out for German planes.  The tank crews looked helpless and scared.  Apparently they have already tasted German air attacks and lost their tanks to them.  During that Monday afternoon a few such small groups of tanks passed by the shtetl.  One such group seemed to be better organized.  They had along a large truck full with barrels of fuel.  A couple tanks were driving ahead and a couple behind.  From time to time a single tank used to pass, a single pitifully lost unit.  At four in the afternoon, the Easterners had the safe opened.   Taking their papers they left in a greater hurry than the day before abandoning the shtetl for the second time.  The crowd slowly dispersed to their homes in search of imaginary security or at least solace.  Now, having seen the rout of the Soviet army in our parts, we all foresaw the downfall of the Soviet Union in a matter of days.  We were still alive and did not know what Hitler had in store for us.  We knew that we have to go on living.  That evening my father decided to reclaim our house that the Bolsheviks took away from us without any compensation.  When the Bolsheviks took our house away from us, my parents hung on to a set of spare keys.  The irony of it was that my father and I went that late afternoon using those spare keys to open the doors after almost two years.

The non-paying tenants left the contents undisturbed.  True, one could see that they left in a hurry as many items were scattered, but they left everything a family can accumulate.  To our surprise there was everything.  They, the elite of the bureaucrats had, apparently unknown to us, a source of supply.  Besides the nice furniture and clothing there was a store full of assorted foodstuff that was never seen in the main warehouse.  I can still see the hundred-kilogram sack of sugar, not the loose kind but in lumps and the many other things by the dozens of kilograms.  Overwhelmed and frightened by all this, we withdrew and, locking the door, we went back and spent the night as before, with my grandparents.  The next morning, Tuesday, my parents decided to start slowly and cautiously moving over to our house.  Each one of us took something in our hands and we started back home.  My mother and sister Sheva began to straighten things out, somehow with little enthusiasm, spending most of the time with the rest of us looking out the windows.  We were expecting the Germans arrival at any minute, in fear not knowing what it is going to be like or what to expect.  There was no progress in putting the house in order.  Soon we found ourselves together looking out the windows at the empty market square, silent and empty as I have never seen or experienced in all my life.  At exactly eleven o’clock before noon, a few German motorcycles pulled in from the south side of the market square.  That is from Kamieniecka Street.  Each motorcycle had a side car attached to it in which another German was sitting holding on to the two handles of a heavy machine gun mounted on the side car.  They stopped in the middle of the square just opposite our house, leaped out of the motorcycle, machine guns at ready.  They formed a large spread out circle around the motorcycles.  The sight of the Germans did not disappoint our expectations at all.  They looked the way we imagined them to be, hard and, I would add, ruthless faces.  They moved about with well-rehearsed precision and skill, taking in with their glances all around them.  They looked to be as if they were born in their uniforms already machine guns in hand.  Within minutes a few more motorcycles arrived and what seemed to us without command, they dispersed to every street and lane taking up what must have been to them strategic positions.  Within a quarter of an hour, there were groups of Germans all around the out skirt of the shtetl.  All this was accomplished without a loud order or even a single shot.  It seemed that they knew exactly where to go and what position to take up in advance.  In my mind I was comparing the German soldiers to the pre war Polish ones which we used to see during maneuvers.  Their saddened dispirited faces, unenthusiastic slacking response to command or the Soviet soldiers in their ill fitted uniforms, the ignorance of modernism, the primitivism, the complaisant approach to the officer, the open faced good natured smile of the Russian peasant boy, did not add to good soldiering.

Yes, I did assume that those were the elite of the German troops, but even as such they were impressive, outright frightening.  Some young boys slowly tried to get closer to the Germans challenging their tolerance, but a motion with their weapon was enough to stop the bravest.  Every few minutes more and more Germans kept on arriving by truck and smaller vehicles reminiscent of the later days allied jeeps.  I would classify them as motorized infantry as there was no heavy weapon with them.  As the traffic increased, it just continued on via Mostowa Street toward Pruzany.  We postponed moving over to our home until the army will pass in a couple of hours.  But instead, as the day progressed, so did the number of the German soldiers.  Some did make a stop, but the bulk kept moving on.  After a while we had enough of looking at the Germans, we locked the two front doors of the house and went outside into the yard to sit on the steps of the back entrance as it was still hot at four in the afternoon.  There, sitting we were analyzing our situation.  Suddenly we were confronted by a group of German soldiers that found their way through the lane way that separated our house and our neighbor Nachman FELDMAN.  The lieutenant in charged addressed my father with one question:  Are you the owner of the house?  Hearing the confirmation the officer announced that they are taking over the house temporarily.  But to the lieutenant my father asked: sir, where should we go?  This I cannot help you with came the reply.  What about everything inside asked my father.  Don’t worry, everything will be looked after and remain in its place.  You can’t touch anything and must leave now.  And so we were expelled once more from our house and went back to my grandparents Yaakov-Kopel and Chinke KANTOROWITZ.  With night, what we considered to be a trickle of military traffic during the day turned into a flood.  Heaven and earth turned into a tide of soldiery.  A steady flow of uninterrupted soldiers was pouring over the street.  Not only over the cobblestone middle of the street, but on either side of the sidewalk.       My grandparent’s house was close to the sidewalk, so we did not sleep much that night.  There was no let up to the motion of the Germans.  On the second day, tanks and heavy artillery began to pass.  It was the first time that not only I, but my uncle Eli, an artillery man in the Polish army, saw the German mechanized cannons pulled by threaded tractor like vehicles on which was mounted a platform with four or five benches, each bench sitting four soldiers.  When those vehicles used to pass by, the pane in the windows used to vibrate.  The heavy weapon and machinery took up the entire width of the road, and the infantry marched on the sidewalks on either side of the road.  Groups of German soldiers began to break into Jewish homes helping themselves to whatever they needed or could carry, from a needle and thread, to men’s underwear, sweaters and shoe to women’s clothing.  We did not even dare to protest and were glad when they used to leave the house.  Such reprieves did not last long.  Soon another group used to come in to ransack the house again.

As Jews, we were not eager to go out in the street, so we tried to spend a bit of time in the yard which was quite spacious.  It had a gateway that was closed by a high and solid gate.  The rest was surrounded by a just as high and touching fence made of heavy planks that made it inaccessible to prying eyes.  After locking the front double doors we used to get out in the yard through the back door for a bit of privacy.  This did not deter the Germans too much.  Seeing the doors closed from the inside they used to start knocking on the door with their rifle stocks.  It used to happen that after a few knocks, they used to leave to go to another house, but if the knocking persisted, my grandmother or mother used to open the door.  Let them in and help themselves to whatever they found of value.  On Thursday, the 26^th via alleys and yards, I made my way to my friends, the brothers Laizer and Litek ROTENBERG.  Two of our friends, Kalman KALBKOIF and Itzik MALECKY joined us a short time later.   In a group we dared to go out in the street, although the market square was full of Germans.  Their march had not slackened up for a minute.   We set out in the direction of Kamieniecka Street, the direction from which the Germans were coming.  The second building on the right side of the street was an Old Russian Orthodox church sitting in a large yard.  Behind it was a large orchard belonging to the priest of that church.  That orchard was referred to as the priest’s orchard.  That entire yard, orchards, and the yard of the nearby priest’s house were taken up by German soldiers.  Before we got a chance to see what was going on there, a few German soldiers got a hold of us leading us into the church yard.  One of the things the Germans had already set up was a mobile bakery.  Nearby we saw a pile of logs, first quality timber for making planks.  A German pointed out some kind of machine and showed us how to use it.  It was a power saw.  We were ordered to cut the beautiful building material into small pieces as fuel for the bakery.  The nearby German auto repair unit soon found out about the few young Jews and made us pump the truck tires they were repairing.  A truck tire needs four-five hundred pumps to fill it up, which is not an easy task.  Before night a German escorted us home, for which we were grateful.  Apparently, I was good and tired after that day’s work, for I fell asleep immediately, unlike the previous nights.  How long I slept, I don’t know, but sometime in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a loud crash at the door and loud German voices.  How the Germans succeeded to open first the closed in porch door and the outside and inside doors of  the house, I don’t know, but suddenly they were in the hallway.  They had before them three doors, to the right that lead to the kitchen, the left one to the part of the house where my grandparents and their son Eli lived and straight ahead where we lived.  They apparently broke up into three groups for in no time some were in our living room and at the entrance to one of the two sleeping rooms.  By then we were all awakened and almost fully dressed for we did not get completely undressed since the war began.  A couple soldiers noticed my sister Sheva and yelled out “Ain Medschen” A Girl!! I do not know how my mother managed to muster so much presence of mind, in one jump she was at the window with one motion unhooked the window hooks and pushed the window outward.  The window opened to its full extend, my mother yelled, “Jump out Shevelah”.  There was no need for my mother to repeat, my sister was over the window in a second.  Seeing her out my mother turned to me and said, “Go with her”.  Being half asleep I did not realize what was happening nor the earnestness of the moment, I just jumped.  We were in a lane between my grandparents and a neighbor’s house.  To turn left, the lane led to the street a dozen meters away which was full of soldiers marching and riding on German trucks.  To the right deeper in the lane and on the left side of it was a Jewish home.  Behind it was a few stalls almost touching each other.  Parallel to the stalls but behind them was a large stable belonging to a further neighbor Avraham ROSOCHOWSKI.

Fortunately the driving and marching Germans did not notice us, partly due to the noise of the motors and marching feet.  To turn left was out of the question, so we turned right.  Running by the Jewish home, I did not dare to stop for a couple of reasons.  I was afraid that the German soldiers will run after us and by our stopping we will loose some precious seconds. Secondly, by the time the people will wake up and open the door, if they would even open it, and what good will running into another Jewish home do if the Germans are after us?  All we would accomplish would be getting another Jewish family in trouble.  Running by the stalls, I was looking for a place to hide.  Pass the stall, was an open and swampy meadow, no place for anyone to hide.  The only place in the dark I could find was the narrow space between the stalls and the barn.  When we tried to squeeze in between them we realized that there is a fence running in between, that marked the border of the two households.  Unable to get in there and in fear that the Germans are looking for us, I climbed up the roof.  My sister Sheva, who was not twenty yet, was an agile girl who did not need any help to follow me.  The two roofs were so close to each other that there was no fear of falling off or in between.  We flattened ourselves on that slanted roof as much as possible not to be conspicuous in prying eyes, awaiting farther developments.  We kept hearing yells and screams in German but did not know if they were coming from our grandparent’s house or from the street full of marching Germans.  The only solace we found was in the fact that we did not hear the sound of gunfire.  How long we were hiding there we did not know.  It seemed endless, but we later estimated between one to two hours.  Slowly, in the dark, we climbed down the roof, huddling close to the fences we got to the window through which we could escape.  To our dismay the window was shut.  We dared not knock for fear of attracting the Germans in the street and not knowing who might appear at the window inside.  Having no alternative, we crawled crouching along the fence of my grandparent’s yard that extended far into the meadow. Approaching the yard from behind I dared to knock on the door that lead into the yard. The door that led from the house into the yard was locked too but here I dared to knock.  Understandably, nobody in the house was asleep and the door was opened immediately.  Everybody had questions.  The essence of the story in that the Germans did not run after us.  They satisfied themselves by ransacking the house and left shortly after.  It began to be dawn, the time we used to get up those days after the sleepless nights.  That morning too like all the previous mornings that week, it was a beautiful morning.  And still they kept on marching.  We began to think that the entire German army is passing through Shershev.  Neither could we understand how, with so much traffic and heavy equipment, there were no accidents in spite of our prayers that it should happen.  That Friday morning passed in our silent prayers for an end to the constant marching of the Germans.  Maybe we would get a rest to the constant barging in of the soldiers with their brigand faces slowly emptying the house of everything.  We also needed a break to go out to the local farmers to see if we can get something in foodstuff.  Next door to my grandparents in the direction of the market square lived an elderly couple with a single son.  The man’s name was Mordechai, his son’s was Baruch, a young man of about thirty with the nickname of “ox”, not because he was a fool or something like it but because of his size.  By trade a carpenter and built like a wrestler.  A six-foot tall man with wide shoulders, barrel-chested and thick arms and legs.  He looked as if he could carry a house on his shoulders.  On that memorable Friday the 27^th of June 1941 (the second day of Tamuz), in early afternoon, the door opens up and in comes that Baruch.  His face twisted, the hair disheveled, the clothes dirty and soaking wet with sweat, trembling all over.  He wants to say something but all he can do is stutter.  The words are struck in his throat.  Before he manages to get a word out in came his parents with confusion and fear in their eyes.  His father gesturing in his son's direction, glances at all of us but at no one in particular, asks in a low voice, "nu, what do you say to this?”     We look at him, at his son, at each other as the unease grows in us.  Finally, my father asks” What are you talking about? What happened?”  A German soldier had entered their house ordered their son Baruch to take a shovel and led him to the large synagogue.  There, in the yard of that synagogue between our house, the synagogue, and the mount of rubble left from the ruins of the by the Bolsheviks torn old synagogue, he and another dozen Jews, watched as a number of German soldiers are beating savagely a group of people.  When their grisly work was done, the entire group was laying on the ground unconscious.  The final act of the soldiers was a bullet to the head of each one of them.  The dozen or so Jews were ordered to dig a hole in the middle of that yard, throw the bodies in and cover them up.  There were nineteen bodies, eleven Jews and eight Christians.  I like to mention the names of these first Jewish victims of Nazi barbarism in our shtetl and the circumstances that led up to it.  It started with an incident that happened at the end of Bet-Chaim Street, where meadows were stretching far and wide and where Jewish owners of cows and horses used to let their animals graze.  Since sitting at home with the Germans all around was not safer then being out of town, and the animals had to be fed, it was only common sense to drive the animals out on the pasture and spend the better part of the day watching them.  A rumor later circulated that a Soviet soldier who succeeded in avoiding German capture, shot down a low flying German airplane over that meadow.  This was never confirmed but it served to glorify a Soviet soldier and give a little encouragement to those who prayed for their return.  It is a fact though that, on that day, the Germans did kill in that meadow a hidden Soviet soldier after a short fire exchange, their fourth day in Shershev.  In their rage, after tasting blood and for amusement, they rounded up the few men that were on the meadow and began driving them into town, on the way dropping into some houses and taking along the males in them.  The largest number of victims was from the CHADRICKY family who lived on that same street.  They were: Ghedalya CHADRICKY 43 years old, the very same man that used to buy from us merchandise during the Bolsheviks era and sell it to trustworthy customers.  After taking this Ghedalya, they entered the other half of that house where his brother Moishe lived taking him age 45 and his two sons Yosel (Joseph) age 18 and Eli, age 16.  From a neighboring house they took Zusel PASMANIK and stopped on the street a shoemaker by the name of DULMAN, a hard workingman and poor as a church mouse.  From the meadow they took Berl ZATOCKY age 30, Jehudl ZATOCKY’s (the blacksmith) son, Ghedalya LOSHEVICKY’s 14 year old son, whose name I do not remember and Bentzys (Ben Tzions) PITTEL’s father in his late forties.  If I am not mistaken also Chayim MAJSTER, Srolka MAJSTER’s son.  The eleventh I don’t remember.  In true Nazi manner, the dozen Jews with the shovels while digging were surrounded by many German soldiers who were ridiculing, mocking them with being shot.  A possibility the diggers considered very real.  To encourage them to dig faster, the Germans used on them their rifle butts with generosity.  After having finished covering the mass grave the diggers were told to go over to the Jewish houses in shtetl and tell them that if the Jews don’t turn in their weapons by four o’clock that afternoon, the entire Jewish population will be massacred.

Those were the first few days of the German campaign in the Soviet Union, even though we knew that we won’t have it easy under German rule, we never expected them to be able to slaughter a score of human beings so savagely without any investigation.  Suddenly, we realized who we are dealing with and what we can expect of them.  The most urgent problem for the minute was the German order to the Jews to turn in their weapons.  We knew that there is not a single weapon or firearm among the Jews of Shershev and the Germans can use it as an excuse for a slaughter.  We were still naïve enough to think that the Germans needed an excuse for slaughtering Jews.  The fear that our neighbor Baruch felt, be it from what he has just seen and did, burying those people that we all knew from infancy and the German ultimatum, that same fear over took us all.  It is almost three o’clock in an hour and the Germans will start going from house to house collecting together the men in each of them to be shot.  The women are lucky, who on earth would touch a woman.  G-D, in heaven, what is happening? Is it a nightmare, a bad dream from which I will soon awaken?  No, it is not, for when I know I am dreaming I immediately wake up.  What should I do?  I look helplessly at my parents, at my grandparents; they in return look back at me, at my father, my uncle Eli.  The pain, the anguish sets in, the fear confuses common sense.  I want to live; I want to run, but where to and how?  The streets are full of Germans, until now they were robbers, but now they become bloodthirsty murderers.  No, I will not be shot by them I will commit suicide.  I will hang myself.  But with what and how?  Yes, and where?  I look all over the house; nobody is asking me what I am looking for.  I find a piece of cord, stick it into my pocket and look for a place to throw it over and strong enough to hold me.  There is no place from the ceiling, no place to tie the cord up to.  I walk slowly out into the yard and look around slowly, yet find no place.  I notice the outhouse, enter and look around.  Yes, the thin beams on the ceiling will do.  I decide to execute my plan as soon as the Germans will knock on the door.  It will give me enough time to run through the back door into the yard and from there into the outhouse.  Meantime I come into the house with a ready answer in case somebody should ask me where I was.  I would not be lying if I said that I was in the outhouse.  Nobody asked me where I was.   Everybody was sitting deep in his or her own thoughts, hoping for a miracle.

The marching Germans in the street look frightening enough until now.  But now they look utterly terrifying.  Every minute I glance at the old clock on the wall and listen to the seconds ticking off.  I would stop the clock but know that the German clocks will continue ticking.  It is four o’clock.  I look out the closed windows.  There is no let up to the marching Germans.  They pass by the houses as if our fate does not concern them.  Those marching on the sidewalks go by as if the houses don’t exist.  The clock on the wall is moving a bit faster.  It is five and six.  What are they waiting for?  Maybe for nightfall?  It is, and the noise of the passing engines and the sound of the hob nailed boots continue.  We sit until midnight, after midnight.  We try to lie down drained and exhausted from tension and fear.  But nobody sleeps waiting to see the dawn knowing that it won’t bring deliverance.  The unease and apprehension transform itself into a constant fear that lasted for the next two weeks.  If in the first four nights of the German arrival we managed to grab a couple hours of sleep, the events of that Friday robbed us of it too.  When the Bolsheviks drove us out from our house a year and a half earlier, my father with the help of our wagon drayer (coachman) Shepsl RUDNITZKY managed to dig up the sacks of vodka we had buried in our garden and take it along with our belongings to my grandparents.  All that vodka, during the Bolsheviks era, was in my grandparent’s attic.  The Germans having arrived so suddenly did not give us time to hide it better. True, my father did sell some of it during the Bolsheviks era but a lot remained.  It was fortunate that while the Germans were coming into the house to plunder they never thought of looking in the attic, as the entrance to the attic was in the large hallway that was in the back part of the house.  To get up there one had to use a ladder.  The ladder for that purpose was most of the time lying on the ground.  None of them thought to look up and if even yes, it would be difficult to tell the difference between the matching door to the rest of the high ceiling.  However, in those trying days, we wanted badly to get rid of that vodka.  In the evenings I started going up there, coming back with a basket full of bottles of vodka.  I used to go behind my grandparents stables into the swampy meadow, turning over the bottles head down, I used to push them one by one into the swamp, deep enough for an accidental by passer not to notice it.  And so I brought down basket after basket full of bottles of vodka that we had salvaged from since before the war of 1939.  A fare amount or shall I say, many dozens, disposing of them in a public place, since that swampy meadow was public property.  The bottles of spirit which were ninety six percent pure and not available at all during the Bolsheviks era was difficult to part with, as each bottle could fetch a fantastic price and in abnormal times save or buy a life.  There was plenty of material in my grandparents stable and I made from some planks a wooden box.  Using some straw I packed into the boxes over a dozen bottles nailing it shut.  Under the floor of the front part of the outhouse, I dug a hole in which I deposited the box, covering it with the same black and heavy soil, replacing the floor and spreading the extra soil around which blended perfectly with the surrounding terrain.  Looking around I felt that not only thieves but even the Germans would not search there.

If in the first few days after the German arrival, one could notice a scarcity of Jews in the street at any moment, they completely disappeared after that Friday the 27^th of June.  Not even a woman would dare to go out.  But Sunday June 29^th, two days after the slaughter of the nineteen men, about ten o’clock in the morning, in comes our Aunt Chashkah.  If a woman would dare go out into the street it would be her.  Despite the fact that she was in her mid forties, she still had a full head of thick light blond hair. She had the stocky PINSKY build and the sure gait that characterized the PINSKY family.  Only a personal acquaintance would know that she is Jewish.  That was the reason that she dared to come to visit us.  It was a week since the German Soviet war began.  She informed us that her husband Reuben, my father’s brother who was working in the military barracks near Pruzany returned home three days after the outbreak of the war using back roads which the Germans were not using.  They, my Aunt and uncle, remained in their home in the market square and had to endure even more than we from the German plundering.  From then on my aunt used to come to see us every couple of days, being brave enough to be out in the street.  Jews were sitting in their houses in constant fear, huddling together or in corners of their homes in expectation of the Germans who will come for them to take them away or shoot them on the spot.  It was during one of my aunt’s visits that I heard her saying: I pray to G-d that I should lay down, fall asleep and not wake up.  I noticed that my parents nodded their heads in agreement and understanding.  Until that time such an idea never occurred to me and I too started to hope for a miracle like this.  Still they kept up marching.  Even if we were getting by on whatever food we used to scrape up in the house we could not do without water.  Early in the morning when the marching Germans were tired from the nights marching and the least disposed to adventure, one of us used to get out with a couple pails to the well for water.  One used to meet there a neighbor and exchange the latest news, like who was beaten up or shot over the last twenty-four hours.  As in other shtetls and villages, Shershev too had its own half and complete crazies.  Those poor souls did not realize the seriousness of the situation and, getting a chance to sneak out of their homes unnoticed by the other family members, they used to do so.  Even those the Germans did not spare and shot them, among them a young girl.

The constant marching through our shtetl lasted three full weeks.  The last couple of days we stopped seeing German heavy equipment.  All we saw were foot soldiers and horse drawn wagons loaded with supplies.  As    suddenly as they appeared, it also stopped, and the street fell silent.  Slowly, Jewish doors began to open carefully.  First a head and then a person appeared.  Neighbors began to gather in small groups to exchange experiences.  Nobody dared to move far from ones house.  The night passed quietly.  In the morning not seeing any Germans around, my parents decided to see what is doing with our house in the market square.  As we got closer still looking from a distance, my father and I did not notice anything abnormal except that it did not have any sign of life in it.  We found the doors open and entered carefully.  The house was completely empty.  Anything moveable was gone, taken by the Germans.  All the house wares, clothing, not only men’s and women’s but even children’s, tools, dishes, furniture, food, everything the Soviet family that left in a hurry plus the things we brought over on the first day the Germans came in, that is, on that first Tuesday morning, June 24^th.  We did not know who occupied our house during those three weeks of our absence but they cleaned out the house not leaving even and old rag.  That day we carried over a few things from our grandparents back to our house.  My father and I spend that night there.  Although we did not see or hear any Germans, the fear lingered on.  The next day, our wagon drayer from before the war, the very same man that moved us out of our house two years earlier when the Bolsheviks took our house away, moved us back in.  A couple days later half a dozen Germans with an officer in charge arrived.  They drove by every street and lane in shtetl, stopping eventually in the center of town, that is in the market square.  Here they got off their vehicle and walked around the square eyeing every house.  They stopped in front of our house, after a short conversation among themselves they come in.  The officer tells my father that they need our house for an “Ortskommendantur” (military headquarters.)    Again an expulsion?  Two years ago by the Bolsheviks and now within three weeks for the second time by the Germans.  My father tries to speak to the officer in a good German.  The officer asks my father how come he speaks German so well to what my father replies that just over twenty years ago, they, the Germans, were here too for three years.  The Germans look at each other knowingly and I wonder what they are thinking about.  Do they think that they will have to leave this place like their forerunners or that this time they came to stay?

The officer thinks for a moment and says: Good, you can remain in the back part of the house, as long as the front part remains inaccessible to you.  My father thanks him for letting us remain in our house.  The next day the Germans hang up a big sign over one of the two front entrances to our house that says “Ortskommendantur.”  I do not know how and who arranged it, but within a couple of days, there was a provisional civilian administration in shtetl. A police force consisting of a group of young local gentile ruffians that were showing off their newly acquired Russian rifles.  The first order of the day was the law that every Jewish person regardless of sex or age has to wear a round yellow circle no smaller than ten centimeters across on the outer garment.  Breaking the law is punishable by death.  The Jewish population was ordered to elect from among them ten members to serve in the Judenratt or whatever one wished to call it. Nobody volunteered, but the fate of the community might be in the hands of such a committee and an appeal was made to those most suitable to join.  Some responded to the appeal and agreed to take on that very heavy and responsible function.  Among them: Yaakov-Meir KABIZECKY (who is married to my aunt’s Esther Liba AUERBACH’s sister, Chayie-Sara), Chazkel KRUGMAN, my uncle Reuven KANTOROWITZ, Avreml KWELMAN, Meir GHELMAN, my grandfather Yaakov-Kopel KANTOROWITZ, the others I do not remember.  Officially they were called “Judenratt” but among us Jews there were referred to as the committee.  Their first function was to submit a list of all the Jewish families and amount of members in them so that they can receive the amount of bread allotted for each mouth.

The next day the Jews of Shershev realize that the allotment is nothing more than outright mockery, as the amount of bread could not sustain the life of an infant.  It becomes a matter of living or starving. People started to improvise, that consists of taking something from the house like a dish or garment to a Christian farmer and try to get for it something in exchange in food, like a bit of raw flour, or maybe a bit of barley or cereal.  Anything will do, like vegetables.  A better item might fetch a few eggs or a piece of butter.  There was no talk of meat.  A farmer would not know what to ask for a cow, besides the ritual slaughterer would not dare slaughter a cow.  A chicken?  The farmers became very choosy and did not know what to ask for a hen.  Nobody wanted money.  The Russian ruble became worthless, the German mark was unavailable and secondly, nobody knew its worth.  What ever the Germans needed or wanted, they took without even a thank-you.  All able bodied Jewish men were ordered to report to work every day at six in the morning.  The order comes from the local authority made up of local Christians. Who appointed them to this office, the few Germans who lived in our house or did they appoint themselves? Nobody knows.  The only place where several hundred Jews could be put to work was the highway. We were divided up into groups of fifty along the road.  Our boss is a local Christian who was the road supervisor during the Polish and the Bolsheviks era.  His job was to keep the highway between Shershev and Bialowieza in good repair.  Normally he used to do it himself with a gang of temporary workers.  Suddenly he found himself in charge of several hundred Jews and overnight this simple peasant, in his eyes, became a general.  He used to ride on his bicycle from group to group pointing out every hole or spot that needs repair.  The holes had to be filled with sand and cobblestone on top.  As far as all of us could remember, the highway from Shershev to Bialowieza has always been in good repair not only due to the proper upkeep but also due to the very light traffic on it.  In fact, I doubt if it was at all built for heavy traffic.  The constant traversing of the German tanks and iron threaded artillery pieces grinded many stretches of the road into the ground, leaving the road in need of repair.

 Despite the fact that the bulk of the German army was by that time deep into the Soviet Union, the traffic on that stretch of road was quite heavy.  Some detachment of the army used to pass by without paying attention to us, others used to stop to amuse themselves with the Jews.  As a result many of us used to come home from the days work eaten up badly and bleeding.  Along the highway we often used to find unmarked graves of Soviet soldiers, who were shot by the Germans after surrender.  At that time the Germans considered them a nuisance and hindrance in their rapid march eastward.  During the three week long German march through Shershev, we often used to see single or small groups of Soviet soldiers being led out of town followed shortly by gun fire.  Rumors used to circulate that Soviet prisoners were being shot.  Now that we were able to move about more freely, we used to come across those graves in fields and meadows around Shershev.  In their rapid advance into the Soviet Union, the Germans succeeded in cutting off many Soviet soldiers from their retreating units.  They found temporary shelter in the heavy forest of our territories.  Slowly, however, hunger drove them out.  Some tried to follow behind the German army hoping to find a way and cross the unmarked front line to get home.  Others having seen the disintegration of the Soviet army, in resignation, began to surrender on mass.  Still others out of outright hatred for the Bolsheviks surrendered willingly.  Nothing good awaited them in German captivity, mostly execution or starvation.  It did not take long for those still hiding in forests to find out what the Germans are doing with the prisoners.  Instead of almost certain death in German captivity, they decided to hold out in the forest as long as they can.  Those were in fact the first, the avante garde of the later numerous Soviet and pro Soviet partisans that the forest of Eastern Europe were teeming with during the German Soviet campaign.  On a hot late July day of 1941, as I was working with my group on a stretch of road, from the forest appeared two young men dressed in Soviet military uniforms.  They looked as if they slept in their uniforms on the ground a long time and ate very little.  Finding out that we were Jews and not any danger to them they asked us the direction east and which side roads they should take to avoid Germans.  Having received our instructions, they continued not through the forest but along the narrow clearing between the road and the forest.  No more than ten minutes later along comes a local policeman on a bicycle, whom we knew for a drunkard and scoundrel from a long time back.  His first name was Tolek.  He peddles his bicycle with his rife on his shoulder.  He passes us by slowly looking at us with a visible superiority.  He continued and disappeared around the bend of the road where the two unarmed Soviet soldiers disappeared.  We hear two shots and a couple minutes later this same Tolek appears coming back in our direction.  Passing us again slowly by with a wide satisfied grin on his face, the face of a cat that just swallowed the canary.  We ask each other, is it possible that this despicable creature would shoot those two young men?  Apparently it also moved the road supervisor, for he got on his bicycle and drove in that direction.  He is back with one comment: a pity, such young men.

A day or two later while working on the road, we notice a long row of horse driven buggies approaching from the direction of Bialowieza.  As they get closer we see they are farmer wagons loaded to capacity with assorted household goods.  As they are escorted by Germans communication with them is difficult and dangerous, yet we did find out that they are from villages in the Bialowieza forest, that they were ordered to load up their wagons with all they can take along, leaving everything else behind.  The Germans did not waste time in taking for themselves their cattle, other livestock and anything else they can use.  At the end setting the village on fire.  The escorting Germans were riding on bicycles and it was easy for them to stop for a bit of “fun” with us, the Jews.  The expulsion of entire villages became a daily occurrence. Slowly we were finding out that the Germans suspected them of giving food and help to the remnants of the Soviet soldiers still hiding in the forests, mainly in the largest in central Europe, the Bialowieza Forest.  A few days later we hear that the Jews of Bialowieza have been expelled, supposedly to Pruzany.  The question arose whether we too will share in the fate of Bialowieza Jews and the mood became even more oppressive.   Everyone was wondering as to what will come next.  Right after the army stopped marching by and the supposedly civilian administration took over, there was not a day that did not bring a new decree.

The Gestapo headquarters for our district was situated in Biala-Podlask, a few kilometers west of the River Bug, by car a couple hours to us.  But the immediate authority over us was in the hands of the German police, so called “Shutz-Politzei” (protection police) which was situated in Bialowieza, 35 kilometers from Shershev.  They got into the practice to come by truck, suddenly and unannounced, park in front of a couple Jewish homes and with the help of the local police used to load up everything in those homes at the same time murderously beating the inhabitants.  They did not stop house-by-house, but at random picking on houses in different streets, thus keeping everybody in constant suspense and fear.  There were times when the leadership from Biala-Podlask used to come along.  Then it used to develop into a major operation with many more police and trucks.  They used to round up as many Jews, men, women, children as they could into the market square.  There, they used to pick out the men, tormenting and torturing them with exercise and what they called gymnastics, kicking them with their boots, beating them with clubs and rifle butts, in the process, leaving behind many beaten up and bleeding Jews.  In such cases, those that were working out of town on the highway fared better.  It is possible that in such cases the women and children suffered as much if not more than the men having to watch as their husbands, sons, fathers and siblings were going through such torture.  The gathering, or better, the herding of the Jewish population used to be accompanied by rifle shots which were heard way out of town and for us working on the highway, not knowing what was taking place, was very alarming.  As I said the scale of the action when they used to come from Biala-Podlask was immense.  They used to drive around every street and lane ordering the Jewish population to gather in the market square.  Then go from house to house making sure that there is nobody left at home.  Woe to him or her found hiding in there.  They never entered our house because of the sign “Ortscommendantur” assuming that there are no Jews living there yet my mother used to go out with the children into the square not wanting to risk being discovered at home.  My father knowing what is awaiting him in the square used to hide in the wood shed.  Working on the highway I was spared this torment.  Never the less I used to get a day off and it was during such a day that such an attack or invasion took place.

Not wanting to go out into the market square, afraid to remain at home, I quickly decided to run to “Doynovka.”  Those were marshes that began behind Ostrowiecka Street for kilometers in length and in places bottomless.  My father decided to join me.  I do not know why, for he always used to hide in the wood shed.  Did he feel safer in the marshes or did he want to keep an eye on me?  I never knew.  In the confusion of running, yelling, beating and shooting we managed to make our way through alleys to those swamps.  There lying submerged up to our necks in mud we listened in fear and anxiety to the constant shooting that came from the center of town.  What was taking place in town we did not know but from the yelling, screaming and shooting that reached our ears, we imagined the worst.  I prayed with devotion to G-d, as never before that he should bring my mother, brother, and sisters safe home again.  I even made a vow that if they will all come home safe and sound, I will say my morning prayer every day like a devout Jew.  Slowly the firing subsided and finally ceased.  A couple hours later that seemed like an eternity, at about mid afternoon, we started slowly crawling closer to the center via the Christian homesteads on Ostrowiecka Street.  When we got to the part of the street where the Jewish homes began, we found out that the Germans had already left after a particularly cruel and indeed savage visit.  My father and I ran home to see how my mother, sisters and brother faired after the days ordeal.  From my mother we found out that this time the Germans did not spare the woman and children either.  Lining them up four-five in a row they were threatened with being shot with one bullet per group.  My mother could not stop talking about my middle sister, Sonia, who was then nine years old, as she was pushing herself in front of my mother saying: Mommy, I will stay in front of you this way the Germans will kill me and you will remain alive.  Dear, dear little sister of mine.  You naïve, innocent child of Israel, your cruel fate that evaded you then caught up with you a year and a half later.

That day the Germans singled out the rabbi and the older Jews of the community.  They beat up the rabbi terribly and after ordered him to do all kinds of exercise.  When they saw that his sweat is taking on the color of blood, they put him under the water pump ordering another old Jew to pump the cold water over him.  After conducting searches in some of the nearby Jewish homes and helping themselves to everything of value, they left leaving the Jews wondering as to when they will be back.  We did not have to wait long.  A day or two later, they were back.  The very same as the last time, from Biala-Podlask, but with a much smaller escort.  They immediately called the Jewish committee (Judenratt) telling them that they will be back in five days, and that there better be ready for them two hundred thousand rubles and a kilogram of gold.  The raising of the rubles did not present a problem as they became worthless, but the kilogram of gold did present one in a small and poor shtetl as Shershev.  Men contributed their wedding rings, women the wedding rings and earrings and the needed amount was collected.      Having it all collected a new problem arose.  Where can it be kept safely away from the Bialowieza Germans or the local peasant police? No house was safe as the searches and plunder was conducted at random.  It was decided that the safest place in town is our house, for apparently the Bialowieza Germans could not imagine that in a house with a sign “Ortscommendatur” there might be Jews in it.  And so it was that a suitcase full of rubles and gold was brought into our house where it stayed under my parents bed until two members of the committee came to pick it up on the designated day.  The Germans must have been happy with their haul for they left the town immediately.

Unable to get enough food, be it by barter, exchange or any other way, we were forced to fill our stomachs with anything that was available.  In one of my free from workdays, I and a couple of my friends decided to go to the forest to pick mushrooms.  The part of the forest we went to was only two kilometer out of town and well known to us from our pre war excursions there.  We just got into the forest when we noticed the first Soviet tank.  Approaching it, we could see the heavy massive doors wide open; dozens of shell casings lay about as well as dozens of unexploded shells.  We realized that the farmers from that part of the shtetl closes to the forest detected the tanks as soon as the Germans passed by.  They emptied the shell casings, helping themselves to the gunpowder and having no use for the unexploded shells, they left them behind.  The tanks carried no visible scars of battle attesting to the fact that they were abandoned by the crew.  We came to two conclusions: one, that the tanks ran out of fuel, the second that they realized that the road they have to take in order to retreat to the east, is already in German hands.  They either surrendered or tried to make it on foot.     Looking around we saw over a dozen more tanks undamaged like the first one.  We did not see the machine guns nor their ammunition, which offered three possibilities; one, it could have been taken along by the crew, or by the farmers or by the Germans.  It pained us to see the undamaged tanks that fell into German hands without firing a shot.  To my mind came the words of David: how are the mighty fallen?  Such became the routine in August of 1941.  Most able bodies Jewish men used to report for work at six, bringing with them a shovel, ax or pickax, march out to the highway, three kilometers away, work till six and go home.  There was nobody with a club over us, but the passing by Germans used to stop often for a bit of amusement.  Making us load up the wheelbarrow with rocks or sand to capacity and push it on the rough road on the run, accompanied by beating.  In the shtetl proper the riots by the Bialoweza Germans and local police continued.  Not only were the Jews in whose house the plunder used to take place being beaten up but any Jew noticed on the street by the roaming Germans could expect it too.  As our house was being avoided by the Germans it became a refuge for neighbors, friends and acquaintances.  Just like before the war our store was a gathering place for local Jewish politicians, so now became our house.  Those very same men but now dejected and struck with fear, in quiet voices almost in whisper, they continued to talk politics.  It did not have the same character nor the speculative assumptions of years gone by; it was more like wishful thinking.  Everybody’s hypothesis used to circulate around the shtetl and when it used to come back to the originator or its source it was unrecognizable and at time taken for a fact.  Even dreams used to be interpreted in countless ways, each to ones wish and liking.  In retrospect I am still not sure if our short-lived optimistic interpretations were intended to give hope and encourage others, or is it human nature to fool oneself?  The only outspoken realist was my father’s youngest brother Eli, the veteran of the Polish German campaign, and for his gloomy predictions, he was branded a pessimist.  Despite the visible reality, dark predictions and prophecies, nobody foresaw the fast approaching last days of the five hundred year old Jewish history of Shershev.

The Jews of Shershev tried to explain the expulsion of Bialowieza and Gajnowka Jews, by reason of them living smack in the middle of the forest.   As Shershev was some ten kilometers away, our chances of remaining were much better.  Still the Jews of Shershev began to take precautions.  We reasoned that in case of expulsion we would have to leave everything behind.  It is worthwhile to try and hide some things.  There was the unrealistic hope that the Bolsheviks will return, maybe even over night.  The Germans won’t have time to empty every Jewish home, even with the help of the gentile neighbor.  They certainly won’t have time to look for hidden property.  We knew only too well that our Christian neighbors would be more than happy with our expulsion.  They would be the real beneficiaries.  But maybe even they won’t be able to find every hidden item.  It was up to ever individual’s ingenuity to find hiding places.  We had two big woodsheds in our yard.  Starting with one we dug in it a large hole in which we buried two large wooden chests full with clothing.  Before we lowered the first chest, on the very bottom of the hole, I dug a small hole in which I deposited a small wooden box with my personal mementos, among them to me my most precious possession, my stamp collection.  Having covered it with earth, we put on top the two heavy chests. My reasoning was that if anybody will dig up the chest, they would never think that beneath it another half a shovel of earth might be hiding something else.  After covering the chests with earth and disposing neatly with the rest, we covered the whole spot with a high pile of wood.  Having finished with this wood shed, we did the same in the other.  There we used wooden cases that the vodka used to be shipped in, the same cases in which we buried vodka two years earlier.  Into those cases went in our silver cutlery, the good dishes and a real china tea set which my mother used at very special occasions.  My father bought it years earlier in a splurging mood and other things alike.      We buried it in the same way as in the first shed.

A year or two before the war, my mother bought a black fur coat made from Alaska seal.  She wore it once or twice.  I do not know of anyone in Shershev who had such a coat.  This coat, some of my mother’s dresses, a couple of my father’s suits, we hid under a special hiding place we made under the steps leading to the attic.  It would take an expert to find it.  Leather too was a precious commodity. My father bought a fair amount when the Bolsheviks came in 1939, especially sole leather.  This we shoved in between the double floor in the back vestibule.  From those days of stocking up, we had several pairs of men’s and ladies new shoes.  This went between the roof beams in the attic.  Pertaining to jewelry, my mother had a heavy gold pin consisting of fused together chain like links each two centimeters in diameter and over half a centimeter thick.  From it another chain used to run down in a semi circle connecting to the other end of the pin.  It was a family heirloom left to her by her mother, my grandmother Freida Leah, and a pair of golden earrings.  These two items my mother did not turn in to the German one-kilogram demand.  My father’s golden pocket watch with an inscription in Russian and a long golden chain attached to it.  He used to wear it at special occasions in his vest pocket with the chain dangling across his middle and a handful of Czarist golden coins.  All this went into a glass jar and buried between the outhouse and fence.  The house still seemed to be full, but we did not want to dig up the sheds too much.  It would look suspicious.  To dig in the yard proper, would be ridiculous as the ground used to be to often traversed and trampled to the state that any touch with a shovel would be a give away.  Besides, if we did plan to hide something, we suddenly ran out of time.  Sunday evening, August 24^th 1941, right after dark, a military vehicle parked in front of our house.  Who and how many uniformed Germans there were I do not know, for a Jew did not go out after dark.  Some of the Germans entered the front part, the Ortscommendantur.  Through the wall we could hear loud voices and commands in German but were unable to make out anything due to the thick walls.  About half an hour later we noticed a group of civilians near and in front of our house.  It did not take us long to realize that they were Jews.  My father and I quietly went out to see what is happening.  They turned out to be the members of the Juden Ratt (Jewish community).  They have just been brought together by the newly arrived Germans and ordered to go around to every Jewish home with instructions that every Jewish male without exception between the ages of 16 to 50 should report tomorrow at six in the morning for work.

As uneasy as the Jews of Shershev slept in those nights, the little rest they would have gotten that night was to them denied.  We sat up that night trying unsuccessfully to guess as to what the Germans had in mind to do with us.  Every minute was long but the morning came quickly.  At six all the towns Jewish males were gathered near the shed of the volunteer fire brigade, a total of some four hundred men.  We were surrounded by a detachment of uniformed Germans with the brown cuffs and collars.  The very same that used to come to plunder from Bialoweza and Biala-Podlask.  The so-called “Schutzpolizy.”  A German called out in a loud voice if there is anyone among us who speaks German.  The first to answer was a Jew from Brest-Litowsk who was brought by the Bolsheviks to run the pharmacy in Shershev.  To me he looked over fifty, yet he showed up with us.  In any case he raised his hand and came forwards. The German spoke to him in a loud voice, loud enough for all of us to hear.  We also understood it.  The man repeated it loud and clear in Yiddish with a German intonation, making sure that not only we Jews understood, but the Germans too. Apparently, something was not clear to one of us who, not realizing the severity of the situation, interrupted the interpreter with a question.  A German barked at him with these words: “Hold your snout accursed Jew.”  The German decree was as follows:  We, the men, are to go home and bring back with us our families, all the woman, children, young and old, infirm.  Whoever will be found home will be shot.  The women shall take with them food for two days.  As we Jews are being taken to a labor camp where the men will work.  In return we will receive a roof over our heads and food.

For the past two weeks, since the expulsion of Wjalowieza and Gajnowka, the possibility of such a moment was in the back of our minds, yet when it happened, it came as an unbearable shock.  What is going to be with us, what conditions will there be in that camp?  Will there be anybody to look after the old and sick or will the Germans let them expire without medication?  Will we get clothes now that the winter is approaching? Will we be permitted to move about?  Will we get enough food or go hungry?  Suddenly, heaves fell on us.  What is happening to us?  Why and for what sins?  What have we done to deserve such punishment?  My two little sisters and brother are looking at us and cannot comprehend what is going on.  What does it mean to leave the house and not to be able to return?  Not to come back to their beds at night? The Germans are taking us somewhere, where to and why?  My mother looks at the children and weeps bitterly.  It grieves me deeply to see my mother cry.  My heart aches as much watching my mother cry as from the misfortune that befalls us and maybe more.   We don’t even try to comfort one another.  We just stay with weighted-down heavy hearts.  There is no time to lose, the sun is up and it is warm already.  My mother is the more realistic of us all.  She tells us to put on a lot of clothing.  I put on two suits, one on top of the other besides the extra couple sets of underwear.  On top of all this I put on a three quarter length winter coat.  My mother and sister Sheva are helping the little ones to get dressed.  The crowd is already gathering in the market place right in front of our house.  My mother prepared a small bundle for each of the children including my sister Sheva and for herself.  My father and I do not dare take anything.  We do as we are told by the Germans.  My father takes an ax and I take a shovel.  We leave the house together my father locks the door putting the key in his pocket.  Outside we gather separately.  The men each with an ax, a shovel or a pick ax to one side, the women, children and old people to the other.  The loud crying of the children and subdued weeping of the women can be heard all around as there is an unusual silence around.  Nothing looks real, for these very Germans that used to come to plunder, terrorize us yelling and shooting several times a week are now silent, as if they themselves are ashamed of their unholy deed.  It is ten o’clock the entire Jewish community has gathered.  I see sick old people lying stretched out on the cobblestone square.  We take the German warning seriously.  I looked around and made a decision to stop being a boy and act like a man.

We heard a command to form a column three abreast.  In that part of the square was a well unused for my time. We were being led past the well and ordered to dispose of our tools, except for ten men that are told to carry shovels.  The order to throw away our tools puzzled me.  What good are we without tools; unless the place we are going to has better ones.  Still I felt uneasiness.  We were led out of the square into Mostowa Street followed by the voices of the crying children and loud wailing of the women.  The street, the main street entirely Jewish is empty.  We march in the middle of the street escorted on either side by the very same brown-cuffed shutz polzei.  I looked around at the homes in which Jews lived for generations, for as long as Shershev existed over five hundred years.  Nobody is looking out the windows.  One does not see the Jews that used to busy themselves this time of year in their gardens.  They are marching now with me to an unknown future, leaving behind everything they toiled for a lifetime and the generations before them.  We came to the end of Mostowa Street and beginning of Pruzaner Street which except for the first few Jewish homes is entirely a Christian one.  Here, just like the Jewish street, this one was empty too.  It looked as if the fear of the Germans actions affected them too.  Here and there a pair of eyes looked out through a curtain.  I wondered if it is really the fear of the Germans that drove them behind the curtains or are they hiding their smiles of contentment derived from our misfortune.  We left the shtetl behind.  A few hundred meters further we were ordered to stop.  The Germans picked out a couple dozen younger boys taking them to the end of the column. They were told to lead the German bicycles by hand.  The officer in charge announces in a loud voice that if any one of us will escape or even attempt to escape twenty-five of us will be shot.  We know the Germans and take his word for it.  We hear a command to go forward.  The Germans march along us on either side. Some of them are bending down and picking up heavy sticks, others are taking their rifles off their shoulders.  We are ordered to march in step, whoever does not will receive blows with a stick or rifle butt.  But how can you march in step when the German near you yells “right” and the one two meters in front or behind you yells  “left” or the one on your side yells “one” meaning left.  The sticks, clubs or rifle butts start falling over us.  The Germans are not particular where the stick or rifle butt falls.  It can be the head, shoulder or back.  Neither are they satisfied with hitting you once.  When they let go of you, you are already beaten to a pulp.  We are perplexed over what is happening.  In town they conducted themselves towards us almost humanely for Germans.  Have they brought us here to beat us senseless?  How can they expect to get any work out of us?  Another hour like this and nobody will be in condition to work.  A thought comes to my mind; maybe they are not taking us to work at all.  They just fooled us all in order to give us a good beating.  If so, what will happen to the woman, the children, and the old we left behind.  The old that were laying half dead on the cobble stoned square?  I am not the only one with such thoughts.  I can see it in other despairing faces.  I hear others being beaten mercilessly yelling “Shima Isroel” (Hear o Israel, the last words Jewish martyrs utter before expiring).  I too am in despair and mad at my G-d for letting it happen.

The cries of “Shima Isroel” became louder and more frequent.  In my hopelessness I think to myself, “Yes, yes, a lot of good can do you now the Shima Isroel.”  We are ordered to sing.  How does one make four hundred frightened confused and constantly being beaten men sing.  The beatings become more savage.  We begin to sing so to say, each his own song. It was a horrible sound carried from four hundred throats that could have chilled the blood in any human vein or frightened Satan in his lair, but not the Nazi executioners.  How does one describe such a picture where several hundred men are being forcibly driven out of their homes, torn apart from their families being led on a road to an unknown fate yelling (supposedly singing) on top of their voices and being mercilessly beaten by raging mad Germans.  We are overtaken by a jeep that passes us, so very, very slowly.  The passengers are officers of the very same brown-cuffed police.  One with the most insignias (badges) seems to be in charge.  He looks older than the others.  He looks at every face.  Having come to the very front of the column, the jeep turns around coming towards us at a crawl.  Now he can see every one of us and is scrutinizing every face.  He recognizes somebody. It is Yaakov-Meir KABIZECKY, a member of the committee.  The jeep stops, the officer gets out and we too are ordered to stop.  Yaakov-Meir is taken out of the line and brought to face the officer who asks him in a loud voice: Have you got leather today?  I hear whispering that this is the big shot from Bialy-Podlask and was in Shershev several days earlier demanding leather, which the committee could not deliver.  Now in parting he decided to have a bit of fun with the Jews.  Not waiting for an answer he started beating him mercilessly.  That Yaakov-Meir was not forty years yet, a tall and strong man who could withstand a beating.  The Germans kept on hitting him until he ran out of steam, so they let him go.  Yaakov-Meir’s neck was bleeding badly.  Quickly running into the column, he positioned himself between two tall men putting up his collar.  When the German caught his second wind, he began looking for him again.  He drove up and down the column several times but did not find him. The jeep pulled away. 

We resumed our march.  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we were ordered to stop, set down on the road cross-legged and look straight ahead.  Except for the screaming of the Germans or the thump of a stick over a Jewish back, there was a total silence on the road or on the surrounding fields.  Suddenly the silence was shattered by a single shot.  The ten men with the shovels were called to the rear where we could all hear the order to dig a hole.  Now it became clear to us the reason ten men were ordered to take along shovels as we left Shershev.  The first victim of the march was Avrom Shlomo’s (Chinkeles) son, whose name nobody knew.  We called or referred to him by his nickname “Kulie” (Polish-Russian for lame or limping) having been born with a deformed leg and was limping noticeably.  His father died years before, leaving behind a wife and several children.  They lived in a little house without floors at the end of an ally near the swamps.  They had no visible source of income and lived from alms.  Dressing in discarded clothing or rags that even the poor Jews of Shershev would not wear.  Their poverty was beyond imagination.  He was not yet twenty years old, but because of his impediment, he could not keep up with us and was disposed off in Nazi style.  As soon as the diggers covered the grave, which too was done under constant beating, we resumed the march.  We did not have to march long before somebody else unable to keep up with us fell.  He was shot and the burial procedure repeated itself.  While we, the marchers used to catch our breath during a burial, the ones with the shovels had no rest at all.  Just the opposite, they worked hard at digging while they were being beaten.  The day was a sunny and a hot one for the 25^th of August and we were dressed for December.  It seemed that even the heat of the day was against us.  Still nobody wanted to discard the outer clothes, desperately hoping that we are being led to a work camp.  We made a couple more stops that morning to bury our dead.  Shortly after midday came a sudden order to get off the road to one side, sit down on the embankment with our backs to the road and not dare to look behind.  A minute or two later we heard passing trucks from which ear piercing screams from woman and children could be heard.  Those were our families we left behind in Shershev.  Our mothers, and grandmothers, sisters and brothers, young and old were being driven somewhere.  They, noticing us, cried out to us but we were not permitted to look at them.  As soon as the truck passed, we continued the march stopping only to bury our dead every half hour or so.  I was wondering as who will tire sooner, will it be us from receiving so many blows or will it be them from constant hitting us.  How can creatures like them go on all day long beating and shooting people that they have never seen or known? 

In mid afternoon we reached Pruzany.  There at the outskirts of town at the fork roads leading to Kobryner and Seltzer Streets on the green meadow, we collapsed broken physically and mentally.  The Germans left several of them to guard us while the others went to eat.  Jews from Pruzany came to see us but we were not permitted to get close to each other.  To say something aloud, one risked receiving a good beating.  My father’s brother and sister came out to literally look at us, no more than that.  After an hour or so we continued our march. Until now we all hung on to our extra clothing we were wearing, but in the mid afternoon, battered, exhausted, thirsty and at the end of any hope, some began to discard part of it.  Mostly the older among us who valued it more than the young did it in the hope of easing the march and maybe save their lives.  During those hopeless hours when one of us turned his head and looked back, one could see strewn along the road items of clothing. To an uninformed by passer, it might have looked as if the column of marching Jews are deliberately leaving behind markers in order to find their way back home.  Sadly, if one would have come to such a conclusion, one would be grossly mistaken.  Those were Jews of Shershev who were, by force, violently torn away from their families and homes a few short hours earlier and now are voluntarily disposing of the last of their possessions, literally, the shirts of their backs.  The march was not getting any easier.  Anyone who fell and could not get up or got up to join the march only to fall again was shot.  The worst were the few men with shovels who had no rest at all.  They soon realized that they can’t keep it up for much longer and when a German was not looking, used to drop their shovels and continue marching.  The Germans did not make much of it, just pointed a finger at the one nearest to the shovel barking, “pick it up”.

At about six in the afternoon we were led off the main road several hundred meters into a farmers large homestead.  Its yard was large and overgrown with grass.  In the middle of the yard was a well.  We were ordered to form a single line for water.  While some of the Germans were watching us, the others gathered near the well and as we were approaching singly for a drink, the searched us.  First we were told to empty the pockets, warning us that if one will hide something from them, he will be shot.  In this we had no doubt and gave them everything.  They took everything, even our passports.  Exhausted we stood in line which seemed not to move.  The Germans were thorough searchers.  Whatever money we had hidden or sewn into our clothes we gave them.  One of the diggers running by me, noticing that no German is watching inconspicuously let his shovel drop.  Another German passing by saw the shovel, looking at me hissed, “pick it up”.  No sooner did I pick up the shovel when another one went by motioning to me to follow him.  I joined a group of five others and the six of us were taken behind a farm building where we were told to dig a hole.  For six men to dig, there had to be room and the hole was wider than needed for one body.  What made us very uneasy was the fact that they took only six diggers and there was no body.  For whom then are we digging the grave?  Now I also felt the taste of being a digger.  The three Germans lowered their rifle butt over any back that tried to straighten up. I don’t know if it was due to the hard labor, extra clothing or the fear of digging my own grave, that I perspired so much that my top winter coat was wet.  I noticed the others were just as wet.

When the hole was finished, we were ordered to lie in a row face down.  I was sure that those were my last seconds and I remember thinking to myself that death is not so terrible.  Soon I will get a bullet in my head and my world with its suffering will end. But should I be spared for some reason, I will never fear death any more.  With such “lofty” thoughts, I became aware of other voices.  I heard the command “throw him in”, then “get lost”, followed by a shot.  We were ordered to get up and fill in the hole.  I looked in and see a well-acquainted man by the name of Moishe GLESER who was married to Sara a year ago and a father of an infant.  He fell apparently at the entrance to the farm and died instantly for the bullet that entered below his right eye tore off a piece of his cheek but neither the torn cheek nor that hanging part of the face was bleeding.  We covered him fast and one of the Germans led us straight to the head of the line to drink.  But before we were permitted to drink we were thoroughly searched, taking from me every penny my parents gave me before leaving home, including my passport.  For the record, it was U.S. currency that we all divided up.  By the time they were through with us the sun began to set and they started driving us into the barn.  I will say that there was plenty of room for all of us to stay but very few found a space to sit down.  As a result the majority spent the night on their feet.

As they closed the barn door behind us my father said to me: If they want to get rid of us now all they need is one match.  In reality he was right, for the thatched room would catch fire like a tinderbox engulfing the building with us inside.  However they did not.  Instead at daybreak they drove us outside in pouring rain, lining us up like the previous day ordering us to march.  Apparently the idea of marching along a column of Jews in rain cursing and beating them did not appeal to the Nazis, so we were ordered to get off the road and march in the ditch along it.  By then the ditch was filling up nicely and we  were marching in water anywhere from ankle to knee deep.  For us it turned out to be a momentary blessing for the Germans marching on the road could not reach us with their clubs or rifle butts.  It was too good to last long and at noon the rain stopped and our luck ran out.  We were ordered back on the road.  I want to point out that during all that morning we had not lost a single man.  The Germans wanted to make up for lost time, so they came upon a new idea.  They lined themselves up on both sides along the road for a kilometer or so and ordered us to run under a gantlet of clubs and rifle butts.  We only stopped at the other end of the German line.  Understandably we had a couple of casualties either from a disabling blow or simply unable to run that far for reasons of age, exhaustion or the standing up all night in addition.

Again like the day before, we had to sit down cross-legged until the victims were buried.  This time however, instead of sitting on the dry ground we sat in deep mud.  Those of us who thought that the running is a one time affair were grossly mistaken, for as soon as we got up from the ground we saw the Germans lining up like before.  We ran again and a next time.  With each run the number or casualties kept increasing.  It got to the stage that we did not stop to bury two men.  We were making stops for no less than four or five.  Those that fell were grabbed by the arms and legs by four men and carried along until the stop.  As a rule they were fully conscious and knew clearly what was happening.  One of the drawbacks in running was that if one used to fall the ones behind him could and many times used to trip and at times pile up into a heap.  Here the Germans used to have a ball, trashing the bodies with all their might.  If one noticed the pile up, he used to avoid it by running around it but thus exposing himself to additional blows.  Those on the bottom of such a heap, used to be so trampled that they were unable to get up and by it seal their faith.  It suddenly dawned on me that my father at 48 being one of the older men among us might fall or trip over someone.  I made my way to the rear of the column from where running forwards I would notice him should he be in trouble.  My decision was a timely one.  I barely covered a couple hundred meters when I notice people falling one over the other creating a pile up.  I took a good look and noticed my father almost at the bottom of the heap.  I do not know where I found the strength, but I stopped in the middle of the running column, anchoring my feet in the muddy ground I held back those behind me.  They had no choice but run around me.  Quickly I lifted my father putting his left arm over my shoulder I wrapped my right arm over his waist.  I was protecting him from the left side.  As we had to be three abreast and everybody in the panic was on his own, a third man joined us.  Thus I have succeeded in positioning my father in the middle, the safest of three places.  However holding my father I could not move with such agility as before and avoided the blows which so far I succeeded to a great degree.  Suddenly I noticed the end of a club coming towards me very fast.  Maybe if I had a free hand I might have succeeded in protecting my hand, but I did not.  The blow landed on my head and for a moment stunned me, but instinctively I knew I had to run and did so.  I came to my senses immediately and tried to avoid blows as much as I could.  I used to change places with the man on the right side, holding my father’s right arm over my shoulder and his waist with my left.

It happened when I was on that right side that I noticed a German delivering a blow to a young man who fell.  The German was not satisfied with it but continued to hit him.  Meantime running we were getting fast closer to them and I noticed that the victim was Motl SHOCHERMAN, the twenty two year old son of Moishe SHOCHERMAN.  The half a minute running that took us to get to Motl SHOCHERMAN he was already laying motionless by the side of the road.  His tormentor taking him for dead or half dead left him and joined the others chasing us.  Suddenly with his ultimate strength that Motl made a final attempt to try and get up.  Lying on his stomach he succeeded in pushing his upper body up and from his throat came a horrible cry.  At that moment came along another German and with a thick club delivered a blow to his neck that made Motl hands give in and he fell with his face to the ground.  That German left him and continued to run after the column.  Motl tried a second time to prop himself up on his hands, a third German came along, stopped, raised his rifle and pulled the trigger.  It was the first time that I saw a man being shot so close to me and with such affect.  His entire skull was torn off spraying us passers by with droplets of blood.  We continue running for a couple hundred meters more before we stopped to bury our dead.   As soon as we stopped and lined up, out of line comes Moishe SHOCHERMAN, whose name I mentioned much earlier as the conductor of the bus that used to commute between Shershev and Pruzany.  He walks over to the nearest German and says to him in a loud voice:  You have just killed my son kill me too.  He did not have to repeat it.  They obliged immediately.  A thought entered my mind that maybe the Germans plan to finish us all up this way.  During the next run I began to feel that my father is weakening.   As we sat down on the muddy road to bury our dead a German asked if any of us is ready to dispose of our coats.  There were many.  A farmer was stopped and we were told that whoever wants to could put his coat in the buggy.  In no time the buggy was filled to capacity.  The farmer could not believe his luck.  While a hole was being dug for the latest victims, some Germans used to count us.  Others used to look for visibly bleeding men.  If the wound used to be obvious that man used to be taken out to join the others waiting to be shot.  My best friend Lazer ROTENBERG received a blow to the left side of his head and was bleeding noticeably.  A German ordered him out, pointed to a group of laying or sitting men waiting to be shot he told him to join them.  Being two years older than I, Lazer was at that time twenty years old, and in excellent shape, among us always considered a hero.  Except for his brother two years his junior Litek, he had no relatives among the marching.  If anybody among us marchers would try anything, it would be him.

Still following the Germans order, he began to run towards the group of condemned.  Reaching them he did not slow down, passed them by and a few meters further jumping over the ditch that ran along the road he ran into a potato field.  He covered several dozen meters before the Germans realized that he is running away.  Several of them raised their rifles and began to shoot.  We all looked at it praying that he should make it.  He fell.  The Germans lowered their rifles and turned their attention to us.  At that moment he Lazar jumped up and began to run again.  Several precious seconds was lost by the Germans before they realized that he is running and started shooting.  He fell again and again he started to run as soon as they lowered their rifles.  For the third time they opened fire, but by then he was on the other side of the field and disappeared in the adjoining forest.  The officer in command announced loud and clear that twenty-five men will be shot.  But first they had to count us for the umpteenth time that day.  As we sat three in a row, two Germans on either side of us walked along the column hitting the sitting men on either side with a club over the head and continued aloud to count for all to hear.  I do not know if deliberately or not, but every time they used to come to the end of the column something did not correspond and they used to start counting again with the banging over the heads.  The diggers started to dig a large grave.  It was late in the afternoon, and the Germans started to pick the victims.  We were told not to look back while they started to pick those unfortunate from the rear of the column.  All we could hear were the word “you, you”.  Apparently some were unable to get up fast enough, or were not in a hurry to, for who would, so we could also hear the blows and the cursing falling upon those condemned.  I could not resist my curiosity to see whom they are picking.  I lowered my head and turned it around for a few seconds to see that they are picking the older among us.  I became apprehensive over my father, yet I could hear them saying, “you, you”  as they are getting ever closer to us.  They must have stopped no more than two or three rows behind us when they had their quota filled.

Although the German said they would shoot twenty-five men, they picked out fifteen.  Ordering the first five to enter the two by two meters hole they told them to lay face down shoulder to shoulder.  Five Germans fired at the same time into the hole.  The next five men were told to lie on top of the five just shot, face down but in the opposite direction, that is with the faces on the feet or legs of the others.  Another volley and for another five innocent and pain enduring Jewish souls the suffering ended.  The same was done to the last five.  By the time the diggers finished covering the grave, the sun that started to appear a short while earlier was setting.  We were sitting on the ground wondering as to what other surprises the Germans have in store for us.+