MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

 

Chapter 9.B

     Shortly before Passover of the spring 1942, the Germans decided to reduce the size of the ghetto.  It might have been under pressure from some local Christians whose houses were incorporated into the ghetto therefore we, living in that area had to move out.  We were assigned a room on Nowa Street.  It was a big house belonging to a tailor by the name of Berl CukermanOne room in that house already occupied by a young intelligent couple from Bialystok by the name of Eisenshtein.  The husband was the assistant chief of the ghetto police.  Always busy at his job, his wife used to come into our room for a chat with my mother.  The room we were given was small, especially for seven of us.  My sister Sheva had to move to my uncle Joshua and family who lived on the same street a few houses away.  The owner of the house looked to be close to sixty, a bit bent over from spending a lifetime over a sewing machine.  A socialist by conviction and, like many old time idealists, well informed about politics; a worthy and formidable opponent in a discussion who used to get easily excited.  His wife was the exact opposite, a quiet easy going ordinary woman.  Their oldest daughter in her twenties recently married in the ghetto to a refugee from Bialystok, a handsome, movie star-like young man, who most probably married her in order to have a home. He sure deserved someone much better.

 

 

     Here we were in the heart of the Jewish part of Pruzany.  Our street that was in the middle of three parallel running streets, Pozarna, our street Nova, and Yatka Street.  Here there were streets and alleys where Jews could move about out of sight from prying German eyes.  At that time the Germans had a better idea of how many Jews are there in the ghetto and so did the committee.  With spring the demand for out of the ghetto workers had increased and dodging it became difficult.  I had to appear now every day to be assigned to different tasks.

     Around Pruzany the Soviets started building two military airports.  To do that work they not only employed local people, but they had also brought in a couple thousand convicts, or forced laborers as they called them, from deep in the Soviet Union.  To house those convicts they built a row of wooden barracks.  The convicts succeeded in building several two-story brick buildings, accommodations for the military, before the Bolsheviks abandoned everything and ran.  Now, under the Germans, their Schutz Polizei moved in the brick buildings.  They decided to dismantle the wooden barracks and a large group used to go out from the ghetto to do the job.

 

     The work could have progressed nicely, quietly and quickly, but the Schutz Polizei lived in the nearby brick buildings and they liked t come over to have some fun with the Jews.  The work became a torture chamber.  The barracks were built on a sandy ground.  The main support of the barracks were the heavy posts dug into the ground.  After dismantling the roof and the wall, they heavy posts had to come out of the ground.  I noticed a German supervising a small group of men digging out a post.  He ordered them to dig around the post and let it fall in whichever direction.  When the post fell half way he ordered them to pull it out of the hole.  It was never an easy job, but this one got jammed in its own hole and would not budge.  The German was standing over them with a heavy club beating them continuously.  I do not know where I suddenly got the nerve to do it.  Running over to the being beaten group, I pushed them aside.  Jumping into the hole, I quickly dug to one side of the hole then, jumped out and pushed the post in that direction.  Giving a nod to two more men we put our hands around the post and pulled it out.  Without stopping to straighten my back and fearing the Germans reaction to my intervention, I ran to the next post, quickly digging a narrow, two shovels wide ditch in one side of the post. I pushed the post in that direction.  The post fell promptly in the intended path.  With a couple more men we quickly pulled the post out.  It was only then that I chanced to take a look at the German.  To my surprise he was looking at me approvingly.

 

     The group around soon caught on and started doing it my way to avoid further beatings.  The German comes over to me, sticking the stick in my hand and says; you take care of them.  As soon as he turned away I let the stick slide from my hand.  He noticed it, coming over he picked up the club, while I was getting ready to receive a god threshing.  Instead he simply handed it to me without a word.  Again as soon as he turned away I let it out of my hand.  He noticed it again, but did not come over; making a sign of resignation he turned and walked away.  I believed then and still believe now, that on that day I saved some of my coworkers from a lot of blows, and proud of myself for daring to throw the stick away.  The next day I was assigned to another task at dismantling the barracks.  The Schutz Polizei showed up too.  I could never understand why, was it sheer idleness, was it for amusement or was it plain sadism that they used to come to torture us.  Within two weeks we finished that job and again I began to work each day at another place.

 

      There were two jails in Pruzany from way back.  One was built of bricks and referred to as the red jail.  The other one was covered with plaster and called the white one.  It served the purpose of a jail for many years.  Under the Bolsheviks those two jails served mostly as holding places for criminal offenders as well as political ones.  From there they were sent to Siberia.  Under the Germans, those two jails too served as a gathering point from where the arrested were being dealt with in the Nazi manner.  That is, to say were sent to their eternal rest.  Those arrested, undesirables of the Nazi state consisted of former Soviet collaborators, communists, employs of the Bolshevik party, militia members, Soviet sympathizers and suspected sympathizers.

 

      When in spring of 1942 the activities of the pro Soviet partisans increased, they and their sympathizers, supporters in any way fell in that undesirable category.  They used to be arrested.  The Germans did not need nor did they look for any proof.  All they needed was a name.  It turned into a time to even old scores. A time of revenge, settling old misunderstanding, rivalry and resentments.  All one needed was to go to the Germans and tell them that such and such supports partisans.  Within twenty-four hours that person used to be arrested and brought in one of the two jails. The above was applicable mostly to the non-Jews.  It was a time for the villagers, the farmers, to fear each other and mistrust one another.  The jails used to fill up quickly.  In order to make room for new arrested the old ones had to be disposed of.  For this purpose a couple Gestapo men used to arrive from Biala-Podlask to look over the cases of the detained.  The decision was a simple one guilty or not.  There was no room for uncertainties.  There was no interrogation, no hearing.  It all depended on the whim of the Gestapo representative.   As a rule almost the entire jails used to be emptied after such a Gestapo visit.

 

      Between Pruzany and its railway station Oranczyce was a birch forest, surrounded by a sandy terrain overgrown in spots with bushes.  Near those bushes the Germans decided to make a resting place for all those condemned.  First, a mass grave had to be prepared and it was the Jewish committee that had to send diggers.  Thus the ghetto used to be forewarned about the impending execution.  Not only this but also the number of people that will be shot.  It depended on the size of the grave.  The Nazis had a prescribed measure as follows:  the hole had to be five meters wide and two and a half meters deep.  The length depended on the number of people to be executed.   Each four meters represented fifty human beings.  That s to say that if the mass grave was twelve meters long it meant one hundred and fifty souls.  If sixteen meters long, it represented two hundred.  That hole had to be dug a couple days before the execution.  On the day of the execution a group of thirty men at six in the morning had to be waiting there for the burial.  It was a distance of an hour and a half from the ghetto.  Of course nobody wanted to volunteer for this job, but as it occurred on the average once a month, many got caught.  In one of those spring morning, it was my ill luck to get caught in that group.  In the morning as each group used to march out of the ghetto it was lead by a so-called group leader.  Among them was one by the name of Berl Buchalter whose job it was to lead the groups to dig those mass graves and a day or two later to cover the victims.

 

      I was informed the night before to report to work much earlier, as we had to be at the graveside at six. As we left the ghetto we received a quarter of kilo bread and marched away to our destination.  After the six-kilometer march we turned off the road for a short distance.  On a large sandy uneven clearing there was the hole dug in a sandy soil.  Judging by its length of about twelve meters, translated into the execution of one hundred and fifty human beings.  From the top to the bottom of the hole steps were dug in the sandy ground.  Apparently it must have rained at night, for the steps were partly washed away, which the leader of the group told us to correct.  While we were busy fixing the earthern steps a gendarme or a Schutz Polizei man pulled up on a motorcycle.  He inspected our work at the same time giving our foreman some instructions. As soon as we finished our work the German told us to get behind the bushes some fifty meters away and not to look in the direction of the ditch.  Berl our foreman turns to us and says: Fellows, if you have something to eat do it now. For later you will not feel like it.  We took his advice and ate our bread.

 

     We did not have to wait long.  We heard approaching vehicles.  Not being able to conquer our inquisitiveness, we looked through the bushes.  Half a dozen of the same Shutz Polizei arrived on motorcycles, taking up positions around the hole some twenty meters from its edge.  Behind them pulled up a jeep like vehicle with four men of higher rank, judging by the conduct of the gendarmes, followed by three fully covered trucks.  At the end another vehicle arrived with a dozen or so gendarmes who took up positions around the trucks including the hole.  Looking from behind the bushes, although hiding from the Germans, we could clearly see one truck backing up almost to the rim of the hole.  Two Germans opened the back half door of the truck that fell downwards, while the upper part of the back of the truck remained covered with the tarpaulin obscuring the view of the people standing inside.  The Germans started yelling Raus (Out) and the people started jumping to the ground and being driven down into the hole using the earthen steps which we fixed up an hour earlier.  As soon as the first truck was empty the second and third follow one after another.  The trucks pulled away and the Germans got closer to the rim, but not too close.  We noticed that some of them threw something in the hole.   A second or two later we heard explosions.  Those are grenades Berl BUCHALTER whispered to us.  Frankly, I thought that grenades make a louder bang when they explode.  This was no louder than a rifle shot from up close.  Right after the explosion the Germans approached the hole right to its rim and began to shoot into it.  We understood that they are finishing off the ones that survived the explosions.  They made sure that nobody is alive, for they hang around the pit several more minutes firing in it from time to time.  Finally some of them picked up the shovels we left near the pit and started filling it in.  Their shoveling lasted a minute or two.  Dropping the shovels they got into the vehicles and into the motorcycles and pulled away, leaving behind the one that came first.  That one yelled at us to come over.  This time we did not walk but run.  I did not know what to expect running towards the hole, but for a minute I was thankful to the Germans for throwing the few shovels of sand over the slaughtered bodies.  The hole that was two and a half meters deep was now one and a half; the other meter was taken up by the just murdered mass of humanity whose faces and torn bodies lay under a thin layer of sand just thrown by the murderers themselves.  Each of us grabbed a shovel and started shoveling the sand into the pit.  I noticed that some of the sand was beginning to change color, absorbing blood. A terrible thought came to me:  If so much blood is being absorbed by the sand on top, what must it be like down below?  We were faster than the blood absorbing sand, and soon all traces of the blood was covered with freshly shoveled sand except for the splattered spots on the walls of the not yet full mass grave.  Apparently the German was satisfied with our progress.  He got on the motorcycle and drove away. For the first time we straightened our backs and tried to relax our nerves.  Despite the fact that we wanted to get away from there as soon as we could, we had to stop to collect our thoughts.  We noticed that even though almost half the pit was taken up with bodies, there was not enough sand to fill in the hole.  Was it possible that the rain that fell the night before washed away so much sand?      We had to scrounge around for pieces of wood even tree stumps to fill up the grave.  That day we started out early and got home early too.

 

      A day or two later I was assigned to a group of close to a hundred men, whose job it was to dispose of undetonated Soviet bombs.  Here we had to go some five or six kilometers in one direction on an unfinished railway embankment built by the Soviets.  From there a field road led into a forest where we saw three huge craters each about seventy-five meters in diameter.  How deep those craters were I could not tell, as they were filled up with water up to ten meters below the rim.  To my question on the meaning of those craters, the leader or foreman told me that there were three large Soviet warehouses, full with aviation bombs that the Soviets blew up before they drew back or shall I say before they ran away, on the first day of the war. I recalled the three tremendous explosions I heard in Shershev that memorable Sunday night of June 22, 1941.  Not all the bombs however exploded in those three explosions.  Many were thrown unexploded over a radius of a kilometer all over the forest with the bombs were also thrown around many detonators.  There were four sizes of bombs: fifty, one hundred, two hundred fifty and five hundred kilograms.  The two German air force men that were waiting for us ordered us to collect the strewn around bombs and stock them up in approximately fifty ton piles.  While they were priming them, we were running to the nearest farmstead half a kilometer away.  The airmen used to light a delayed action fuse giving them enough time to run to a previously prepared shelter.  After the explosion we had to run back and start collecting more bombs.  The work was not only dangerous but also very hard.  The fifty kilogram bombs we carried on our shoulders, the one hundred ones were carried by two men on two hammered together boards and the two hundred fifty plus the five hundred ones we had to load on a horse drawn buggy.  But even a fifty-kilogram bomb to carry on a shoulder several hundred meters in a thick forest all day is no easy task.  The two Germans although serving in the air force were very willing to use their sticks generously. One of them a non commissioned officer carried with him a “Schmeiser” (German submachine gun).  At midday they were both warm from yelling and hitting us, the non-comm suddenly points at me and in a loud voice says: “You come here”.   I was wondering as to what have I done now.  The German takes off his machine gun puts it over my shoulder and says; Take care of it, now go to the shelter where w keep the explosives, timers and detonators.  The shelter was part of the ditch at the main road that was covered with branches and earth dumped on top.  I went over there and spent the afternoon walking back and forth along the ditch.  Compared to the others I got off easy that day.  The only annoyance was the swarms of flies that kept on biting.

 

     The next morning going to work I yearned for the yesterday when I got off so easily.  To my surprise as soon as we got there, the non-comm recognized me right away and motioned to me to come over.  This time he gave me his weapon in my hand and motioned with his head in the direction of the shelter.  I was wondering if he will give me the three long bullet magazines he kept on his belt.  He never did.  The next day I already knew my place.  As I was walking back and forth on the road, I was wondering what are the farmers thinking, seeing a young Jew, (as I had a big yellow stars on the front and back of my shirt) walking back and forth without fear nor without interest in them.  Going to and back from work, we used to talk among ourselves about the number of bombs the Germans are now destroying, about the loss and waste of material and what’s more the effort and toil that was put in producing all this that is being now so easily destroyed by the accursed Nazis.  We were talking of the thousands of innocent Soviet citizens that languished in jails, in mines and work camps to produce it all.  So, first the Soviets themselves could blow it up and the rest we are forced to do and all without the loss of a single life of a Nazi.

 

      In between being shifted from one to another job I used to get away with a day or two staying home.  In those off days, and on Sundays, I used to spend a fair amount of time with my two friends Kalman KALBKOF and Itzik MALETZKY.  Even on work days and the days were getting long, after work coming into our room, my mother had always had something for me to eat.  I used to sit down to eat not having the consideration to ask her if she had already eaten or anybody else in the family for this matter.  After eating, I used to lie down for an hour and then go to meet my friends.  It was only later, after I had lost them that I began to regret my actions.  With my friends the topic of our conversation was about rumors of German defeats and new slaughters of Jews.  Unfortunately, the slaughter of Jews was always proven to be correct, while the rumors of German defeats wrong.  For the Germans have just started their summer offensive that took them to the gates of Stalingrad.

 

      That early summer the Germans decided to fence in the ghetto and I happened to be one of many to do the fencing.  First we had to dig posts and then fasten on them a net of barbed wire.  I happened to work on a stretch of fence behind  Rezky Street, where there was a large meadow.  Our foreman said: Look fellows, there is now nobody to supervise.  Lets take in a bit more of the meadow so that the ghetto children will have some place to play.  We did.  When the fence was erected and the German commission came to inspect it, they decided that the ghetto had too much space.  They ordered us to move the fence right behind the street of houses, depriving the ghetto of  the only bit of green grass and empty space.  It was also my task to take down the fence and move it to wherever the Germans wanted.

 

      The committee was informed that the Germans are planning to create a work camp near Bialowieza, fifty kilometers from Pruzany. It was required of them to deliver two hundred able bodied men.  To go out daily from the ghetto to work for the Germans and come back at night is one thing, but to be away for a month or two under the constant supervision of the Schutz Polizei is something else. Understandably, nobody wanted to go.  As the style was in all other ghettos, so too in a smaller degree was it in Pruzany.  To all unpleasant places the committees used to relegate the refugees.  Again I am emphasizing, to a smaller degree, it was in Pruzany.  For this purpose the ghetto committee appointed representatives from all the shtetls that were brought in or came voluntarily to Pruzany.  From Shershev they appointed my grandfather, Yaakov-Kopel.  Now the committee called a meeting of all the representatives demanding from them names of people to be sent to that camp.

 

      After hearing their demand my grandfather told them:  I can give you only one name. He gave them the name of his youngest son, my uncle Eli, the only unmarried son, nine years my senior.  I do not know if it was spitefulness or maybe helplessness that they did put my uncle Eli’s name on top of the list and he was sent to the Bialowiez camp.  The camp or rather the couple barracks they slept in was several kilometers away from Bialowieza in the depth of that ancient forest.  During the day the Schutz Polizei used to supervise them, but before dark the Germans used to get back to Bialowieza, fearing the partisans that were operating in the forest.  And indeed they used to be visited by partisans at night quite often.  It was the partisan’s visits that became the stimulus for a partisan movement in the ghetto. 

 

     During the two months of the camps existence, the workers, that used to get sick from over work or even due to the beating by the police, used to be sent back to the ghetto and replaced by others.  Here I would like to emphasize the effort of the leadership of the ghetto to insure the safety and lives of the inmates of that camp.  For when the work was finished all the two hundred men returned safely to the ghetto, one of the rare cases where Jews returned home after a stint in a German camp.  As a rule, after finishing their task they used to be shot or sent to other camps, if lucky.  Again I would like to stress the fact that the Juden-Rat, or committee did everything in their power to ease the conditions in that camp.  With the help of bribes they used to send out several horse drawn wagons with food weekly and when it was necessary, even with a German escort.  No wonder that when those two hundred men returned, they had nothing but praise for the committee.

 

     That spring of 1942 a couple more Shershev families succeeded in making their way from Drohyczyn and Chomsk to Pruzany. They were driven by hunger and fear.  With the warm weather, the killing of Jews by the Nazi squad and their helpers intensified.  Those newcomers used to bring news from all the shtetls where Shershev Jews were dispersed, like Drohyczyn, Chomsk, Antopol, Iwanowo, Janow and neighboring shtetls.  The news was always depressing and what’s worse, shocking.  We, in Pruzany used to wonder as to how long our luck will hold.  As in every place and at any time there were also in Pruzany, foolish optimists that used to find all kinds of reasons and merits for the Germans to leave us alone. They used to justify their argument by fact that the Germans opened a tannery where good quality leather was produced that the Germans, especially the Gestapo craved.  So that in the ghetto is being opened a workshop in which several dozen Jews will be working at sewing leather around felt boots to be sent for the army on the Soviet front.  After all, there was no secret that the German army suffered from the bitter cold on the Russian front last winter and to those naïve optimists, there was no question that the Germans saw their solution to this problem in the couple dozen Jews sewing on leather on the felt boots.  In the category of such optimist belonged only a few local men, but many more women, or rather housewives to whom the very mention of the word slaughter was criminal.  Although from a psychological point of view and with hindsight we can now rationalize the reason.  That does not mean that the Jews of Pruzany were so naïve or foolish to believe that they will be spared the fate of other Jewish committees.  To the contrary, Pruzany and many intelligent, realistic and lucid Jews were active not only in the Judean-Rat (committee) but in all other social and communal organizations that functioned in the ghetto.  Maybe they felt that this was all that could be done, after all, they have managed so far to steer the ghetto clear of catastrophe, in fact unscathed, while all around the Jewish communities have disappeared from the face of the earth.  Everyday that we survived brought us closer to allied victory.  For us refugees who have already tasted real Nazi atrocities, the future was very bleak.  All we cold hope for was a miracle that refused to happen.

 

      If in winter and early spring a few Shershev Jews succeeded to make it from Pruzany to Drohyczyn and back, it became practically impossible in summer.  The human animal had tasted Jewish blood and realized that it is wanton, worthless, unprotected and cheap.  At time even rewarding to betray, so it started doing it.  A Jew on the road could be stopped by a couple or several villagers who used to take everything from him and hand him over to the Germans or local police.  They in turn used to make that Jew dig his own grave before shooting him.  Some villagers used to satisfy themselves with robbing the Jew and letting him go.  Rare was the case when a villager did not rob him and even rarer when a villager let him in for over night and gave him something to eat.

 

     That late spring of 1942 we found out from a Shershev  Jew that made it from Drohyczyn to Pruzany, that the Germans requested from the Drohyczyn committee two hundred men for a labour camp.  As usual in such cases, the Drohyczyn committee picked the outsiders, in this case, the ones from Shershev.  Before taking the local single men they first took from among the many married men from Shershev. One of those taken was my father’s brother Reuven who left behind in Drohyczyn his wife Chaskha, a daughter Michla, two years my junior, a son Shalom a year older than my brother Liova, and a son Shevach, age five.  My aunt Chashka remained alone to fend for herself and her three children.

 

     The two hundred men were led away from Drohyczyn, never to be seen or heard from again. Peasants from nearby villages told some Jews of Drohyczyn that they saw those men being led into a nearby forest and killed.  From those scarce wanderers we were told that those ghettos are being divided into two separate ones.  They would be called ghetto “A” and ghetto “B”.  In the ghetto “A” will be the members of the committee, the ghetto police, employs of the committee.  All those needed for the functioning of the ghetto and all those employed by the Germans and their cronies.  All others will be living in ghetto “B”, qualified as unproductive and thus not needed.

                                                                                                            

     If ever Jews in their long history of persecution did not need division of any kind it was in those days.  The Germans understood it perfectly and took advantage of it to the fullest.  They succeeded in turning Jew against Jew.  Life long friends became embittered enemies.  Everyone understood that the first victims in case of a Nazi conducted slaughter would be those in ghetto “B”.  Everybody wanted to get in there and the Germans ordered the ghettos to be divided in two even parts.  It was like a drowning passenger boat that has not got enough lifeboats.  How the committees succeeded in carrying it out is in itself a wonder.  A big part in its execution played the fact that the Germans threatened to do it themselves, which nobody wanted, knowing that it would end with the obliteration of the entire ghetto.  After the division of the ghettos, the inhabitants of the ghetto “B” knew that it is only a matter of time before the Germans will come for them.  The Jews of Shershev that were living in those shtetls found themselves mostly in the ghetto “B”, due to their status as refugees.  Having nothing to lose, they tried to get out of the ghetto to make their way to Pruzany.  They of course put their lives in immediate danger, whether by getting out or by being caught on the way.  How many Shershev Jews left their ghettos to make it to Pruzany, nobody will ever know.  Most of them were caught by the local, so called Ukrainian police and shot.   A few made it.

 

      It was from one that made it that we found out that my aunt, my uncle Reuven’s wife and three children were let into ghetto “A” as compensation for her husband that was one of the two hundred men that were taken earlier supposedly to work, but were shot in the nearby forest.    Pruzany as a whole, including the ghetto was, at that time, administrated by a Nazi party member.  He held the title “Birgermeister” (mayor).  There was also an “Orts commendanture”, a military command that dealt exclusively with military affairs.  Its quarters were in the former Polish “Monopoluwka” (Monopol office).  It was a fenced in yard containing several brick buildings on Pocztowa Street, that lead to Pacewicza or “Neghydishe Gass” (Rich Man’s) as it was called in the old days.  It was also the main street in Pruzany.  In the Orts commendanture, beside the administration, the bulk of the buildings were taken up by members of the regular army.  Those were soldiers that used to come from the front for a week or two rest.  Those soldiers did require service and what could be better than unpaid Jewish help?  So a group of Jews used to go there daily to put things in order.  At the beginning a large group but, as things began to fall in place, and the rooms became equipped with iron beds, with cupboards, table and chairs, less and less help was needed.  In the end all they employed were six men.  I became one of them.  Our work consisted of sawing splitting wood, pumping water for the buildings up to a water tower, peeling potatoes for the kitchen, even to scour the large cooking kettles.      Nobody was eager to work there.  There were too many Germans around, too many eyes watching.  I never cheated on work, as long as they did not beat us, I did not mind them watching.   So I remained there. 

 

      “When you chop wood splinters fall,” goes a saying.  With us, it became a reality.  We made ourselves primitive knapsacks in which we used to put in a few chips of wood.  Not being stopped at the exit of the Ortskommendanture at which two soldiers were constantly on guard and not being beaten at the ghetto gate for a few chips of wood, we began to fill our knapsacks more.  Not withstanding the insignificance of a piece of wood at present, it meant a lot more in the ghetto.  To us it meant that my father did not have to walk along the street to his sister and carry back a few chunks of wood in a bag.  At least we became independent as far as wood is concerned.  When I used to come home from work to see my  mother heating up some soup for me with the wood chips I brought the day before, I felt that I am contributing something and wished I could do more.

 

     At work, after the noon meal was cooked, the Germans soldiers used to give us the large kettles to clean.  As  a rule there was something left in them.  After having part of it, as we used to divide it among us six, I used to have twinges of conscience for having eaten the piece of bread I got at the exit from the ghetto.  After all, I could have saved it and brought it home.  Twice we had successful days.  Once they were cooking “bacalla.”  This is salted and dried codfish. It has to be soaked in water for a time before cooking.  The smell is unpleasant during and after cooking.  Many soldiers would not eat it, so the six of us had some to take home.  The second lucky day was when a couple of farmers brought a wooden barrel full of fresh milk and left it uncovered in the middle of the yard.  Nobody bothered with it and after a couple hours it turned sour.  We were told to move it behind some distant buildings.  Before going home we looked in it and noticed a transparent liquid on top and a white cheese like substance on the bottom.  Pouring out the water, we emptied the white substance in our knapsacks that served for a while as a sieve.  We forced the water out as much as possible, took the knapsacks on our back and carried it into the ghetto.  The exit and entry into our ghetto was less restricted than in ghettos I was told about or read about.  By mutual agreement with the Germans, the ghetto committee could and did issue a permit to any Jews to leave and come into the ghetto.  As a rule groups leaving the ghetto were accompanied by a ghetto leader or foreman called a “Column-leader.”  He carried a permit stating the amount of people he had with him.  In our case six men did not warrant a column leader, so we received individual permits.  It meant that each of us could get out or into the ghetto at will.  Still we preferred to enter as a group, hoping  due to the number to discourage the Germans at the gate from searching.  Our knapsacks were not always completely innocent.  Working around in a kitchen we used to succeed at times to put a couple raw potatoes in our pocket.  Sometimes a carrot or a beet.  We used to bring it in under the wood chips.  That does not mean that the Germans did not conduct searched at the ghetto gates.  It is just that we were lucky.

 

       There were often extensive searches conducted not only by the police, the so called Schutz Polizei, but by a group of soldiers, attached to communication, that were stationed in Pruzany.  The name of the officer in charge was LEHIMAN and they were referred to in the ghetto as the LEHIMAN gang.  They were not satisfied with beating up Jews outside the ghetto, but liked to come in and beat up anyone at random.      They, together with the Schutz Polizei, used to stop entire columns on the way to the ghetto, lead them into a yard and order them to get undressed, looking for any excuse.  Woe to the one who even had one potato on him.  At the gate of the Ortscommendantur, where the guard stood, the Germans affixed a billboard on which they used to attach in the morning a couple daily newspapers.   Before going in or on our way out we used go glance quickly at it.  The headlines proclaimed their victories, telling of the new conquest, giving numbers of prisoners that ran in the hundreds of thousands and their imminent taking of Stalingrad.         We knew that some reports and some numbers are a bit inflated, but we also knew that the Germans are in the middle of their 1942 summer offensive and are advancing deeper into the Soviet Union.

 

       In May of 1942 a Pruzany gentile got in touch with my uncle Leibl PINSKY and handed him a letter from his brother Hershl who lived in Warsaw.  I mentioned him much earlier in my memories of 1929.  He was the one that secretly crossed the Soviet Polish border and came to his sister Chashka and his birthplace Shershev.  He left Shershev for Warsaw shortly after and went into trucking business.  In the letter he offered his brother financial aid via that Christian family.  In fact he managed twice to send over a few dollars before July that summer, before the annihilation of the Warsaw ghetto began.  At which time their contact ceased.  I can only assume that Hershl met his end in the gas chambers of  Treblinka where the entire four hundred thousand Jews of Warsaw ghetto were put to death.  His brother, my uncle Leibl and family perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz six months later.  To this event, I will come back later.

 

      Many of those long summer evenings I spent with my friend Kalman KALBKOIF at our friend’s Itzik MALETZKY’s in that small one room house where other young men from Shershev used to gather.  Besides the news from the front and the constant slaughter of Jews, a new topic arose, the question of partisans.  By that time there were in Pruzany a few single men, formerly from Shershev and others from neighboring towns who left their families, parents, sisters, brothers, and young siblings and came to Pruzany, the imaginary safe heaven.  Only a single young person could undertake such a journey.  It was sated with danger.  The passing through or even around unfriendly villages and avoiding the local, so called Ukrainian police took youthful strength, agility and courage.  Among those that used to gather at the MALETZKYS, were two friends of Itzik MALETZKY’s older brother Nochum’s friends;  Shloime ZUBATZKY and Yekutial WAPENSHTEIN.  They have left their families in Chomsk and made their way to Pruzany.  It was they who brought me the news that my close friend Laizer ROTENBERG, who married the previous fall in Chomsk became a father.  We used to gather at the Maletzkys as that small place or rather their little one room house offered us complete privacy, which none of us so called refugees had.  Our conversation was down to earth, but at times led more to like “wishful thinking” than reality.  It used to alleviate our strained nerves from the hopeless realities for a moment.  It was during those moments of hope that we could  forget our plight and we spoke of joining the partisans in the forests.  When during such a conversation , I asked the few young men that came to Pruzany by themselves, why don’t they go into the forest?  They answered that if I will join them, they will go.  Here I want to point out that I was the youngest among them, that they were all older than I by anywhere from one year to three.  To my argument that I still have in the ghetto my parents, sisters and brother, not to mention other relatives while they had nobody here to leave behind,  they responded that most likely I know that it is safe to remain in the ghetto for the time being.  It dawned on me that because my grandfather was officially representing Shershev in the committee, I knew more than they.  How foolish and naïve we all were…….

 

     The railway station Oranczyce that serviced the entire district of  Pruzany was twelve kilometers away.  Next to it was the village of Linowo, in which a few dozen Jewish families lived.  Being so close to Pruzany, some of the families intermarried with members of the Pruzany community.  With the entry of the Germans, a handful of those families moved to Pruzany.  They too were looking for safety in numbers.  The large majority however, remained in place hoping to outride the  German onslaught at home.     Groups of Jewish men used to go daily from Pruzany ghetto to work at the railway station carrying news in either direction.  On a July day when a group returned from that Linowo Oranczyce station they brought the sad news about that morning slaughter of the entire Jewish population of Linowo.  The village was surrounded early that morning.  The Nazis went from house to house with a list of inhabitants.  After collecting the entire Jewish population they were taken to the nearby petrol depot, built two years earlier by the Bolshevics and was surrounded by a barbwire fence.  In that enclosure, in small groups they were lined up at the edge of a prepared hole and shot.  Due to the geographical nearness and the close relation that Pruzany had with Linowo, that news made a shocking and lasting impression on the Pruzany community.  The outpouring of grief surpassed the combined sadness and loss that Pruzany had shown to all other communities slaughtered this far.  This event was too close a call to home.  It gave the impetus for young men to think seriously of going into forests and joining the partisans.

 

     That summer the activities of some partisan groups became quite daring.  Their exaggerated heroic deeds assumed legendary proportions among the villagers and even more so among the closed in Jews of the ghetto.  The Nazis revenge however was swift and merciless.  If a German was killed in or near a village, the following day the village was flooded with Germans who used to round up all the men of the village and simply shoot them.  This action or reaction of the Germans became so routine that, if a German used to be killed, the nearby male villagers used to run away to more distant villages or to the forest.  Staying away a day or two they used to return home.  By  then the Germans had already been in the village and had done their savage work.  Killing the males that did not run away or hoped to prove their non-involvement in the death of a German.  As a rule the Germans did not return a second time to the same village to round up the ones that were in hiding.

           

      On a late July afternoon the ghetto gates on Kobrin and Shershev street opened up and an army of the brown cuffed police that we gave different names like Schutz Polizei, Schupo, Field-Polizei, or Einzatzgruppen, started passing though the ghetto and out the main market square gate to Pacewicza Street on the Arian side.  The ghetto inhabitants estimated them to be a thousand strong .  Such a number of executioners we have not seen before.  Their appearance caused a panic in the ghetto.  Many speculated that they have come for us.  The following morning as the six of us workers at the Ortscommendanture had to cut some wood near the local gendarmerie, we saw them billeted in tents nearby.  When we left work at six, they were still there.  The next day as we showed up to work a non commissioned officer lead us to a warehouse pointing to some buckets with lime, some trowels, crude paint brushes, bags of cement and sand, ordered us to load it on a truck.   Get on it and accompanied by two soldiers we left town.  We were driven in a northeastern direction towards Pruzany on the highway Brest-Litowsk Baranowicz.  We have barely covered five six kilometers when we notice an entire village in flames some two kilometers off the road.  As we kept on driving we noticed one more and again more in the distance.  All together we counted six villages, not only we, but the two soldiers too looked at it with surprise.  A dozen kilometers out of Pruzany, we noticed in the distance a guardhouse.  We came closer and stopped in front of it.  It housed a dozen or so soldiers, two of whom were constantly guarding a wooden bridge that span across a river that bisected the road. We were told to cover the walls with a new layer of cement ad white wash it, as bed bugs got in the cracks of the walls.  After having finished our work in mid afternoon, we set out for home.  On the way back we passed again the burning villages over which heavy smoke was hanging.  Parallel to the closed village but at the roadside we noticed two women sitting and crying.  As we drove by, we yelled to them,  what village is it?  They yelled back:  Rudniky!!  The truck kept on driving.  After getting back into the ghetto, we found out more about that event.

                     

       Like Shershev with its swamp and forests, southwest of Pruzany, so Ruzany northeast of Pruzany had its own swamps and forests.  The river I mentioned in the few lines above, between Ruzany and Pruzany lie in such impenetrable swamps.  On the Pruzany side the swamps bordered on farm land that stretched for kilometers all the way to Pruzany.  On the Ruzany side the foliage and reed covered impenetrable swamps which eventually change into thick forest.  The river and what’s more important the swamp formed a natural obstacle for inexperienced navigators in those treacherous places.  Behind those impenetrable swamps the thick forest became that summer a haven for partisans whose numbers kept on growing.  Many of those partisans being local peasants, knew secret passages in those swamps though which they used to cross at night to attack the Germans and run back the same way.  The Germans unable to chase them, decided on fortifying individual houses in certain villages converting them into defense positions.  This however did not discourage the partisans.  To the contrary it gave them an immobile objective to attack.  And attack they did.  Crossing the swamps at night they attacked the fortified house in the village of Rudniky.  The Germans behind sand bags resisted stubbornly.  The partisans, unable to overcome them, set the wooden house on fire.  Seeing the house in flames, being sure the Germans perished in the fire and not wanting to hang around for fear that the fire will attract the Germans from Pruzany, they went back the way they came to the forest.   

                       

      The Germans were prepared for such an eventuality.  Unknown to the villagers they built a fireproof cellar in the house.  When the house became engulfed in flames, they went into the cellar.  Thus survived, losing only three of the twenty men inside.  Before daybreak all able-bodied men left the village fearing immediate German retribution.  To their surprise no Germans came that day or the following one.  Slowly they all came back to their families and homesteads.  It was a week later, before daybreak, that not only the village of Rudniky but also five nearby villages were surrounded.  The Germans picked out every male sixteen to sixty.  Taking them behind the villages, they shot every one of them.  Ordering the women to load their wagons with whatever they wanted, they drove them out of the villages, setting the buildings on fire.  This crime was committed by those thousand or so brown cuffed Nazi police that passed through the ghetto and those were the fires of the burning six villages that we saw passing by.  Having accomplished their horrible retribution, the German police did not go back to Pruzany.  Most likely there was another such crime waiting or them somewhere else to commit.    

 

     Everyday of the summer 1942 kept on bringing heart rendering news about the Jewish settlements in our area.  From the few miraculously saved individuals that managed to sneak into the Pruzany ghetto we used to hear stories of slaughter of partial or total annihilation of centuries old Jewish communities.      With the Nazi introduction of the two-ghetto system., the annihilation of many communities used to be divided in parts-phases.  First the Nazis slaughtered the “B” ghettos and later the ghettos “A”.  Some ghettos agony was extended for a longer period of time by conducting slaughters or actions as they were called several times.  As an example I will give the town of Kobryn, forty five kilometers from Pruzany where the killers came back four times in 1942 before they killed the last Jew of the community of close to ten thousand souls.  Thus ending a five hundred years history of Jewish Kobryn.  Those are the dates; June 2, 1942 the annihilation of ghetto “B”, June 6, 1942 four thousand more Jews taken to Brona-Gora and killed.   July 25, 1942 two thousand more and on October 14, 1942 the last of ghetto “A” was liquidated.

 

     The same fate befell all the shtetls in Eastern Europe that found themselves under Nazi rule.   I know of the places in my region.  Names so familiar to me that as I read them they sound like a litany with a lament so full of pain that should shatter the heavens.  Names like Bereza-Kartuska, Ruzany, Kosowo, Iwaceicze, Antopol, Horodez, Zabinka, Tewle, Drohyczyn, Janow-Poleski, Motel, Pinsk, Dawidgroder, Olszany, Lchwa, Luniniec, Telechany, Nowy-Dwor, Porozow, Swislocz, Wolkowisk, Slonim, Baranowicze, Nieswiez, Stolbce, And many more.  All within a ‘stones throw” of my shtetl, Shershev, where the over five hundred years old Jewish culture and life was snuffed out forever.  It was from those single, temporary rescued individuals of those places that we learned of what happened there.  What took place in the countless other Jewish communities from which not a single soul escaped, we know nothing but imagined the worst.  Unfortunately we have been proven to be correct.  Unable to travel, always under supervision outside the ghetto, we knew nothing of what has transpired in neighboring shtetls.  In fact we no longer knew how far we are from the nearest Jewish community.

 

      Late that summer the ghetto community received an order to deliver fifty able bodies men to the Schuz-Polizei for transportation to the town of Wolkowisk which was being turned into a  camp. The rare reports we used to get from there were shocking.  Understandably nobody wanted to be sent there. The community made up a list and the fifty men were sent away.  How many among them were from Shershev I do not know, but one of them was Shepsl RUDNITZKY our former wagon drayer (coachman) that used to haul the merchandise for us before the war.  He was the sole provider for his old parents, a hard working honest man.  How they fared the remaining few months until the liquidation of the ghetto Pruzany I do not dare to think.  Somehow we managed to survive that summer on our diet of potatoes, bread and soup.  Of course items like meat, sugar and alike, we had not tasted since we have been expelled from Shershev.  Regretfully my parents, sisters and brother had not tasted it any more until they experienced their last painful breath of air in the gas chambers of Auschwitz

 

      For an unknown to me reason, I started to develop boils.  They mainly appeared on my legs, one at a time.  But as soon as one disappeared, a second used to appear.  A close friend of my sister Sheva, by the name of Reshl SHLOSBERG who worked as an assistant nurse in the ghetto hospital, after hearing from my sister about my problem, said that they deal with it daily and that it is easily cured with an injection of boiled milk.  Somehow my parents got from somewhere a quarter of a glass of milk and she, Reshl, after boiling it, injected it in me.  Lo and behold, the boils disappeared. 

 

     With the approach of the days of Awe, that is the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur (the day of atonement), the final phase of the slaughter of Jews intensified.  This time it was aimed at the remnants of the ghetto “A” the so called by the Germans “useful Jews”, Jewish tradesmen and artisans that worked for the Nazi.  So intense and concentrated by the Nazis was their effort to annihilate the Jews that even their desperate need of the Jewish artisans for the war effort could not save them.  As in previous cases a few or single individuals managed to hide, at times for a week or two without food and get away at night.  Most of them fell victims to supposedly non Jewish friends or real and open treacherous characters who after robbing them of what ever they have still had, either killed those unfortunate helpless individuals themselves or handed them over to the Germans or local police.  From a couple of those that managed to get into our ghetto, we heard that somewhere along the way they were apprehended by Ukrainian police who were threatening them with death using a cold weapon.  Apparently to those hopeless, resigned desperate Jews, death by a bullet was neither the worst thing nor frightening enough.  Interesting that, in that case, after taking from those Jews everything of value, they let them go.  Most likely not wanting to waste the time and effort on rounding up some locals to bury them.  From such strugglers it became known in the ghetto of the annihilation of ghetto “B” in Nieswiez on the seventh day of the month of Av that is July 21, 1942.  A couple of months later we heard that ghetto “A” in Nieswiez was slaughtered.  It took place the ninth day of Cheshvan, October 30, 1942.  In Nieswiez my father had a sister Pola (Pesl) married to Zelik REMEZ, and a son Max age five,  and younger children whom I never knew.  We never heard from them again.

 

     In one of the sheds in the Ortscommendanture where I was working, I found a German map of our district.  I could not get over the accuracy of that map.  It covered a territory from Pinsk in the east to Brest-litowsk in the west.  From Nowogrodek in the north to Rowno in the south,  I found on that map every trail and every footpath.  Not only in the fields but also in every town and village.  Every church, one steeple one that is an Orthodox one and two steeple ones, meaning Catholic.  I hid it on me and brought it into the ghetto.  I shared my find with my friend Kalman KALBKOIF.  A couple days later my friend asked me to lend him the map as his acquaintance would like to copy it.  A couple days later my friend Kalman tells me that last night, his acquaintance left the ghetto with a group of young men for the forest to join the partisans taking with him the original map.  This was the first group of young people that left our ghetto to join the partisans and fight the Germans.  How many they were I do not know.  What I know is that in command of that group was Yosel UNTERSHUR, who took along his wife and Mordchai Bear SEAGAL.  Those two I knew personally.  The one that borrowed my map, Maitchik, I knew indirectly.

 

    The final liquidation of the ghetto in Brest-Litowsk began on October 14/42.  Two men succeeded in getting away and making their way to Pruzany bringing the sad news with them.  Shortly after the ghetto “A” of Drohyczyn, my uncle Reuven’s family and Antopol were annihilated.  Before we had a chance to get over that news, the Jews of Chomsk were slaughtered.  This time the victims in Chomsk were the eighty families from Shershev that settled there after the first slaughter.  Among those eighty Shershev families were my good friend Laizer ROTENBERG, his wife and newly born child, as well as his brother, my friend Litek.  Their parents Yosef and Rayah with their three daughters: Pola, Lisa and Minah, plus my friend’s grandparents Joshua and Bluma PINSKY.  Some one managed to save himself from that, the second slaughter of Chomsk and managed to sneak himself into the ghetto Pruzany to tell the story as it transpired during the final hours of that slaughter.  This is what he told us: 

 

    It was on the second day of “Rosh Hashanah” (Jewish New Year), Sunday, September 13, 1942 early in the morning that Chomsk was surrounded by the Nazi killers.  Herding the Jews together without any pretext, they led them straight to the two mass graves of the original Jews of Chomsk slaughtered fifteen months earlier.  This time however, the Gentile population did not show as much enthusiasm in rounding up the Jews as in the previous time.  The Jews of Shershev had nothing to leave for them.  In fact some of the Gentiles intervened on behalf of the Jewish artisans whom they badly needed.  The Germans obliged by leaving one of each most needed tradesman with his family but picked the ones with the smallest families.  For example:  there were four blacksmith families: Daniel MEISTER, his wife and three children: Yosl, Mayah and Reuven.  Their oldest son Avreml was already married with a baby and was considered another family.  Another blacksmith Srolkah MEISTER had a wife with several children and so was another blacksmith Yudl ZATOTZKY with a wife and children.  The Germans temporary spared Avreml Meister and his family as he had only one child.  The same standard was applied to a male tailor and a seamstress.  For the seamstress they left over my friend’s sister Pola ROTENBERG, a single girl age twenty-three.  As she was of age and single, the Germans would not allot her the privilege of sparing her parents or her two sisters who were still minors.  With the eighty Shershev families in Chomsk were also murdered the dozen young boys and girls of Chomsk that managed to save themselves from the first slaughter.  When it came to the decision about Pola ROTENBERG some kind of disagreement arose between the Nazi killers.  Apparently some of them considered sparing her family.  Others disagreed and were ready to dispose of her too.  She was ordered to undress the same as all others destined to die.  Another Nazi ordered her to get dressed contending that she can be spared alone.  Again she was ordered to undress and then again to dress.  Because of my close friendship with her two brothers, Laizer and Litek, I was also close to their older sister Pola.  As the events of those days are constantly on my mind, I often try to imagine how their older sister Pola felt and what went through her mind as she was being ordered to undress and get dressed in front of the ditch filled with dead and half dead bodies, including bodies of her friends and relatives, as her fate was being decided by the whim of a murderous Nazi officer or soldier.

 

    The older of Pola’s two younger sisters, the fifteen-year-old Lisa, developed into a beautiful and very attractive young woman.  To such an extent that one of the Nazi murderers watching her getting undressed remarked :  What a pity, such a beautiful young woman has to die.  As usual, the Nazis ordered all the Jews to get completely undressed, lining them up at the rim of the ditch they mowed them down.  The five tradesmen with their small immediate families were taken away literally from the rim of the graves and handed over to the local so called Ukrainian for safekeeping.  Those few souls lived together in one house knowing only too well that their time is running out.  They were not under lock and key but neither were they permitted outside.  The police station was across the street from them and they kept an eye on them.      The only single man among them Aaron BIKSTEIN’s younger brother, a top notch men’s tailor, took the chance one night and sneaked out.  He made it to Pruzany.  It was from him that we heard the story in such details.  A couple of weeks later rumors coming from Drohyczn spread in the ghetto that the last four tradesmen and their families in Chomsk were killed.

 

    The month of October 1942 was a particularly vicious one for the remainder of the Jews in our part.  The savagery manifested by the Nazi murderers is beyond description.  I do not know exactly how long it took the Nazis to annihilate the last Jews of Brest-Litowsk, but I know that besides those killed on the spot, the rest were shipped to Treblinka.  What I know for sure is that on October 15, 1942 the Nazis succeeded to slaughter in one day 2500 Jews of the ghetto “A” in Drohyczyn and 2300 Jews of the ghetto “A” in Antopol.  The very same day 2600 Jews of ghetto “A” in Bereza-Kartuska were put to death.  These numbers and dates can give us an idea of the amount of manpower the Nazis allotted for this task and intensity with which they were going about the annihilation of the Jews in Europe.  I am mentioning a couple of places very close to my birthplace and with which I became emotionally connected during those dark days.  I am not mentioning places a bit further from my hometown.  Places that shared the same fate, unknown to me and where not a single soul survived to tell the story.

 

    In the slaughter of Drohyczyn I lost my father’s brother Rueven, his wife Chashka, their three children, Michla age 17, Shalom age 14 and Shevach age 7.  My uncle was torn away from his family some months earlier supposedly to go to a work camp.  That entire lot was shot outside Drohyczyn as soon as they were led out of town.  As far as I remember there were at that time some dozen Shershev families in Antopol and even less in Bereza-Kartuzka.  However in Drohyczyn were somewhere between eighty and a hundred.  Most of them perished in the slaughter of the ghetto “B” on July 26, 1942, the rest with ghetto “A” on October 15, 1942.  The Jews of Shershev being introduced to Nazi brutality right a the start of the war and not having deep roots or commitments to extended families in Drohyczn were more willing to take the risk and run for their lives, despite the next to nil chances of succeeding.  Indeed, a few days after the slaughter of Drohyczyn, six Shershev men and two women made their way into the ghetto Pruzany. It was a distance of one hundred kilometers through forests and field where a Jew would be hunted down like a wild animal.  The names of five of the six men I still remember.  They were: Chaim LEWKOVIGCH, Pinchus WEINER, Leibl LEBERSHTEIN, Avreml KWELMAN and Moishe TILTER.  The women were: Peshkah ZARITZKY and Lola BAUMRITER.  They were indeed sole survivors, leaving behind parents, brothers, sisters and what more, wives and children.  Among the eight were four married people.  I do not want to dwell on the moral aspect of that event, nor am I accusing neither justifying it.  Who am I to do it?  I am leaving it to more qualified people than I or still better to those who were confronted with such a decision.  Apparently some one from outside the ghetto noticed them crawling under the wires and counted them.   For the next day the German gendarmerie came to the ghetto committee demanding the eight Jews.  The usual negotiations started between the committee and the Germans.  This time the Germans were adamant and insisted on the handing over the eight Jews.  No amount of bribery could change their minds.  I remember that unforgettable morning. The committee, being compelled to hand over the eight Shershev Jews, ordered the Jewish ghetto police to execute the job of collecting them.  The police went to the houses in which those just escaped from death Jews were, gathered them in order to hand them over to the Germans.  As far as I know it was the first time the Pruzany ghetto committee was compelled to execute such a repulsive job like handing over Jews into Germans hands.  Up to now they were always successful in redeeming Jews from German hands.  Nor was the Jewish ghetto police conditioned to perform such tasks.  To execute such a job the police needed the moral support as well as the physical presence of some members of the committee that they too lacked.  So the police was accompanied by some members of the committee led by the president himself, Itzik JANOVITCH, respected and admired by all citizens of the ghetto.  They were followed by a crowd of onlookers.  When they approached the house in which Gotl WEINER lived and where his by ten years younger, the eighteen-year-old brother Pinchas who just saved himself from the slaughter of Drohyczyn was hiding,  Gotl stepped out the door approaching the chief of police and said;  I am ready, we can go.

 

     The ghetto Pruzany was not that large that most people were total strangers.  Besides Gotl was known in the ghetto as one of those that risked walking from Pruzany to Chomsk and Drohyczyn and back carrying so called contraband to support his family there.  The chief answered: We did not come for you but for your brother.  Gotl did not accept it insisting to go with them instead of his brother.  The members of the committee got closer and so did the crowd.  Gotl tried to reason with the president saying:  The Germans want a Jew, they do not know who he is or looks like.  Let me go instead and let my brother remain alive.  He is only eighteen years old.  We could all see the tears in his eyes as he pleaded for his brother’s life.  The moment Gotl uttered those words the mask of the play or charade dropped.  Up to now the committee was talking of the eight men being put in jail while further negotiations with the Germans for their release will continue.  Although everybody knew that this time the Germans have something else in mind.  Now with those words everybody realized that there is no need to pretend.  With a trembling voice the president JANOVITCH said;  Gotl, I am not G-d.  I cannot decide who shall live and who shall die.  The Germans want the one who sneaked into the ghetto.  I cannot change the fact.  It is up to G-d and he made the decision.  The eight people were gathered together.  Poor, lonely, forlorn, wretched souls who had already nobody in the world to shed a tear for.  The only one that did have was the eighteen-year-old Pinchas, whose brother was willing to die for him.  The others had left behind their families in Dorhyczyn where death had claimed them only a few days earlier.  The Germans put them in jail.  For several days the committee continued to negotiate their release hoping against hope to succeed in freeing them.

 

     Meantime the two jails in Pruzany were being filled up.  The time came to empty the jails as usually in the Nazi manner.  They ordered the committee to send men to dig a hole in the usual place, six kilometers out of town.   A couple days later they ordered a group of men for the next day to be the grave coverers.  When the men showed up the next morning a German told them to go back to the ghetto.  All kinds of rumors began to circulate in the ghetto.  Like the Germans decided to stop executions or that the allies cautioned the Nazis against killing civilians and alike.  All  those rumors stopped when it became known that the Germans want those men back the next day.  When the next day the men returned back from work to the ghetto they told of the killing of three truck loads of people, among those were the eight Shershev souls.  Why the Germans postponed the execution for a day became known a couple days later when two Shershev Christians came to Pruzany and met a Shershev Jew who was working on the Arian side.  This is what they told him:  A couple of days ago an auto full of Germans drove into town and stopped in front of the house in which Avreml KWELMAN used to live.  Among the disembarking Germans was Avreml KWELMAN who carried with him a shovel.  He led them to a spot near the fence and started digging bringing up a small metal box.  With that box they all got back into the auto and drove away. 

 

   The rest of the story became clear to all after the explanation given by two former members of the Shershev Jewish committee that were now living in the ghetto Pruzany.  They were Chazkl KRUGMAN and Meir KABIZETZKY.  This is what they told us:  When we, the Jews of Shershev, were still living at home the Nazis from Biels-Podlask put a tribute on Shershev Jews in the amount of two hundred thousand rubles and a kilogram of gold.  (I have written about it earlier).  The gold collected from the community was almost twice as much.  It was decided by the committee to keep the extra for an emergency or to be more precise in case the Germans decided to demand more.  The extra gold was divided to three parts and three committee members were entrusted in hiding it in a safe place unknown to the others.  The committee was sworn to secrecy.  One of the three was Avrmel KWELMAN.  The rest is conjecture, but it was believed in the ghetto to be a correct one.  Apparently when the jail inmates were being loaded on the trucks, in desperation knowing where they are being taken, Avreml KWELMAN cried out to the Germans that he will give them gold in they will let him live.  They most likely herded the inmates back into he jail, took him to Shershev where he dug up his part of the gold entrusted to him, driven back to the jail in Pruzany and was executed with the rest a day later.  Among the executed was as I mentioned earlier,  Lola BAUMRITER, the Shershev pharmacist’s daughter and my classmate.  She blossomed in the last couple of years into a beauty and was considered to be not only the most beautiful girl in Shershev but also in the entire district of PruzanyThe darling of every older boy and young men around, among them sons of committee members of the Pruzany ghetto, who tried to save her at any price.  It was all in vain.  As far as we knew, we, the ghetto Pruzany, was an island in a sea of gentiles.  From what we were able to gather the nearest Jewish community was Bialystok, a distance of one hundred and thirty five kilometers away.  No more could one find the Jewish shtetls every ten to fifteen kilometers apart, nor the numerous Jewish settlements still closer in between.  The constant question lay heavy on our mind and hearts:  How much longer will they let us remain alive.

 

    A partial answer came on November 1, 1942.  On that morning as I approached the gate of the ghetto through which I used to go outside to work every morning, I noticed a large crowd at the gate.   Getting closer I saw a detachment of Schutz Polizei outside the ghetto and others patrolling the perimeter around the barbed wire fence of the ghetto.  Without an explanation we were told that nobody is allowed to leave.  The crowd continued to grow in front of that main gate as more and more workers were trying to go to work.  As the office of the committee was on the street opposite the gate people began to assemble in front of that building with the hope of finding out what is happening.  Inside, the committee was having an emergency meeting that was interrupted with the arrival of some Gestapo men.  Entering the meeting hall and finding the entire committee present, the German in charge announced that as of this moment the ghetto is in a transitional state, meaning that it can be transferred at any time.  Commanding to be given the files of every person in the ghetto, they told the committee members to load it onto their auto and pulled away.  Meantime the crowd in front of the committee office had grown to a size that it took up the width of the street on either side of the building, hoping to find out what there is in store for us, speculating and predicting conceivable and inconceivable things.  The first to appear outdoors from the meeting was Zalman SEGAL, the so-called “foreign minister” of the ghetto.  The one that used to conduct negotiations with the Nazis on behalf of the Jewish community behind the barbed wire fence.  His tall slim figure towered over the crowd on the porch.  From a thousand throats cried out the question: what does it mean?  Have they come for us?  Raising his hand in a gesture for silence from his grief laden face and twisted lips came a quiet answer as if he would be talking to himself yet was heard across the entire crowd: What makes us better than the Jews of Brisk or Pinsk or Kobryn?  Have we got more “Zchut-Avot (ancestral merit) than they?  Have we earned it more than they?  His uttered few words were drowned out in an outbreak of laments and cries.  It was not impossible to hear him any more nor did it make any difference to me.  I turned my steps in the direction where I could find my parents, sisters and brother to spend the last few hours of our lives together.

 

     As I imagined, the news had already reached them and every corner of the ghetto before I got to them.  In order to get to our room I had to pass the house owners big living room that he converted into a workshop.  It usually used to be a noisy place.  There was now a total silence.  The owner and family were sitting stuck away in the corner of that big room giving the impression as if the room is empty.  My entry did not make any impression of them.  They barely glanced at me without any sign of recognition.  Without even saying good morning I walked into our room.  There I found my parents, sisters and brother all sitting on the double bed and couch given to us by my aunt Sheindl when we came to Pruzany almost a year earlier.  They too got close to each other with the same empty gaze in their eyes as those in the other room and an expression of resignation and despair on their faces.  Without saying a word I sat down near them sinking in my own thoughts.  First came the realization of the imminent and avoidable death and a despairing desire to live or at least to try and save myself.  I have to admit shamefully that I was thinking of saving myself without thinking of saving my dear ones with whom as far as I was concerned, I was spending the last hours of our lives.  Nobody said a word and if somebody did say something it was without meaning or value.  It was of no importance anymore.  So we sat until noon listening to the outside, which was as silent as a cemetery.  It was entirely different than I have imagined it would be.  I imagined that after surrounding the ghetto the Nazis would enter with shouts and shooting, herding all the inhabitants into the street and from there outside town to be shot.  Meanwhile we did not hear any shots or shooting.  The silence was interrupted by my mother who got up to announce that she is going to prepare something to eat.  Nobody thought of it nor was anybody hungry, but it gave her something to preoccupy herself with.  The lunch that consisted of dry potatoes went down with difficulty.  I decided to see what is going on in the street and at our relatives.  On the way I could see the main ghetto gate.  There were still a lot of Germans there, but none of the Jews that were there earlier that morning.  From a few passersby I found out that the committee made an attempt to communicate with the Germans a couple of times but to no avail. 

 

     At our relatives the mood was the same as in our place, but being a larger crowd they tried to be more preoccupied with daily chores and it seemed to me that the time there passed faster.  I returned to find everybody sitting in the same places as when I left them.  They looked at me with a glimmer of hope that disappeared instantly without me saying a word as it was written all over my face.  After a while we decided to join our relative hoping to find some comfort in dying together and so my immediate and extended family sat there waiting for death, not knowing when and in what form it will come.  We sat there together without sleep not getting undressed all night.  If someone did lie down and dozed off, it was only for a minute to awaken from a nightmare.  Unable to sit all night in one spot, some used to get up and look out the windows or walk nervously around from room to room.  If now so many decades later I have difficulties in recollecting all my thoughts at that time, how can I attempt to describe the thoughts and comments uttered by members of my family then in those desperate and hopeless moments.  It is my belief that if anyone of us had any thought of attempting to save his or her self, it was I.  For my parents, sisters, and brother there was no hope and neither for anybody present there.  What was going on in their minds?  And so the night passed.  At dawn we noticed someone sneaking by with a “Tallit” (prayer shawl) under his arm.  It could only be a Jew on his way to the synagogue.  With my  mother’s encouragement I too went to a nearby synagogue.  To my surprise the synagogue was full.   The crowd started to pray and after the “Shmona-Esray” (the eighteen benedictions, part of the daily prayer),  we recited the “Ovinu Malkeynu” (our father our king, a penitential prayer said on special days).  If I ever recited that prayer and paid attention to it, it was that morning.  Never in my life have I seen a congregation saying this prayer with so much commitment,  with so much dedication, so much devotion and heaven splitting weeping and been part of it.  Leaving the synagogue, I was thinking to myself that G-d surely watched and listened to those fervent prayers.  How can he not answer?  And so passed the second day in tension and fear.

 

     We could not understand the game the Nazis are playing.  What are they waiting for?  Some of us suggested the idea that gentiles are digging for us mass graves outside town but it is not finished yet.     The next morning the synagogues were even more crowded than the previous day and the prayers more fervent if it was at all possible.  During the day few more people appeared in the streets.  True, mostly on the side streets and alleys.  Never the less we began to see people on the street.  And so another day went by.  This time rumors began to circulate that the committee succeeded in making contact with the Germans.  The Germans requested some things and were satisfied with the response.  Finally, on the fourth day a couple Gestapo men showed up at the committee office to announce that the ghetto will remain temporary in its place.  There was however a new list of restrictions.  Among them reduction of rations and the total abolition of exit permits from the ghetto that was so far handled by the committee.  From now on no Jew was permitted to go outside the ghetto unless accompanied by a German guard, nor was a Jew permitted to work outside the ghetto unless under constant guard, regardless if with a group or by himself.  The large numbers of Germans that have been place at the three ghetto entrances have been removed, except for one at each gate and the cordon of guards around the fence had been replaced by patrols.  In order to facilitate in patrolling the ghetto fence, the Germans straightened the fence by cutting away parts of the ghetto, thus squeezing the population tighter.  One of the ghetto main streets, Kobriner Street, was partly cut off including the building housing the committee.  The committee office, which took up an entire building, was forced to move.  They picked my uncle and aunt’s, Leibl and Sheindl PINSKY’s nearby suitable house.  They were given in return a big house on “Rezky” street to accommodate not only my uncle and family but the rest of my extended family like my grandparents and their son, my uncle Eli, his brother Hershl and wife, my father’s cousins from Malecz, Joshua and Zalmen NISELBAUM, with their families, who all lived previously in my uncle’s house.

 

     The ghetto sighed with temporary relief.  We went back to our room with a better feeling than we have left it a few days earlier but also with an increased awareness of our perilous situation.  No longer were our exit permits valid and the six of us, workers at the orstommendanture had to wait for a soldier that used to come daily for us.  We dared not go out of the yard where we worked to read the newspapers plastered on the wall.  Even to go from the orstcommendanture to the wood yard we needed an escort.  Because of it we used to miss the leftovers from the soldiers kitchen, which I missed very much.  Not only did I miss a midday meal, but also regardless what the soldiers left over or would not eat, it was still much better than what we had in the ghetto.  It was only then that I began to wonder if my parents, sisters and brother were having enough food to fill their stomachs.  In general the food situation in the ghetto worsened.  The official ration for the population would never suffice, but the leadership of the ghetto up to now managed to bribe the Germans and bring in more than was the allotment.  Besides, a fair amount of food used to find its way through the fence.  With the new regulations imposed by newly come Gendarmes and the constant patrols around the fence, it became much more difficult to get in extra food.  With me worked a young man from Shershev by the name of Sholem BERENSTEIN, four or five years older than I.  A former Soviet soldier and run away German prisoner of war on whose shoulders lay the responsibility to provide for his mother and younger brother and sisters as his father died shortly before the war.  Necessity drove him to look for some sort of income even more than the other co-workers.

 

      As of lately we began to spend more and more time cutting wood in the closed in storage yard which was at the outskirts of town adjoining the gendarmerie.  The entrance consisted of a wide gate at which was a guardhouse manned by two soldiers who rarely ventured outside, preferring to sit in the heated inside.  There really was no need for them to go outside as nobody was coming in or out except for us.  The presence of Germans in the guardhouse was enough to keep anybody out.  Not that there was nothing to guard.  The Bolshevics left the warehouses there full with spare parts for tanks and other machinery.  I personally saw tank motors in its original packing and who know what else there was in crates and boxes.  Many of those warehouses were under lock and key.  In one was a pile of discarded Soviet weapons, mostly rifles many with broken stocks but otherwise in functional condition.  The two soldiers at the gate paid little attention to us, spending most of the time sleeping on the bed in the guardhouse and keeping the fire going in the cast iron stove.  So Sholem BERENSHTEIN attempted once to go out in the street and come back unnoticed,  or maybe the two ordinary soldiers saw but could not care less.  Whatever the reason , he started doing it making contact with a gentile across the street some fifty meters down the road.  That Christian became the intermediary buying food from farmers and selling it to Shalom BERENSHTEIN.  We in return used to divide it up, hiding it as not to look suspicious at the gate and bring it into the ghetto.  There BERENSHTEIN had his customers to sell it to.  Soon we started to take turns going out that yard and crossing the street to pick up the food.  German vehicles used to pass by on the road, but fortunately none of us was ever caught.  Smuggling potatoes was not a profitable venture, so we concentrated on barley, porridge, grin, beans, peas, even cheese,  butter and a couple of times whole frozen fish, fresh from the river.  Yes, there were a few local Jews in the ghetto that could from time to time permit themselves such a luxury, but a very few and only from time to time and far in between.  We, the risk takers could only look at it and dream.  The following morning Shalom BERENSHTEIN used to bring the money to work where we used to divide the profit among us six, retaining the original investment for further transactions.  Not every day could our supplier provide us with something and not everyday did we spend cutting wood in that place.  To go to our supplier from the ortscommendanture was out of the question.  Those days were lean days for our families and us.

 

      The events of November 1st, that put the ghetto “on notice” has shaken the ghetto from its complacency.  The inhabitants, particularly the young people suddenly realized how perilous the situation is and started to look for ways to save themselves.   Common sense dictated that the only place where a Jew had any chance of survival was in the forest with partisans or on their own as partisans.  But partisans did not accept unarmed men, nor was it easy to find them.  They too were constantly on the move, being hunted by Germans, local police, local Nazi sympathizers and other partisan groups of other persuasions like the Polish and Ukrainian nationalistic groups.  Those groups were at that time fighting the Germans and at the same time fighting each other.  The only thing they had in common was a deep-rooted anti-Semitism and they killed Jews as efficiently as the Nazis.  The only groups that would and at times did accept Jews were the pro Soviet ones. But even among themselves, there was no shortage of anti-Semites that made life for Jews even in their ranks unbearable.  Not to mention the ordinary farmer or peasant from whom all partisans used to take away their produce in order to survive.  No wonder that many peasants looked upon the partisans as ordinary robbers, and many used to denounce them to the Germans.  A Jewish partisan group found it even harder to survive than other groups due to the element of anti-Semitism that was so wide spread among the population and the phenomenon introduced by the Nazis depriving the Jew of any claim to belong to the human race and designating them to total annihilation.  It was only when Jewish groups have proven themselves to as equal or better fighters than non-Jews that they started to be accepted in non-Jewish groups.  The going into the forest had a lot to do with the elements.  If partisans found it difficult to survive in the forest in summer, how much more is it in winter.  All the hunters had to do is to follow the footprints of the on being hunted.  While a wild animal is created to blend in its environment, can outrun the hunter or hide in a hole, a human being can do none of those things.  What about the winter cold, when one is forced to spend night after night under open skies?  Unable to sleep due to cold, fear and hunger.  I still remember my naïve argument in ghetto during that previous summer, namely that I prefer a night in bed in ghetto than wander about in the forest.  If that argument was applicable in summer, how much more relevant was it for winter.  Apparently there were many others of the same opinion in the ghetto.  Especially after November 1st there were many who claimed that we have to prepare ourselves for the forest, but as long as we can remain under a roof, why not?

 

     There were however, those who understood that “we might miss the train” so to say.  That is that the Germans might surprise us by surrounding the ghetto and take all away before we know it.  The insurmountable problem was the procurement of weapons  From time to time one of the workers employed at clearing the former Soviet military barracks used to stumble upon a weapon or a piece of it, a damaged rifle or revolver, a few cartridge or a grenade.  But one could never be sure if it is functional or a dud.  But all those finds were not enough to arm even one group of men.  The effort of procurement weapons had to be intensified and this required organization and time.  But what will happen if the Germans won’t give us the needed time and come for us in the middle of the winter?  Having no choice we will run to the forest anyway.  No matter what the consequences, we will have time to die.  However, to run into the forest we have to  hide out.  The “Evacuation” (clearing the Jews out of ghetto) during which the Germans will look “high and low”, they will make sure there is not a single Jew left in the ghetto.  Only after the Nazis are sure that there are no more Jews left, will they call off the guards around the ghetto fence, which will give those, that survived the searches a chance to sneak out quietly into the forests.  I will say that some of those hiding places were quite ingenious depending on space, availability or materials and finances.     Refugee families here were at a disadvantage.  Living in somebody else’s homes, most of them like us, a family in one room, could do nothing.  There were however, a few refugee families that lived in former Christian homes that were now included in the ghetto.  One of them was the family MALETZKY who lived in a former Christian house that consisted of a three by three meters room and a hallway that served as a wind break and a storage place for furs that they used for heating and cooking.  Whatever and whenever they had something to cook.  The entrance to the room was via the hallway.  The MALETZKY family whom I described much earlier consisted of the mother Braina, her three sons; Nachum, Itzik and Moishe.  The middle one Itzik was my friend.  As that house looked so inconspicuous with no way to hide in it, the three MALETZKY brothers, our friend Kalman KALBKOIF and I decided to dig a hideout there.       We moved the loose turf away a bit from the hallway’s back wall and started digging, before the frost set in.  The digging was done in the evenings after work.  Filling up a sack full of earth, one of us use to take it on our shoulder, walking around the nearby alleys used to let it spill out slowly on the muddy ground where it used to be trampled in the mud in the early morning so it did not attract attention from preying German eyes.  Not having material to support the walls of the hole or the ceiling, it remained nothing but a hole in the ground, narrow on top and wider on the bottom.  To say that it was a hide out would be wrong.  All it could serve, we hoped, was that having covered it with short pieces of wood and spread some turf over it, it could pass a temporary superficial search. We were counting on the simplicity on the innocuousness of that little house, more than the security of the hide out.  We assumed that it was one of the most primitive hideouts in the ghetto, but with our resources what else could we do?

 

      By the way, my close friend Kalman KALBKOIF, his parents and his four sisters too, shared a Christian house with a young local couple by the name of KOTLER.  That couple too built a hide out in their half of the house.  It was a roomy place big enough to accommodate thirty people, with enough food to last for weeks.  It was even rumored that they had a well in there.  Of  course they were locals with an extended family that contributed work and materials.  Yet there were a few exceptions.  My former private Hebrew teacher, Yaakov-Berl EISENSHTEIN, though a refugee himself lived in a former Christian house sharing it with his brother-in-law Itschah LONDON.  Those two families succeeded in building a double wall in one room, which looked to me undetectable, simply a masterpiece of delusion.  Of course they had the privacy of an entire house and yard.  Taking in consideration that Itschah LONDON had two grown sons, blacksmiths by trade and the improvisational ability of Yaakov-Berl, it is no wonder they survived the German searches after the liquidation of the ghetto and lived a life of hunted animals in the forest around Shershev.

 

     A  couple years after the end of the war, I found out that the last of those two families, Yaakov-Berl and his wife were betrayed by Shershev peasants shortly before the arrival of the Red Army.  How the others of those two families perished will remain a secret forever.  How the ghetto continued with its superficial, so called “Normal” existence, is now difficult to understand less so to describe.  I remember when I used to lie down to sleep, my thoughts used to race one after another.  Trying to imagine the last hours of my life, the very last minutes before my death.  Listening to the regular and innocent breathing of my little brother and sisters, the constant turning and twisting of my parents in that very same double bed as my little sibling.  I knew that they too are awake and are hunted by the same thoughts and nightmares as I.  Now, that I am a parents and grandparent I can understand how dark and desperate their thoughts were.  Lying on that narrow couch I used to deliberate and wonder if my digging a hideout for myself was such a good idea. What will my life be worth without my mother if by some miracle I will manage to survive the slaughter of the ghetto.  I will admit that the dearest most precious person in the world to me was my mother and I could not imagine life without her.  How could I have understood then, my parent’s concern for their children? 

 

      Eventually the weariness of the days work used to take over and I used to fall asleep for a few hours, if lucky, only to be awakened by a daylong haunting nightmare.  In the short November and December days, I was the first to arise.  The breakfast used to be prepared by my mother the night before.  It consisted of a small pot containing three-four potatoes and a piece of beet for colour.  She used to cook it in the evening on the small cast iron stove with the wood splinters that I used to bring from work.  That stove while it used made our room unbearably hot in the previous summer, it turned ice cold in the winter when the fire was out.  Getting up at five in the morning I used to throw in a few splinters of wood to warm up the potatoes and at the same time taking the chill off the cold room so that the rest of the family would not find the room so cold getting up as soon as I left.  One morning as I was sitting down to eat the few potatoes, my little sister Sonia, who was not quite eleven years old said to me:  Moishe, give me a potato.  Before I realized what she just said to me, my father responded:  Do not take the potatoes from him.  He is on his way to work for the rest of the day and we are soon going to have breakfast.  Here I committed a sin, one in two that I committed in my life for which I tried to atone ever since, but in vain, for I am the only one that can forgive myself and I cannot.  I did not give her a potato.  All the years, ever since my liberation, I looked for justification for my act, at least an excuse.  All I could come up with in my defense is the fact that all the time in ghetto, we never experienced a shortage of potatoes. I knew it that morning too.

 

     Since beginning of December we stopped going to the Ortscommendanture and spent the entire time cutting wood at the warehouses yard.  Two of us six were separated from the rest as they were registered as mechanics.  One was from Shershev by the name of Zalmen ROSUCHOWSKY, the second was from Kamieniec-Litewk.  They started to work at repairing trucks in the same yard, so we used to see each other constantly.  Their work used to take them in the warehouses of the abandoned Soviet machinery and even in the one with the dysfunctional Soviet weapons.  Some of the warehouses were pad locked and when they needed machine parts from there, one of the two soldiers from the guardhouse used to go with them.   The ghetto youth began desperately to look for weapons, which was unobtainable.   The two mechanics began to eye the discarded ornaments in the warehouse.  We all knew about it.  We used to see it passing by the wide open doors of the warehouses when the two mechanics used to do some work there under the watchful eye of a soldier.  We deliberately did not gaze at the weapons not to arise suspicion by the soldier.  Never the less among ourselves we began to look for a way to get a few rifles out.  An occasion arose sooner than expected.

 

     There lived in Pruzany a man by the name of Itchak HYDAMAK.  By profession a locksmith, plumber and owner of a bicycle repair shop.  In the ghetto he became a jack-of-all-trades who used to go out to do all kinds of repairs for the Germans.  Doing some work for the Germans he needed a certain part.  Knowing that he might find it in the warehouses where we worked, he went there with a German soldier.  Our guard took him around to all the individual stores, including the one with the weapons.  This Itchak HYDAMAK noticed it.  Finding the needed piece of machinery he left with his guard.  Before the week was up he was back with another soldier needing something, which was of course in the warehouses where the weapons were.  This time he came prepared, pulling behind him a sled stacked high with tin stove pipes.  Coming into the guardhouse with his guard he pulled out a bottle of vodka from his pocket and proposed to have a drink with them.  One drink led to a second and the now three soldiers began to feel comfortable.  Not wanting to disturb them, he offered to go by himself for the needed part while they finish the bottle.  Without hesitation one of the soldiers gave him the keys.  He went straight to the warehouse grabbing a couple of rifle he shoved them into the empty pipes pinching both ends.  Taking inconsideration that he was a man in his late forties he moved very swiftly.  Before he realized what was happening, he was inside again for more.  We did not wait for an invitation, just followed him and started grabbing rifles too.  He, HYDAMAK, turned to us saying:  take it fellows, now is your chance.  From great excitement and unexpected wind we all stood in the middle of the yard with the rifles in hand not knowing what to do.  HYDAMAK quickly shoved the other rifles in the stovepipes, squeezing the ends tightly together.

 

        He harnessed himself to the sled and started out in the direction of the gate and guardhouse.  Some one yelled, lets hide it.  We pushed the weapons under a pile of wood.  I do not know how it happened, but some how the two mechanics became the sportsman for the six of us.  I, being the youngest, followed the rest.  They,  the two mechanics, told us that they are in contact with a well-organized group in the ghetto who are in need of weapons.  For the price of eight rifles the group will accept all six of us.  We, and that group knew the rifle stocks are broken.  The Soviets broke them before they surrendered.  The task before us was to get the rifles into the ghetto where carpenters could make new stocks.  But how?

 

      There was a middle age couple in Pruzany by the name of HELMAN.  They had two sons both in the mid twenties.  The eldest name was Joseph and the younger Shmerl, who became a kind of helper attendant to the German Birgermeister (Mayor).  Not so much to the mayor who used to spend a lot of time traveling around with other Nazi big shots in their Nazi uniforms, but to his wife to whom he became a messenger boy between her and the Judenrat.  That is to say that whatever she needed or wanted, she used to send him for it to the Jews and the Jews produced and delivered.  Did they have a choice?  The group partisans, the ones we were to be accepted in, worked out a plan.  To this group belonged this Shmerl HELMAN, the mayor’s messenger boy.  A sled will be made with a double bottom.  Shmerl HELMAN will ask the mayor for some wood, come with that sled to us for the wood.  Some of us would distract the German guard, which will come with him (at that time even Shmerl could not move about outside the ghetto without a guard).  The others will hide the eight rifles in between the double decks and pile on some wood on top.  Then, and only then we will hope for a miracle that he should not get caught at the ghetto gate.  Not only did this Shmerl put his life on the line, but the lives of his family.  Ours, the six of us that worked there and our families and maybe the lives of hundreds or even thousands of other ghetto dwellers.  This Shmerl knew only too well what chance he is taking and how much is riding on his mission.  Yet only a couple days later he appeared at the gate of the yard harnessed to a fairly large sled made in the ghetto by a young but good carpenter with the name of Hershl MORAWSKY.  He is accompanied by a rifle-toting soldier.  They approach us; the soldier looks around and sees piles of wood.  I do not know if because of the cold or sheer boredom, the soldier turns around, walks back the few dozen meters to the guard house and disappears inside.  Now we are alone.  We quickly take off the top covering of the sled put in the rifles, replace the cover and pile on some wood.  We still have time to exchange a few words and wish each other good luck.  The soldier comes out of the guardhouse.  Shmerl hitches himself up to the sled and they leave the yard.  We continue our work but constantly glancing in the direction of the gate expecting at any minute a bunch of Germans to come for us.  In such tension the workday comes to an end.  Our guard appears to lead us back to the ghetto.  Only after passing the gate we realize that our fear was a bit exaggerated, for why would a German gendarme stop to search a single Jew who is constantly under guard and apparently has the German’s permission to take along with him a hand sled with pitiful wood splinters. 

 

     On everybody’s mind pressed the gravity of the situation and the ever-present question:  Will the Germans let us spend the winter in the ghetto?  The barometer of that moment became the factory in the ghetto where workers used to put on leather soles on felt boots for the German army.  Like a clock a big military truck used to bring raw material and take back the already made boots.  It was said that as long as the Germans are bringing material we are safe.  Should they stop the delivery of the raw material it will be a bad omen.   One of the first days of January happened to be a beautiful day and the two soldiers from the guardhouse came out for a stroll in the yard, which bordered with the land on which the soviets were building a military airport.  On that terrain in the Soviet erected buildings were now housed the gendarmerie or to us known as the “Schutz-Polizei” or even the “Brown Cuffs.”  A couple of them strolled over to the two soldiers for a chat.  As they were on the other side of the fence they had to speak loudly. I, being the closest to them could overhear their conversation.  After exchanging a few polite words, their conversation turned to the topic about Jews.  I clearly heard one gendarme saying that if the Jews won’t be taken away by the end of this month (January), they will remain until spring.

 

     I took this remark seriously for it came from reliable sources, a gendarme, who told it to another German who was not concerned with the Jewish problem and could not care one way or the other.  I did not like what I have heard and all that day had a bad premonition and when I got home I shared the news with my parents.  A few days later, we, a part of our supposedly future partisan group, held a meeting in the quarters of the mechanic from Kamieniec-Litewsk. He and his wife lived in Moishe GLOTZER’s cramped attic on Kobriner Street, almost opposite my uncle and aunt’s house which now served as the office of the “Judenrat.”  At that meeting I told them what I overheard at work, hoping to add some urgency to our plans.  Everyone present had his own interpretation and expressed his opinion, but nobody was in a hurry to rush into the forests in January.  To be honest, neither did I.  The meeting ended with no decision and we went home via back alleys.