MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By
MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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;
The same fate befell all the shtetls in
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
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
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
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),
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
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
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 Pruzany. The 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
A partial answer came on
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
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,
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
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 “
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