The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell. Henry R Lew
tanks and marching foot soldiers. Reasonable passage along them was impossible. Every 15 minutes or so a German plane would swoop down over a road to shoot at the fleeing hordes. This converted the landscape into a horrible tangled mess. Human bodies lay scattered among overturned vehicles and dead horses.
When messengers relayed this terrifying news back to Bialystok many people changed their minds about leaving. Nevertheless there were a small number of daring young Jewish men and women who were prepared to take the risk. Some wandered the roads for more than a month and then, exhausted and defeated, finally dragged themselves back to Bialystok. Others became victims of the German military machine. A small number eventually broke through and escaped into deepest Russia and from these a significant proportion survived.
POLES RANSACK THE TOWN.
The lack of authority that prevailed served as a catalyst for many Bialystoker Poles, men, women and children, to commence looting. They broke into the fully stocked Soviet shops and warehouses and soon emptied them of everything they contained. Not satisfied the worst of them started to plunder orphanages and Jewish homes. The few armed Soviet troops who remained behind no longer seemed to deter them. The looting continued for a week until the Germans arrived. A small number of Bialystoker Jews were also involved in the rampage. Most were connected to the underworld, like Chana Yolkeshe, the sister of Yolke thedrayman, who was shot dead robbing a tobacco shop on Lipowa Street.
THE ONWARD MARCH OF THE GERMAN ARMY.
The German army did not march straight into Bialystok. It chose to bypass Bialystok to the south and advance east of it through Brest to Kobrin and on to Slonim.This enabled the Germans to bomb the bridges over the Shchara River. This was a manoeuvre calculated to cut off retreating Soviet troops and force them back into Bialystok. The initial reappearance of these Soviet troops on the streets of Bialystok sparked us up. We thought they were reinforcements. But our hopes were short-lived. It soon became apparent that these were retreating troops who were surrounded with nowhere to go. With this realisation all expectations that our situation would improve evaporated. The days of Soviet rule in Bialystok were clearly numbered and the town lapsed into a depressive mood.
JEWISH BIALYSTOK ON THE THIRD DAY OF THE WAR.
By Tuesday June 24th 1941, the third day of the war, Jews in Bialystok were in a daze as to what to do. They knew full well what was happening on the roads to the east and that to attempt to escape along them was very dangerous.
THE FINAL TWO DAYS OF SOVIET RULE IN BIALYSTOK.
Over the next two days one noticed a sharp decline in the number of visible Soviet military personnel in town. The few who remained scurried frantically from one side of town to the other constantly looking for a means of escape.
By Thursday night there was hardly a Soviet soldier left. Nobody knew where they had gotten to. One man who remained behind seemed frightened of his own shadow. He continued to shoot blindly into the dark. At dawn there was an expectation on the streets that the Nazis would arrive soon.
CHAPTER 4.
NAZI ATROCITIES AGAINST THE BIALYSTOKER JEWS UP TO THE TIME THAT THEY WERE HERDED INTO THE GHETTO.
THE NAZI MURDERERS ENTER BIALYSTOK.
At 9 a.m. on Friday June 27th 1941, the overnight silence was temporarily broken by the rattle of gunfire, and then there was silence again. Hitler’s leading troops entered Mazowiecka Street and moved on into the densely populated Jewish area. This included such streets as Piaskowa, Senders, Suraska, Sucha and the Fish Market and the adjacent lanes and alleyways. It was here that some Nazis threw grenades and incendiary bombs into Jewish houses and set them burning furiously. Other Nazis entered houses, which had not yet caught fire, and started dragging the menfolk out. These men were ordered to raise their arms, and then they were forcefully herded, under a hail of heavy blows, towards and into the Great Synagogue.
THE FIRST MARTYRS DIE IN THE FLAMES OF THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE.
Once the synagogue was fully packed the Nazis surrounded it with a thick cordon of heavily armed troops. Within seconds these killers had thrown gas canisters and grenades into the synagogue and it had burst into flames. This hellfire became the scene in which heart-rending tragedies played themselves out. The choking odour of the burning gas was intolerable and people felt an immediate need to end their suffering. A son hanged his father from a menorah with a trouser belt at the father’s request. Others cut each other’s arteries. One energetic young man climbed up onto a window, knocked out some glass, and entered into a heated verbal exchange with the Nazis. He was shot in the hand and fell down to the ground drenched in blood.
As the fire became more intense and belched off thicker smoke the cordon of Nazi murderers backed away from the building. This provided Bartoczko, the Polish watchman, with an opportunity to open the synagogue’s back door. By risking his life Bartoczko gave ten Jews the opportunity to escape. Included among them was the young man who had climbed up onto the synagogue’s window.
Meanwhile other Nazi murderers were combing the back yards of nearby properties looking for more men. Those they managed to drag out were shot in full view of their wives and children.
Among those who perished in the synagogue were Dr. Krakowski; Note Jacobson, an accountant; Kaplan, a merchant-manufacturer from Kupiecka Street; Aron Zabludowsky, the son of Chaim-Zvi and a well-known chess player in Bialystok; Poliak, who owned the pharmacy by Rabbi’s Street; Alter Steinberg, also known as Alter Chalele, a beloved Bialystoker comedian; Isaac Brenner; Radzinower, the proprietor of the Aquarium Restaurant; Jamnik, the cork manufacturer; Michel Grodzenski and his son and son-in-law; Kaplan, a restaurant proprietor; Byspucki, a merchant; Fuksman, the son of the furniture manufacturer Fuksman; Isaac Lach, a well-known soccer player; Abraham Spektor and his two sons; David Wysocki; and David Lew, the son of Fishel Lew, the Chief Accountant of the Jewish Kehilla or Jewish Community Services in Bialystok.
Among those found shot dead in the streets were the widow and daughter of the former Labour Zionist activist Berel Jaszynowski; the lawyer Gottlieb; and the son-in-law of the pharmacist Kurycki. The body of another lawyer Tespoya, the brother-in-law of the well-known Bialystok real estate owner Baruch Gewin, was found in a garbage bin on Lipowa Street.
THE FEARLESS DEDICATION OF MRS. GITEL CHAJKOWSKI-PLAC.
Sixty little Jewish children were living at the new orphanage on Wesola Street. With little regard for her own safety, and ignoring the fact that it was dangerous for Jews to be on the streets, the long-time Orphanage Director, Mrs. Gitel Chajkowski-Plac, put her life on the line and fought her way through to the orphanage.
Along the way Nazis were rounding up Jews and setting fire to their homes. Close to two thousand Jews were incinerated or shot this day, and despite this, Mrs. Gitel Chajkowski-Plac, fearing no evil, ventured through a valley of the shadow of death to seek out and comfort her charges. When she learnt that the orphanage’s Polish watchman had gone to the Germans to tell them that the orphans were children of hardened Jewish communists, Mrs. Chajkowski-Plac hid them in a cellar up to their necks in water and saved their lives.
Mrs. Chajkowski-Plac was the only person who did not abandon the orphans at this most critical time. Her dedication to the children, at risk to her own life, deserves prominent extolment as an exceptional act of humanity.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF NAZI RULE.
The Nazi army used the minor resistance put up by a small group of Red Army soldiers as an excuse to shower every house in its path with gas and incendiary bombs. Entire streets disappeared into mountains of ash.
This conflagration, which engulfed the Jewish section of the city, continued for twenty-seven hours. When it finally ended at midday on Saturday nearly two thousand Jews had been brutally murdered and over thirty streets, containing a third of the Jewish dwellings in town, had been flattened to the ground. The streets destroyed