Murder Story of Propoysk Jews in an Anti-Tank Trench in Propoysk

Then suddenly a rumor was heard that they [the Jews] had all been rounded up and shot. Only much later did I learn that they had been shot in October. After the war Yakov Isaakovich Breger, who had lived in the town before the war and knew everyone by name, researched the history of the killing of the Jews. He also compiled a list, which was subsequently included in a memorial book. The list had the names of 98 Jews. No one survived: we heard no accounts of anyone being able to hide. After they shot the Jews of Propoysk, they found Jews in the villages after people denounced them. There was a teacher of mathematics named Altukhov, who lived with his Jewish wife somewhere in the countryside. They had two children. After receiving a denunciation, the Germans came after the wife, took her away, and shot her in Propoysk. The children were not around when she was arrested. Afterwards they did not harm the children, Roza and Tolya. People remembered the doctor, Moisei Isaakovich Etninson (in the memorial book his name is spelled Itninson), who was well known in town and already elderly at the time [of the killing]. After the town had been destroyed, all the non-Jews of the town used to say: “When Etninson was alive, there was someone to treat you if you were sick.” He was an extremely good doctor, one who treated almost all the inhabitants of Propoysk. He was shot together with all the other Jews of Propoysk. We hid in the woods, in the swamps, during roundups and then, later, in dugouts that we made with our own hands so that we wouldn’t be caught and sent to Germany. I was warned about planned roundups by a teacher I knew named Vera Ksenzova … and I would then inform all the young women and men I knew. After the war at our school we collected money to erect a monument at the site where the Jews were shot.

... I had two brothers, Yanik who was eight years old and Yefim, who was four, I was already considered old since I was eleven. Father had been called up for combat and, since then, I had heard nothing about him. He was killed. Mother remained with us in the ghetto… On November 5, 1941 the Germans collected all the men, took them out of town, and shot them to death there. On November 14 they collected all the women, including Mother. Basya Smolitskaya told us that they had taken them to gather potatoes but not a single one of them returned from the work. They were shot to death next to the same pit where the men had been killed. Only children remained in the ghetto....