Murder Story of Gorodok Jews at the Yarmolintsy Military Barracks

… For the beginning I would like to relate the story of how all my relatives were killed: my mother, father, brother, sister, and their families as well as [my mother's and father's] brothers, sisters, and their wives and children, over 70 people. All of them were living … near the border between Poland and the USSR… On the second day of the war the Germans were already near this border and several days later they entered this town named Gorodok, to which the Germans drove all the Jews from the nearby towns…. In 1943 [sic for 1942] (the 22nd of the Jewish month of Heshvan) at 3 a.m. the Germans, assisted by Ukrainian policemen, forced old people, women, children out of their homes. [The Germans] collected from the peasants many carts, put some [of the victims] onto them, others went on foot 20 kilometers to the Yarmolintsy railway station. The military barracks were standing empty there and all the Jews… were driven inside without food or water. Near these barracks [several] large pits had been dug. When the Germans and the Ukrainian policemen began to take the people out of these barracks, the people already knew that they were being taken to be shot. So they refused to get out, then several "people" of these bandits entered the building, the Jews captured two of them and didn't let them go alive. Then the Germans set fire to straw in the lower floors of the building in order to smoke up the building where the people were being held. When the people began to suffocate, they had to get out. I was told about this by several eyewitnesses who managed to get out [by climbing down] a drain pipe and to escape from this hell. There, at that site, all my close relatives perished.… I would like to add that when the Jews were taken to the Yarmolintsy railway station, they were told that they were going to be sent to Palestine. The peasants from the nearby towns were already waiting with sacks [for the victims to leave]: when the Jews were taken away, they burst into the [Jewish] houses and took all that had been left, they broke through the walls with a shovel, looking for hidden Jewish valuables.…