Murder Story of Litin Jews at the Military Barracks in Litin

… Then, in the evening… the eve of December 18 [,1941] it was announced that we (i.e. the Jews) should appear on the morning of December 19 at the military barracks with our belongings. Whoever did not appear by the set time would be shot. The SS forces were brought to the town and the local police was reinforced [by policemen] from other towns (Khmelnik). Many people proceeded along the town's streets toward the military barracks. My mother hid with her children in a cellar and did not go to the military barracks. I helped them to close themselves in the cellar, while I myself hid in the loft and from the loft I saw hundreds of Jews - elderly ones, women, and children - with small bundles moving along our street toward the military barracks. Then all was quiet. Suddenly an elderly woman (her name was Khaikele Marems)… her last [married] name was Sandler, appeared from somewhere. A gendarme [German policeman] was walking along the street … and he noticed this woman. He attacked her, shouting why did she not go to the military barracks. She … tried to explain something to him in Yiddish but he shot her at point-blank range as she was moving along the wall. She was motionless there at the wall as if she had sat down to rest. In the afternoon the survivors (Jewish artisans left alive by the Germans to work for them) started to return. Out of the Jewish population of four thousand about three hundred returned from the military barracks….

… It was 1942. Most of Litin's Jews had already been annihilated, shot. Few people remained alive: [these were] skilled workers, artisans who still could be of use to the Germans. The previous evening nothing signalled disaster. There were no rumors, for example, about pits being dug (as was the case on several occasions, when everyone in the ghetto hide wherever he could). No, everything was quiet…. Then the silence was exploded by noise, shouts, the thunder of boots, crying, and unfamiliar speech, not speech, but some roar of a beast. Everyone was driven out of his house. They managed to push me up to the loft. However, what happened happened. They did not manage to remove the ladder. At this time outside people were sorted into "still needed ones" and those who were "unnecessary." My father found himself among the needed ones since he was the only watchmaker in Litin. He, together with [my] mother and my cousin Hosya (at that time his entire family had already been killed - his father at the front, while his mother and older sister, a student, had been shot by the Germans in the first, largest, pogrom) stood in front of the house beside the other Jews who, like them, had not yet been condemned to death. The column of those doomed to death was lined up along the street. These were mainly children and elderly people. Of what use could they possibly be? And at that time the zealous perpetrators of this murder operation (oh that ladder that ill affected my fate!) dragged me and several other children who had climbed up to the loft outside and added us to the general column of those doomed to death. I was 10 years old at that time. For a year already I had been living a nightmare in the ghetto, I had survived several pogroms like this one. I already understood well that nobody came back alive "from there". I struggled to get free, screamed, and wept. The mother could not stand it and came over on her own to the column I was dragged into. After all the houses were "cleansed" of children and other "unnecessary," i.e. "useless" creatures, the column was driven through the entire town to the former military barracks. My mother was walking beside me, holding me by the arm. We walked along Lenin Street past our former house. I never saw cattle being driven to the slaughter, but why were we being driven so? It was impossible for a 10-year-old girl to understand this back then and it is still impossible for me to understand this even now, when I am of very advanced age. The only protest possible for me was to tear the lining of the light jacket I was wearing. This was due to my childish naivety: I didn't want them to have any use from it after I was killed. Further all went according to the technique worked out meticulously by those "first-class" specialists. We were kept standing in an unfinished barracks for minutes or, maybe, it was hours. Time had lost all its meaning. However, Mother managed to say to me: "When you are taken, tell them you are not a kike." "Mother, but what about you?" "I will run away from the pit" Mamma replied. Indeed, I did not look like a Jewish girl. As it turned out, that was enough to save me from being killed. Such a saving idea could have only entered a mother's head. I really believed that my mother would be able to escape from the pit, but unfortunately…. I did everything that I was told by the mother when we were taken out of the barracks and closely guarded. I do not know why but they believed me and put me aside. I clearly heard how [other] children after me also started to claim they were "not kikes." For some reason the voice of one boy still resounds in my ears. But it was to no avail. I myself, terrified, and confused about my home address, was finally taken to the Ukrainian police [station], which was located in the school building. There one policeman recognized me: "She is a daughter of the watchmaker" [he said]. When the policeman brought me back to the ghetto, the survivors looked at me as if I had returned from the other world…

… when the murder squad entered Litin on August 20 [,1941], they started to catch the young people. My father wanted to run away with my brother from work but Chernyavskiy said that they should not worry since [there were working for an] official organization and, even if something happened, he would see that no harm came to them. They stayed there and my father's brother was with them. But all three of them were taken away. It turned out that 57 young people were caught then. They were taken to the building of the old cinema, to which many people were taken. A selection was carried out there: skilled workers - barbers, tailors, and shoemakers - were placed to one side while the youngsters without a trade were left where they were. My father was registered as a skilled worker; he was a tinsmith; his brother and his son remained with the rest of the young people. They were shot in the course of one day on the territory of the military barracks… I remember running after a truck. I was a child, and I did not know anything. They were taken one by one, my brother went first. A young, handsome lad, he waved to me. They were taken into the cinema building and I did not see them anymore… I ran after that truck; they did not take away all of the people in one go, rather they returned for a second and for a third time. I had already noticed where the truck was heading - toward the military barracks. Later, when the truck was going the third time, we saw it enter the same place. I was lying in a policeman's garden, i.e. I did not know he was a policeman, and heard the shots, there was shooting for about half an hour. They were murdered on August 20; my brother was then 17 years old…