Murder Story of Luck Jews at the Bolesław Chrobry Labor Camp

… In December 1942 rumors began circulating that the camp was due to be liquidated. The people [in the camp] began to run away. The Gendarmerie wanted to mislead [the laborers] of our camp. They used to come to [several] workshops supposedly to order things for the [Christmas] holidays. There were some [among the laborers] who said "if they [Germans] wanted to liquidate us, they wouldn't order things from us." On December 11, [1942] the day before the liquidation of the camp, a Catholic [Polish] acquaintance of mine came running to the camp and told me that I must run away [from the camp] since the camp would be liquidated the following day. I asked her how she knew this and she answered: "Mrs. Srorobog, the wife of the Ukrainian mayor of Łuck, came to my father's pastry shop. She told him that her husband was ordered to supply men with shovels for digging pits [at Gurka Polonka] since the Jews from the camp were going to be murdered." Immediately afterwards I said to everyone [in the camp] "anyone who can run away – do so!." Mozes Ranz, my cousin had a hiding place that he had prepared beforehand. He came to take us out of the camp. Unfortunately he was killed [later on]. We packed our belongings quickly and waited for night in order to escape from the camp. The minute that we were about to escape, we [realized that we] had been already surrounded by members of the Gendarmerie and Ukrainian [auxiliary police]. We were desperate and I went up to the roof to evaluate the situation.… I descended from the roof. In the room were my wife, my brother, and my cousin. In the next room Halpern, the [camp] accountant, was dying. When [Josef] Glueck took from him the keys to the storeroom, he understood what [fate] was awaiting him. He didn't want to be killed by those murderers so he took poison. He placed on his chest a letter of evaluation from Feuertag [the former SS commandant of the camp] stating that he was a "necessary Jew".… It was 10 p.m. when all of us were surrounded. They didn't allow us to turn off the lights in the living quarters. The next morning we saw through the window that trucks from [the city of] Równe had arrived [in the camp] and Gendarmerie men and Ukrainian [auxiliary policemen] were sitting in these trucks. The people who were working in the carpentry shop were ordered to get out. The first shots fired by the Jews were heard. Several Gendarmerie men were killed. [The Jews] began to shoot with rifles. Several armored vehicles arrived to assist them [the forces of Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police] and hand-grenades were thrown into the carpentry workshop. Almost all the [Jews] who were in the carpentry workshop died [on the spot]. When the firing stopped, the Germans took the wounded and loaded them onto trucks. Ukrainian [policemen] killed them by beating them with iron bars. Witnessing this, the people in the [next] barrack committed suicide since they didn't want to fall [alive] into their [Ukrainian policemen's] hands. Dr. Wegner and his son took cyanide. Kaszkiet the engineer and Dr. Poturak took poison as well. A kind of madness took hold of people, and those who didn't have poison looked for some other way to commit suicide. Many hanged themselves with rope. The Germans who were standing at some distance [from the building] shouted [to the remaining Jews] "Come out by yourself!" A man whose name was Yankel Koziol came out and said to the Gendarmerie men: "When the [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen leave [this place], all [the Jews] will leave by themselves. The Ukrainian [policemen] were ordered to leave. The people, among whom were my brother and my cousin, began to come out of the shed.… I remained in the barrack. My wife and I went down to the cellar and lay down under sacks of] potatoes. When we began to suffocate, we got up. In the corridor we saw a closet and a niche inside it.…. It was possible to push inside and to stand against the wall.… Through a crack in the closet we could follow what was going on outside. I saw Gendarmerie men breaking in. Ukrainian [auxiliary policemen] were in a great hurry and looted everything they could. Several Jews were found in hiding below the attic and were taken down to the corridor. As punishment they were ordered to remove the dead bodies of Jews from the barrack and then they were shot to death. We remained in the closet until evening. In the evening they [Ukrainian policemen] began to seal the windows and doors. We saw them moving the clothes of those murdered to the kitchen. Some of the clothes were left in the courtyard. When it became dark we wanted to get out of the closet, but we couldn't. The base of the closet was stuck in the crack of the floor and we couldn’t move the closet. Until this point this closet had saved us. The Ukrainian policemen opened the closet several times searching for hiding Jews, but when they saw that it was empty they closed the door. [During those searches] we were standing inside this niche and our hearts were pounding rapidly. Suddenly we heard quiet steps and saw the shadow of a person. He called out in Yiddish and we answered. It was Szulman, a teenager, 13 years old.… He had been hiding … under the staircase. We asked him to move the closet. When he did, we were able to get out.… The night was bright. We descended to the room. We sent Szulman to see whether the [Ukrainian] guards [outside] had moved away. They were marching back and forth [around the barrack]. When they [finally] moved away, we could leave the barrack. The windows had been locked shut with nails. I found an ax and managed to cut down the doorpost. When we were descending the stairs, we met a fourth Jew. His whole body was black since he had been hiding in the cellar under some peat. He was so terrified that he was acting like a madman. We could barely control him since [we were afraid that] that he could easily give us away. Eventually we went out to the courtyard. Szulman lifted and held the barbed wire so that we could get out. Without looking back, the four of us just walked foreward.…