Murder Story of Maniewicze Jews at the Horse Graves

… Half an hour afterward I saw, through the cracks in the dairy barn, eight or ten canvas covered vehicles with a swastika painted on them. They drove toward the "Gmina" (council of the area). I didn't know why those vehicles had come. I was terribly afraid. I didn't know what to do, where I should hide? Perhaps downstairs?… Thus, I was running around [the dairy barn] like an insane person without succeeding in finding a hiding place to save myself. My hands and legs were quivering. I couldn't grasp why I was so afraid. A small kitten was running around between my legs…. I was thinking to myself: I wish I could get inside the skin of this cat, or be a mangy dog…. Just not be a Jew. I tried to avoid such stupid thoughts and regain my composure. I focused my attention and again sought a safe place to hide. Suddenly the woman of the house came up to me in tears and pleaded with me to leave the place immediately. "The men", she said "are being taken for work, and the Ukrainian [auxiliary] police announced that if any Jews are found hiding in the houses of residents of the town, the whole family will be killed. Please, leave the dairy barn since you are endangering the lives of my children and my own life." I didn't hesitate for a moment. I immediately climbed down from the attic and left the dairy barn.… It was nine o'clock. The sun, as if ready for a festival, was shining in all its glory that morning.… I remained frozen in place. I still couldn't detach myself from the pleasantness of the sunbeams and from the bright sky. For four week I hadn't seen the sun. I felt like a prisoner who hd been released from jail…. I don’t know how long I was standing there … until the brother of the lady of the house came, breathing heavily in and out and holding a sack under his arm and a sickle on his shoulder. Without stopping, he whispered very quietly: "They [the Germans] are catching… and carrying off … [the Jewish men]. Let's go through the garden to the 'Bochintza' (a side railway), and from there we will go to the fields to harvest some grain for the cows. He showed me his sickle and whispered: "Pinhas, come quickly, all the men had been captured on our street. The Ukrainian policemen and Germans will be here any moment." … "No, I am not going" I replied decisively. Upon my refusal, the neighbor replied with regret: "As you wish, but still listen to me, listen to me and come!," but when he saw that I wasn't moving, he climbed over the fence and disappeared.… Shooting from rifles and cries of "Halt!" were heard, and they were getting closer. I felt, but without fear, that danger was approaching. I went to the room of my neighbor and with difficulty I pulled out two planks, I entered the garden and I put them [back] in place so there would remain no sign of what I had done. I lay down on the ground and crawled between the potato furrows until I reached the back wall of the dairy barn…. There I came across a young Jew who had found a hiding place for himself. Both of us sat bent over without speaking.… Just in front of our hiding place all the Jews from our own and nearby streets had been collected.… When I was sure that we couldn't be seen from the collection point of the Jews, I began following what was going on there. About 50 Jews were lying in rows, face down. One fat, red-faced German was running around the prostrate Jews. The German was wearing a white shirt … and was holding a whip. He beat on the head and face every Jew who had been taken to the collection point. Two members of the Sonderkommando grabbed the arrested person by his legs and head and threw him onto the ground like a slaughtered animal at the slaughterhouse. When [the victim] was on the ground, they began to drag him from side to side until he was lying in a straight line…. Not long afterwards a big truck arrived and several policemen jumped off. With their rifle butts they began beating the people who were lying still, half dead. Afterwards they made them get up and then pushed them onto the truck. Those who couldn't climb up on their own were caught by the soldiers and tossed onto the truck like a log, until the truck was completely packed and it drove away. All that time an awful, disturbing silence hung over us, the silence of a cemetery.… No one spoke or cried…. It seemed that even the shouting of the policemen and the whistling of the bullets were swallowed up in this terrible silence…. Everything was done precisely and quickly, as if a dead father had been taken out of the house and only little orphans were left in the house.…

… On one of those days while we were in the village [near Maniewicze] busy with threshing, a peasant woman who had returned from town came [and told us] that the Germans, with the assistance of Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen, were going through the Jewish houses, grabbing the [Jewish] males, driving them out onto the street and forcing them to lie face down, and all this was done with terrible beatings and tortures, and, from time to time, trucks would arrive [at the site] and load the Jews who were lying down and took them to the [so called] "horse graves" outside the town and there they [the Jews] were ordered to dig pits [sic] and then were shot to death while at the edge of the pit so that they immediately fell into the pits. She burst into tears and added, while still crying: "Though I don't consider them [Jews] human beings, but that is [already] too much. She drove us away out of fear of the Germans.… Despite the curfew, we succeeded in evading the German guards and reaching home. At home it turned out that our father and our brother-in-law, along with over 360 [other] Jews, had been killed. At home they believed that they had been taken for work, but we knew the bitter truth and didn't want to talk about it since we didn't want to sadden our family members and the rest of the Jewish families even more….

… On August 26, 1941, early in the morning, the town was surrounded by German and Ukrainian policemen. They entered the town and began to arrest the Jewish men and take them to the collection point at the garden of the medical clinic, near the train station. That day about 300 men were rounded up. They were beaten cruelly and afterwards they were taken by truck toward the village of Czerewacha. On their arrival at a field plot in the forest, [the site] that we called "the horse graves," the victims were ordered to get off the trucks, to strip naked, and to stand in rows. Row after row, those unfortunates were forced to run to the two pits that had been prepared beforehand. A hail of bullets killed them and they fell into the pits. In no time at all 300 Jewish males: fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandchildren were murdered. Many German and Ukrainian guards were standing around the murder site and none of the [Jewish] men succeeded in escaping. One man, Josef Niczeczkin, succeeded in moving about 100 meters from the pits, but the murderers caught him and killed him. … … On Friday September 4, 1942, toward evening, German and Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen surrounded the town. The Jews already knew that their final hour was approaching. The night between Friday and Saturday was an awful night for the Jews, a night of horror, a night of fear and waiting for death. During that night many Jews tried to escape the town, but they encountered Ukrainian policemen at every turn ... Very few succeeded in escaping. On Saturday September 5, 1942 the murder operation began. Wild Germans, and with them Ukrainian and Polish murderers, entered the [Jewish] homes and searched for the Jews. They looked in every place: in cellars, stables, gardens, in every place reached by their criminal arms. The Jews who were caught [in hiding] were taken to the collection point that was on the corner of Łuck and Ogrodowa Streets. By noon about 2,000 Jewish victims from Maniewicze had been caught. The murderers surrounded them from all sides and none of them [Jews] could [even] dream of escaping from the murderers who were guarding them. The victims were lined up in rows and taken through the streets of Ogradowa and Szirak, and near the railway station toward the village of Czerewacha. The sight of … the victims who were forced to walk their final way was awful. Fathers and mothers were embracing their children. Grandfathers and grandmothers were holding their grandchildren. Quiet praying and quiet crying were heard. This terrible journey ended at the same plot in the forest where the previous year 300 Jewish men had been murdered (at "the horse graves"). The [German] monsters ordered the victims to strip naked and a mound of [their] clothing was piled up. Then Rabbi Gordon was given permission to speak for 5 minutes to those who were gathered there [to be murdered]. With a trembling voice he attempted to encourage those unfortunates who were about to be killed within several minutes. After the Rabbi's short speech, the German murderers ordered the victims to line up in rows. Then, row after row they made them run to the 4 pits that had been prepared. They were made to lie in the pits and a hail of deadly bullets ended their lives. A thin layer of earth was poured over every layer of those murdered and, [then], on the top of this layer a new row of victims was made to lie in the pits, and again the same awful process was repeated - until the last victim was buried in those death pits. By evening the murder operation was over: the last victims had been slaughtered. Many victims were buried while still alive and they continued to move for a long time under the earth that covered them. Four long deep pits were filled with the bodies of the victims. After the mass murder the [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen searched for and found several Jews who had hidden themselves somewhere, and they were killed as well. Maniewicze was then proclaimed "Judenrein" ("clean of Jews')….

I was told by a Polish acquaintance about what had happened there, near the Horse Graves, and that I shouldn't believe the Ukrainian [auxiliary policemen] who had said that those men had been sent for work. One night I went, together with Aizik Sosal, of blessed memory, to the "ferdishe mogiles" [Yiddish for "horse graves"], and there I stuck an iron wire into the earth that covered the pits and I found out that indeed a slaughter had been carried out here. All the members of [the first] Judenrat were murdered in this first murder operation, along with 70 Jews who had come [to the Judenrat] to seek advice and shelter with rabbis who were members of the Judenrat. At that time 375 males age from 12 to 80 were killed in this murder operation. Their murder resulted in a great gap in the leadership of the [Maniewicze] community.