Murder Story of Luboml Jews at the Brick Factory in the Luboml Area

… that black day arrived. It was the time of the [Jewish] holidays, it was already cold outside. We felt that something was about to happen in our town. People sensed that the end was near. My big brother and I and several more children, teenagers, and several adults were lying [hiding] in the attic of our neighbor's house and, with our own eyes, we saw the Germans taking people to be killed. They were killed near the town, about several kilometers outside of it… . Pits had been dug, and I saw mothers and children in the arms of the mothers; there were small children, literally babies, who didn't understand what was going on. But the screaming of the people, their crying, was heard far, far from the town. The babies were cut in two and thrown like garbage into a pit, right in front of of their mothers' eyes. For 3 days the earth was heaving since there were people who were [still] alive in the pits because not everyone was shot to death but [some of them] only wounded. They covered them with earth, then with a light layer of sand, then with one of earth [again] and on top of the earth there was one of lime, and yet again - one of earth, and [still] the ground was heaving for three days…

… On October 1, 1942 the ghetto was surrounded on all sides, and on that day 1,700 people, including me, were rounded up. All of us were taken from the market [square] toward the brick factory. Strong German units and Ukrainians [i.e. Ukrainian auxiliary policemen] equipped with automatic weapons guarded us; they had also trained dogs. After we arrived at the brick factory area, [Gebietskommissar Uhde] ordered the family of the head of the Judenrat, [Kalman] Kopelzon, consisting of 10 people, to get out of line and stand at the edge of the pit that we had dug. When they did so, Uhde personally killed all the members of the Kopelzon family with his automatic pistol. Afterward Uhde stood to the side, and an S.S. man wearing a white apron took his place; he shot to death the families that had been taken to the pit, one after the other. My family was the last one; when we were positioned above the pit it was already dark. When the murderer fired his first shot, I threw myself into the pit. Afterwards, from the pit I saw that after the murder the Germans were drinking vodka that they had brought with them and singing, together with the Ukrainians [auxiliary policemen]. After midnight I managed to save myself by crawling out of the pit and, by going through gardens, in reaching the town. I hid in Luboml for the next three days and then I fled to a nearby village, where I hid until the liberation [of Luboml by the Red Army]. …