Murder story of Swislocz Jews in the Wiszewnik Forest

Aharon Lonchitsky [Lączycki], who was sent to the Wołkowysk transit camp during the murder operation of November 2, 1942 in Świsłocz, gives the following description of the selection in the town: ...Around the market square, in all the adjacent lanes, about 500 peasant carts with their drivers stood at the ready; they had been brought there beforehand. They were making noise.... Now the Jews saw that they were in a trap. Escape was impossible, since the perimeter of the market square was under heavy guard. Only a few were permitted to leave, and thus able to flee. And so, the Germans went ahead with the selection – and, by the way, it did not take long, because one order from the superior was enough for all the inmates to get onto the cart, with the greater mass of the young people separated from the elderly ones. And, in a short while, all the people left in the direction of the railway station, which lay less than two kilometers from the town. A little before the station, there was a small forest. Here, the several hundred elderly individuals disembarked [from the carts]. The rest of the Jews were loaded onto the railway cars, feeling very anxious about the fate of their fathers and mothers. The German guards reassured them that those would follow them in a second train. And they mentioned the 25 young people whom they had left together with the old ones as proof [of their good intentions].… The carts with the elderly people, who had disembarked in the small forest, did not proceed to the railway station. Instead, all those individuals were lined up in a row in front of ditches, and [the Germans] opened fire on them from rifles and revolvers. Some of the elderly Jews were merely wounded when they fell, and if [the perpetrators] saw that a victim was still alive, they would finish them off with a truncheon blow or another bullet. The young ones were standing to the side, and had to watch the whole process. When it was over, they were ordered to cover the bodies lying in the grave with sand and soil.... When their work was done, they, too, were shot....