Murder story of Iwje Jews in the Stonewicze Forest

I was lying down quietly until neighbors knocked on the door half an hour later: "Shifre, why are you sleeping? They're driving people out of their houses to the market! The murderers have tricked us!" I jumped out of bed and ran to the window, and there it was happening before my eyes! On the other side of the square, where our ghetto was located, a thousand people with small children were already kneeling there, as the murderers had ordered. Meanwhile, the gendarmes and the police were running like evil spirits through the streets, from house to house, and driving everyone out to the market. I had just thrown on a dress and was almost barefoot.... I told [my middle-aged sons] Shleymele and Osherke to take [the little one] Yankl and go to the nearby artisans, as we had agreed the day before. I did not even think of kissing my dear, holy children. I ran with my [elder daughter] Brokhele and with [Shifre's brother] Meyshele to a hide-out where 18 people were sitting in a small dug-out. Without air, without water, and without food we sat there a whole day and night. And then another day, until the evening.… Thus, we remained there until May 13.... After someone who had gone out to talk with Kopol [the chairman of the Jewish council and Shifre's brother-in-law] he came back and told me that my three children, together with those families [they were with], had been taken to their deaths in Stonewicze [in the forest]! … My sister Khashke and Tsvia, Khone Malakhovski's wife, related and described the events of the horrible spectacle of death of May 12 1942: A German was standing near Rashke's house on Bernardynska Street and telling every one to get into family groups, to show his identity papers, and then to go where he were told to go - to the right, to the left, or out [of the crowd]! Then the families came to Shishke Blokh's house, where the main murderer was standing. When a family presented itself, he looked into the eyes of the man of the family and then made a decision: if the family was a big one with small children or had a lot of women, he told them to go straight to the church, [which meant] to death! Whoever pleased him was told to take his wife and children and go to the right, or to the left, [both meant]: to life! That was the case mainly if the family consisted of men capable of work, that is to say a man and a wife and grown sons.… In the course of three hours the murderers sorted 4,000 people. The market square was empty and the [death] pits full…. Meanwhile, those selected for death were forced toward the church and, then, three kilometers further -- to the pits in the Stonewicze Forest. ... What happened then is hard to describe. This was all told to me personally by the priest who had been standing in the doorway of the church and observing the scene since it was near the church that they were so crammed together that they could not move, a mass of about two and a half thousand people. The despairing people tore out their hair, ripped off their clothes, and wrung their hands. Whoever had any money tore it into pieces and threw it away. Christians who were near the church eagerly gathered it up and kept it. The priest himself saw all this. One woman's child was struggling and crying in her arms. The soldier-guard hit the child in the head with the pin of a hand-grenade and the child fell dead from his mother's arms. People said that Meyshe Fiselewski and Alter (Girszowicz) Zawodczycz went mad from fright and walked the three kilometers to the pits arm in arm, singing songs. After the arrival at the pits at Stonewicze, they took 20 men at a time. The latter had to strip naked, put their things into a small bundle and tie it up, and then enter the pit, where they were promptly shot. That is the way my sons must have undressed and entered the pit to die. They were not even shot, that I know! The local Christian police said that all the children were thrown into the pits alive. Oh, Lord, what have You done to us?! Why are You silent about this Amalek? The children had to lie on top of dead bodies and then more dead bodies fell on top of them. The pit was filled with the dead and they suffocated.... My heart must really be stronger than iron since it did not burst! Oy, vey iz mir! But I will not speak of this any more, I will only ask that God protect my two children Borukhke and Brokhele. God, have mercy! Rashkele and Rishele did not want to strip naked and be dragged by the hair and forced into the pit.… After each 100 Jews, the policemen and the Lithuanian murderers snacked on schnapps and sausages at a nearby table... Those who went to the right and to the left to remain alive were ordered to hand over all that they had with them: money, gold, jewelry, watches, and so on. Then they were driven to the market square, where the regional commander [in fact, it was Leopold Windisch, assistant to the commander for Jewish matters] gave a short speech. He claimed that their brothers had been shot [first] because the Jews in Lida had stolen weapons from the Beutenlager [a storehouse of captured ammunition] and, secondly, because their co-religionists [fellow Jews] in America and England, the rich Jews, had started the war. Thirdly - because the Germans simply regard us as enemies! Meanwhile, he said, our remaining alive depended on the development of the political situation. He did not promise us life, but meanwhile we remained alive! We just had to be respectful and not, heaven forbid, disobey any of their German decrees. In his speech he also referred to the "the particular mildness" with which he had carried out the "Aktion" in Iwje.