Murder story of Mir Jews in the Mir Area

Sunday, November 9. A damp foggy morning, it is not even true daylight. Suddenly, we can hear gunfire. We haven’t yet gotten up, and – a turmoil! Run away! But it is too late. The town has been tightly cordoned off from all sides by the police and the Germans. They have commenced a hunt against the Jews…. We personally were luckier; my son and myself were sheltered by some unfamiliar peasant, who did it at risk to his own life… In the market place, in all the streets and lanes, there is incessant shooting.… People are lying in puddles of blood. The luckiest are those who die quickly, finished off by the bullet of a ‘kind-hearted’ policeman. But the policemen are too busy: they are going to loot [Jewish property]. The streets are full of people who are being led to the marketplace.… People are reciting the "vidui" [prayer of confession], taking each other by the hand and asking for forgiveness. Those who, in the normal course of events, would be afraid to even think of death are now going to their graves with indifference…. As they stand in a row, [the Germans] choose who will live, and who will die. The skilled workers are the first to be spared, while the elderly and the common people are marked for death. The latter have a vacant look about them. Between the first row of Jews and the Germans, a machine gun is mounted, along with a bowl in which the Jews must deposit their remaining gold and silver objects.… The rows became increasingly numerous.… Bentse, Elie-Chayim’s son, is standing there with his family. Chayim says to him: ‘Bentsie, let us throw ourselves upon the machine gun’. The answer is: ‘It’s not worth it’. It is the ultimate resignation: We are already more dead than alive. Rivka, Chayim-Velvl’s wife, is running away with her three children. One of them falls dead. She does not look at it, but keeps running with the other two. And there, near the graves at the edge of town, the bloodbath is in full swing. The executioners work tirelessly. Now, they have brought Henoch the butcher with his large family. They shoot the youngest son before the eyes of his mother; she faints, and Henoch tries to revive her. Leizer Manto with his wife and daughter. They have to wait until the grave is ready. He is hurrying the non-Jews who are digging the grave: ‘Khloptsy, kopaite skorei [Russian for ‘Lads, dig faster’]. New waves of Jews, with their last Shema Yisrael, are being brought to the grave near the old slaughterhouse. This massacre goes on for twenty-four hours. Snow is falling, covering the atrocity.

On the morning of November 9, a number of cars with Germans arrived, accompanied by the Mir policemen and some random non-Jews, who were ready to murder Jews. They surrounded the little town from all sides, and a slaughter began, lasting a day. That day saw the murder of young and elderly [Jews], little children and adults, most of the town's Jewish population. After the slaughter, only 800 Jews were left. Some of these had been designated as artisans by the Germans, while the rest were those who had managed to hide on the day of the slaughter.