Murder story of Mir Jews in the Jabłonowszczyzna Forest

...The day approaches…. We can now even count the hours we have left to live. We know already where the graves will be. The ghetto is feverish. In the round yard of the castle, there are waves of people. They all speak, they all bustle and shout, they are all right.... The Germans want to stupefy our consciousness, so they place orders with the Jewish Community Committee for long, distant dates.… Sunday, the 9th of August. All already know that we are to be sent away, because the ghetto is being liquidated.… The next early morning, Monday, the 10th of August… On Monday, at 4 o'clock after lunch, the ghetto is encircled by a heavy cordon of police and Germans with machine guns. Now, single attempts to break through the cordon are being made. Very few succeed. We start liquidating everything. We crush and burn remnants of food, clothing, and leather. We pour kerosene over it all and burn it, so that the enemy should not profit by it. Others even now carry food down into the cellars: perhaps they will succeed in lasting out the action, and then run away to some place. Even the police had no desire to go on searching in the cellars, thanks to which nine young girls saved their own lives. In spite of the encirclement, they managed to get out of the ghetto one night. Suicides begin.… Josef Schneider with his family hid in an attic of a tower. They were found by the Germans and hurled down from the fifth floor. Braina Kagan was also with them. The religious react quite differently. They have self-control, and seem outwardly calm, engrossed in their deep belief that they are passing into a better world. So, several dozens of them sit around up top in an unfinished part of the castle, which has always served them as a prayer room. They pray, learn, and recite psalms. On the last day, they wash, dress, put on clean underwear, and prepare themselves for the great moment of dying the death of religious martyrs. Eszke Longin gathers all the homeless children, gives them food, and provides them with the feeling that they have a caring mother, in the last days of their lives. Tuesday, the 13th of August, at 4 o'clock in the morning. The cars drive in with Germans and policemen in front of the ghetto. Resigned, the last martyrs of Mir go down on their last journey, to the forest by the little stream. The ghetto remains encircled for three full weeks. The butchers know that they have not yet finished with all the Jews of Mir. So, they search all the rooms, tap all the floors with their heels, and listen to the sounds.… Now, we flee wherever we can. Nearly all go into the forests, while some shelter with non-Jews. Not all those sheltering with non-Jews had the good fortune to survive. On August 10, I ran away with my son to Jozef Stelmaszyk, a peasant in Mir. The Stelmaszyk family, husband and wife, both middle-aged, deserve to be mentioned here. In the ghetto, he used to be referred to as ‘the righteous Gentile.’ Their hands were unstained by plunder. Seldom in those days did a peasant acquit himself in this manner.… Once, we noticed through a crack in our hideout caravans and trucks moving in the direction of Baranovitz [Baranowicze]. We took this to be a sign that the Germans were withdrawing. There was no limit to our great joy! Our imagination became so fanciful that we almost saw our Mir partisans triumphantly driving into Mir on tanks. How dismal was our disappointment when we found out that the cars were merely being sent away for repairs. We stayed with the Stelmaszyks from August 13 until December 23, 1942, and then we went into the forest....