Murder Story of Luniniec Jews at the Borowszczyzna Tract

The second liquidation took place in late August 1942. Prior to the liquidation, locals would talk in private of pits being dug somewhere. Before that, POWs would be shot on a daily basis, and pits were being dug for that purpose, so the people assumed that they [the Germans] would start killing the Jews. People knew for certain of one pit that had been dug at a spot 1 kilometer beyond the forest. The digging had been done by locals in the night. I learned from a Belarusian friend who lived near the ghetto that the police and the Gendarmerie had surrounded the ghetto at dawn, and begun to drive the Jews out of their homes. Beyond the ghetto gates, they ordered the Jews to kneel. The latter were mostly women and children, and they were taken in groups to the execution site. It was located 4 kilometers from the ghetto. With my own eyes, I saw them being taken to the murder site and forced to sit on the ground. I lived 400-500 meters from the pit. The Germans made no attempt to conceal the massacre of the Jews from the locals. Apart from the Germans and the policemen, there was a small group of civilians present at the shooting site. They had gathered to watch the execution. Most of the doomed [people] were women and children – because, as I said earlier, the men were no longer there. The women and children were ordered to strip naked, group by group, in front of the others, who were seated. Then each group was shot, standing up, some 400 meters away. I heard the shots and saw the people fall into the pit. The victims went to their deaths calmly. Some became hysterical, ripped off their clothes, and threw them in the direction of the people, who caught the clothes. There were instances of resistance. The militiamen later went around the houses telling the story of a female dentist [named] Sygnałowska, who had refused to take off her clothes; they had beaten her to death with their rifle butts. Dr. Hurwicz was reluctant to leave his house. They beat him, put him on a cart, and took him to the execution site. Jan Skubi, a Ukrainian, took part in the shooting. He worked as a clerk with the mayor. I saw him standing with a whip and chasing away the people who wanted to loot the victims' possessions. The wives of the militiamen were given the first pick of these items. An hour after the liquidation, people began to plunder the [Jews'] property. The wives of the militiamen and the Germans' collaborators were allowed to take whatever was there, and they did so…. After the liquidation, there were still Jewish professionals who had been kept alive. I know of a group of approximately five tailors with their families, who still had some outstanding orders to complete for the Germans. They were not local Jews, but refugees. They still lived in the ghetto, but could move around freely by then. I do not know what happened to these remaining Jews. They stayed in the ghetto for some time, about 2-3 weeks, and were then apparently killed. The Jews of Łuniniec did not survive; they did not escape to join the partisans, because the men had been killed shortly after the arrival of the Germans. Only the women and the children remained. The only woman who survived, out of the whole town, was Brewda. During the liquidation of the ghetto, she hid in an oven, and later escaped into the forest to join the partisans.