Murder Story of Kobryn Jews in Borysowo

The second [sic] operation took place on October 14, [1942]. At about 4 AM, while we were asleep, some [Jewish] partisans, who must have been staying in the town, wanted to leave the ghetto for the forests. They saw that the ghetto was being cordoned off by the Germans. All the partisans returned to their homes and told their families about it. So my father heard the commotion outside. Two of our neighbors’ sons were partisans, and he got up and went to them. Thus did he hear about that.… I got up and went outside. I saw the people walking about like spirits in some ancient Greek tragedy. I wanted to go and see for myself whether the ghetto was really cordoned off. I stood 200-300 meters from the fence. It was still dark. I climbed onto something and saw armed German soldiers standing at 50-meter intervals. I went back home.… And so, at dawn, while the people in the ghetto were [getting up].… There was no yelling, but everyone kept scurrying from place to place. I cannot forget it. It seemed as though we were trapped inside, and death was closing in.… Our house stood second-to-last at the end of the ghetto. A German with a gun came and told me to go outside, to where the rest of the people were waiting. I saw about 800 people there, and there was fear, and they [apparently, the Germans] were looking for an ax. The Germans said they needed something with which to bar the exit from the ghetto, because the people were being taken from there to the shooting site.… I later learned that the people had been forced to walk two kilometers to the pits. Once there, they were all ordered to strip naked and murdered.