Murder Story of Miedzyrzecz Korecki Jews at the Dyvan Brick Factory

It was in 1942. On Tuesday, three days before the [Jewish holiday of] Shavuot 5702, an order was issued for 200 Jews to assemble with shovels in the school square, in order to go to [the village of] Nevirkov and work there for three days. A hidden horror prevailed in the town, a vague premonition that weighed down on our hearts and portended bad news. Many were afraid to go to work, and they even began to hide, while others decided to obey the [German] order, [fearing that] they would be harmed otherwise.… Besides, the labor wasn't a matter of choice, and those who refused to go of their own free will would be taken from their houses by force. My husband Froika was working at the "court" of Stetski at the time, and when [the Germans] came to take Shlomo Gurevich, who was living in my house and who hadn't been found, I was taken instead of him. While the Jews were being rounded up in the houses and streets and taken to work, the [Ukrainian auxiliary and German rural] policemen noticed that several Jews had evaded the roundup and were hiding… in the side lanes. While they [the policemen] were busy taking care of them [the hidden Jews], I was able to run away and hide in the pen of Kolker. From there, I watched through the cracks and saw a column of people being taken away to work. Their number exceeded the quota that had officially been announced [by the Germans]. Among them, there were elderly and weak individuals…. I was suddenly struck by the notion that the [Germans'] real intention wasn't work, but death…! In those days, some 200 [Jewish] men and women, including my daughter Donia…, were working in Nevirkov. After the convoy of people had passed through and vanished from my sight, I hurried out of my hiding place and came home.… A painful thought was gnawing at my mind: Our children were there, working.… Israel Zinman [Ester's cousin] – who, on the orders of two Germans, was walking from the Międzyrzecz grist mill toward Nevirkov at that time – happened to see a large group of people digging pits on the road. Scared to death, he returned to the town and made the laconic announcement: "Jews, save yourselves! Pits are being dug…!" And, very quickly, he returned… to Nevirkov to warn the people who were working there not to go back to the town via the pits. Alas! It was too late – all the laborers had already finished their work, and were going back [to Międzyrzecz] along the dangerous route. All of them, including my daughter, were stopped near the pits…. [While spending several days in hiding], toward evening on the same day, much to our surprise, we saw a number of Jews being taken back to the town…. But our hearts were pinched, almost leaping out of our throats, when we saw that the German policemen were leading four of our girls: Donia Zinman [Ester's daughter]… [and three others]. As we would later learn, they were taken to the town to point out the cache of gold, in exchange for false promises… of safety.… We quickly removed the bricks [blocking the entrance to the hiding place] and went out into the open, intending to join our daughters in life and in death. Unfortunately, we didn't find them.… [After returning to the hiding place] with a broken heart, we once again clung to the cracks in order to see what was going on outside and follow our daughters. For a minute, we were allowed to feast our eyes upon them, before they were taken from us forever.… And on Friday, in the morning, we saw several trucks full of elderly and sick individuals and of children. [The group of victims] included our daughters and others, who had been taken back to the town to locate the [caches of] gold, and who had been deceived in such a cruel and despicable manner.… A rearguard of Gestapo men on motorbikes was following this group of doomed [Jews]. From time to time, they would shout and clap, crying cheerfully: "All the Jews to their deaths!" The first murder operation was carried out on Friday, which was the first day of the holiday of Shavuot in 5702 (1942), and it lasted from 10 AM until 12 PM. On the [Germans'] orders, all the [Jewish victims] removed their clothes and assembled near the pits that had been dug in advance. They were thrown into the pits in groups of 10 and shot with a machine gun. [The bodies of the first victims] were overlaid with new layers of ten people, until three pits were full: The first one contained men and young boys; the second one was filled with women and young girls, and the third one contained little boys and girls. [The Germans] were smearing [some substance] under the noses of many little children, in order to dull their senses – but, when the time allotted to the murder operation was about to run out, the remaining children were brutally lifted on bayonets and thrown into the pit. The twin children of Avraham Nisenholtz remained. They were sitting and playing on a blanket that was spread out on the ground. The hands of the murderers were tired of the slaughter, so one SS German man declared that the person who would throw the children into the pit would receive a blanket as a reward. One peasant volunteered to carry out this satanic task and received the promised reward.… At 12 PM, the German commander ordered a halt to the shooting, and he personally congratulated the 12 Jews who had remained alive.… The pits were immediately covered with a layer of lime (prepared in advance for this purpose), which was topped with a layer of earth. This was the end of the first murder operation, which had claimed the lives of more than two thousand people. …One day, we learned that all the Jews [from the village] of Matievka had been brought to Międzyrzecz and thrown into the cellar below the church, having been accused of murdering a Christian boy (a blood libel). For three days, they were kept in the dark cellar without food or water, awaiting their bitter fate. All this became known to the ghetto inmates, who realized that the fate [of these Jews] today might be our fate tomorrow. And one morning, while on our way to Nevirkov to work, we saw a new mass grave, the site where 20 Jews from Matievka had been shot and buried…. [Apparently on September 25, 1942], at 4 PM, my husband Froika approached me and said: "Leave your work and go home with me. One way or the other, we will be paid tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow." His words spread quickly and became known to everyone…. Everyone left their work and returned to the ghetto, where we found a great commotion, since the sad news had already reached the inmates. A stampede began; some ran into the [nearby] forests, while others hastened to their non-Jewish acquaintances; still others were simply running about, not knowing where to turn. The people's judgment was clouded with the horror of death, and in the prevailing panic wives lost their husbands, and husbands lost their wives. Little children were placed near the houses of non-Jews, in order to facilitate their escape. When we were already outside the town, my husband recalled a box of silverware that he had kept hidden, and he returned to the town to retrieve it, leaving me and [our] child in the dairy barn of a peasant. While my husband was late in coming back, the peasant's wife came to me with the news: "Run as far as your legs will carry you! The Germans have surrounded the ghetto, and I am afraid to let you stay here." Having no other choice, I took the child and started running through the fields. There were [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen and peasants standing at all the crossroads, returning the Jewish refugees to the town or simply killing them on the spot. With a great effort…, I evaded the fury of the guards, and was on my way to our friend Navorovskii…, where, by prior agreement, I was supposed to rendezvous with my husband. In the meantime, night had fallen, and the child and I lay down to sleep in one of the ditches in the field.… At 10-11 AM on the next day [apparently, September 26 or 27], I heard the rattle of the machine gun, with short breaks. [This sound] had been etched in my memory since the events of the first murder operation. I became convinced – and this conviction would be tragically confirmed later on – that it was the second murder operation for the liquidation of the remaining [Jews] of the Międzyrzecz Ghetto. It was on the first day of [the Jewish holiday of] Sukkot in 5703 (1942) that the second murder operation was carried out, resulting in the annihilation of the last Jews of Międzyrzecz, some 1000 people in total, who had remained after the first murder operation (which had been carried out during the Shavuot holiday of 5702 [1942], and claimed the lives of some 2000 people….

…And behold – at the end of the [Hebrew month] of Iyyar 5702 [i.e., May 1942], [the Germans] began to arrest people in the town streets, and young people were also taken out of [their] houses – ostensibly for work, sifting grain in the nearby village of Nevirkov. However, three days later we learned from the Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen that the abducted people had been ordered to dig several pits near Nevirkov, and they didn't return. Panic prevailed in the town, and fear gripped all the Jews; many began to hide away or flee [from the town], feeling that their end was near – and, indeed, this premonition turned out to be correct. On Friday, the first day [of the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot 5702 [i.e., May 22, 1942], the town was surrounded by [German and Ukrainian] guards, and half of its Jewish residents (those whom the Ukrainian policemen had managed to catch and detain) were driven out. The unfortunate ones were taken to a place where bricks were burned [i.e., the brick factory], near the village of Nevirkov, about 7 kilometers from the town, where Poles and Ukrainians lived…. Without much delay, the assembled [Jews], including their families and children, were ordered to take off their clothes, and then [at that moment] I was gripped with the sudden urge to run away… I didn’t know where to, but my inner sense drove me to step aside, and I began to inch away [from the murder site], while the noise and cries from the assembly point [i.e., the murder site] followed me….