Murder story of Stanislawow Jews in the Stanisławów Ghetto

…The period of apparent “calm” in the ghetto was shattered on the night of March 31 – April 1, 1942. That day, the Gestapo staged a "St. Bartholomew Day's massacre" in the ghetto. Already at about 8 PM, the Order Service [ghetto police] was ordered to stay put. At about 10 PM, the ghetto was surrounded from all sides, while armed gangs of Gestapo men, urban policemen, and Ukrainian auxiliary policemen entered the ghetto. Now, the criminals were not only armed with submachine guns, but also festooned with grenades and equipped with small incendiary bombs. The barbarians methodically surrounded individual apartment blocks in various parts of the ghetto, doused them with gasoline, and threw grenades and incendiary bombs at them. The ghetto began to burn. The glow of the fire suffused the air. The unfortunate residents tried in vain to escape the burning houses. The criminals, foreseeing such an eventuality, surrounded each burning building, mowing down anyone who tried to jump out of a window to escape death. The Hitlerite beasts erected a huge pile of logs in the center of the ghetto, which they ignited after dousing it with gasoline. Tearing the children and nursing infants out of their mothers' arms, grabbing the babies and children by the legs, they hurled them into the flames. Others placed children in paper bags and threw them onto the burning pile. About 7 (seven) thousand ghetto inmates perished during that night….

…Often, in the evenings I saw a glow over the ghetto – the Gestapo men would set the houses on fire, locking the residents inside. Whoever tried to jump out of windows or from the attic would be fired upon and pushed back inside the burning building….

…The second-large scale murder operation (Akcja), which claimed the lives of many Jewish residents of Stanisławów, was a fire in the ghetto. It was the Passover holiday. The Germans set fire to the ghetto simultaneously from all sides. Some of the Jews ran out of their houses in a panic. They were shot on the spot. The people perished in the flames, as the conflagration engulfed the ghetto area. My husband’s parents, along with his entire family, died in this murder operation.