Murder Story of Ludwipol Jews at the Military Barracks in Ludwipol

…On Sunday, the 11th day of [the Hebrew month of] Elul [August 24, 1942], a gathering of the town elders took place. There, they were informed by the commissar [i.e., the senior German official of Ludwipol, Franz Norgall] that the Jews were already tired and incapable of work; under wartime conditions, this meant that they were useless "eaters", and that therefore "they should be sent to Moses." There were some who dared to break the news to their Jewish friends, but the latter refused to believe in the possibility that the whole nation would be annihilated, despite being innocent of any crime; other [Jews] thought that, even if (God forbid!) a tragedy should befall [the Jewish community], it would affect only the elderly people who were unfit for work, as had happened in Korzec and some other towns.… On Monday, [contrary to his usual practice] the commissar didn't survey the work [of the Jews]; rather, he galloped past the [Jewish] laborers [on a horse], on his way to the county town [i.e., Kostopol], probably to receive some final orders [from the District Commissar, Heinz Löhnert] regarding the execution of a despicable crime – the liquidation of the town. The joy at the fact that the visit of the commissar didn't leave any [Jewish] victims [in Ludwipol] was mingled with fear, since the unnatural behavior of this murderer made people wonder. And indeed, on the next day (Tuesday), when we woke up to go to work, we found ourselves surrounded by Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen. The mayor of the town, Hering…, went from house to house, accompanied by the Judenrat members, and ordered [the Jews] to assemble in the ghetto. The imminent disaster was made clear, but not its scope.… At that moment, I was seized with a strong urge. Suddenly, my life became so precious to me, and I wanted to live, not to die.… Then I understood what I should do. Together with three other neighbors, I plotted a way of escape. Our house was the last one in the town, bordering on the non-Jewish neighborhood. We passed the field and began to run away, until we reached the village of Bilichki [apparently, Bilchaky], some 10-12 kilometers from the town.… Several days afterward, we arrived in Libichi – a Polish village, near which many [Jewish] people from our town and other nearby towns were hiding…. From them, we learned about the scope of the tragedy. On Tuesday, the majority of the Jews of the town [Ludwipol] had been taken to the [former] Polish military barracks, which were surrounded with a tall wooden fence. [The killers] gave them bread rations, to mislead them into thinking that there was no intention to annihilate them. Several people tried to talk some youngsters into attempting to escape. There guards were not numerous – only several policemen, no more than 20. But there were some [among the youngsters] who were afraid that, by escaping, they would bring a disaster upon all [the remaining Jews], since the Germans might not be intending to kill them, after all. Nevertheless, a handful of people dared to jump over the fence at night and run away.… On the next day, [the remaining Jews] were awakened and ordered to strip naked and go in groups toward the pits. Three pits had been dug by non-Jewish residents of the surrounding villages: For the men, the women, and the children. Each group was forced to stand on a plank; they were then shot, and fell into [the pit]; a second [group] would then approach.…The machine guns of the SS men, who were drunk on wine and blood, kept firing, killing the innocent people one by one, the old and the young alike, all of them full of dreams for the future. These dreams were drowned in torrents of blood – their own blood and that of their loved ones, their relatives and brothers. This bloodbath went on throughout Wednesday, and some 1,500 people were apparently killed in the course of that day.… My father was among those who were put to death at the Polish barracks. He and his friends went [to their deaths] asking each other for forgiveness….

…Thus it went on, day by day, until September 1942, when the order to liquidate the ghetto was given. This time, all the people were herded to the assembly point, and he [Klems, a member of the Gendarmerie in Ludwipol], together with other Gestapo men, took these people to a pit, where they had to strip naked. These victims were forced to lay down on top of the [bodies] of those already shot in the pit – and they were then murdered in this fashion, as well. I, too, was among those victims, but I managed to escape by chance, along with several colleagues….

…The situation [in the ghetto] remained unchanged until [the Hebrew month of] Elul 12, 5702 [August 25, 1942]. On the previous day, all the artisans who would go to look for work in the nearby villages had been warned not to leave the town, as any Jew caught outside the town without a permit [i.e., a work certificate] would be killed on the spot, and his family would suffer, as well. This was an order issued by the German commissar [i.e., Franz Norgall], and the Judenrat had to carry it out scrupulously.… When I asked the Judenrat for a permit to go to the [nearby village of] Nemilia, I was told that no more permits would be issued, and warned not to leave [Ludwipol]; should I disobey, all my family members would be arrested, and no one could tell what would happen to them. Naturally, I stayed [in the town]. When we woke up [on the next day] to go to work as usual, we were informed that it was forbidden to leave the houses. The gendarmes and the [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen made certain that no one left their house. The commissar approached our house, accompanied by Judenrat members. He knocked on our window and ordered us to get out and move into the ghetto, to the place where a gathering of all the Jews of Ludwipol would be held. When the commissar and the Judenrat members had moved away from our house, we began to debate how to hide.… We [Yehuda and his wife Dvorke] found a hole in the granary wall, and we entered in.… Through the cracks in the wall, we watched the Jews being led outside the town in long lines, and those lagging behind were beaten severely. [The Germans and Ukrainian policemen] showed no mercy to the women and the children.… [After being caught in hiding,] I thought that I would be able to escape…, but several other [Ukrainian] policemen had joined in, and they took us toward the ghetto. There, I found another 100 people. I was told that two large groups of Jews had already been taken to the assembly point at the camp of the [former] Polish military barracks in the forest, across the Słucz [River].… We were taken to the murder site.… There were many old men and women in this group, together with me. When we were about to leave the ghetto under an escort of Ukrainian murderers, an old [woman named] Tovah Volman and her grandchild, Isralik, were brought to the ghetto.… This little child, who was only four years old, evaded the watchful eyes of the [Ukrainian] policemen and began to run away from the ghetto, as fast as his legs would carry him. One of the murderers ran after him, and, after a long chase, he managed to lay his hands on this nice boy. He returned the boy to the ghetto with the relish of a predator…. On the way to the murder site, many elderly people became tired, since they were exhausted anyway, and they fell down. The murderers beat the laggards who were walking slowly with their rifle butts, until they fell – and then we, the young men, were ordered to carry them upon our shoulders.… Thus did we arrive at the assembly point. The courtyard was packed with men, women, and children, and it was about 10 AM on Elul 12, 5702. I saw all the Zionist activists there…. They were all sitting, wondering aloud what would happen to them. I sat down together with them. For instance, Yitzhak Raber said that it was impossible for all of us to be annihilated, and that a selection would probably be carried out, and the majority would be allowed to return home. Shichne Shemesh told us that our Lord in heaven wouldn't let [the Germans and Ukrainians] to commit such a massacre of Jews.… Old Khaim Shlein was standing, surrounded by his large family: his daughters, sons, and their children were embracing each other and crying loudly. By contrast, some other families were sitting together in deathly silence, as though petrified. Once again, there were some individuals, especially young ones, who tried to bribe the guards to turn a blind eye to their attempt to break through the fence.… At noon, a small group of Jews had arrived. It was almost the last one, and Rachel Polski was among them. They spread the rumor that, ostensibly, an order had been given to release us; this was seemingly confirmed by the arrival of the commissar [himself], the German murderer; he was accompanied by the Judenrat members, who had been arrested prior to that. But these news were proven false very quickly. When the Judenrat members came in, and when Kalman Wolman, who was a Judenrat member, approached us, he was asked what was going on, and he replied that, until now, they had clung to the hope that we might be kept alive; but now that we [the members of the Judenrat] have been brought here, as well, we realize that our fate will be the same as that of the [other Jews], and the commissar was here to announce the annihilation plan of our community. And indeed, we were assembled in one place, and the murderer [commissar] proceeded to explain to us something that was already obvious – [namely], that, at 5 AM on the next morning, all [the Jews] would be shot dead. The wails and cries of the women and the children did not move him, and he went on to announce… that the children would be given their last bread ration and [some kind of] hot food, and that was all. And thus, when we had heard the whole truth about our fate, a group was organized whose members decided to break through the fence and run away as soon as the opportunity arose.… [This] group, which was made up of several dozen people (since the vast majority [of the Jews] were resigned to their fate), planned to break through the gate and go out… I was part of this group…, and, when we approached [the gate] to carry out our plan, several Judenrat members came and asked us not to do it now, but wait until dark, and they added that we wouldn't be able to survive anyway, since we had nowhere to run to.... When I [finally] approached the fence, I was told that Yonah Pikovskyi and some others had managed to jump over the fence and escape.… I had one leg on the other side of the fence when the [Ukrainian] policemen began to shoot at us: "What you are doing here!?" They could see everything by the light of the moon, which, unfortunately… illuminated the entire area, and they opened fire. Moshe-Aizik [on whose back Yehuda was standing] got scared and crouched down, and I remained hanging on the fence, with one leg on the other side, and the murderers kept shooting at us. I heard people shouting: "Leibish is hanging on the fence, and he can't jump." I began to rock with all my strength and managed to get my other leg [across the fence]. However, my trouser belt got caught in a plank of the fence, and I remained hanging from the other side of the fence, unable to detach myself from it. I've never been able to understand from where I took the strength to rip the belt in several seconds, under a hail of bullets. I suffered pangs of remorse for not bidding farewell to my loved ones, and for failing to stay by their side. But the will to flee and the prospect of survival didn't leave me much time to think. When I felt that I was free, I began to run as fast as I could. I had to cross the plot of land where the Polish army used to conduct horse races…. I reached the [nearby] forest and found a ditch that had been dug around this plot of land. I lay there for a short while, trying to determine where the shots [of the guards] were coming from, since it seemed as though [the guards] were shooting at me from the forest, as well…. [During the time spent in hiding], I learned the details of the [German] annihilation plan [of Ludwipol's Jews]. Short before I ran away, all [the Jews] had been taken out; the women were buried in a separate pit from the men. The men themselves had dug these pits [beforehand], at a spot near the murder site, together with Ukrainian and Polish forced laborers…. Afterward, all [the Jews] were ordered to strip naked and get inside the pits, whereupon they were shot with automatic weapons. All of them – those who had been killed and those still alive [i.e., the wounded] – were covered with earth, and the earth over the pits kept heaving for several days, until all grew quiet….