Ghetto Lutsk, 1942
Between August 20-23, 1942 approximately 17,000 Jews from Lutsk
were led by Germans to shooting pits outside the city.
We knew, we were informed, the rumor spread by word of mouth,
that there'd be an Aktion in the morning. We slept in our clothes.
Then after an hour or two,
German and Jewish cops arrived
and told everyone:
"Everyone proceed to the main Ghetto,
"to the Judenrat courtyard".
So we started walking and already on the way,
I told Mickey: "Look, there are so many men here,
"why don't they take butchers knives?
"Why don't they take sticks?
"Why don't they take axes? Why aren't they doing anything?"
No one answered. No one said a thing.
If I were an adult,
I might have been the same, but I was a romantic boy.
And then I became apathetic, completely apathetic.
I did whatever Mom told me.
She told me to sit, I sat.
She told me to get up, I got up. To eat, I ate.
Then, I already told you this, my two friends came
and asked: "Shmilik, what do we do?" They were full of energy.
I looked at them, I didn't know what they wanted from me.
That's the worst thing that stayed with me for life,
how I disappointed my friends
and myself.
Near the square where Jews were rounded up
there was a pharmacy owned by Jews.
Several Jewish families hid in its cellars.
They vacated the outlying ghetto in Hnidawa.
They pulled all the Jews out of their houses
and concentrated us in that square I showed you.
We sat and waited, I don't know what we waited for.
Mickey and Skeerch, Mom's cousin, they found out about the cellar,
there must have been rumors about it,
and the Jews that hid here, the families, 3 or 4 families,
they wouldn't tell us, they didn't want to share it with anyone.
They searched and searched until they found it.
I remember we went down the stairs, Mom and I, Bera'le and Necha.
Mickey and Skeerch began digging and lifting things
because everything was covered with firewood to conceal it.
You can say we went in by force.
They managed to find the entrance underneath, opened it,
the families that were there objected
and Mickey said: "Go in, we're not asking".
We went in and stayed here for 3 weeks.
First of all, we could hear, since as you notice, it's near the road,
near the square,
so every day we heard cars arriving and driving off.
You hear all that, and I was thinking, perhaps Bujik's there,
perhaps Haim Mussik's there and the aunts.
And every day the Ukrainian and German cops came down.
When they came down they lit a match or a flashlight
and then, you know, the light seeped in through the cracks
and it passed above us,
as if you were touched by the angel of death.
We sat with open mouths,
so they won't hear us breath.
And you know, here, listen to this sound... Let's not talk...
If someone whispers, he's heard.
So when the cops came in and talked among themselves,
it was like thunder. They talked among themselves.
The best word was "Nyema"- Nothing.
Imagine being in a place like this for 3 weeks.
Anyway, one day,
after they stopped coming in and searching,
Mickey and Bera'le and Skeerch heard people talking Yiddish
so they went out. They were workers from the labor camp
who came to collect clothes and furniture for the Germans.
Then they said:
"The Germans announced that they're not killing Jews any more.
"England and the US intervened, you can come out.
"There's another small Ghetto on the way to Hnidawa
"and Jews can live there. There's no more killing".
We decided to go out and imagine this,
when we went in the Ghetto was full of people,
since they were all rounded up in the square,
we went out and there was no one.
There was nothing.
And you know that no one's alive.
You say to yourself, only 2-3 weeks have passed
and this whole world is dead.
You see the windows wide open and the wind...
to this day I can't stand hearing a window swaying in the wind...
Doors, feathers,
blankets, clothes, scattered all over.
I remember it as if it were today, Bera'le watching
and it was not the first time he said that to me,
he said it also on another occasion:
"Shmilikel, if you live through this,
"remember this image".
After the Aktion and the murder of approximately 17,000 of Lutsk Jews,
the remaining Jews were concentrated in a small ghetto
surrounded by water and swamps.
Bera'le and Mickey, Shmulik's elder brothers,
were transferred to a labor camp
and his sister, Necha, hid in the home of Polish acquaintances.
Shmulik and his mother stayed in the small ghetto for about 10 days.
A day after Rosh Hashana
the ghetto was surrounded by German and Ukrainian policemen
who forcefully took the Jews out of their houses,
led them to the Lubart's castle and from there to the shooting pits.
It was the second day of Rosh Hashana in 1942.
It was still a holiday, supposedly.
We walked along the narrow, desolate ghetto.
On the way, people were coming out of their houses frightened
and they joined the row of people on the street.
It was early morning
and a Jewish man we knew said:
"Look at that, I face death
"and I feel like smoking. And I don't have a cigarette."
That's what he said.
And then a woman who hadn't had time to dress
and wore only a night gown said:
"I'm going to die but I'm cold"
and she was shivering.
Right behind me a mother and daughter stood and she wept.
She said: "Mom,
"I haven't lived yet.
"I want to live".
And her mother told her: "We will go through this".
"Dad went through this",
because her father was already captured and killed,
"we will go through this".
And that man added:
"Whatever will be, will be. This is our fate".
Mom told me all the time, I was with Mom...
I held her hand because to go die alone was pretty scary
and Mom kept letting go of my hand and said: "Be free, be free"
so I don't cling to her, so I can escape.
She didn't let me hold her.
We were certain that we'd be led straight to the pits
but they led us here
so they could dig a pit without us knowing.
We walked down the entire street, people stood and watched.
We passed the church,
we didn't know at first where they were taking us.
And they took us inside.
We entered the hall. It was a big hall.
People started running around, started to climb on the windows,
the girls... and the cops laughed,
they mocked them and didn't let them.
Then I saw that on that end there were stairs
and people climbed up the stairs and ran.
I went up
and saw that people were crawling into...
I'd call it a tunnel, under the "podloga",
under the floor.
I saw that and immediately ran back, from afar,
ran back, reached the stairs,
there was already a cop at the entrance.
He started yelling and hitting, "don't go here, don't go there".
I ran, went into the tunnel
and stayed there for 3 or 4 days.
I left Mom here.
She didn't move from the stairs
and the whole time I lay upstairs...
I thought that she was looking for me, that she was crying.
Each scream I heard, I thought: It's Mom.
I said to myself: I have to get out,
but I couldn't get out because I was lying here
and there were people over there.
When they started taking people out to Hirka Polonka,
they saw that people were hiding under the floor.
I decided that I wasn't going out.
They told people: "You will be taken to Kiwerce
"and you'll work in a sawmill.
"There are other Jews there and there's no fear".
And people, I don't know if they were persuaded, but they came out.
Gradually, more and more people came out.
I decided I'm not going out.
My worst nightmare
was when I heard them starting to tear down segments of the floor
to find me.
I was laying there, saying to myself in Yiddish:
"Gottiniu, macht mir apopleksie... Give me apoplexy,
"so I'll die, so I won't be here any longer".
The fear that they were about to pry open the floor
and I would see their faces, that was "the" nightmare.
After about an hour I heard them sending in a Polish kid
with some source of light, I didn't see what kind,
and again, the light passes like that...
and then I knew he would try to check whether the board was steady,
I put my hands like so and indeed he went all the way to the end
and with his leg he pushed and pushed
and in the end he said: "Nyema" (nothing).
And to this day I don't know
whether he saw me or not.
I tend to give him credit that he didn't turn me in,
that he ignored me.
And when I heard 3 or 4 days later
that there was complete silence,
I dismantled the board I put behind my head,
I crawled downstairs on my knees,
I opened a window after I heard there was no one, no cops,
and I jumped down.
Mass grave in the Hirka Polonka area where Lutsk Jews were murdered.
"25,658 Jews from Lutsk were murdered and buried here in Aug. 1942
"by the Nazi murderers and their aids. May God avenge their deaths!"
This is the place where all the Jews from Lutsk were executed.
Now look at the trees.
It's...
This is the last place they saw, here they cried out: "Hear, O Israel!"
and here they also screamed: "There's no God!"
because there was no God here!
This is the last scenery
and this is the place where children screamed and wept,
shouted to their parents: "We want to live..."
It happened here.
It's dreadful.
When I think about it I can see it,
perhaps my mother screaming,
I picture her screaming: "Hear, O Israel",
and I see the children, Haim Mussik and Sheindale
and Aunt Zlate...
I see them stripping naked,
standing above the pits and being shot. That's...
Sometimes on Fridays, when I returned home,
I couldn't sleep at night because each time I saw that image,
although I didn't actually see it.
And they're all buried here, my mother's buried here
and Bera'le and Mickey and all the neighbors and relatives,
and my aunts and my friends from school.
What a world... It's hard to believe.
And look at this contrast, with the greenery and flowers.