That night, we were surrounded by tanks. The Ghetto was surrounded by a special army,
and SS men, and tanks were going into the Ghetto.
And I remember: I watched through the window - I was not in the bunker yet -
how a young man (he must have been young, because older people wouldn't have done it)
went right through the tank and threw a bomb inside. It exploded.
The tank with the people inside it exploded, and the Germans were furious.
They started to - how to tell you? - take revenge, but there were no people in the street,
so they were, right away, you know, destroying houses with tanks,
because they knew that people were hiding inside, so they were trying to take revenge right away.
And they went about in the most cruel way, they were putting bombs in one house after another.
And out of the blue sky, one afternoon the SS came, and they just opened up the wall.
They knew exactly where it was.
And there was fire all around. There was an SS man standing there with a machine gun like this,
going: "Raus! Raus!"
That was the end.
We came out "Haende hoch" (with our hands up).
And all the valuables, anything you had, you had to put in a pot. They lined us up against a wall.
We were standing against the wall.
And what do Jews do when they are about to be executed? What do they say? "Shema Yisrael".
Everybody is praying.
We came down the main street. They told us to sit down in the middle of the street, on the cobblestones.
And there was a machine gun trained on us, on all the people from that cellar.
We sat there for about, maybe two hours.
In the meantime, the Nazis had a field day, particularly with the women.
They ripped their skirts off, they abused them in front of everybody. It was just horrible.
"Horrible" is not the word. It was disgusting and horrible.
I looked at what happened there to that particular group, and I said to myself:
"Maybe it's a blessing my mother is not there".
When the Ghetto went up in smoke, I was living in the cemetery with my parents.
And I went out. I could not stay there.
And I was walking in the streets.
And the whole city was in flames, because the whole city was burning.
So many blocks, not one. So many blocks.
And I looked at these blocks.
But the worst thing for me was Easter Sunday, when I was in the church,
listening to all the sermons of the priest.
And I came out. The priest was standing in the front, greeting all the parishioners.
And they were dressed in the best Sunday clothes.
Most of them took their children to the carousel that was nearby, with music playing.
You could see with a naked eye what was going on in the Ghetto: the flames, the burning, everything.
And we were just listening to the expressions: "Jews are burning".
Not burning. "Jews are frying".
I was in that environment of the people,
and to this day I cannot understand where I found the strength not to scream,
not to reveal who I am, that I look at my people burning, and I cannot say anything.
And here the carousel is running, the people are riding on it, and they are all happy.
We were packed into the trains, so we couldn't pull out our hands.
That's how tight we were packed, like sardines.
And later in the night, when they had all the trains filled in,
they locked the doors and they stationed SS men with rifles (mostly Ukrainians) on the top of the trains.
They pulled out. We didn't know where we were going.