Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Abraham Asner - October 10, 1982

Now, I'll start from there and I'll come--no, no, no, no. And I'll come to another, another incident because that's keeps for... forgetting. When we was in the ghetto, they start to check the passports. They start to check the passports and uh, who's not from that area, from Radun, they come, somebody come from Lida or from Voranava or somebody come from other towns, uh... And they check the passports, if the passport doesn't match, they pick 'em out. If the passport doesn't match, they pick 'em out. In our place where we used to live, they don't go in. I don't know, maybe we was lucky. Maybe they would took us away too, because we was from a little town, from another town. Well when they come, the policemen, the, the Germans they don't come in, in our place in ghetto. Finally they took forty-three people, it was winter in 1942, a frosty day and a windy day, and they make like a hunting. They killed forty-three people. And then they give us two hours to bury the people. When the first--the, the ground was frozen three feet deep or more. They start to pick up the people and some people was alive. It was uh, one boy alive and we got to take him away to hide him somehow to take him away to... because he's not dead. And uh, and finally we got to give the counting, so many people, where, where is the boy. Where is one person, one dead body's missing. I don't know how they did it that time ex... exactly, I don't know. Just they bring him, they find a big hole in the ground from 1939, a bomb fell in that. We brought all the people down there, the forty, over forty people and we put 'em in that uh, hole and we just push some snow around on top. Uh, put some sn... sn... snow and cover up just with snow, because we couldn't make uh, in two hours uh, when the ground is frozen, three feet deep. Then in, later when the spring come, the sun start to warm up and that snow melted and that corpse start to smell. They told us to take out with wagons the, the dead bodies and bring 'em to the uh, to the same place where they buried them before. And some people recognized uh, from their families some kids, some other kids uh, and some girls. One father recognized his daughter was going and crying. And then they buried them that time. And the same place where they buried the... It's over two thousand people down there where they killed them ???