Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984
Liquidation
Our city was, was liquidated sometimes October the 22nd, 1942. It was a Wednesday, it was a Wednesday evening when all the local, the local police, Gendarmerie, what you would call, came and took back all the belongings from our people like uh, shoemakers, tailors, whatever they had left to be done for them. They took this back because they knew the following day we're being--we be uh, sent out--sent away. They rounded us up on the city square. Early in the morning they proclaimed--it was a Thursday morning--proclaimed everybody got to line up on the city square and uh, waiting an hour or so, about 7,000 people were rounded up. All the dignitaries, the local dignitaries, all the Germans--stone looking faces lined up and looked at us, and uh, all we could see that they too didn't look very normal, but they had no function, they just looked at us. The people which were involved with this function--if I remember it right, the guards were ???, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. Uh, they were lined up in a place further south, and also the SS which uh, they weren't local, they came uh, from uh, some other city. They called out certain trades people to be put in a different uh, in, in, to be put in a different uh, uh, column. Among those I stepped out as a carpenter, and they needed carpenters. They took out something like eighty people, eighty men and twenty girls, including the Jewish uh, police or guards, so we were about 100 people to be left in the city. All the others marched about thirteen kilometer to a station called Jasice by foot. Uh, we could see the columns from that place where we were standing, we could see the columns for hours walking in the direction of Jasice to be lined up, to be lined in uh, cattle uh, wagons to the train in cattle wagons. We--our function was in the city, those who were left behind--to clean the city from all the loot the Germans wanted--furniture, goods, whatever possible they could steal. They stole. And also of course to bury the people, which were--couldn't move from their beds or couldn't move out of the house. Those that couldn't move were shot in the beds or those that could get out of their bed were shot in front of their doors. Our function was to bury those people. There must--there was going on a lot of killings. As we were rounded up, lined up in the front of the blocks to be--put the 100 people in that little ghetto where we lived in. They gave us three apartments, three apartment buildings, put us 100 people in these three apartment buildings. As we were standing in front of the buildings we could see within 100 yards a young Jewish boys and girls were rounded up which came out in the last minute--had nowhere to go--confused, and the S...SS killed them right there and then, they would not let them join us because they would call them illegal people.
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