Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

Jewish Deportation

How did they do that? They just came to a district... Did they go into the houses?

Into the houses, yeah.

They had loudspeakers to call them down?

No, no, no, no. Fact, fact is the neighbors next door didn't know what happened. They were very quiet, went in and they marched everybody out.

This was during the day.

No, at night.

Oh, at night.

At night when everybody was home.

Was there a curfew?

Well, when the, after the war broke out uh, yeah there was a curfew. All the time. You had special... When the Germans came in, you couldn't go out at night.

So they knew they'd be there.

Yeah, they knew there were going to be there.

]interruption in interview]

This city business all was confiscated by the Germans, you know. They uh... And uh...

When these people were taken away, what did you think happened to them?

They shot 'em. Just killed 'em.

But did you...

But not, could not... The fact is they were, we used to see where you could get some uh, people to find out and maybe uh, maybe uh, buy 'em out, you know. Nothing. Was the end of it. Because uh, several, I remember several times those raids like these happened, and some of 'em even in the middle of the day. They closed off an area, and every person that was there, especially Jewish uh, they were in the Jewish areas, and they took 'em on trucks and that was the end. There was a cousin of mine who was also uh, kidnapped at the time, you know. We tried to buy him out. Never heard from him again. They just must take 'em away and shoot 'em and that's it.

And nobody said they were taking them to work or anything like that.

No, no, no, no. This was just uh, strictly a raid, and they whatever, whoever they captured was killed. Never saw 'em again.


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