Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984
Selection for Skarżysko
In the morning I woke up like a new person. The fever was gone, and then the people told me how I acted, what all, what had happened during that night. I had the idea, I remember quite well the discussions, but apparently I did no crazy things, which I didn't know. As soon the fever got off, maybe a day or so later, the city was rigged by all possible formations: German formations, Polish police, Polish firefighters. A cat or a bird couldn't get through that fence, couldn't get out of that ghetto. And they had us rigged for about three or four days. Ordinarily, as far as I know, being expelled once from a situation like that, they only came in the morning--surrounded the ghetto in the--at night--in the morning the people were expelled and finished the job, but this time, they kept us in bay for about four days. And the reason for that, more likely, they expected some kind of fight, but it never took place. One day in the morning, they--through a loud speaker or whatever, they called every people to line up on the, on the square, on--in the ghetto. ??? there were 7,000 people. We had a clever leader, the head of the Jewish people. There was, there was--I mentioned his name before, Mordechai Weissblum. He was very clever. He called up this place, Skarżysko, which was this factory--that modern ammunition factory, and tried to talk in the people to have a request for some working people. ??? requested 300 people only--men, no women at all. And they sent out about, I don't remember, about three trucks--not very big ones--to pick up the people. And uh, of course, the SS moved in--when the trucks came--the SS moved in and tried and knocked out a wall from the ghetto, and marched the people out, maybe a couple hundred yards on the square, on the city square. As they marched out there was an open space there--they knocked out a wall maybe, not more than ten, fifteen feet. There were a group of SS people--German faces, and for the kick of it--just for the fun, I don't know what they had in mind, or what they want to see, or what was so impressive. They just killed in random. The people were walking to the trains to be gassed anyhow, but they kept on shooting--in random. It was bitter cold, now whether they wanted to see the frozen expression of people's faces, frozen dead eyes--that is unknown to me.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn