Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984

Tragedies of War II

At least one thing were to mention about that night of 1942 October the 22nd. In this group of people a young girl by the name ???--unfortunately, I don't remember the name--she must have been not older than nine years. She survived that massacre. A bullet hit her arm, apparently knocked her out. This was the type of bullets the Germans used. And all the other corpse fall on her. She came through late in the night. Unfortunately, she didn't know--more likely she didn't know that we were located not only a few hundred yards away from that place--she could have walked down to us and maybe, maybe could have saved her. Instead she walked through the night all the way to a city by the name Sandomierz--on the Vistula, knowing that there was a labor camp there with Jewish people. She got there safe, she made it through the night. She too didn't survive. The Germans found out, either they were just--she was just too young to be in a camp, in a labor camp. And they used the tricks to round up people whenever they had a chance. They took out children, they took out women, they took out all the people and they sent them away, of course to the gas chambers, and she was one of them to be sent away too. Ironically enough her mother, by the name ??? ???, a lady of forty-five maybe, something like it. She too survived that massacre, being covered with the corpses. Not injured at all. She was confused in that massacre too. She had nowhere to go. She had a friend, a so-called friend, by the name ???. He was a Polish policeman. He too was a uh, he was sent out with the group of Polish people I mentioned before from the west border--from the German border--from the border towns of Germany. He's the one, uh, one...that Polack. He came to our city, became a policeman. Apparently she knew this man. He was known to me too. She must have left some money with him or whatever--all the belongings. But apparently he wasn't willing to help her. And he either killed her himself or gave her--handed her over to the Germans, and that was the end. A day later we had to go and bury her too. We stayed in that city for about four weeks, cleaned up all the kills, those which I mentioned earlier--they couldn't get out of the bed, were shot in the beds; those who got out were shot in the front of their houses. So all the people--they uh, there was no other way to save them, so this is what the Germans did in our city at that time.

Was it the Germans who shot them or--you said there were Lithuanians and Ukrainians?

No, those shooting people they--those executing people were Germans--SS or marked SS.


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