rule, they nevertheless preferred to be under the Germans than the Jews. Several days after the German invasion in Grodno, a series [6] of anti-Jewish laws was introduced. First of all, the Jews were ordered to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David, but it was not long before they became yellow stars, to be placed on the left side of the chest and the back. The Germans repeatedly levied high contributions on the Jews, and finally drove them from the main street (Orzeszkowej Street), now called Hauptstrasse. After the German invasion, several hundred Jews were deported from Grodno and shot. Immediately after they captured the city of Grodno, the Germans sentthe entire Jewish population, men and women, to forced labour in collective farms located around the city, and maltreated them there. For example, theyordered women to clean the garden of weeds, but they did not let them crouch on the ground, forcing them to perform the task in a standing position with their knees locked straight and their spines bent. After the Jewish Council was set up in Grodno, the issue of forced labour was settled in such a way that every day a certain number of workers were delivered to the Germans, as the Germans had not yet managed, for topographical reasons, to arrange a closed ghetto in Grodno.
In other towns, the entire Jewish population suffered the cruelty of the Germans. In smaller towns in the occupied territories [7] there are hardly any Jews left – they were mainly deported by the Germans and shot. The only major Jewish centres there are in Vilna, Białystok, and Grodno. In these three cities, Jews are mercilessly persecuted. After the occupation of Vilna, approximately 2,500 Jews were killed by the Germans. They drove them out of the city, divided them into groups, and one group was ordered to dig a hole and then lie down in it, and the other group had to fill that hole with dirt. Othergroups were treated in a similar way, and the last mass grave was covered by the Germans themselves. Similar incidents occurred quite often in other towns. In Vilna and Białystok, the Germans put Jews in closed ghettos. The Białystok ghetto is very crowded, as the Germans assigned one square metre of space per person there; thus on average fifteen people had to live in a single room. When the Jews appealed to the authorities, explaining that they could not live in such cramped conditions, the Germans replied that they would take care of this problem. They did it by deporting several thousand Jews from Białystok, and no one knows what they did with them. The Jews who live within those territories [8] try as hard as possible (in many cases,
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