arrived from the nearby villages. They sang and wept for joy, thinking that the Russians were already there. After a long wait, a car with a Russian officer arrived. He demanded that the population return to their houses. The Red Army still had a lot of work to do, clearing the roads of the scattered Polishunits, and it wasn’t safe to gather on the road. Disappointed, the peasants dispersed. That was the first disappointment for the people, who were expecting a joyful experience.
[12] Meanwhile, we remained in Ratno, but we had to be practical. We couldn’t live off the shtetl for too long. Individual Jews had helped us a lot. We discussed what to do next and where to go. We decided to go to Brześć for the time being. There we would decide on our destination: Białystok or Vilna.
After staying in Ratno for about two weeks, when the radio announced the fall of Warsaw (there was a radio set in the synagogue),269 we left town and set off for Brześć. We got as far as the large village of Mokrany270 and spent the night there. We came upon the traces of the large Polish militarydivision that had passed through Ratno: telegraph poles had been sawn down and the woods were burning. We were also told about a horrible case in which peasant militiamen had shot 32 Polish officers from the units defeated by the Russians. I myself saw peasants wearing the caps of officers who had been shot. In the village we found out that a train was already running from Małoryta271 to Brześć, organised and driven by the Russians. In Malaryta we encountered the first large Soviet military unit. Peasants and Jews surrounded the Soviet soldiers and listened in amazement to their stories of Soviet marvels. (These were men from politruk units, the Soviet propaganda service.) From Malaryta, we took the train to Brześć. Małoryta, too, had suffered from the war. A German tank had burst into town and shot the Polish troops. The town was partially burnt down. We boarded the train without tickets and travelled very slowly to Brześć. It was night time when we arrivedat the station. We had no wish to go into town because we didn’t have anywhere to sleep. We intended to stay in the station all night, but in the mean-
