families of Soviet officials and troops. Panic broke out immediately amongst the population. Everything that was still available in the co-operative was bought up. In the afternoon, almost the entire Jewish and most of the Polishpopulation of Rutki moved with their bare essentials to nearby villages further from the main roads. At night, a mass evacuation of Soviet motorised troops from the border began on the road to Białystok. This increased the panic even further. In the night of 22 to 23 June, and at dawn on the 23rd,most of the Jewish youth and a number of older Jews employed under the Soviets set out towards Białystok on foot or in carts, together with the stream of Soviet troops. On 25 June, the Jews who had remained in the surrounding villages returned to Rutki. At that point, no authorities at all were in Rutki. The Soviet authorities had already left and the Germans had not yet arrived. That situation was exploited by a Polish armed gang, which in the Soviet period had been hiding in the forest on either side of the River Narew near the villages of Grądy and Bronowo,316 about 10 km from Rutki. On 25 June the gang attacked Rutki with the aim of robbing and starting pogroms against the town’s Jews. They managed to drive the Jews together into a field outside Rutki and attempted to proceed with the robbery. The local priest and the school headmaster spoke out against the gang, but the gang ignored their warnings and started to threaten them, too, and to shoot at the assembled Jews. Right at that time, a large group of German troops was driving by on the road. They heard the shooting and drove into the town, thinking a Soviet unit was still hiding there. Not realising what was going on, the Germans dispersed the armed gang. So it did not come to a pogrom, but only a few wounded Jews and a small amount of looted Jewish property. After dispersing the gang, the German unit continued on its way. German rule as such arrived in Rutki only the following day, 26 June. A gendarmerie post was set up in Rutki, manned by six gendarmes. The gendarmes immediately began house-to-house searches of Jewish homes and took anything they fancied. During the searches the Jews were beaten with sticks, without rhyme or reason. The Germans ordered all Jews over age 10 to wear two round yellow patches, 10 cm in diameter, one in front and one on the back. The whole Jewish population, with the exception of working artisans, began to be rounded up for forced labour every day. As there
