took all of us in, gave us food and drink, and we had a good wash afterwards. After not having washed for so long, it was a real pleasure. The Jew made upfine beds for us and we quickly fell asleep.
During the night, we were awakened by heavy gunfire. When we got up at dawn, we saw hordes of Germans heading towards Rawa Ruska.
The Jew was afraid to maintain a large group of young people in his homeand so he asked us to leave. We had no choice but to move on. On the road, large numbers of German soldiers drove by. We walked along the road nextto them and they didn’t bother us.
We arrived in Rawa Ruska on the first day of the Jewish New Year 5700.377 There we found elderly Jews with long, grey beards sweeping the town’s streets. A Jew [9a] took us in and we ate there and spent the night. We learned that as soon as they [the Germans] had arrived, they immediately began to seize Jews for work. At work the Jews had their beards cut off. They were tortured and beaten. The synagogue was desecrated and the Torah scrolls torn apart. On the Jewish New Year no services were held in any synagogue, study house, or Hasidic prayer house, but each group of neighbours formed a minyan and prayed secretly while hiding. The town was flooded with refugees, and the local Jews all took in several refugees apiece. We remained there until afterthe holiday.
The day after the holiday we went to town commandant. Our spokesperson was a woman comrade who had been expelled from Gdańsk and was a member of our kibbutz. She explained in splendid German that we were students at an agricultural school who had been displaced by the military operations and were therefore requesting authorisation to return to Warsaw. We received the authorisation (a przepustka) immediately.
We left on foot in the direction of Tomaszów Lubelski.378 On the way, we came across many burnt-out villages. [10] Although the peasants knew we
