a glass of water. After several days of maltreatment, the Jews were taken in groups of several hundred people to Ponary (a village near Vilna), where huge ten-metre pits had been dug for military purposes. The Jews were brought there in groups of six and shot, and after each pit was filled, lime was poured on top of it. The sound of gunfire and cries of the victims alerted the area to those brutal [21] murders. Thus, about 8,000 people were shot over the course of several days. Even before that, there had been cases of shooting men whoallegedly had been taken there to work. When their wives brought food for them, they were told that their husbands had already bitten the dust. To murder a Jew went unpunished and happened in the city on a daily basis. It was a regular sight to see corpses of people killed in queues, at the city garbage pit, at public toilets, or at work details. There were incidents of Jews burying other Jews alive on the order of Germans and Lithuanians.
On Saturday (6 or 7 September) at 6 a.m., the city was locked in and the Jews were told that they had fifteen minutes to pack and get out of their homes, because they were being sent to the ghetto, which had been organisedaround the houses of Jews who had been shot.
[22] (1.42.) Jews in Vilna in the German times – continuation
Since the Jews were lamed for the murder of those two Germans, the German authorities arrested all the members of the Jewish Council, including Dr Wygodzki, and shot them along with other Jews. Only one member of the Jewish Council managed to avoid that fate, Anatol Fryd,464 who happened tobe in a hospital at the time.
Two weeks before the establishment of the ghetto, a contribution was imposed on the Jewish community, amounting to five million roubles and two kilograms of gold. Despite enormous efforts, the Council managed to collectonly approximately 3.5 million roubles. For this reason the Jews did not know whether those persecutions (the execution of so many Jews and members ofthe Council) were caused by the murder of the two Germans, or were a resultof failure to collect the contribution.
