started sending Jews to German work details. Those people brought food to the ghetto upon [27] return from work and thus in the early days hunger in the ghetto was alleviated. The number of Jews who worked outside the ghettoreached 20,000, and for this reason there was always an incredible crowd and confusion as they were leaving for work. The Germans and Lithuanians often fired shots at the Jews, in an effort to bring order. The matter was settled by the Jewish police who organised workers in groups according to respectivework details.
In the early days of the ghetto, there was a huge fire on Lidzka Street and the Jewish police had to deal with fighting it.
Regardless of the situation the ghetto, the Judenrat and the police appealed to the German authorities on behalf of the Jews kept in Łukiszki prison. As a result, out of approximately 5,000 detainees, about 1,000 people were released, exclusively professionals, such as engineers, technicians, furriers, and tanners. The remainder of the Jews were kept for another weekin desperate conditions, crammed into the cells like sardines, without any food or water. Every day, there were suicide attempts; [28] cries of despair were heard constantly. Some also tried unsuccessfully to bribe the guards and escape from the torment.
After one week, those prisoners were taken in groups of several hundred to Ponary, where they were killed just like the Jews who had been executed there earlier. Men were taken from the prison separately, which prompted the Jews to conclude that they were being taken for labour. Also the German authorities tried to calm them, reassuring the public that those people would be placed in the so-called Ghetto III, a concentration camp in Ponary.
Meanwhile, the ghetto was still in chaos. The authorities sought to concentrate all working people (professionals) in Ghetto I, and the elderly, the disabled, and the unemployed in Ghetto II. Therefore, obligatory resettlement began, resettlement which was carried out amidst confusion. People subject to resettlement stayed out in the streets day and night, unable to find a roomin the new premises to which they were assigned. It was crowded and overpopulated everywhere. Only after vacated shop premises were made available to the people was [29] the housing question more or less settled. The sanitary conditions in the ghetto were deplorable, there were numerous incidentsof suicide, and disease and famine decimated the population. One day during the resettlement operation, the Judenrat and the police received an order
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