panions. Of course we said we could not. When I asked him: Was kann man dort bekommen? He answered laconically: Mit einem Stein in Kopf.734 He did not want to talk much. Our insistence did not help. When we bade our farewell he said (his last words stuck in my memory for good), Nach dem Kriegs bekomme ich das Wort.735 He presented us with a few kilograms of groats. The fact that during those horrible days we often met with humane treatment on the part of individual front-line soldiers gave us some encouragement and hope that not all had been lost and that human hearts were beating in the chests of many of our enemies and that in the end they could overcome the savage, animal hatred. But in the meantime… . New pogrom days began.
On 24 November an ordinance was issued regarding the establishment of a Jewish ghetto, which encompassed a very small part of the city beyond the Zamarstynowski Bridge. That area was practically in the suburbs. The living and hygienic conditions there were horrible. By 15 December all the Jews had to move into the ghetto, but were allowed to use only the bridge on Pełtewna Street. The ghetto was separated from the rest of the city by the Lvov–Tarnopol railway. Aside from the bridge on Pełtewna Street one could also go into the ghetto over the bridge on Zamartynowska Street or the ramp on Żółkiewska Street, but Jews were forbidden to do so. There were strong posts of the gendarmerie and Ukrainian police on each of the bridges. The authorities’ policy was clear: [13] to further decimate the Jewish population before the closure of the ghetto and the walling in of the remaining Jews, thus sentencing them to certain death from hunger, diseases, or camps. The Jews moving into the ghetto were searched and robbed of almost everything by the bridge on Pełtewna Street. The resettled people did not avoid beatings either, as bands of thugs waiting for them on the other side of the river attacked and robbed them of whatever they had miraculously managed to salvage. Older men and women above age 50 and sometimes younger ones too were captured and executed. With help from the Ukrainian police, the gendarmes and Gestapo functionaries selected older Jewish men and women from the crowd and locked them into the neighbouring elementary school, from where, after many unbelievable tortures and indescribable suffering the
