They caught both women and men for forced labour, but in fact many went willingly. They worked in granaries. Since Białystok was a city of the first category, warehouses were stocked with enough food for ten years. Thus, people could not only feed themselves, but could take something to eat home with them. The Preussiche Zeitung52 reported that Białystok Jews were eagerto work.
After two weeks we had to wear patches. Yellow stars: one on the chest,another on the back.
There was hunger. We could not buy anything. There were no shops. In addition, a prohibition was imposed on selling anything to Jews. Farmers would only barter food; they did not want to take money.
On Friday, 27 June, the Germans occupied Białystok, and on 1 September they closed the ghetto.53 They allowed three metres of space for each Jew.
I volunteered to work. A friend gave me a ticket entitling me to apply for a job. In the morning I went through the gate of the ghetto, where people gathered with similar tickets. Then the German came and chose workers from among the Jews assembled there. Over time, the authorities sent their requisitions to the Jewish community.
[30] When I first went to work, an officer checked the tickets. A foreman brought us there on the basis of a collective pass. We left as a group and, walking down the middle of the street, we went to the job fair. I stood at the end of the queue and waited. Suddenly, a military officer appeared with the so-called Totenkopf.54 He looked around and finally chose four women and several men, including me, and took us to Reichsstrassenverwaltung.55 We worked in the yard. Men carried furniture down, and we washed it. There was supposed to be an office and a dormitory. Our supervisor was an elderly German who spoke excellent Polish. He was very polite and spoke to me, addressing me formally as “ma’am”. There was a nasty incident with him and I am not surprised thathe reacted so harshly. At one point, he came out and asked who had taken his bread and sausage. Nobody confessed. It was not until the German began to grow more upset that someone, fearing sanctions that could affect us all,
