were ordered to sweep the courtyard. Bearded Jews were made to sweep the
courtyard with their beards...
One group of Jews was led away to clean the “toilets”, not with rags and
brooms but with their bare hands... Others were forced to eat the human
excrement... People vomited … fainted...
It was 12 o’clock. Now the meal.
People cheered up for a moment, thinking they would be given meal,
since they were completely exhausted. The soldiers told them cynically,
“We are going to have a meal. You will get nothing to eat here... Jews wanted
the war, let them die of hunger”...
After such a meal, there came an order: “Women and children will be
freed – the men must stay here”... The soldiers added, “You will all be shot as
enemies of humanity” … An indescribable wail rose from the women... they
did not want to leave the men...
[28] But they were “released” from the courtyard with rifle butts...
The parting was tragic and terrible, nobody knew whether they would ever
see each other again...
The women clustered restlessly around the churchyard fence, trying to
pass some food to the men through the slats... They all shared what they managed
to get... but it wasn’t much comfort... You could feel that something else
was coming after the pause...
Then a soldier came out and announced that the Jews had to tell them
where Rabbi Perłow (the town rabbi)⁶⁷⁰ was, otherwise they would all be
hanged on the spot. You can image the panic and fear amongst the Jews...
(the rabbi wasn’t there, he had left for Lublin during the bombing).
And so they took the most prominent citizen, a great religious scholar
and the richest man in town, Shmuel Moyshe Korman, led him to a tree… and
hanged him in front of everyone. At the last minute they… cut the rope.
He fell from the tree … and when he had come to himself, they strung him
up again and … again cut the rope... Mr Korman began to beg them [29] to
let him die...
The hangmen’s answer was as follows: “You kill a dog, but a Jew is worse
than a dog, a Jew you torture”...
670 Nokhem Shloyme Perłow (1911–1942), rabbi of Kozienice from December 1938.
