The Jews began to plead, to weep, to fall at his feet, but to no avail... they
had to dig – and if they did not, he would shoot everyone immediately...
It was all over.
Jews said viduy and dug themselves a large mass grave... They wet the
earth with bloody tears... and they dug sluggishly and slowly, their hands
gave out, their knees buckled, they fell with their shovels... No one looked
another in the eye... and… no one yet knew which of the “four deaths”⁶⁷³ was
in store for them...
[5] They dug a large grave... He ordered them to lie down on top of each
other, alive, in the grave...
Jews fell upon each other’s necks... They said farewell and asked each
other for forgiveness... They called out Shema Yisroel and went alive into the
grave...
He called his “comrades” to fill the grave with earth...
The Jews lay stretched out with their eyes closed... They could not open
them for fear... Then they heard one of the “comrades” who had come, call
out to him: “Karol, we don’t need this”...
And they once again heard the “Düsseldorf man-eater”⁶⁷⁴ say to them
“On your feet!”
Two of the 60 Jews, Gorzyczański and Borukh Manela,⁶⁷⁵ went mad from
the experience...
Two youths came out of the grave [6] as grey as two white doves...
The others came back to the courtyard of the church, barely able to
walk... and encouraged the remaining Jews not to worry... “Jews have a great
God”! If they had been “resurrected” from the grave, then they would most
surely get out of the church...
And they resolved to celebrate a holiday every year on that same day and
to give charity in memory of the miracle that had happened to them..
And the Jews in the shtetl say that the “comrade” was no comrade... but
the spirit of the holy Maggid...
673 The four forms of capital punishment referred to in the Talmud (Sanhedrin, 74a) are stoning, burning, beheading and strangulation.
674 Possibly, a vague reference to the “Vampire of Düsseldorf”, Peter Kürten, a serial killer of women and children who was active in Düsseldorf in the 1920s.
675 Reading of surname uncertain.
