bet hamidrash, from where they would be sent off to the occupied territories
in Russia for work.
At the appointed time, the courtyard of the bet hamidrash was already
full of men, women and children. The cries went [3] right up to heaven.
After the appointed time, the Germans together with the Polish police
went to the Jewish dwellings and looked for hidden Jews. Whenever they came
upon a Jew, they shot him on the spot. The same fate befell the sick people,
who were not able to present themselves at the courtyard. They were shot
lying in their beds. The murderers found the family Kołkowicz, which comprised
18 people, lying in the cellar. For a large amount of money, the family
Kołkowicz persuaded them not to shoot them in the cellar. They were led out
to the cemetery and were shot dead there. Approximately 100 Jews, among
them sick people and small children, were shot dead at that time.
The Polish police worked extremely hard. Through a crack in my hidingplace
(an attic of a storehouse), I noticed that three small children, whose
mother had run away from them in great confusion, were nestling up to one
another, poor things, trembling all over in great terror. Suddenly, two Polish
policemen arrived and, with sadistic calm, shot the three children, leaving
them dead on the spot.
[4] Along with the shooting of hidden Jews, the operation of emptying
the Jewish flats took place. All Jewish possessions were loaded onto carts and
taken away to the gendarmerie station.
At noon, the whole crowd, men on foot and women and children on
carts, accompanied by blows with sharp rods and gun butts, was driven to
Puławy, 16 km from Sobienie, and from there they were loaded onto rail carriages
to Treblinka.
Since I was hidden and did not experience the journey to Puławy, it is not possible
for me to recount in detail how the hellish journey from Sobienie to Puławy
went and how dozens of Jews fell from the frightful blows and other tortures.
This is how the community of Sobienie was destroyed.⁷⁵⁵
ARG II 365 (Ring. II/309)
Description: duplicate, handwritten (SJ*), ink, Yiddish, 154×199 mm, 2 sheets,
4 pages.
755 According to Sura Drożdziarz’s testimony, three Jews from Sobienie-Jeziory survived the war. AŻIH, Holocaust testimonies, 301/5490, p. 1.
