split us up. Ten on the truck with cinders, and ten on the other. We’re riding.
Both trucks go to Piotrkowska Street. I see it for the first time since the ban
on Jews from that street.⁶⁵¹ We’re driving down the entire Piotrkowska street.
At a certain moment we see the soldiers or the civilian throw a silk Jewish
yupitsa⁶⁵² from the first truck. The second truck doesn’t move. The driver
gets out and picks the yupitsa up. We want to give a sign, but he threatens
us with a fist. We understand that something will begin. We ride further.
We’re already at Górny Rynek. We’re already outside of the city, at the road
to Pabianice . We stop after Ruda Pabianicka. A side alley. A house. In front of
the house, a glimpse of a civilian with an armband and a gun on his shoulder.
An order: “Get down.” They lead us to a courtyard. A factory was probably
there before. In the courtyard, Christians with numbers on their backs,
either captives or arrestees, hung around. They split us up in a row, just in
front of the entrance to a little house. We receive the first blows from several
civilians with small gas pipes–accessories well known to us from before
the war.⁶⁵³ They search us. First the tales. It inspires a strange paroxysm of
exaltation. Two of the civilians dance on it. For the first time I see a demon’s
dance. Cursory body searches. They find tsitses⁶⁵⁴ on somebody. They tear it
off his throat so that blood trickles around his entire neck. He looks like he
was taken down from a gallows. All our faces are pale. We understand what
awaits us. The first in the row, a young Hasidic man, is taken into a room.
Beastly screams. In a couple minutes they take him out. His face is three
times bigger than before. Blood streams from his head. They had pulled out
all his hair, which he himself had to put atop the tales and trample over with
his feet. Where such a thin Jewish boy found so much strength, I don’t know.
They take the second person in. The same screams. I’m the third or fourth in
the row. We stood and awaited our fate.
Now one of the arrestees approaches me. He asked if I had any money.
I had a barely 10 marks. “Give them to me. I’ll let you go.” I didn’t have much
to risk. I gave them to him. The beastly screams of the tortured, we heard it
all. He went away. And it worked. A minute later a man dressed in a black
651 See Doc. 5, p. [31].
652 Kind of a smock.
653 Gas pipes were often used by Polish anti-Semites during pogroms in the 1930s.
654 That is, a tales-kotn.
