the patients, what to take with me, what to put on, what to take off. My wife
packed the rucksack while the patients loudly lamented. My son sat looking
at me silently and banged the table with his fist. The patients began crawling
out of bed and lay down in front of the door to prevent us from leaving them
behind by themselves. They all shouted, wept and screamed.
In the midst of this tumult, the Germans came in. They clambered over
the patients, stamping on their heads with heavy boots, and kicked them
in the teeth, eyes and nose. The screams grew even wilder, the weeping even
louder, and at this, the Germans who had entered became even more crazed.
When the terrified patients crawled behind the beds, into the cupboards,
or wherever they could get away, the Germans fell upon them, dragged each
one out by the arm or leg, and battered them over the head with their clubs.
In this manner they ‘finished off’ almost half the hospital, killing them on
the spot. Those patients who stayed in their beds, unable to move, were not
bothered; I learned later that none of them had escaped alive.
[3] While the beating was going on, I, my wife and son, and a few of the
fitter patients, ran out of the room. In front of the gate, an officer tore off my
rucksack and punched me in the mouth, knocking out two teeth. The force
of the heavy blow to my face made me fall in the mud. Initially I felt nothing
other than the pain from my teeth. It was only after a few minutes, when my
wife and son tried to lift me up, that I realised my arm was resting in something
damp and very sticky and that I myself was lying in a pile... We all left
the spot, driven away by the officers. I wiped my arm and rubbed it on my
coat, but was quite unable to get rid of the sticky mess. The rain poured down
on us as we walked along the path in the darkness, and it soon froze on all our
clothes. We climbed over dead bodies and injured people who were no longer
even able to groan, until we arrived at the assembly point on Szeroka Street,
where the whole population was descending from every corner of the town.
When day began to break and the whole mass of people — around
4,000 Jews — was assembled, the Germans and a few Jewish militiamen began
lining them up in single file. They themselves [4] withdrew to the sides of the
street, leaving a small passage free in the middle. Then the hounding began,
as they lashed out left and right with clubs and iron bars. Everyone simply
ran towards the row of Germans. There too it was like running through a fire.
On one side, a row of Germans, and on the other side — the same. On one
side, they were beaten with clubs, whips and revolver butts, and on the other
