half circle, and the military men pointed the barrels of their rifles and held
them by the triggers and thus kept everyone in terror for about an hour.
It seemed that the military was waiting for an order to fire, and in the meantime,
shots were often fired into the air to scare the crowd, so that all the Jews
frequently proclaimed Shema Israel. Fortunately, no order to fire came, but
all the men were quickly chased to the Ciechanów road for hard labour. It did
not help that everyone said that they had not yet eaten. All still had to work
hard. The work consisted of throwing stones, which lay by the road, into the
ditches [4] and then placing the same stones back where they had previously
lain. During the herding to labour, a certain Avrom Malewańczyk was heavily
wounded with a dagger and subsequently became seriously ill. He was
stabbed because the military man who was chasing him at full speed could
catch up with him.
In the middle of the work, a taxi with military officers arrived, who
asked why the Jews were working. They received a reply: because Jews had
shot a military man in Nowe Miasto (which was lo hayu devorim meolam).¹⁷¹⁷
In that case, they ordered all the Jews who were working to line up; of these
they selected 10¹⁷¹⁸ young men they liked, namely:
1) Alter Kahan, aged 30, who has a wife and 2 children;
2) Shlomo Yoysef Sztern, aged 37, who has a wife and 5 children;
3) Yoysef Majersdorf, aged 27;
4) Gedalya Lewin, who has a wife and 2 children, and is the only son of
his parents;
5) a certain Frenkel, aged about 30, who came from Przasnysz, having
fled from there because of the local wartime events.
So these 5 men were selected and they were ordered to march in a different
direction; the remaining men were again herded to work.
At 7 p.m., everyone was brought back to the market, where they
were informed that the 5 above-mentioned men had been shot. It was also
announced to everyone that all men must shave off their beards and peyes
and dress in the European manner. Whoever did not comply with the
order would be shot. Another 20 men were selected from the group; among
these 20 men were the town rabbi, shlit”a, and several other elderly people.
1717 (Hebrew) No such thing ever was, i.e. a baseless claim.
1718 From the continuation of the text we see that it was five.
