the shirt on your body was too much. From midday on, rain poured down,
together with hailstones so large they were like the makat barad¹⁷⁵⁸ in Egypt.
Not only were we soaked through, but we had to wade through water up to
our knees. That day we were condemned to the arba mitot bet din, sequila,
srefa, hereg ve-henek,¹⁷⁵⁹ degradation and destruction. As long as we live, it
will remain a day of shame. The date has been engraved into my heart with
the blood from my own body. That day the yevonim ordered us to do the whole
42 kilometers biegem,¹⁷⁶⁰ while they rode on bicycles. They did not let us rest,
nor were we allowed a drink of water. There was no question of bread. They
even made us run across fields, in ditches, then on the road, and so on. And
when we were running in a ditch, they ran alongside and stabbed us with [14]
their bayonets. Anyone who fell while running, rested a bit, adjusted his shoes
or wanted to stray from the flock, was shot on the spot and cleared off the road.
The writer of these lines was fated to be one of the victims. They sought
to cut the thread of his life. I wanted to stop for a minute and tie my shoelaces.
At that same moment I heard a shot. Then they threw me into the
ditch and I was hit by another shot. I jerked in fear and opened my eyes.
Suddenly I heard one of them say to the other, “He’s still alive. Let’s give him
another bullet and finish him off.” Immediately I heard another shot, but
fortunately I came to my senses, stretched my legs, dropped my arms, closed
my eyes and held my breath, pretending to be dead. What happened to me
is a miracle from heaven: the fact that they did not hit the target but only
[15] wounded me.
Taking me for dead, they went off after the whole group and left me in
the field. I remained alone, beaten, hurt, and lying in a pool of blood. I tried
to get up, but could not. When I raised my eyes, I saw small Christian children
looking at me. I asked them for a little water, but they said there wasn’t
any and quickly disappeared. And so I lay there in pain for half an hour. Then
someone approached me with a bottle of water, looked around to see that no
one was watching, gave me some water to drink and quickly made off again.
the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, following which thousands of Jews were slain and the remainder driven into exile.
1758 (Hebrew) Plague of Hail; the seventh of the ten plagues of Egypt.
1759 (Hebrew) The four judicial deaths: lapidation, burning, decapitation, and strangulation; the four forms of capital punishment laid down in the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin).
1760 (Polish) running.
