Yizkor (Memorial) Books are one of the best sources for learning about Jewish communities. Members of landsmanshaften have published these books as a tribute to their old homes and to the people who were murdered during the Holocaust. They are written mostly in Hebrew and Yiddish. The Steibtz Yizkor Book is 600 pages. Only the the first 20 pages reproduced below are in English.

Steibtz, home of my childhood and youth, I was not with you when the reaper came. My ears did not hear the moans of those ever-lamented ones who were so dear to me from my early days. On the Twelfth Day of Tishri 5730, fifteen hundred of your sons and daughters, old and young, were buried alive, including those who had studied with me and bad been my comrades in the Movement; they and their wives and children. Yet when they were all buried alive in that vast common grave which their own hands had dug, my heart did not break at their wailing and outcry. Only from afar did I experience the calamity of my people, and I could not then distinguish your wailing in that stupendous tempest of death cries uttered by my people, whose dim echoes reached us so belatedly and afar, without sound and without any differentiation, through some fraternal awareness deep in the heart.

Steibtz home of my childhood, pride of my youth, I cannot believe even now that you went as sheep to the slaughter. For I so well knew the heroes among your youth, who had been brought up on, the banks of the Niemen and were so familiar with the trouble and distress of borders and frontiers. I knew your butchers and waggoners, your ship-caulkers and those who tied up the rafts at the riverside; the hawkers who used to stand up to drunken peasants and the Jews who lived in the Yurzydika, who were brought up to toil with their hands; to say nothing of the market-boys who fought so well. Where did you leave your bravery? Your handful of partisans who passed through the seven infernos of the Resistance on the way here, through the forests of Polesia and the borders of Rumania and Italy, serve as witnesses that even in the day of wrath and distress you had not entirely lost your own brave spirit. The enemy must indeed have been very powerful and cruel to have trapped you thus. I ached and grieved at your end from afar, and belatedly. And yet I witnessed the beginnings within you of the flaming spirit of self defense at the time when the term "self-defense" was first heard and reached your youth; when the organization of a self-defense body had barely begun, to continue there-after as a living memory which I shall relate. Self-defense was there long before any organization. Our little town was a center of handicrafts and traded with the villages all around. Sunday was market day and the day when trouble might be expected. There an inn in town, and there were the homes of Reb Yonah the Winemaker and Reb Mordechai Aizik the Winemaker; fit and proper scholars who on Sabbath Eve used to prepare raisin wine, for all the householders in town to hallow the Sabbath and end the Sabbath at kiddush and havdala. On Sundays they also provided vodka for the village peasants. And every market day there was a frightful crowd round about those three houses.

In due course vodka-selling was handled by a Government monopoly firm. The peasants used to line up at the premises in long files every Saturday night and would leave behind all the money they received for the crops and produce they brought to town. They were astounding virtuosos in setting corks popping out of the bottles into the air, and emptying one bottle after another down their gullets. And that was where danger always lay in wait.

When Easter approached, or on Christmas Eve when the Pope in the church used to inflame their imaginations in fit and proper fashion, and after the long church procession wound its way round the town, the peasants afterwards used to make their way to the monopoly building in order to wash clown their religious ardor and hatred in right royal liquor in return for their good earnings. Then dead would descend on the homes of Israel; and the lads would tell one another that Reubele the waggoner had stuck his axe into his knee boot, just on the offchance of course...
This Reubele the waggoner was the oldest son of Moisheke the waggoner, who when a young man used to drive his horse and cart as far as the fairs at Smolensk and Nizhni-Novgorod with the local merchants; and whom I came to know only when he was an old man who year by year took my mother and us children to the Polish doctor Malkovitch in Malyova village, five hours journey from Steibtz. On the way he would carefully, in a very sweet voice and with exceedingly precise enunciation, chant the entire hundred and fifty Psalms by heart as he sat on his waggoner's seat. Between each of the five books of the Psalms he would give me a lesson in the writing of an exceptionally elegant and flowery Hebrew.

Reubele his oldest son was the first self-defense man in town. He never accepted the discipline or authority of any organization. He also despised the aid of comrades, and was certain that he himself could drive any enemy out of town. There was nothing whatever in his external appearance to indicate his bravery. He was lean and not tall, but was stouthearted; and he was known, through the neighboring villages as a brave man. Once, so they said, seven peasants had attacked him on the way when he was all by himself. He overcame the lot, killed the whole seven of them and came running back to town with a knife stuck in his belly. So without any organization and without any choice the town knew that Reubele was its shield and defender. That was why they forgave him all his whims and queer habits, regarding those as matters that lie between a man and his Maker, as well as the queer things that went on between him and wife.

Then came Shmuel Tunik (see photo). He looked the absolute opposite of Reubele, standing head and shoulders taller than all the Jews and non-Jews of the town. An impressive, fleshy man he was, with a broad yellow moustache that was as sharp as a skewer. When he marched at the head of the Fire brigade which he commanded, with his copper helmet on his head and the gleaming trumpet in his mouth, the very earth trembled underfoot. I do not remember that he ever did actually hit a non-Jew, but every drunkard was dead afraid of his gaze, and his very walk across the market was as good as a security that no harm would befall the Jews of the town.

Now these two were enough as long as times were normal. But the days of the first revolution came round, the "Black Hundred" organized, the Kishinev pogrom occurred and was followed by the disturbances in Homel. Then dark clouds gathered over the Steibtz region too. It was Passover time in 1905. The torrent of incitement and animosity had been continuing since the 9th of January. The papers were filled with reports of pogroms. All of a sudden suspicious looking strangers appeared in our town; people whom nobody knew and who bought nothing but went wandering round among the peasants in the market-place doing nothing but incite. The peasants used to come out of the church with their faces red as fire. Friendly peasants told us that the villages were being visited by rabble-rousing speakers, and that the day and hour had already been decided on.

In our town there were already the beginnings of a clandestine Jewish Labor Movement. The Bund had already been in existence for quite a while, and that year also saw the organization of a Poalei Zion group who were attached to the Party in Minsk. From hand to hand passed a thin and secret pamphlet printed on cigarette paper and entitled "The Zvi Family", by David Pinsky. In the home of M. Maharshak, the leading Zionist who afterwards inclined towards Poalei Zion, we excitedly read the copy of "Hazman" that contained Bialik's poem "The Burden of Nemirov" which has since become better known as "Beir Haharega!' - In the City of Slaughter. At a large Zionist meeting the Russian teacher of the town, Z. A. Rabinovitch, who afterwards became the theoretician of the Poalei Zion and signed himself "ZAR", told the whole story of Troyanov, which was the story of the young Jews of Dubrovna who went out to help the Jews of Orsha who were in danger. They passed through Troyanov and the Jews of Troyanov were afraid to give them shelter, so seven of them were killed on the way. So a boycott and interdiction were proclaimed against the Jews of Troyanov. And we in the ardor of youth rose and declaimed and proclaimed the verse from the Song of Deborah: "Curse ye Meroz, says the messenger of the Lord, curse ye. Cursed be the dwellers therein, for they did not come to the aid of the Lord, to the aid of the Lord amid the warriors."

The Poalei Zion group reached the conclusion that it was necessary to organize "Self-defense" in Steibtz as well. A resolution to that effect was adopted at a meeting of the "Skhodka" or branch committee, which numbered five members. But money was needed in order to acquire the tools, and so we had to obtain the aid of the householders. We decided that a meeting should be organized in the synagogue. The task of organization was imposed on our comrade Pinya Kushnir, son of Yoshke-Berka-Henyes, the renowned bagel baker of the town and nephew of the Tzirkov Rabbi, who was one of the first Mizrahi rabbis and delivered Zionist sermons in our town.

This time I was entrusted with the address to be delivered. I was still a boy, and it was my first month in the Party. The fear which possessed me before I went up to deliver that address - my first political address at a public meeting - has not been driven out of heart or mind by all the many fears and dreads I always experience before my speeches, from then till now.

The meeting was held in the new synagogue at night, after the Evening Prayers. My comrade Pinya mounted the stand, banged on the table and announced that nobody was to leave the synagogue until the address was over. Our comrades placed a block of wood under the handle of the door so that it could not be opened; and to make a greater impression two comrades stood on guard at the exit.

Surrounded by these guards I mounted the preacher's rostrum to make my statement. I began with a quotation from our sages of blessed memory. I called on the younger generation to volunteer for the Defense group and to the householders to supply us with money. Pinya, who stood next to me, began to call for contributions as soon as I had finished.

A week later instructions were received from the Committee of the Party in Minsk that our Branch was to organize Self-defense in the neighboring small towns too, and that Pinya and I were to start out on this mission at once. We visited the neighboring towns of Svirczhna, Gorodzei, Baranovitch, Mush and Lachevitz. This was our first propaganda tour. We called on the local members of the Poalei Zion but the meeting was invariably a general one and held in the synagogue. The organization of the Hagana, the Defense, was always non-party, and wherever possible we aid our best to make sure that some of the local leaders of various parties, Zionist or Bundist, should speak with us on the platform.

The police got to know of this, and the householders were afraid to come to the synagogue. Even Pinya's threats and the block of wood in the doorway did not always help. There were some shameless people who were so afraid of our questionable gatherings that they jumped out through the window and ran away. But I do remember that when we afterwards visited the householders in their homes, many of them responded. I particularly remember the ample assistance of the Zionist Geller in Lachevitz. He was a Congress delegate, the son-in-law of the local Jewish magnate, and had a black HerzIian beard that went down to his waist. He was not prepared to talk from the platform, but together with me he visited the local well-to-do folk, spoke to them sternly and obtained quite considerable contributions.

We used to call the young people together separately in the Women's Section of the synagogue. There Pinya would divide the recruits by tens and appoint their leaders.

When we went back to Steibtz we found it in a state of wild alarm. Rumor was running rife on every side. We decided to summon a meeting in the old synagogue on the Sabbath before Passover (Shabbat Hagadol), as soon as the rabbi finished his regular semi-annual sermon. The local Bund leader, Herschel Neifeld (Herschel Shimkes) who had learned Hebrew with me and was now my rival on the party front, but was still a dear and precious person, promised to speak together with me. The Chairman of the meeting was always the same Pinya.

Yet how astonished we were when, immediately the two of us had spoken, my uncle Reb Joel Ginsburg, one of the town's rich folk and the warden of the Hevra Kadisha (Burial Society) came up on to the platform. I felt sure that he would make us one with the dust of earth, for daring to destroy all sanctity in the middle of Shabbat Hdgadol, and would upset all our efforts. And then to our amazement we heard him say "I am not a preacher nor the son of a preacher and there are .all kinds of things I certainly have nothing to do with, but this time the boys are right. It's a good and pious deed to help them with body and money, for the situation is very grave."

That Saturday night the wealthy householders brought money to the veranda of my uncle which was in the middle of the market, and next morning Pinya went off to Minsk to bring us the "spitters", as we called the pistols. At a meeting we afterwards held at midnight in the Shtiebel of the Hassidim, we found we had about a hundred armed and trained members. We used our organized strength twice that season. The first time we were summoned to the neighboring town Svierzhna, on the other side of the River Niemen. This was a far smaller spot than our own town. It was known for its orchard keepers, who used to hire orchards from the local squires. All week long they tended the trees and guarded the fruit, and then they used to sell the apples and pears in the neighboring markets. These were not people who spent their days and nights in the House of Study. They had grown up in the open air and used to meet the local toughs and scamps, so they ought to have known how to look after themselves. But this time there was, an overwhelming fear of pogroms, and even the stoutest-hearted Jews were suddenly terrified of the rioters.

Early in the morning we heard the rumor that a pogrom had started in Svierzhna. Friendly peasants from neighboring villages came to tell the Steibtz Jews that their youngsters had gone off to pillage and murder.

We summoned our Hagana and of off we went. The snows were melting and the River Niemen was in spate. At ordinary times, when the ford across the river was in order, it took twenty minutes to go from Steibtz to Svierzhna. But now the Niemen had overflowed its banks. We had to go a long way round and cross stretches of mud and standing water. The cart that came behind us with our equipment - iron bars with bolls of lead at the end and iron bars we had taken out of the shops could not cross the swamps. So we had to load our weapons on our backs and cross the swamps on foot.

This march of the Steibtz defenders who went off to guard Svierzhna on the day of the riots took about six hours. When we arrived towards evening, weary and exhausted and. all set for the fight, we found that the little town seemed to be dead. All the shops were closed and locked. The streets were empty and dumb, and there was not a living soul in the buildings. We learned that the Jews had been alarmed and terrified at the approaching rioters, so they locked up their shops and homes and hid in the cellars. From cellar to cellar we went headed by Pinya our commander, to tell the people in hiding that danger had passed and the Defense had arrived. The townsfolk looked at us as though we were redeemers from on high after they had been sitting in the darkness of the cellars all day long, in dread and fear of what might happen. I remember how the youthful rabbi of the town, Reb Heifa Katzenelenbogen, older brother of my beloved teacher, the poet J. S. Katzenelenbogen (known in Hebrew literature as "'Yeshak"), kissed, my comrade Pinya on the brow in gratitude and esteem. And the womenfolk of Svierzhna fetched cream and sour butter and preserved fruits out of their cellars to restore our souls.

After that we learned that the melting snows and perils of the road which had not frightened the Steibtz lads had upset all the plans of the village pogromchiks. They had faltered halfway and gone back as they had come. A few days later we learned that trouble was due in Steibtz the following Sunday.

This time we were prepared. We knew that rabble-rousers had come from far away. Women had turned up driving empty carts, to loot and pillage and take the spoils back home. From morning on all our comrades were in the market, carrying sticks with leaden ends, and with lead-weighted belts in our pockets. The heads of tens, armed with their pistols, parceled out the market between them. At noon, when crowds came out of the white church at the end of the market place, incited and inflamed and ready to begin, the signal was given. One of the "visitors" went ahead, dragging behind him the peasants who had brought the carts, all prepared to start looting the shops. Then the pistols suddenly went off together from each comer of the market. The heads of the Hagana groups shot in the air and did not hit anybody, but they put the fear of God into the crowd. Panic and confusion began. The horses became alarmed, the women shrieked as though they were being slaughtered. The carts piled up, one over the other. The peasants started to run away while they could for fear of the armed Jews dispensed all over the market place; and the shooting continued. Within a few moments the entire market had emptied. Indeed, the world improved a great deal between 1905 and 1942. This is not the same peasant nor the same rancor; these are not the same rabble-rousers nor the same aroused rabble. Our orphanhood amid the gentiles has marched on and on. But what of our powers of self-defense? Did they not improve at all ?

My comrades of the Self-defense in 1905 had already grown old by 1942, it is true. Yet surely their time was not yet over! And after all, sons had been born to them. Meanwhile they had passed the years of revolution, years of independent Poland, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and of a World War, once and again. And I have heard that your sons, Steibtz, distinguished themselves on different battlefronts.

How was it you fell in that day of wrath bereavement? I cannot believe, Steibtz, delight of boyhood and pride of my youth, that you were led like sheep to the slaughter!

Steibtz mine, at the grave of your tortured tormented, permit me to bring back the memory of who once protected you.

According to various historic sources Steibtz was a town as long ago as five hundred years. It lies on the Brisk-Minsk railway line on the bank of the River Niemen, in a broad valley of green fields and meadows with vast forests on three sides of it. There it has been now for hundreds of years, this little town of Steibtz with its rich Jewish life, its deeply rooted Jewish community which lived its specific traditional life.

Steibtz was proverbial, with its outstanding rabbinical personalities. Later, with the emergence of the Labor movement, many Steibtz young men dreamed of a better and juster world and joined the various Labor parties. But the Zionist halutz movement was particularly attractive for them. Many of the young people became dreamers of and active fighters for Zionist ideas. Part of that Zionist youth fulfilled their dreams and many of them made their homes in Eretz Israel.

One of them is Reb Shneour Zalman Shazar, the third President of the State of Israel.

In the course of generations many institutions were established where everybody lived his life after his own fashion. There were Batei Midrash, Talmud Torahs, Synagogues, libraries and party meeting-places. A cooperative folk bank was established. There was a Gemilat Hasadim free loan society, a Bikur Holim society for visiting the sick, a Linat Hatsedek Society, a Hachnasat Orhim hospitality society and many other social and philanthropic institutions which lit up the warmth of our former home. Steibtz was a singular Jewish town with its joys and sorrows. It is true that there was not always too good a living to be made, but we always did our best to make a decent living in trade, crafts or the free professions. That was how things went on for many generations. Fathers and mothers married off their children and grandchildren and were happy. Until... Until the diabolical German murderers put all Jews out of the law in 1942, put yellow badges of shame on them, took away their property and belongings, trod the sanctities of generations underfoot, tortured and pillaged. They drove them all together in a narrow alley and walled the ghetto off with barbed wire. Afterwards they were all dragged to the graves that had already been dug and were all shot, some of them being buried alive.

The flourishing little town was transformed into a great cemetery. Ages upon ages of Jewish culture, scholarly acuity, love of life, demands, emotions of a youth who lived and dreamed of making life more beautiful and better all now lie buried in the grave. The golden chain has been snapped in the cruelest possible fashion...

The town is done. You hear nobody and nothing. The houses are burnt down, everything has been destroyed. Jewish blood, our blood, has been shed everywhere. Once there was a community here, a. lovable, cordial Jewish community. It no longer exists.

May this volume be an everlasting memorial for our town. Let us say the memorial prayer, Yizkor, after the most precious and holy souls of ours: Fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters whose lives were cut off halfway.

Yizkor! Let us remember the holy and lovely little children who were stabbed, in their cradles, and those who were tortured on the scaffold and whose bones are spread over the fields and swamps. May the sufferings of our tormented martyrs rob their murderers of rest by day and by night. May the shadows of our martyrs forever pursue those who tortured them. We who have remained alive cry out: "Remember what Amalek did unto you! " Remember and never forget what modern Amalek and Haman did to your brethren.

June, 1941

Dread of the future was in the air. Preparations which promised ill could be felt in the town. The government officials shifted their families deep within Russia. Trains from Steibtz were moving in the direction of Bialistock and Brisk. Soldiers, countless soldiers, lorries loaded with equipment and foodstuffs. There was menace and terror in the atmosphere.

On June 22, 1941 the calamity befell. Only a few hours after the outbreak of the war (between Germany and Soviet Russia) the town was bombed. Jews ran hither and thither without any goal along all kinds of paths and tracks, like driven animals. Each and every one was asking, how can we get to Russia?

During the early days the frontier was still open. The young men were the first to leave, and together with them went others urged on by the instinct to save their lives. But most people remained in the town. The deep spiritual bond with the family was what kept them to the spot. Most of the inhabitants who had children remained. Nobody imagined how little time there was.

The Germans invaded after three days had passed. On Friday morning we still went down to the River Nieman. It was a fine day with a friendly sun warming and caressing us. All of a sudden artillery began to fire. The city burst into flames. We were deafened by the whistling bullets. Alarmed Jews dashed down to the River Niemen, from the fire to the water. But here was the peril of the bullets. Many ran with a knapsack on their backs to the threshing floors, to the mountains. Dozens of Jews were killed. Many households lost the husband, the son or the son-in-law. Yet many people stayed where they were. It is hard to leave the Place where you were born, where you have grown up, where you have become mature and have brought up a family. It is a pity to leave the little you have scraped together with so much toil and sweat.

As remarked., the town was in flames. Red fire was rising from every building. When the fire reached our house we took our paralyzed old grandfather and brought him over to the people who had run away to the threshing floors.

When the Germans entered the town we began to leave our shelters, and everyone went to visit his own ruins, to see what had been burnt and which children had lost their lives in the fire or the shooting.

During the early days the Jews were still permitted to bury their dead and the Hevra Kadisha had a great deal to do. Hundreds of families remained without a roof over their head and went to kinsfolk and acquaintances. The congestion was overwhelming, ten families in a single room. Most of the buildings had collapsed, but the Yurdzika and Pocztowa Streets had not been touched. Afterwards the ghetto was established there.

The first Sabbath passed quietly. On Sunday the Germans accused the Jews of the town with shooting at them from the forests of the district. On account of that charge they destroyed the Szpitalna Street and murdered several hundred Jews and several dozen Christians. The Jewish homes suffered most. Yet if you came to a Jewish house to ask for shelter you were not turned away in spite of the dreadful crowding. But when the Jews appealed to their Christian acquaintances for a corner in which to lay their heads, most of them answered that their great hour had come and they were tensely awaiting the moment when they could pillage the Jews and "inherit" what was theirs. However, it should be remarked that there were also a few Christians who showed that they shared in our distress and wished to help their Jewish acquaintances; but they asked us not to get in touch with them because they were very much afraid.

Famine stalked the streets, for a great deal of the foodstuffs had been burnt. Barter trade with the Christian population began. The currency was coats, high boots, clothes. For any of those it was possible to obtain a little flour, groats and potatoes. If anyone had money or jewelry he could still obtain bread with it.

The first Germans who entered the town from the front began to recruit Jews for work. These '"happy" ones received 125 grams of bread and. a little thin soup daily. I still remember very well the scene in the home of Hayyim "der Glatter". The father came back from work with a tiny loaf of bread. The children waited half fainting with hunger. Their eyes burnt as they waited for the bread to be shared out piece by piece in accordance with the scales of the highest justice.

During this first period bread was still to be found in the homes of craftsmen such as locksmiths, carpenters and shoemakers. The Christian neighbors came furtively to order shoes or chairs. But very soon an order was published which forbade commercial relations or work between Jews and Christians.

Little by little "equality' was established among the Jews. Those who had been eating bread only yesterday wandered about starving today. Orders were issued that all the Jews must move to the Yurdzika quarter and the half of the Pocztowa Street. Dwellings began to be exchanged with the Christians. The Jews were forbidden to take any belongings or furniture out of their former homes. That all remained in the possession of the new Christian neighbors.

Officially speaking the establishment of a ghetto had not yet been proclaimed, but preparations were perfectly obvious. A Jewish council was established by order of the Germans. They took a Jew from Lodz as the chairman. The members were: Alter Yosselovitch, Berl Moshe ben Schmerl, Nehama-Ettas, Velvel Paramnik, Weinreich and Press (who was vice-chairman of the council). The decrees and harsh commands came one after the other. We were ordered to wear the yellow badge. We were forbidden to walk on the pavements. In addition every Jew had to take off his hat six steps before passing a German. But when the Germans saw the Jew taking off his hat they burst into a fury at the "impudence of the cursed Jews" removing his hat to a German and would beat them savagely. If anybody exchanged a word with a Christian he was liable to receive fifty lashes.

An order of the council head required all the Jews to gather outside the town. He would select a few to send to death in order to terrify those who remained alive. People aged fourteen to sixty had to work.

The work was at the Besorezna sawmill and at Kitaievitch, and near the railway. Some were taken to work as servants to the Germans. The chief work was shifting the broad rails of the Russian railway line to the narrower European gauge. They worked from sunrise to sunset. The Germans established cooperatives where the workers were Jews exclusively. The manager of the carpentry cooperative was cruel beyond imagining. For the slightest error the worker had to stretch himself out and he thrashed him savagely. Afterwards he would bandage the injuries himself and feed the man with fattening food. His murderous blood only quieted down after he killed at least one Jew a day by shooting him. On the eve of the New Year and the Day of Atonement all the Jews were gathered to a single place in order to terrify them entirely. On one occasion twenty young men and women were selected and taken away to an unknown destination, after which all traces of them disappeared. Sometime later when building a pit behind the slaughterhouse, the bodies of the women and men were found. Their faces had been mutilated so as to be unrecognizable but the clothes were still left and from them the corpses were identified as belonging to the twenty young people of Steibtz.

From time to time the Jews were collected and the first, the fiftieth and the hundredth were taken out of line and sent to die. One order pursued the other. Once we were ordered to bring all the copper and wine vessels, candlesticks, etc. On another occasion large cash payments were imposed and the Jewish council worked hard to collect them. Thus the Jews were required to pay a million rubles, and the amount was provided in money and securities. The Jewish police played a big part in collecting money and supplying the Germans with high boots and clothes. The Jewish council did its best to spread the illusion among the Jews that if they were obedient there would be no more pogroms. Yet this was an illusion. The liaison officer between the Jewish council and the German municipal authorities was Press.

His relations with them were "in order", and they "promised" him that in Steibtz '"everything would be quiet"

Winter 1941 was unbelievably harsh. There was no wood for burning, most of the household belongings had already been sold in order to buy food. One could only "warm up" in the dense atmosphere of a hundred people in a dwelling. Those who suffered most were the old folk and children. The youngsters and adults who were working used to receive a meager ration and maintain themselves on the scraps of food left by the Germans. It should be noted that there were a few individual Germans in whom the spark of humanity still flickered. These expressed their disgust at the cruelty of their own people. But "orders are orders" and had to be fulfilled.

Worst of all was the situation of the Jews when S.S men came to town. They gathered a group of Jews from out of town, ordered them to dig a grave, put them in row and shot them dead. On one occasion they took forty young men and women to the police station, ordered them to kneel down and straighten their bodies. Anybody who did not succeed in "straightening" the body, was beaten with rubber trucheons and, in this way, kneeling with their faces to the wall, a different one was take out each time and sent to his death. The state of those who remained alive was unbearable. Hungry, in rags and tatters, degraded and tortured. Your brother or comrade was taken to death before your eyes. A row Of S.S. men stood, "working" with their rubber trucheons and giving orders to run, to run as long as you had breath. Run fast, otherwise you were dead. You gathered the last remnants of your strength and ran home. If you were lucky you escaped from that hell, but you came home broken and broken-down, dejected and weary to death.

All this, as remarked, was before the ghetto, was built. Only after a while was barbed wire placed round the Yurezdika and half the Post Office Street. People went out to work every morning through a narrow gateway. Each one received his own work card on which was marked the name of the factory or plant where he worked. Within the ghetto there were many revelations of personal self-sacrifice one on behalf of another. People divided their last crust with others. To our own shame it must be said that there were also manifestations of the loss of every vestige of humanity. There were cases where one stole bread from another. The ghetto had its own "autonomy": a Jewish council, Jewish police, Jewish starvation and Jewish suffering. Everybody worked and everybody suffered and starved. In daytime only old folk and little children remained in the ghetto. The White Russians and Letts exploited this situation and often swarmed into the houses in order to pillage or just do some thrashing.

One day the Jewish council received instructions to provide seven hundred young people for work. The Jews secretly debated whether they should go or not. At the demand of the council volunteers were found as well. They hoped that they would save their lives by this. Of the people five hundred were sent to Baranowice and two hundred to Minsk. They could not run away because they were afraid that vengeance would be taken on their families who had remained in the ghetto. The Jewish council was required to notify every escapee at once, and it carried out this duty faithfully.

On the other hand, very close friends began to discuss an organized revolt. They spoke about putting the town on fire, pouring boiling oil in the faces of their tormentors. Material was prepared for this. We were ordered to maintain 'absolute secrecy, which meant that only a few exceptional people could be trusted to know about it.

The local police were interested in winning German approval.

Every Jew was hoping and waiting for the collapse of the invader, and there were those who saw what was not there. When the Germans had reached Stalingrad a rumor spread that the Russians had dropped a paratroop division near Bialystok. In Steibtz there was a Jew named Speigel. He encouraged the younger generation and insisted that we must believe in the collapse of the Germans. He also conducted propaganda to go to the forests and join the partisans. More than once a group of Jews met in order to leave for the forest, but at the last moment the local Steibtz folk refused to join them. This Speigel, who came from Warsaw, was the initiator and vital spirit among us. He preached and encouraged, disturbed Jews in their lethargy and called for vengeance and deliverance. When a scouting group was sent, the Judennrat came to know of it and warned and threatened that this step endangered the residents of the whole town and those who endangered the others would be responsible for the blood shed.

In spite of this there were some Jews who paid no attention to the warnings and threats. The first group went off to the forest. It should be noted that it did not include a single former Steibtz resident. Next day the Germans learned of this. They took the families of those who had run away and murdered them. In the ghetto there was a storm. Jews cursed those "lightheaded people who had destroyed the safety of a whole town for their own benefit". This exerted a most depressing influence. The "forest" movement was suspended for a time.

The movement to the forests continued from the neighboring small towns, but they always returned home because there was no organized partisan movement as yet.

The scent of slaughter could be felt in the ghetto. The men were taken to camps. Old people and children were left. The young folk were engaged at work in the sawmills and on the railway. We went out to work in the morning and came back in the evening.

Two days after the Day of Atonement we saw that that the ghetto was surrounded by police, S.S. men, Letts and White Russians. Only the most skilled specialists were being sent to work. There was a tremendous congestion with everyone crowding round the gate. The will to live whispered that there beyond the barbed wire life was safe. The awareness of death was absolutely certain. We went back home. There were tears in all eyes, running down the checks silently, silently so that nobody should know. You could feel as though they were all choking themselves with tears not to cry loud, so that nothing should be heard, so that nobody should know that there was a living soul here. Everything had frozen and died - died while it was still alive. My mother clung to me, embracing me and kissing me. If we have to die, my son, let us better die together. But you are still young and you have to live, to live. So go and try your luck, my son, and may God preserve you among the living. My face was red with tears. I burst out and pushed though my way to the gate, my head full of the single thought: would they let me pass through and go to work or would I have to stay here and die with my mother?

I passed the gate. On my way to, work I heard blood curdling shrieks and wails. Some of the German foremen understood why we were so exhausted and gave us easier work. It is hard to describe our feeling. You work, living and breathing near Germans, while shots are splitting the air only a short distance away. There they are taking your nearest and most precious to destruction. You feel that it is pure chance that has kept you alive, that has kept you for a few days. Tomorrow or the day after your fate will be the same as the fate of your brethren.

The extermination continued for eight days. The murderers could not finish off the Jews of Steibtz in one single day.

Once again talk began about a plan for vengeance, pouring boiling oil in the faces of the Germans and setting the town on fire. But the cunning Germans promised the Jewish council that the Steibtz ghetto would not be liquidated, and they succeeded in putting the Jewish forces to sleep. The sparks of revolt were extinguished. The only one to rise was Elyakim Miltzensom.

He burst out like a tempest and awakened those who slumbered. He set fire to the largest two story house in the ghetto in which there were about a hundred and fifty Jews.

Two days before the liquidation the Germans woke up the peasants of drezdi, Strosworzena and Pertuk and took them to work. For two days they dug a pit that was a hundred and fifty meters long and two and a half meters deep. The Jews were loaded on lorries. Those who refused to climb up were beaten savagely or killed on the spot.

The shrieks of the poor people split the heavens. The lorries were driven by local White Russian drivers. Beside the pit stood Germans, Letts and White Russian police with machine guns. The Jews were ordered to take their clothes off. Men, Women and children stood naked. Their belongings, their rings, their money and everything else was taken away from them. They were placed in a row on the edge of the pit and the machine guns began chattering and killing. Living people also fell into the pits which were then covered with a layer of sand. The next day other groups of Jews were brought from the bunkers to the identical fate. There were some who joined this journey to death on their own free will when their families were taken. So it was with dr. Sirkin, the district physician. The Germans wanted to leave him, but after they had taken his wife and child he saw no point in living. There was no place for him in the world that had turned dark and he went together with those who were taken to death. Rabbi Joshua, the rabbi of the Community, went to the slaughter wearing his prayer shawl and tefillin.

Some Jews hid in caves, in attics and cellars where they stayed for eight days without food or water. In some cases the choked weeping of a little child revealed the hiding place of the Jews to the murderers and they burst in like wild beasts and dragged them to the pit grave. When they burst into one of the bunkers they found a seven year old child of Dosia Hankin. The boy fell at their feet and begged to be left alive. He was murdered in cold blood. Zimmel Havvatovitch and wife were enfeebled after eight days in hiding without food and came out into the ghetto. We took them to work with us in order to save them. When the foreman saw the children he said cynically: "I know that you yourselves, but I'm prepared to leave you alive because I disapprove of slaughtering the Jews. But the order is that no Jewish child is to be left alive and so I must kill them." The children clung to their parents but in vain. With a cruelty that froze the blood they took them and killed them before the eyes of their parents.

After the slaughter which continued for eight days, as said, the Germans took fifteen of the working Jews and ordered them to take the belongings out of the homes whose owners had been exterminated. Pillows, kitchenware and furniture all in order and with German precision, each kind separately every type together with those like it. They loaded everything on buses and took them away.

When we came back to town we were met by local peasants with a malicious smile on their lips. There were some whose faces showed their astonishment and disappointment, their eyes asking: "How have you had the impudence to remain alive?"

The peasants of the neighborhood and their wives dragged off everything valuable that they could: furs, pillows and cushions with Jewish bloodstains on them. Here and there we saw piles of sand where the Germans had buried the Jews who had refused to mount the lorries. Almost the whole ghetto had been transformed into a graveyard.

There were still pools of blood in front of many houses.

We began to think once again about going to the forest. Maybe somebody would remain alive there in order to tell later generations what Hitler had done to the Jewish people.