Written Testimonies

On August 6, 1942, while I was at work at the tannery, we received word that the ghetto was being surrounded by a heavy detachment of the SS and their Estonian and Lithuanian collaborators. In accordance with the prearranged plan, my mother left the ghetto and headed towards her hiding place.
The summer night was short. In the morning, all the Jews in the ghetto were ordered out of their homes to the yard in front of the gate. As soon as they were assembled, they were told not to raise their heads or they would be shot. Trucks were waiting in front of the ghetto gate. One by one, the Jews were loaded onto the trucks and taken to a nearby ravine in the village of Litovke [Litowka]. Once they got off the trucks, they were ordered to walk in single file to the edge of a ravine, where they were machine-gunned by the SS, and fell row upon row into the ravine. The shooting went on for an entire day. Again, thousands of Jews from the ghetto were killed. August 7, 1942 will be remembered by the survivors as the second mass killing of the Jews of Nowogrodek.