Holocaust in Eshishok

It is commonly stated that there was 3,5 thousand of Jews living in Eišiškės. However, it is not taken into account that many of them had been brought there from neighboring towns and villages.

Just before the German occupation there had also been a large influx of Jews from Belarus and Vilnius. Thus, it is not surprising that more than 5 thousand of Jews, including women and children, were killed altogether. Around the whole country of Lithuania this number is estimated to be between 200 and 250 thousand. In reality, however, this number could be even more than 300 thousand. On August 1, 1941, the Provisional Government of Lithuania sent a note to the Germans saying that there are 170 thousand of Jews inhabiting the Vilnius Region. On the captured lands, the Nazi occupier began establishing their own administration. In the Decree dated the 17 July 1941, Adolf Hitler created Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, headed by ‘Reichminister’ Alfred Rosenberg. (Rosenberg was born on January 12, 1893 in Tallinn, executed by hanging in Nurnberg on October 16, 1946.) Every minister took the oath in front of the Fuehrer: ‘I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfill my official duties, so help me God!” – signature.

His duties included organizing Special Units Sonderkommando, in Lithuanian called ‘Ypatingas Burys.’ They were completely subservient to Rosenberg and his orders.

Holocaust of men

I do not want to present my polemic against the description of the genocide of Jewish people by Professor Jan Marek Chodakiewicz and the witness Witold Andruszkiewicz in ‘Jewish Holocaust in Eshishok.’

Armed Shaulists escorted whole families with children and the elderly to Eshishok from neighboring villages inhabited by the Jewish population, including Kolesnik and Burtymanc. Taking into consideration the number of Jews from Vilnius, Belarus and other places, I assume that around 6 thousand were killed in Eshishok. On Sunday, September 21, 1941, between 20 and 30 Lithuanians came to Eshishok from Vilnius, dressed in handmade clothes, similar to those which the peasants had seen. They were carrying rifles on their shoulders. They were Lithuanian volunteers, originally coming from central Lithuania, commonly called Shaulists, meaning riflemen. They were subunits of Special Units ‘Ypatingas Burys,’ trained to carry out mass murders of Jews mostly, but also of Gypsies, Poles and Soviet captives. On early Monday morning on September 22, the Shaulists violently gathered thousands of Jews regardless of age and sex and cramped them within the confines of a ghetto, created on the so-called school square – next to two schools and a synagogue. Those for whom there was no more space left were taken to ‘koński rynek’ (‘horse market’).

Front doors were wide open, there was an overwhelming chaos, the furniture was overturned, which meant that those looking for valuables and vodka, which the Jews had stored in large amounts for the bad times, had already been here. At the beginning of the war both Polish and Lithuanian money was worthless. Vodka and gold were the only guaranteed capital. The Shaulists then were well supplied. At the back of the school square there was a Jewish cemetery (kirkut). It was next to the old kirkut, which had not been in use for one hundred years. Unlike Christian cemeteries with many trees on them, the Jewish ones were bold with a sea of stone tombs with Yiddish writings on them, facing a direction of Israel, towards the Valley of Josaphat, where the Final Judgment will take place. There was a deep ditch behind the cemetery, which carried water to the Wersoka river. A week earlier 100 Poles were forcibly displaced and sent to Eshishok to widen and deepen the ditch to 2 meters.

On September 21, the first group of 100 people was brought to the site. 15 to 20 Shaulists surrounded them, under the command of Ostrauskas and few Germans. SS-obersturmfuhrer Gamnn supervised the massacre. The Jews, many of whom had not realized there were going to be killed, were walking obediently and quietly. Jan Stańczyk, who was forcibly sent to bury the victims of this homicide and spoke Yiddish, described a rabbi Szymon Rozowski saying: ‘The Jews planned to rule the world, but the Highest ordained differently and his will ought to be accepted with obedience.’ At this point Gamnn took out a gun and shot the rabbi. Then the Jews quietly did what they were told and undressed. I remember seeing white figures from our background, falling one by one to the ditch as the shots were fired. When the next ones were brought, the earth over the bodies just shot was still moving.

There was no resistance. The convicts were behaving as if hypnotized. No one attempted to run away neither on the way to kirkut or at the site of the execution. They accepted their fate. However, they could have attacked the murderers if someone called for action.  Most of the Shaulists had single-shot rifles, were drunk and shooting inaccurately. The bodies were being covered with 10 to 15 cm layer of earth. There were 6 or 7 layers of bodies in the ditch. Gamnn was taking photographs of the Shaulists working in order to have them chained and obedient to him.

In the city of Vilnius and other towns of the Region, the Germans saved a part of the Jewish population that was useful – craftsmen and representatives of other occupations needed in the war industry. However, in Eshishok it was not the case. All of the Jews were murdered. Of all the ethnic groups on the occupied territories, German national socialists managed to exterminate all the Jews and Gypsies.

On the other side of Eshishok, in the direction of Oran, there is an old graveyard. On a hill behind its fence, there is sand on the ground, and those who did not have pantries in their houses, came here to store potatoes in the ground. Jan Mickiewicz, who had an estate nearby, recalled the end of September 1941, when along with other Poles he was forcibly sent to dig a ditch few meters wide and up to 2 meters deep. Having finished with men, the Shaulists and the Germans forced thousands of women and children out of Eshishok leading them directly to the cemetery in Oran.

Unlike men, women and children knew what was going to happen. It was an atrocious march of terrified, crying people, surrounded by 20 Shaulists and the Germans with Gamnn out front. They were brought to the ditch and shot in front of the watching crowd. One of the Shaulists, allegedly Ostrauskas himself, had a cudgel with which he was killing babies by hitting them in their heads. Then he would walk near the cemetery’s fence, had some more vodka and come back to do the work. There was no end to the crying and yelling of women. This horrible massacre lasted the whole day. When a ditch was filled with babies’ bodies, they moved on to fill the next one. The murderers’ hands were all covered in babies’ blood.

When I recollect these events after so many decades have passes, I analyze them but still cannot comprehend the cruelty I saw: these executioners had wives and children themselves and they must have had some human feelings for them. What an extremely horrible outcome of this ideological nationalistic brainwash. It was a big shock for me. I would cry in sleep and my parents would leave the lights on. I would like to tell you about this extraordinary person Jan Mickiewicz. He talked a beautiful baritone. Because the church dean Bolesław Moczulski had a weak voice, it was Mickiewicz who would sing “Holy God” after Sunday masses. He would sing every stanza solo and the congregation would repeat after him. He also sung at funerals. He had a heart of gold, but after the massacre he suffered a breakdown. It was a psychic shock.

One cannot possibly make sense of this mass murder. Was it indulgence, slaughter of women and innocent children? Not even a single woman survived. But the place of this massacre became forgotten. There was no monument in remembrance, to fence. Perhaps something has changed now. Human relations. To accentuate Polish-Jewish relations up until and during the WWII, I should go back to that time. My father Kazimierz was born in 1916 in Grajewo in Belostok district. He was enlisted in the tsar’s army in Russia. Before the end of the WWI, he voluntarily became a member of cavalry brigade – Józef Piłsudski’s uhlan. He was hit by a Soviet bullet in the Polish-Bolshevik War and became handicapped. He was treated in Lida. Even though the war had not finished, the Chief visited the hospital in Lida, which proves his concern about his soldiers.

After the war, Polish economy was ruined, especially in the East, where the Bolsheviks occupied. On the land where Semyon Budyonny’s Army had been, the fields were destroyed and houses plundered. Post-war Poland could not support invalids and give retirement funds, thus pieces land were given out, licenses for craftsmen or for selling alcohol were issued. Trade in alcohol was the state’s monopoly in Poland. The license, which my father was given for Eshishok, allowed him to open a restaurant, a coffee and a teahouse. Having no capital, he became acquainted with a Jew Pogorelski and as partners they set a stock company. As the time went by this partnership turned into friendship. It was very common. Landowners and the aristocracy were dependent on the Jews, as it was them who possessed capital. However, the Church did not approve of friendly relations between the Catholics and the Jewish population. My father had problems because of that, but he was a resourceful man, a member of Zwiazek Inwalidów Wojny (Association of War Invalids) and was in a good finacial situation.

The Association mainly included members of the Polish Socialist Party, which was led by Józef Piłsudski and was the core of Poland’s independence.

The word ‘socialist’ should not be connoted with bolshevism. Every invalid of the war would give his life for the Chief. Just before the war there was a meeting of invalids of Eshishok borough, some of whom I still remember – Binkiewicz, Koleda, Hrynkiewicz. (I enclose a picture of Hrynkiewicz from his wedding. He lost his right hand completely, and the left one up to his elbow. My father was a witness at this wedding.) The Association also included the Jews, who participated in the Polish – Bolshevik war.

My parents and I would spend a lot of time with Jewish communities. My father held his view on Jews throughout his life. Different mentality, religion, relation to the country did not matter to him. What mattered was faith in One Creator. One day, my father rented a wagon and went to Vilnius to purchase some goods. He did not have enough money. He asked a wealthy Jew, an owner of the hotel ‘Bristol’ (currently Hotel ‘Vilnius’), to lend him some money. They set up a date of pay off and my father asked for the promissory note to which the Jew answered: ‘Why such delicacy? Who does not know Mr Kazimierz?’ This wealthy Jew, a member of Qahal (management of autonomous governments of Jewish communities in Lithuania), knew that ‘this man from Eshishok sides with the Jews.’ It was how information would spread in the pre-telephone era. Good relations between the Jews and the Poles were highly valued.

On the night after the massacre in Eshishok, a wounded Jew appeared in our house. A bullet went through his side, but did not hurt his internal organs. He had been lying under the dead bodies until everyone was gone and then he crawled to our house in the middle of the night. He knew about and believed in my father’s good heart. He was covered in mud and blood, both his and others’. He was washed and given fresh clothes. His old clothes were burned. It was impossible to call a doctor. The head doctor of the city hospital, Ler, put on a German uniform when the oppressor came. My parents did everything they could to prevent the gangrene and infection. Herbs, iodine and vodka were the only antiseptics. The Jew was also given vodka to drink to fall asleep. He lay in the attic in hey. After three months he went downstairs, got shaved, we gave him food and he went to hide in the nearby bushes around Majak.

He had to go, because he knew that if he was found in our house, both him and us would be shot dead. It was a German order. In German-occupied Europe, such draconian directives were in effect only in Poland. Lithuanian and German police inspections at night could lead to terrible consequences. My father would often disappear at night. We assumed that he was going to visit ‘our Jew,’ as we called him in our house. What a pity I do not know his name. I never supposed it could be so actual.

Grzegorz Józef Koszczuk 

The Jews on pre-war Lithuanian territories

In a book published in 1921 titled ‘Lithuania and the Lithuanians,’ in a rubric ‘The Jews,’ the author Petras Klimas, one of the signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania in 1918, says: ‘In 1897 census, conducted by the Russian Tsarist government, we find: Kaunas Governorate Jews – 13,8% of the population, 12,72% in Vilnius Governorate, 10,14% in Suwalki Governorate. In the whole of Lithuania there were 12-13% of Jews. In 1897 the population was 4 million people, meaning that there was half a million of Jews. In some places, it was even more than a half of the towns’ population, as in Poniewiez – 50,5%, Widziech – 67,6%, Vilnius – 40%, Kowno 35,3%, Suwalki 43,3%, in Rosienia – 46,2%.’

Murder of the Lithuanian Jews – To save from forgetting

This year in Lithuania is devoted to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The main ceremonies took place on 23 September at the 70^th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius Ghetto. There was also the Fourth Congress of Lithuanians – the few Jews, who survived the Holocaust, and the descendants of those who were killed. Welcoming the participants, the president Dalia Grybauskaite highlighted that the year of remembrance of the Holocaust’s victims is an occasion at which we should remind ourselves about those tragic event. ‘We were mislaid in the whirl of history. There were the lost ones too. We did not protect what was the most important for our nations – the bond, shared culture, the beauty of being each other’s neighbors. However, today we can gather that the history of Lithuanian Jews and the Holocaust should occupy the right place in our memory and history books,’ the president said. She also added that the society is still not fully aware how big the empty hole in our consciousness is with the history of Lithuanian Jews missing. Thanks to our memories and the support of people like Jakov Bunki, called the ‘last Plunge Jew,’ the memory of the history of the local Jewish communities and their tragic fate during the WWII has survived and is living in the society’s collective memory, including the once half-populated by the Jews small town in North-Western edge of Lithuania. In the middle of July 1941, all off Plunge Jews were murdered – more than 1800 people. At first they were being kept prisoners, starving, at the local synagogue. Then they were brutally murdered – those who were so weak from starvation were thrown to ditches, and those who could still stand were shot, the children were smashed against the trees to save bullets. Similar thing happened in Eshishok, a town in the South-East of Lithuania. A witness of those events, Grzegorz Jozef Koszczuk, born in this town before the war, wanted to share his memories with the readers of ‘Kurier.’

S.T.

Source: http://kurierwilenski.lt/2013/10/04/zaglada-zydow-w-ejszyszkach/

Tłumaczenie by Awa Ratajczak w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Awa Ratajczak within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.