shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held on to my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me, ordered me to watch, and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies; but I felt nothing.
The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive any more, but I feel somethingafter I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.
I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, ‘Mother’, ‘Father’; I could not stand on my feet.
The Germans had gone. There was nobody there, no one standing up. ‘I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from the other bodies, with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me.’ Rivka Yosselevska had been wounded in the head. But she managed to crawl out of the grave. Then she recalled:
I was searching among the dead for my little girl, and I cried for her—Merkele was her name—Merkele! There were children crying, ‘Mother!’ ‘Father!’—but they were all smeared with blood and one could not recognise the children. I cried for my daughter. From afar I saw two women standing. I went up to them. They did not know me, I did not know them, and then I said who I was, and then they said, ‘So you survived.’ And there was another woman crying, ‘Pull me out from amongst the corpses, I am alive, help!’ We were thinking how could we escape from the place. The cries of the woman, ‘Help, pull me out from the corpses!’ We pulled her out. Her name was Mikla Rosenberg. We removed the corpses and the dying people who held on to her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her out, to free her, but we did not have the strength.
And thus we were there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and the screams and all of a sudden we sawGermans, mounted Germans. We did not notice them coming in because of the screamings and the shoutings from the bodies around us.
The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together, all the corpses, amongst them many still alive, children running about the place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging on to me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the children around me. The children who got up from the heap of corpses.
Then Germans came and were going around the place. We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach me, and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a few shots and the children were dead. They did not need many shots. The children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot her.
They all left—the Germans and the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all left, and the four of us, we went on to the grave, praying to fall into the grave, even
The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive any more, but I feel somethingafter I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.
I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, ‘Mother’, ‘Father’; I could not stand on my feet.
The Germans had gone. There was nobody there, no one standing up. ‘I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from the other bodies, with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me.’ Rivka Yosselevska had been wounded in the head. But she managed to crawl out of the grave. Then she recalled:
I was searching among the dead for my little girl, and I cried for her—Merkele was her name—Merkele! There were children crying, ‘Mother!’ ‘Father!’—but they were all smeared with blood and one could not recognise the children. I cried for my daughter. From afar I saw two women standing. I went up to them. They did not know me, I did not know them, and then I said who I was, and then they said, ‘So you survived.’ And there was another woman crying, ‘Pull me out from amongst the corpses, I am alive, help!’ We were thinking how could we escape from the place. The cries of the woman, ‘Help, pull me out from the corpses!’ We pulled her out. Her name was Mikla Rosenberg. We removed the corpses and the dying people who held on to her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her out, to free her, but we did not have the strength.
And thus we were there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and the screams and all of a sudden we sawGermans, mounted Germans. We did not notice them coming in because of the screamings and the shoutings from the bodies around us.
The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together, all the corpses, amongst them many still alive, children running about the place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging on to me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the children around me. The children who got up from the heap of corpses.
Then Germans came and were going around the place. We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach me, and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a few shots and the children were dead. They did not need many shots. The children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot her.
They all left—the Germans and the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all left, and the four of us, we went on to the grave, praying to fall into the grave, even
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