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October
15 [19141]
Announcement
in the Lithuanian language:
"Although
sensible people, and they include the very great majority of
the Lithuanian people, avoid contact with Jews, it can be
observed that the Jews who leave the ghetto daily for work and
return there succeed in establishing contacts with individual
Lithuanian citizens. Therefore:
1.
It is hereby forbidden to non-Jewish residents to maintain any
form of relations whatsoever with Jews, even any simple
conversation between a non-Jew and a Jew. It is forbidden
to sell, exchange, or make a gift of any foodstuffs or any
goods; it is forbidden altogether to trade with Jews.
2.
The German Police and the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police have
ordered that all contact between non-Jews and Jews be cut off.
Any person contravening this Order will be severely
punished."
A
threat to think about. Thousands of people humiliated, without
any protection, worse than animals, and all that because they
have "other blood."...
October
30
Again
(10.28), 10,000 people have been taken out of the ghetto to
die. They selected the old people, mothers with their
children, those not capable of working. There were many
tragedies: there were cases where a husband had been in town
and on his return he no longer found either his wife or his
four children! And there were cases where they left the wife
and took away the husband. Eye-witnesses tell the tale: On the
previous day there was an announcement that everybody must
come at six in the morning to the big square in the ghetto and
line up in rows, except workers with the documents which were
recently distributed to specialists and foremen. In the first
row were the members of the Council of Elders and their
families, behind them the Jewish Police, after that the
administration officials of the ghetto, after that the various
work-brigades and all the others. Some of them were directed
to the right -- that meant death -- and some were directed to
the left. The square was surrounded by guards with machine
guns. It was freezing. The people stood on their feet all
through that long day, hungry and with empty hands. Small
children cried in their mothers arms. Nobody suspected that a
bitter fate awaited them. They thought that they were being
moved to other apartments (the previous evening there had been
arguments and even quarrels about the apartments). At dawn
there was a rumor that at the Ninth Fort* (the death Fort)
prisoners had been digging deep ditches, and when the people
were taken there, it was already clear to everybody that this
was death. They broke out crying, wailed, screamed. Some tried
to escape on the way there but they were shot dead. Many
bodies remained in the fields. At the Fort the condemned were
stripped of their clothes, and in groups of 300 they were
forced into the ditches. First they threw in the children. The
women were shot at the edge of the ditch, after that it was
the turn of the men... Many were covered [with earth] while
they were still alive... All the men doing the shooting were
drunk. I was told all this by an acquaintance who heard it
from a German soldier, an eye-witness, who wrote to his
Catholic wife: "Yesterday I became convinced that there
is no God. If there were, He would not allow such things to
happen...."
Y.
Kutorgene, "Kaunaski dnievnik (Kovno Diary)
1941-1942," Druzhba Narodov ("Amity of
Nations"), VIII, 1968, pp. 210-211.
*
The Ninth Fort the place where the Jews of Kovno were killed. |
