The 21st of June, 1941, the war broke out. Since Disna was located on the former Russian border, refugees from the surrounding cities and towns came through Disna. To continue on their way they needed to cross the river Dvina, but for this you needed permission from the Soviet authorities. For this reason many refugees had to stop in Disna, since they didn't get their permits. One could risk an illegal bording crossing, around and about, in the dry season.
Disna was bombarded for the first time on June 28th. The city started to burn.
The Germans occupy Disna
On July third the Germans entered Disna. They were there when the city burned as a result of German and Russian bombs. A third of the city and also the center burned up.
Soon the Germans gave an order that all residents who had gone off to the neighboring villages should come back at once.
Without much delay the Germans started to murder the residents. At the beginning they shot ten people, not only Jews. They got together all the remaining residents in the city, put 100 people in the market palce, took away every tenth man to the boulevard and shot them there. Among those shot, I recall, there were two Greiniman brothers, whose father had to bury them.
Soon a local authority and militia was organized in Disna. Solntsev, a Disna resident, was named mayor. As militiamen, Christians and Poles were chosen from the surrounding villages. Besides them there was also a German gendarmerie and a "Sonderkommando", who were occupied with economic matters.
The Disna Ghetto
On the 25th of July 1941 the Germans issued an
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order that all Disna Jews should gather in a special quarter assigned to them, which was on Polotsk Street on the left side of Globok Street, with all the alleys between them. We were sent to the Slavin family, acquaintances of ours, who lived on Polotsk Street. In our house on Kilin Street a Polish militiaman named Yablonski had moved in.
They gathered together in the ghetto about 3000 Jews. Besides these, the Germans brought in Jews from neighboring towns and villages, like Yazne, Vloshnik, Vulkova, and Yelnia.
It is worth remarking that before they created the ghetto, some of the Disna Jews had gone over to Luzhke and Glubok.
The Disna ghetto was not enclosed. And since it was on the shore of the river Disienka, the Christians could come over easily to it.
It was horribly tight in the ghetto. There were five or six families in every house. In our house there were, besides the Slavins, that is Eli Slavin with the two sons -- Shniur and Baynish -- a daughter Ester, the dentist Rozet with his mother, our family, Rachmiel Izik Slavin from Vulkova, Mendel Leib Sushkovich with his wife Rachel, his son Avraham with his wife and child, Efraim Sushkovich, Ester Sushkovich, two boys from Yazne and a woman called "Rachel the cook".
Soon there was a Jewish Council with Rochlin as "Elder Jew", Gordan and Hauchman (the others I don't recall). After a certain time a Jewish police force was formed with Berke Vayspapir at the head. The Jewish police were stationed by the bridge, to survey who was going into the city, and they decided who should go to work.
All men capable of work would go out a 8 AM to work, wherever the Germans required. I had been assigned to clean the streets in summer and clear off the snow in winter. Others worked on the island as truck gardeners. Still others worked on the demolition of houses and laying bricks in the kitchen of the command post and in the police station.
The ghetto got no food. Meager portions of bread were given only to the completly destitute. We lived by trading househlod items for food. Or from canned goods.
Then the levies began. We where ordered to give up tailored goods, leather, gold, silver, copper, and furniture.
So the winter came, in the course of which there were no special events. In this time they shot some former active soviet agents and some others who were not from the Jewish population. They shot them on the boulevard by the Disienka across from the ghetto.
Before Passover, in March 1942, the Germans carried out their first "action". Over thirty Jews who were apparently already in their list. Among them I recall Yosef Epshtayn and his son Borke. (They had a dog named "Hitler" and had been reported.) Dobe Rositsan, Yosef Fuks and Shatzman. They were taken out of their homes and in a few minutes we heard shots. As was known later, they were murdered on the Polish mohilnik ?? in Doroshkevich (boulevard?). While they were led off Shatzman decided to run off. Then they came to his house and announced that if he did not come back they would kill his whole family. So he accepted death voluntarily.
Passover was over with terror, matzoh were baked with barley flour. After Passover rumors spread that the Nazis were gathering to liquidate the ghetto in Disna.
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On the first of May, 1942, they liquidated the ghettos in Luzhki, Mior, and some other towns. A few refugees from Luzhki came to us. Two of them were from Disna: Kuperman and Itshe Lifshits. Among the Luzhkier's was Nechama Yafeh. They told us that all the Jews had been gathered together in the market, and from there they had been taken away and murdered. These managed to escape.
The Liquidation of the Disna Ghetto
On the 15th of June 1942, the liquidation of the Disna ghetto began. Before it started there was a feeling in the air that a misfortune was approaching. At that point they had decided to put a guard on every house, so that in the event of a pogrom they would be ready to run away. In each house there was a stock of gasoline ready, so that in caes of a liquidation everything should be set on fire, so that Jewish goods would not fall into murderous Nazi hands.
On Sunday night, the 2nd of Tammuz, at 4 AM, the guards got everybody up. They had seen that the police and the Germans were surrounding the ghetto. Everyone jumped up, some in underwear.
As I ran out into the street, I saw that the police and he Germans were surrounding the ghetto from two directions: one part was up on the banks of the Disienka, the second -- in the directionof Glubok Street. A panic started. People started running as they were without overclothes. I myself ran off in a nightshirt.
We ran in the direction of the village of Manyakove, to get away from the circle that had formed around us. I ran and yelled "Jews run away!" Meanwhile two girls, who worked at the police station in the kitchen, went to work. They had been told to come earlier than usual. Running off a certain distance I could hear their cries: the Germans had driven them back with nagaikas.
Running, I saw people were running out of the ghetto houses, but I didn't recognize their faces. Our group of refugies had managed to run before the Germans managed to close the ring. But soon a hail of bullets fell. One of us, Mulie Katz, was wounded in the foot, but he ran on. After me ran my ten year old sister Keile. She chased me and we reached a nearby grove. When we looked out from the grove, we saw that the whole ghetto was burning, the Jews themselves had lit the fire.
In the grove there were gathered more than five people. We decide to divide up into small groups and each group went off in another directoin. I, my sister, Avraham and Efraim Sushkovic and Michal -- a Yazne boy -- went off to Rozdiorke, near Vulkave.
Going to Volkave the brothers Sushkovich left us, knowing some Christian acquaintances. I, my sister, and Michal, went off into the forest. I was barefoot and in a shirt. In a village they gve me a dress and a blouse. So we roamed barefoot, without bread, for almost a month in the forest. When we would come to a Christian to beg a piece of bread, some would give it to us. But at first they drove us away like dogs.
At this time many Jews were wandering about in the forests around Disna. So the Christians told us. During the time we were in the woods I heard a lot of shooting. The Nazis had Jew hunts. So most of the Jews dies, who had gotten to the forest, among them Michal's brother Velvel.
At the end the situation had gotten so tense that we were afraid to look in to a Christian
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house. They would turn over Jews to the Germans themselves, and get for each Jew a kilo of salt.
Suddenly heavy rain and cold began. Hungry, half-naked, barefoot, we wandered in the woods, not seeing any way out. Give oneself up to the Germans, hand oneself?
In this situation we languished till the beginning of August 1942. Then I found out that the Glubok ghetto still existed. We decided to go there to die with our fellows.
We went off to Glubok all three of us. We needed to go about 60 kilometers. We still went at night, bloody, bitten by mosquitos, disheveled, hungry, with swollen colorless feet from walking, we would not have been able to find it by ourselves. We went to the village of Zalesia. There a Byelorussian forest guard caught us. Michal ran off, but he arrested me and my sister, took a horse and wagon from a neighbor, put us in, to give us to the Zalesia police. Sitting in the wagon I gave my sister a signal and as we approached the bushes we jumped out of the wagon and started running. The guard had a weapon and soon began to shoot and whistle so that the Christians would call the police. Many Christains gathered. Police came and surrounded the forest.
We lay holding our breath. There was no way out. They went by us many times, but they didn't see us. The search drew out till evening. Luckily they had brought no dogs.
When it was dark they went back. Then we got up, not knowing where to go. At night we knocked at a house. A Christian came out and showed us the way to Gluboke. We went the whole night. In the morning we found ourselves in a forest called Borek. The place, where on generally murdered Gluboker Jews. At that time we knew nothing about that.
In Borek we met Christians who were gathering mushrooms. They told us that there a part of the Glubok Jews had been shot there and many Russian prisoners. The women were good to us and warned us, that a German patrol would come by shortly. They advised us to go with them. When the Germans had passed, they would take us to the ghetto.
The idea of reaching the ghetto, to be among Jews, to sleep, eat up and wash oneself -- this seemed like a dream.
The Glubok Ghetto
After the Germans had gone by, the Christians brought us into the Glubok ghetto. The ghetto was not yet fenced in. We went into the first house on Kililay Street. Soon we were washed, we had eaten and notified my relative, Dvorah Shuchman, and she took us in.
Soon after we arrived, they started to build a fence around the ghetto and shrink the available space. As the house of my relative was next to the ghetto gate, we were afraid that they would send us away. So we had built a bunker under the stable. That was a ditch with a very narrow and low entrance. To come in there you had to slide on your stomach. It was made for 20 people. A very primitive one, but if the Germans came to take us to work, we could all hide.
In September 1942 the regional commissar gave an order, and only then did we
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register with the Jewish Council. We were put in the list and sent to work. Together with my sister I worked in a knitting workshop. THe Germans gave us wool and we knitted socks, mittens, and sweaters for them. Once going to work I met Disna Christians. They told me how the Disna ghetto had been liquidated and that my father and another 17 "professionals" were still alive to serve them. They were: the dentist Lifshitz, the pharmacist Chaya-Dove Gelman, the quilter Avraham Sher, the carpenter Chaim Fridman, the locksmith Siame Barkan, two brothers Smirin, the carpenter's wife Zelde Kagan was working for the Germans in the kitchen, and some tailors and others.
When the Disna ghetto was liquidated my father escaped to some Christian acquaintances, with whom he had worked the whole time. But they tied him up and gave him to the Germans. Thanks to a lot of money he bought himself off and was counted as a professional.
Thanks to the Polish chauffeur Chobrotski, I got in touch with my father and got from him some money and little packages. From Chobrotski I got to know more details about the liquidation of the Disna ghetto. At the time that we had run off from the ghetto, the Germans drove out everyone in the houses onto the sand, where the graves of the soldiers were found from the year 1812, at the time of the war between Russia and Napoleon. The Christians dug ditches and the Germans shot everybody. In the liquidation about two thousand Jews wee murdered. The rest were chased down, there they killed my mother and my sister Zelde. Afer that the Germans began their search for the Jews in the forest. Whom they would bring onto the sand and shoot. So a few saved themselves.
The 17 "professionals" were murdered on the 22nd of January 1943, t''z in Shvat, ostensibly because the partisans had taken the doctor Nachum Lakach, who had lived in Luzhki. The Germans were afraid that these 17 Jews would run off to the partisans, so they arrested everybody and killed them in a stable. There bodies were thrown into the ditches where one put sand, next to the high school.
In spite of everything, my sister and I were alive... since I worked as a knitter, I had the right to have food. The portions were very tight and the bread was mixed with oats. We fed our relatives and friends from Disna, who had come to Glubok before the liquidation of the Disna ghetto -- Mayte Machinson and Sarah Beilin. Above all Mayte helped us. She worked in a "warehouse" and would bring clothing.
As we lived by the gate of the ghetto, we lived in constand fear. Once at night drunk Germans came into our house and started to beat us while we were asleep. My sister and I, not understanding what was hapening, jumped out the window and hid in the bunker. The rest of the people in the house ran after us. In the morning when we saw it was quiet in the ghetto, we came back into the house.
Life in the Glubok ghetto became very difficult. Jews from 50 villages and towns from the surrounding region found their refuge there. It was horribly tight. Death hung over everyone's head and everyone had foreseen his own death. Every morning one would hear that in the previous night someone had been taken out of the ghetto and shot.
Some of the young men went off to the partisans. In that year, 1943, the partisan groups started getting organized.
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So we went on until October 1943. At the beginning of January I had been transferred from the knitting establishment to the kitchen of Vitvitski's restaurant. And about that a few words: in the Glubok ghetto there was an Obersturmführer, a German, named Vitvitski. He had indeed lived in Gluboke, but nobody had known what we were involved with. When the Germans came into Gluboke, he appeared on the scene. He knew everyone and was a fearful sadist. He himself killed Yerucham Lederman. He would make an unexpected incursion into the ghetto and would beat men nearly to death. He always demanded contributions and is the one who led the fight against the partisans.
The Liquidation of the Gluboke Ghetto
In September the situation in the ghetto became tenser, so people didn't sleep at night, feeling the liquidation approaching. One night it was felt that something was roaming about the ghetto. Everyone jumped up. As we lived by the gate, we went to the roof and observed.
In the morning the liquidation had begun. With my own eyes I saw how the German commander called out the commander of the Jewish militia, Blant, and ordered him to gather at 8 AM all the Jews to transfer them to Lublin for work. We had not yet heard about Majdanek. But the expression "send off for work" meant death to us. That morning I had noticed that the ghetto was surrounded by gendarmes with various weapons.
Soon all the Jews were in a panic in the streets, not knowing where to run. They ran from one end of the ghetto to the other. Many Jews in the ghetto had weapons, but unfortunately did not know how to use them. And then small tanks entered the ghetto. The Jews broke the fence in one place and started to run away.
I ran off with my sister. In front of us there was Mansvild. Suddenly a thick fire opened up and people started falling like flies. I decided not to look around. Better to get a bullet in the back than in the eyes. So holding my sister by the hand, I ran, like a storm wind. Suddenly I felt that I was wounded in the hand. Running, I bandaged the hand with my kerchief, but I had let go of my sister's hand. She, an eleven year old girl, could not overtake me and I lost her. Bullets tore arond me. With machine guns we were shot at from all sides. The Nazi's sat in the trees and from there they shot machine guns and through grenades. I looked back and saw my sister from the side. Soon a grenade exploded near her and I understood that I had lost her forever... there was no time to think and nothing to do either. I ran ahead. Near me my friend Raske Tsimer from Sharkavshchizne fell.
Running off to the forest, people began to cry out, that the forest was surrounded and one could not go through. Then we started running to the side. And then I saw my sister. It seems she was badly wounded in the side. Holding her by the hand, I started to drag her. To my great fortune good people helped us. So we barely made it to the forest. There I took off my blouse, moistened it with bloody water and washed our wounds. My sister chattered about heat. I started to move again with my half-dead sister, together with other Gluboke Jews, among them many wounded. Only one had a rifle with him, and his wife and a suckling infant ran with him. Thanks to
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the rifle we got food, which we took from peasants. How long we wandered in the forest I don't know. Worms appeared in our wounds.
So wandering about we ran into a group of partisans who were locaed around Sharkavshchizne. To our good fortune there were Jews among them from other partisan divisions. In the meantime many Jews from the Glubok ghetto had collected. With them the pharmacist Sheynkman and his daughter. They bandaged our wounds with the help of the partisans. Among the Jewish partisans we found friends and they decided to take us with them.
So in this way I, my sister, and a few more joined up with the fourth Byelorussian Partisan Brigade, which was in the Disna-Miar region. First we were healed for a long time till our wounds healed up. It turned out that I had also been wounded in the side. But only because of the horrible pain in my hand, I didn't feel the side. My sister's wound did not heal for a long time.
My first assignment with the partisans was in the intelligence division. I would make myself up as a peasnat and go around the cities and villages to get news. Which was necessary for our partisans. It happened a lot that they found me out and chased me.
Once, at the beginning of 1944, I and the intellience chief Shimeon Goldin went out to connect with a certain policemand, who worked for us. The peasants had told the police, that there were partisans in the village, near Mior, and they had started to surroundus. They shot us badly. Our wagon had holes like a sieve. By a miracle we managed to get away. In our unit everyone thought we were dead. Our task had been fulfilled.
Almost throughout my whole war work, I would go riding in the evening on a horse all alone, to get various pieces of information, and more than once the police chased me and shot at me. When I could no longer work for that division, because everybody knew me alread, I worked as an intelligence analyst in fighting unit. I worked there till the Soviet army entered our area.
When breaking out of the blockade in which 50 percent of our brigade fell, I was wounded again. This time in the foot. The bullet is in my foot till the present day.
All the time that I was in a partisan group, my sister, who was too small to fight was with peasants in the village near our unit. The blockade in May 1944 was broken so unexpectedly, that I did not manage to inform my sister and she fell into German hands. When she was brought to the Disna police, she was recognized and they started trying to find out where I was. She claimed the whole time that I had been killed.
In a little while the German troops began to retreat and my sister took advantage of this to escape back to the village where the Soviet regular army had joined up with our brigade. After they went chasing the Germans through the village, I ran into her.
The Liberation
In Juli 1944 the partisans were dissolved. Some went to the regular army, others were sent to organize local munnicipalities. I was sent to Yazne. At the end of 1945 I went off to Leningrad to
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my relatives. In the year 1948 I came to Vilna, where I stayed until they began the repatriation to Poland, that is 1957. In the year 1959 I came to Israel.
When I was in Vilna I would often visit Disna. But I never had the courage to visit the place were our dear ones fell. I knew, that my mother and sister were in the huge mass grave and my father in the grave of the 17 Jews. In the year 1955 I decided to find the graves. On the large grave I found heaps of garbage.
Together with Chaim Smirin (his brother is in the same grave as my father) we decided to clean off the grave and to erect a lcol hafchot sign, that murdered Jews lie there. We hired Christians who found the exact gravesite and we put up a monument.
