THE PREPARATION OF THE UPRISING IN PRUZHANY GHETTO

By Jacob Valavelsk

 

 In the short agreed upon time, the Germans decided to find a different way to deceive the Jewish people's opinion. They sent out notices that the town is surrounded in a circle of East Prussia as part of the German Reich, and that the Jewish population is working for the German military industry; like that it is a natural element, and nothing bad will happen.

 

The first of November, 1942, was the hardest day in the life of the Jews of the Ghetto. The ghetto was surrounded by the military SS, and they sealed up all exits. The atmosphere was extremely oppressive. One could feel the great danger. Part of the intelligentsia, who did not want to make peace with the fate of being completely annihilated in the hands of the Nazis, decided to kill themselves. Fate wanted them to be saved from the fingers of death, in order that, in a given time, they would die in the gas ovens.  Then the young people started to organize to put up resistance and to go over to the side of the Partisans. The slogan was: "to defend oneself and die with honor and not to go like sheep to the slaughter." And they even made a resolution to cut the wire and escape from the ghetto. Hundreds of young men and women were waiting for a signal, and they brought in arms from the outside; two bazookas, rifles and guns. They decided to concentrate then-strength under one command. But this was not possible. We were completely cut off from the rest of the world. We did not know what happened in other ghettos, in Warsaw, Lublin, Vilna, Bendin, Byalistok. We didn't know about any organized Jewish resistance. Aaron Goldstein (who was shot in the 4th transport), Leib Braverman, and Boris Nachovskin were at the top of our resistance group..  At the end of November, a group went to the surrounding forest, and they started to prepare for the exit of a second group.

 

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