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.