Sobbing Graves

There was no end to the devastation. The horror-filled days of the now familiar 'actions,' and 'deportations' came one after another, with sporadic intervals between them. Each time people were brutally torn from the shtetl. At first it wasn't even known where the victims were being taken. The remaining number of Jews in our town dwindled steadily and yet, though the constant fear of death remained with them, those still living continued to believe in some miraculous rescue. Throughout that period, Jews tried to retain hope even when all seemed hopeless. They had faith in the inevitability of a miracle!.

After each 'action' was over, some of those who survived insisted that the tragedy had been a sacrifice which only God himself could understand and that now something good would have to happen. The arrival of the Messiah, they believed, is connected with suffering and renewal and that he is to come after days of audacity and injustice on Earth. But he is blessed who is sustained in faith and lives to see that blessed day which will come -which must come! It may seem strange and incredible but, as I have indicated earlier, before every slaughter there were dreams being interpreted and prophecies offered which, based on various signs and hints, foretold the exact day of salvation. Paradoxically, those very days turned out to be the days of the greatest 'actions,' and mass murders. As a result, during that time people used to say to each other: “Wish me anything - except salvation.”

The 'action' of the “Sobbing Graves” about to be recounted also coincided with one of those “days of salvation” that had been predicted for the Jews of our town.

This time it was Berl, the son of Benjamin Wolowycz (the well-known Rabbi and leader of the orthodox Agudat Yisroel party), who had calculated by cabalistic numerology that salvation would come on 2 Nissan 5703. Berl was a dreamy young man of about twenty, who embodied all of the virtues. He was sensitive, a gifted preacher, a master of prayer, of Torah-reading and of shofar-blowing, as well as a profound scholar and a mystic. He was also familiar with the modern sciences, such as mathematics, physics, astronomy and philosophy - a truly outstanding young Jew. During the worst times of the German occupation, when Jews were left moaning and bleeding after each disaster, Berl consoled everyone. Several times he and my father spent hours studying the Torah and the cabala, and every time they found in the Eternal Sources not only consolation but some deeper meanings for our tragic fate.

And now Berl had discovered in the cabala that 2 Nissan would be the great day - the revelation of the Great Secret! Berl's message came as a healing for heavy hearts, a balm on Jewish wounds. The shtetl breathed more easily. Hope filled the sorrowful souls and strengthened their spirits. It was no small thing: Berl the Rabbi's son, that great mystic and student of the Torah, had said it himself! And isn't it time that the One On High should show mercy to His Chosen People? Salvation must come! Incidentally, it was around that time that the Germans were suffering reverses in North Africa and it was also after the battle of Stalingrad. If the Ruler of the Universe were to provide the final push, there would be an end to our suffering! So the Jews waited impatiently, hoping for the coming of the blessed Second day in the month of Nissan. And finally, after much suspense the anticipated spring day arrived: 7 April 1943. The weather was sunny and fair, ideal for the fulfillment of the most beautiful dreams.

Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of gunfire, from afar and nearby. Frightened hearts knew that something terrible was happening. All of the previous slaughters had started in the same way.

On that day the order came down for the final extermination of the remaining Jews. The shtetl was to become Judenrein. Three trucks, jam-packed with SS-men had arrived from Tarnopol. Again they enlisted the aid of the local German garrison and the Ukrainian police. The shtetl was completely surrounded so that no one would escape. The murderers raced fiendishly through the streets and houses, like devils, searching for and dragging out people, pulling them by the hair and shooting at those who ran. Most of the people were too frightened and dazed and did not know where to run. “Come on, hurry or I'll

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shoot you!” the executioners shouted at their victims. After a half-day's rampage, nearly 700 Jews, men, women and children, were jammed into the shul. The building had by now become the usual assembly point during every 'action.' Among the prey was Berl, the Rabbi's son...

Some weeks earlier, the Jews in the camp had been ordered to dig three large pits in a field outside the town. They were told that the pits were to serve as depositories for phosphates to be used during the spring planting. It never occurred to any of the Jews that they were digging their own graves. On the contrary, they regarded the project as proof that they would be employed in the corning season, as they had been the year before. Now, though, in the shul, they understood the purpose of the pits.

The shul was so jammed that it was practically impossible to breathe. Packed as tightly as sardines, they waited in terror. Thoughts of death consumed them. Some recited the Psalms while others chanted confessional prayers. Some sobbed convulsively while others were as silent as stones. The shul was as hot as a furnace, sweat poured from everyone. Mouths were dry and tongues were leaden. “God in Heaven: be merciful!” Berl, the Rabbi's son, elbowed his way through the crowd and mounted the pulpit. Pounding for attention, he began to speak. “My masters, this is our Judgment Day. We are about to go to our death - but let us be strong. To die for the Sanctification of the Name is to attain forgiveness. We must not oppose His Judgment...”

He who had prophesied salvation for that very day now consoled the crowd with Holy Words, but he soon broke down. Choking back his tears, his voice grew weaker sounding like the spent murmur of a shofar - until nothing could be understood.

Sudden wild shouts from the Germans electrified the crowd. At the gate, SS-men began the preparations for the final march. Everyone's heart froze. The crowd grew quiet and in the silence that ensued it seemed that one could hear the approaching steps of the Angel of Death. The Germans renewed their shouting: “Juden raus! ^[57] Juden raus!” People started pushing toward the exit as though to a rescue, because everyone yearned for a breath of air. Blows from gun-butts and blackjacks rained down on the heads of the condemned.

Once outside, the Jews were lined up in rows of five. Seven carts drew up, carrying the deathly ill patients and the staff from the Jewish hospital. The victims were counted. In the vestibule of the shul, there were ten infants lying. The police brought them out to be included in the count. The Gestapo Chief, Herman Muller, said they were not to be counted, they were just to be tossed into the carts among the sick.

Now the column began to move, accompanied by wild shouting. Guarded on all sides by about a hundred Germans and Ukrainians, the procession snaked through the winding, narrow streets of their town, leading to their own Golgotha. Along the way were crowds of bystanders, watching the condemned with glances of questionable pity. Moving as slowly as the very old, barely dragging their feet, the condemned filled with dread, walked mutely in their own funeral procession. Here and there tears fell. The carts loaded with the sick followed in the rear, with the infants sobbing ceaselessly. Shots were fired into the air regularly, warning everyone against attempting to escape.

The column came to a halt before the three open mass pits and the killers began to prepare for the bloody job. The Jews were made to form a square. The infants and the sick were placed to the side, on the ground. The eighteen Jewish policemen were forced to participate in the work, in exchange for a promise that their lives would be spared..Then came the first command: “Take off all your clothes. Place your clothes in one pile!” The Jewish policemen drove the crowd to undress quickly. Those who resisted were brutally beaten. The ground was soon strewn with torn paper money, ripped up to prevent the bills from falling into the hands of the assassins. The cries of children mingled with the prayer-filled shouts of “Shmah Yisroel!”, as ghastly scenes took place, while the murderers wildly shouted “Faster! Faster'

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Faster!” The mound of clothing grew higher by the minute as men, women and children stood stark naked, shivering in the cold.

Berl, the Rabbi's son, stubbornly refused to undress. A German struck him several times in the head and he fell to the ground, bleeding. He was then kicked in the belly several times. He managed to stammer out a final “Shmah Yisroel!”, groaned and gave up his soul while lying on the pile of bloodied clothes. The Germans kicked the corpse over the edge of the pit from which there soon came the thud of Berl's fallen body. The Rabbi's son had triumphed at the mass graves: he was the first to fall at the hands of the murderers and now lay in his grave dressed in a red shroud. At his breast lay the phylacteries sack from which he never parted.

Janka Margolis, a Jewish beauty, also refused to undress. She was beaten to death but did not yield. The Jewish policeman, Kuba Migden, seeing his wife, child and mother-in-law standing naked and ready for death, voluntarily stood with them although, as a member of the police, he had been promised that he would be spared.

Some individuals, totally naked, fell to their knees before the killers, begging for mercy. Such pleas were answered with kicks to the head. The wealthiest man in Skalat, Joseph Tennenbaum, the landowner of the fields in which the slaughter was about to begin, pushed his way to the senior officer and implored his mercy in exchange for the treasure that he had buried somewhere. He was ready to lead the way to the treasure, when the blow of a gun-butt struck him down dead.

Suddenly the high school teacher, Rozia Pikholtz, began speaking to the naked crowd: “I call on you to maintain your courage: we die today as innocent people...”

“You are not people!” the SS Sturmfuhrer interrupted, dealing her a blow across the face. “Now you can go on speaking, you whore!”

The speaker continued, letting her anger at the German murderers and her pain pour out: “Don't think we are not enjoying vengeance...we know that your end is near. Whole forests of gallows await you!” This was more than the German could bear. A bullet pierced the heart of the naked speaker and her body fell to the ground. The crowd envied her the privilege of so painless a death.

Then came the next command. “Faster! Faster! Finish this off! Shoot them in groups of four!” First, over sixty infants and sick people were tossed alive into the pits, from which their cries arose. Ephraim Szpacirer, a policeman, threw his own two children into the pit and then jumped in after them. Then groups of four were lined up at the pits, one behind the other. Three SS-men fired a single pistol shot at each and, regardless of how the bullets struck, the victims were pushed into the grave -many of them still alive. As more bodies fell, the cries from the graves grew louder.

The bloody work went on for two hours without interruption. They sent for a machine gun to speed up the work, because the murderers were anxious to attend the prepared feast. This new murder weapon was equipped with long belts of bullets, and now groups of ten were placed at the edges of the graves to be cut down by the experienced killers, like ripe sheaves before the reaper's scythe. The machine gun spurted fire while the graves spurted fresh, warm blood. The piles of bodies grew larger in each of the graves. Cries of Shmah Yisroel! hung over them, mixing with the screams of the half-dead.

During this 'action,' the Germans had ordered the entire Judenrat and their families to report to the shul at 1:00 PM. Some members of the Council went into hiding but the rest, particularly the quieter and gentler among them, such as Dr. Izydor Kron, Yosl Loyfer, Nuchym Safir, Leibisz Degen, Yankef Sharf and their families became victims of the 'action.' They were forced to watch the whole slaughter and then to fill the graves and tramp down the bloody mounds of dirt on top of the still-moving people buried below. Finally they and the Jewish police were also lined up for the firing squad. Once again, horrendous scenes took place. Naked people fell at the feet of the Germans, who knew them, and begged for mercy. The Germans responded with derision and murderous beatings. The same machine gun that

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had wiped out the mass of Jews also put an end to the lives of the ghetto officials who had believed, right up to the last minute, that they would be spared.

While the unceasing cries from the graves continued, the Ukrainians filled the third grave with earth. Then the killers fell like locusts upon the clothes: patting every garment, searching and turning out each pocket, looking for “Jewish gold” and other valuables. They finally loaded the clothes into trucks and drove off, leaving a sacrifice of three fresh, heaving graves, that rose and fell like waves. Inside those graves, beneath the mounds of earth, human beings with limbs entangled and not yet dead, were tearing at and biting each other. These victims were being denied their final rest. The graves groaned and sighed. The next day the peasants in the nearby village heard the far-off sounds of human groans and cries. On the third day, passersby again heard the sobbing and were convinced that the sounds came from the humans, not yet fully dead, lying in the poorly covered graves.

A few peasants from the village of Nowosiolka found David Epstein and told him what they had heard and seen at the graves. They had recognized his seventeen year old daughter, whose head had emerged from the earth and was calling for help. People went over there and indeed found David Epstein's daughter alive, as well as two other children who showed signs of life. The children died the next day. The girl, however, survived another week and told what had occurred under the earth: how living people among the corpses had shoved, bitten and clawed at each other. She also described in detail the entire course of the 'action.'

The sobbing graves are to be found approximately three kilometers outside of Skalat, on the right side of the road leading to the village of Nowosiolka. Some one hundred meters beyond the graves there is a row of tall poplars in the middle of a field. From the distance one can also see a dark stripe, the edge of the Hores Forest, approximately two kilometers away.

And though the sobbing graves have been eternally silenced now, this place and thousands of similar places shall cry out to the end of time in their demand to be heard.

Footnotes:

47 Ober Jude - Chief Jew. Return

48 Herr Chef - Sir. Return

49 skotchkes - (Train) leapers (from Polish verb, skakac, to leap). L. Milch Return

50 Kripo - Criminal police, made up of Poles and Ukrainians. Return

51 Obersturmbannfuhrer (Rebel) - In command of all the camps in the Tarnopol region. Return

52 talis, talaysim - Prayer shawl(s). Return

53 tefillin - Phylacteries (used in morning prayers). Return

54 kugel - Pudding. Return

55 Hauptsturmfuhrer (Bischoff) - In charge of confiscating Jewish properties in Tarnopol. Return

56 MITS shop - Mashyno Traktonaya Stantziya - Machine and tractor, maintenance and repair shop (Russian). L. Milch Return

57 “Juden raus!” - “Jews, get out!” Return

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