Testimony of Joseph Kofler

My name is Joseph Kofler. I was born and raised in a shtetl, Medenice, near the town of Drohobycz. I attended high school in Stryj and the Politechnik University in Lwow. This area was in Eastern Poland and was occupied by the Soviets in 1939, and by the Germans in 1941. My family, at that time, consisted of my parents, 4 brothers, 3 sisters, their spouses and children. They lived in Medenice, and the nearby towns of Drohobycz, Boryslaw and Stryj.

They all perished. I am the only survivor. I learned after the war that most of the Jews in that area were rounded up and taken to Belzec, an extermination camp in Eastern Poland.

I was living with my wife, Sima, in Lwow when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. In August 1941 my wife and I made our way on foot and by hitchhiking to the town of Skalat where my wife's family lived. We settled in the ghetto where I worked with a group of Jewish men assigned to forced labor on the highway, breaking up stones for paving. We worked there until the 'actions,' began in August 1942.

At dawn on November 9, 1942, the Skalat Ghetto was surrounded by German SS-men and the Ukrainian police. Early in the morning they started entering Jewish homes and dragging out people. We could hear the shouting of the Germans and the screaming of the victims.

I managed to hide our family in a prepared hiding place in the attic, but I had to stay outside to cover and camouflage the entrance. My intention was to hide in a different place. As I stepped out of the house, however, I was grabbed by a German, who was already holding an acquaintance, Munio Pudles, whom he had caught a few minutes earlier. We were both led to the assembly point at the synagogue.

At the synagogue were assembled many men, women and children who were wailing and screaming. Every few minutes the Germans and Ukrainians were bringing in more victims. At about noon the commanding SS-man stopped the round-up and ordered the transport to begin. Trucks normally used to carry rocks were brought from the Nowosiolka quarry. The people were herded from the synagogue and the Germans, using whips and delivering blows with rifle butts, made us climb the lorries at a fast pace. The Germans forced their victims to squeeze together so more people could be loaded on a truck.

When the loading was completed, but before the trucks started to move, a Judenrat official by the name of Lempert, arrived and asked the SS-man to release an employee of the Judenrat and a friend of Nirler (the head of the Judenrat). The SS-man agreed and called out the name of the woman who was on the truck with her 10 year old son. The German, however, would not release her child and gave the woman one minute to decide whether to leave alone or stay with her son. She decided to get off and her son continued alone with the transport.

The trucks transported us from Skalat to the railroad station in Tarnopol. There, the Germans made us once again leave the trucks at a fast pace, under a hail of severe beatings and with shouts or “Judenschwein.”

After the unloading, we were ordered to sit on the ground in complete silence along with other Jews from Zbaraz, Trembowla, and Kopyczynce. Round-ups of Jews were carried out in those towns the same day as in Skalat. It was a cold day, the temperature was below freezing and the frozen ground was covered with snow.

People were shivering because they had been driven out of their homes in their night clothes, and therefore unprepared for the cold. The children suffered the most. They were crying and their mothers were wailing. The Germans ordered the crowd to be quiet, but the children continued to cry. One SS-man became so enraged by the noise that he picked up a few screaming children, took them behind a wall and shot them. This subdued the crowd and the other children stopped crying as well.

Towards evening a freight train arrived and the Germans and Ukrainians herded the crowd towards the cattle cars. At the same time they selected able-bodied men for assignment to forced labor camps.

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This selection involved separating the men from their families and resulted in tragic scenes and the crying and wailing of women and children. Some men resisted being torn away from their loved ones but the Germans cut the scene short with their usual method of terror, and with the help of whips and rifle butts. The old men, women and children were pushed into the cattle cars, the doors were shut and the victims were dispatched to their destination - the gas chambers.

The men selected for forced labor were assembled in columns and assigned to various camps, Hluboczek, Zbaraz, Zloczow, Zborow and Kazimirowka. I was assigned to Kamizirowka. After the train left the station, our column was ordered to march at a fast pace along the highway towards Zborow, which was about 40 km from Tarnopol. We were guarded by many Ukrainian policemen on foot and by two Germans in a car, driven slowly behind the marching column, with the headlights directed on the marchers. After marching a few hours, trucks arrived to pick us up in order to speed up the transport to the camp.

Around midnight, we arrived at the Zborow camp. There we stayed overnight without food and slept on the floor because all the sleeping bunks were fully occupied. We were awakened before dawn and given breakfast consisting of black water, which was the camp version of coffee, two slices of bread and a stick of margarine. At five o'clock we were marched under Ukrainian guards to Kazimirowka.

Conditions in the Kazimirowka camp were ho1Tendous. We were housed in wooden barracks, which had been converted from a horse barn by installing three tiers of sleeping bunks. In an area which was built for twenty horses, the Germans crowded in 250 inmates. The bunks had only enough room to slide in. One could not sit up. We were packed so tightly that when all the inmates were in place, it was hardly possible to turn around. A hole in the ground behind the barracks served as a latrine. The hole was small and people had to wait in line to use it. At night many inmates were so tired and weak that they were unable to wriggle out of their bunks. This resulted in inmates urinating in their bunks, wetting those who were sleeping below.

The camp grounds were surrounded by a fence of barbed-wire and one watch tower. The Kommandant of the camp was a German named Riesberg, who was assisted by about 15 Ukrainian policemen. We were awakened every day about 4:00 a.m., except on Sunday, and served breakfast which consisted of ersatz (imitation) coffee and two slices of half-baked, black bread. Within 30 minutes after wake-up call we had to attend the line-up. The Kommandant reviewed the column and then we marched to work at a rock quarry a few kilometers away.

A German named Schelhorn was in charge of the quarry. During work the quarry was surrounded by Ukrainian policemen in order to prevent escape attempts.

There was no hospital or clinic. There was a sick room with one doctor who did not have any drugs or instruments. Once, while at work, I was hit with a shovel over the head by a German and I was bleeding heavily. All the doctor could do was wash the wound with water and apply a clean rag torn from an old shirt.

In the shower room, which was open only on Sundays, there were three shower heads. Only a fraction of the camp population was able to use the shower. Most of the inmates were infested with lice, resulting in the spread of typhus and causing the death of many inmates.

A sick inmate was not allowed to stay in the barracks during work hours. He was carried on a stretcher to the quarry and left there all day in the cold. Most of the time the patient died. Otherwise, he was carried back to the barracks and the same procedure was repeated the next day. In order to stay in the barracks a sick inmate had to bribe the Kapo who would hide him during inspection.

This camp was small compared to the notorious concentration camps equipped with gas chambers and crematoria. There were hundreds of similar small camps in Eastern Poland, the names of which are forgotten. They were established to supply slave labor for the local economy and also to hasten the elimination of the sick and weak Jews without having to build expensive killing installations. No bullets were needed to kill inmates except in escape attempts. Since bullets were in short supply and were needed

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for the battle front, they were used sparingly. The Jews had to die without them. The bodies were dumped in a nearby ravine and covered with the soil stripped from the rock quarry.

The work at the quarry consisted of breaking up large stones into gravel using heavy sledgehammers. We worked from 5:00 in the morning till about 5:00 in the evening, when it became dark. There was a one hour noon break, when we were given a hot lunch brought from the camp kitchen. The lunch consisted of watery soup and two slices of bread. Sometimes on a Sunday, the Kommandant would present to the camp kitchen a few dogs or cats which he shot during a hunting trip to a nearby village. Inmates were then treated to soup made from this meat.

A few days after our arrival a 14 year old boy was caught at night, trying to escape. The next morning all the inmates were assembled at the line-up to watch the punishment. The 14 year old prisoner was brought to the gallows and his teenage friend was summoned and ordered to place the noose on his friend's neck. When he refused to do so, a German beat him severely with a whip over his face and then shot him. A Ukrainian policeman then placed the noose and the boy was hanged. After that episode there were no other attempts to escape.

The remaining Jews of Skalat who avoided the round-up, came out from their hiding places and tried to go on with their precarious lives in the reduced ghetto.

My wife, who luckily avoided capture, learned after a few weeks that a number of men from Skalat were confined in the Kazimirowka camp, and that I was among them. With me from the town of Skalat were: Gelbtuch, Wilner, Sharf, Sass, Kiwetz and a few others, whose names I do not remember. She managed to make contact with the Judenrat in the town of Zborow, which is located near Kazimirowka. They indicated that it was possible to get an inmate released for a ransom. They were especially interested in jewelry.

As the negotiations were going on concerning a ransom, I contracted typhus and developed a high fever. A friend, David Gelbtuch, bribed the Kapo, who managed to hide me from the Kommandant and shielded me from being carried to the quarry.My wife delivered the ransom and I was released unconscious and with a high fever. I was taken to a so-called hospital in the Zborow Ghetto. It was a small, crowded place where two or sometimes three patients shared a bed. Two doctors and three nurses cared for about two dozen patients. After ten days, without drugs or proper treatment, I miraculously recovered. My wife managed to find transportation and we made our way back to Skalat.

NOTE:

As I found out after the liberation, all of these small camps were liquidated by the Germans in the Spring of 1944 as the Soviet Army was approaching. The following method of liquidation was used. The inmates were assembled inside the barracks, which were surrounded by German and Ukrainian guards with machine guns. The doors were shut, the buildings were then doused with gasoline and set on fire. The inmates were burned alive, and only a few escaped to tell the tragic story.

Joseph Kofler
Santa Monica, California 1993

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