KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
accompanied by German officers, and dividing the Jews into work forces to clean the town and bring water and wood for the German troops. Within a few days, the Germans had found local Ukrainians who were more than happy to serve as police officers and armed guards. Within two weeks they set up a civil police administration, called the gendarmerie, run by Germans and Ukrainians. Some of the German soldiers then left, continuing their advance into the Ukraine. The Jews tried to bribe Mayor Hering to protect them, but were unsuccessful. A few months after the Germans arrived, on October 1, they issued an order for all Jews to wear the yellow Star of David to identify themselves as Jews, and they created a ghetto and started to evict people from their houses. Our town had two main streets running crosswise. They took one quarter of the town, about sev- enty homes, erected a ten-foot high wooden fence with barbed wire around it, and shoved in all the Jews from the entire town. The ghetto walls ran along Szewska Street from Habel Creek, starting at Isaac Kogot’s house, to the corner of Koretz Street, and from Yankel Raber’s house to slightly beyond Barder the baker’s house, then along May the Third Street. In a cold, driving rain on October 14, 1941, during Simchat Torah, we were forced out of our homes and into the ghet- to. Those who looked physically able to handle hard labor were put in a work camp. A few craftsmen were given special certifi - cates that allowed them to remain on the Craftsman Street, which faced out from the ghetto, because their services were need- ed by non-Jews. About two thousand people had to fit into this small area. There was no food and hardly any water for drink- ing or washing. People referred to the ghetto as Kasrilevke, from Sholom Aleichem. Ukrainian police stood guard on all sides of the ghetto. A special commission searched each family’s belongings when they entered their new residences in the ghetto. Everything of value was taken from them, and they were left with only a few blankets and the clothes on their backs. Four or five families had to live in
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