II. The War
On the Day of my Bar Mitzvah By noon of the first day of German occupation, Jews in Ludvipol were dragged out of their homes and rounded up in the center of town by the Ukrainians. An unknown number of Jewish women were raped by German soldiers, including four women from the Gandelman family. 1 Ukrainian villagers immediately began to ter- rorize their Jewish neighbors, storming Jewish houses, attacking their inhabitants, and stealing anything they desired. “The sequence of events quickly fell into the pattern of a pogrom,” reported Ba- ruch Guttman in Ludvipol’s Yizkor book. Afraid for their lives, Jews locked themselves in their homes and hid their daughters in attics. Some fled to nearby villages, and their homes were plundered by local Ukrainians. Several days later, the Germans issued an order that they must return to Ludvipol on penalty of execution. In September 1941, a local Gebietskommissariat (government) was established for the area, which was part of the Reichskommis- sariat Ukraine and commanded by Erich Koch from Rovno. The regional governor was named Guenther, approximately fifty years old, tall, heavyset, light with blond hair and a mustache. The head of the local Gebietskommissariat, based in Ludvipol, was Franz Norgall. 2 As soon as he arrived, Commissar Norgall ordered the arrest of at least eight Jews, including Akiva Zaltzman, Akiva Vasserman, Szejle Welman and two of his brothers, Yacob Berman, Eliezer Fineman, Lea or Sara Alt, and perhaps Dawid Grud, who were ac- cused of having belonged to the Communist party. They were tak- en to a sandy area behind the church and shot next to a ditch that
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