Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
had been dug in advance. Shaulik Valman and Naftalk’e Valman were also killed that day. Elsewhere in Volhynia, similar horrors were under way. The kill- ings took place on the largest scale in Lutsk, Dubno, Rovno, and Ostrog, where thousands were murdered in the first days of Ger - man occupation. It is estimated that in the first wave of slaughter in the province, fifteen thousand Jews, 6 percent of the Jewish pop - ulation, were murdered. The early victims were often local public figures, well-educated people, and rabbis, in accordance with the German goal of eliminating Jewish leadership as soon as possible. Local Ukrainians created lists from which victims were cho- sen, served as informants, and were often co-perpetrators of the violence. 3 In his 1993 eulogy for the Jews of Ludvipol, Arje Katz bitterly recalled abuses perpetrated by the Ukrainian villagers. For instance, he said, there was “a Jewish man named Yankel Schmir- gold, the son of Mikhle, who lived with his family in a home near Lazar Shitchik, a Ukrainian, and his family. One day, Lazar Shit- chik and his sons dragged Yankel Schmirgold and his six-year- old son to the Shitchik vegetable garden. Once there, they killed both Schmirgold and his young child and buried them there in the gar- den.” After that, the Shitchiks returned to Schmirgold’s house and looted it, he said. Similarly, Katz said, the Ukrainian brothers Kirilo and Andrei Abramchik attacked the young grandchildren of their neighbor, Ye- hezkel Eisenman; Eisenman owned the local vegetable oil factory and shared a house with his daughter Sara, son-in-law Shechna Shemesh, and grandchildren Yosef, age thirteen, and Avraham, age eleven. “The Abramchik brothers attacked and threatened the chil- dren with pitchforks, demanding that they tell where their parents’ money was hidden. Neither child panicked. They remained calm, repeated a private password for dangerous situations, and sprang straight ahead, like arrows from a bow, to the field behind their house. Then they ran north towards the River Slusch. Fortunate- ly, it was after sunset and they managed to disappear in the dark- ness, running a winding path into the green grain, and then over
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