KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
the River Slusch at the one and only crossing point. Apparently, the brothers fled to a Mazurian village, where they sought shelter and were protected,” he said. A few weeks after the entire Jewish population of Ludvipol was forced into the newly erected ghetto, the Germans conducted an aktion (German selection, deportation, or mass murder) in nearby Rovno. Between November 7 and November 8,1941, approximate- ly twenty-one thousand Jews (80 percent of the city’s Jewish pop- ulation) were marched six kilometers, to a pine grove at Sosenski, and shot dead. 4 Communications to and from the ghetto had been severed, however, and it appears that Ludvipol’s Jews did not know about the event. “Taking advantage” of the Jewish workforce was one of dual Nazi goals, the other being its annihilation. As Obergruppenftihrer Friedrich Wilhelm Kruger advised other German administrators, “By means of police coercion, for the first time many Jews have been induced to engage in fruitful labor in the service of the com- munity.” 5 Forced labor was a prelude to their eventual death from hunger, thirst, illness, and exhaustion. Most of Ludvipol’s Jews over the age of eleven were ordered to work on the road between Admovka and Brezno, although some were put to work at a saw- mill in Chmielowka, some in agriculture, some in the forest cutting lumber, and some digging peat. Certain Gentile residents, between eighteen and forty-five years old, were also forced to work for the Germans. Unlike the Jews, however, these workers were not controlled by armed guards who were prepared to shoot them at the slightest provocation. They were paid and allowed to keep their pay, whereas Jews were paid on the whim of the Germans and Ukrainians and had to exchange their wages for rations and a place at the soup kitchen. The German mayor, former schoolteacher Hering, set up a local Judenrat that included Mottel Etsztein, Joseph Gluzmann, Barder the baker, Yenia Gachpinboim (the president) and Kalman Valman (the deputy). 6 According to Shmuel Shaflr, “They were not bad Shafir, Obergruppenführer
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