Free The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val Page B

their house for a few days. Then the Germans began searching all the houses very carefully looking for Jews, and it became a matter of mortal risk, so they had no choice but “to say good-bye” to Itzik.
    One Trochenbrod survivor told me of a Polish family that hid her family, and later brought food to them where they hid in the forest; and also of Ukrainians who during the winter let Jews hiding in the forest warm themselves in their houses, fed them, and offered food from their gardens. A Ukrainian from the Polish village of Przebradze described a family friend, a red-haired Trochenbroder, who had obtained a false passport that identified him as non-Jewish. He stopped at their house to say good-bye, hid with them for a day, and then continued on to Lutsk to lose himself among the crowds. When the family of Basia-Ruchel Potash hid in the forest, a Polish man who had been her father’s customer sometimes brought food to them, and alerted them to dangers. People in the nearby Ukrainian village of Klubochin helped Trochenbrod families survive in the forest and gave support to their young men who formed partisan units.
    In preparing for its grisly work, the Nazi murder machine was very organized and methodical. The plan called for a schedule of exterminations that would leave Ukraine essentially “Judenrein,” free of Jews, by October 10, 1942. Accordingly, most of the Jewish people of Kolki were slaughtered on August 9, most of the Jews of Olyka on August 10, and the bulk of Trochenbrod’s Jews were scheduled for slaughter on August 11. The Nazis began the process of organizing the mass murder for Trochenbrod with a number of advance actions meant to ensure that everything proceeded efficiently. They and their Schutsmen killed a large number of people in their homes and in Trochenbrod’s street, and undertook other forms of terror to reinforce a sense of helplessness, hoping in that way to ensure submission and minimize attempts to escape. They conducted a program of psychological trickery to encourage denial on the part of their victims, not a few of whom to nearly the end believed they were being corralled for labor details.

Chapter Four
    DARKNESS
    I n the early morning hours of Sunday, August 9, 1942, twenty men of Einsatzgruppe C, one of the German extermination units, rode into Trochenbrod on motorcycles. In their wake were eleven German army trucks carrying about one hundred Schutsmen. The Schutsmen spread out and ordered everyone to go immediately to the center of town for a meeting where they would be issued labor cards. While pushing everyone, the Schutsmen freely shot people, tens of them, as they moved bewildered to the designated location.
    After a long and frightening wait, the German commander arrived and informed the townspeople that henceforth they would have to live in a ghetto in the area where they were standing, in the middle of Trochenbrod. He told about fifty leather workers and some professionals, ones the Germans wanted to continue working for them, that they must move with their families into a cluster of houses just beyond the north end of town, in the vicinity of the flour mill. Then Einsatzgruppe troops lined everyone up in ranks to count them and determine, according to a formula they used, the depth of pit they would need at a given width and length. People were allowed to return to their homes to gather clothing and other small things for the ghetto, whatever they could carry, but had to be back in the ghetto within two hours.
    The Schutsmen lined up along the sides of the street. As long lines of men, women, and children trudged down the street carrying sacks of belongings on their backs, the Schutsmen opened fire from time to time, murdering randomly. They also looked in the houses and dragged anyone they found outside and shot them. Trochenbrod’s street echoed with gunshots and the cries of dying people. The goal was now to escape the bullets and get to the ghetto as fast as possible.