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234 LUBOML
soldiers made a rush upon them to buy whatever
they could find. Every piece of merchandise,
shop-worn because it had been lying idle for
many years, was sold for Soviet rubles and Polish
zlotys; and nothing, not a piece of junk, was left.
The shopkeepers were raking in so many
rubles and zlotys that they did not know what to
do with them; but when they tried to buy new
merchandise with this money, they could not buy
anything with it. When they saw the trap into
which they had fallen, they stopped selling and
began to hoard whatever goods they had.
I myself was afraid to go near my brick works.
True, the building was not my own; I only rented
it. But, according to the Soviet interpretation, I
too would have been called an exploiter. The new
authorities quartered the officers and their civilian
staff in the homes of the townspeople, big
homes that had a lot of rooms. The owners were
distressed at having to squeeze themselves into
one or two rooms. Moreover, the army nationalized
some of the enterprises and made the former
owners work for the authorities as simple workers.
We were gloomy. Merchants and rich men
feared being sent to Siberia as bourgeois and exploiters.
I was afraid to go to the brick factory that
I was renting. The factory had finished bricks that
I had made myself. Later I sold them to the military
for very little money.
Still later I, like some others, became a government
worker in a lumber yard that provided
lumber for the lyespromchoz [the government
forest products] as well as for the military staff in
the shtetl.
I postponed my own private plans, knowing
that there was no chance for them to materialize,
as we were facing an abyss.
Our hearts were heavy, and this was expressed
in all kinds of rumors, one worse than
the other. The rumors turned into realities very
suddenly, when 500 of our youth were drafted.
Some of them joined the army at once and others
were sent to build aerodromes, dig trenches
and the like. That which we feared came sooner
than we thought.
Early Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, bombs
began to fall on the shtetl. A bomb exploded not far
from us, destroying the post office. Shrapnel was
flying into the homes. Not far from us lived the
shoemaker Sender and his wife, and the two of
them became the first victims of this first air
attack.
Sunday at 10 a.m., I was drafted with many
other townsmen. Our priyom [induction] took
place in the home of Veytsfrucht. Somehow I
managed to make a quick visit home. When my
wife and family saw me, they fell upon my neck
nearly strangling me; I felt that if I did not free
myself from them, I would faint right then and
there. I do not remember who tore me away from
them almost by force. This was the last time that I
saw them!
They sent me to the stationme and many
others from the town, including some of my
neighbors. There we found some newly erected
barracks; we were provided with some provisions,
including biscuits, saccharin and sugar. I
was assigned to the artillery because of my previous
experience.
The officer in charge immediately let us know
that the merzavtsy [German bastards] had attacked
us first: we had given them bread and they
had thanked us by casting stones at us. "But don't
worry, rebyata [kids]," he consoled us. "Pobyeda
budet za nami [victory shall be ours'!"
We went straight to the Shatsk area near the
lake. As we found out later we were already
surrounded, so that instead of fighting a war, we
had to seek a way out of the trap to save our lives.
We set out over highways and byways and
unknown routes, in the general direction of Kovel,
marching night and day, whenever we saw an
opening to do so, only to get further away from the
deadly bombardment that the Germans had directed
at us.
During these first days I had experienced
great terror and dread, seeing and living through
a great many things. While we were in Shatsk, a
part of our company was sent nearer to the front.
As I was walking, I noticed someone near me look
around and run away. It was my friend Avrom
Melnik. Later, when the company returned from
its foray, an officer came toward me on his horse,
took out his revolver, and wanted to shoot me,
thinking I was the deserter Melnik. Luckily, the
men in my company took my part and proved to
him that I was not the deserter, but one of them.