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Fifty years have
passed since that bitter tragic day when the Jews of Kletzk were concentrated
into the market square. They were divided into two groups. One group,
with about 2,000 Jews, was led into the Kalte Shul, the large synagogue
of the city. They were pushed inside and the door was closed on them.
The rest, about 4,500 Jews, were led to the sand mines (stone quarries)
at the end of Neshvez Street. The Jews took their clothes off in these
ditches. They were old people, young people, youth, children, and babies.
They were brutally murdered and in cold blood.
Here with us on this
Memorial Day (Askara) are people who witnessed that tragedy: The
partisan Yosef Shepeyorko Borisovich who excelled as a fighter in the
battles against the Nazis, and the partisan Nissan Israelevich who was
one of the fighters in the illustrious Kovpak units.
After the murder
in the ditches, the remaining 2,000 Jews, who had been previously concentrated
in the large synagogue, were taken out. After a short time, theywere
imprisoned in the Ghetto compound which was located in the big Shulhoif
Yard and, the streets surrounding this Yard. They 1ived and existed
in this Ghetto in overcrowded conditions, impoverished and with shortages
of basic commodities, until the 22nd of July 1942. On this day, the Ghetto
was surrounded by the Nazis and their supporters. They fired indiscriminately
into the area of the Ghetto.
The Kletzk Jews did
not give up. They returned the fire with the few arms that, they had --
stones and axes. A tin of kerosene was prepared in every house. The Jews
set fire to the houses in the Ghetto in order not to fall into the hands
of the bestial enemy
Alter Mierovich,
a partisan who took part in this struggle, describes these last minutes
of Ghetto Kletzk in his book Kletzk:
At four clock
in the dawn light of the 21st of July, the police surrounded the Ghetto
on all sides. The adults took up positions and threw an avalanche of stones,
which had been prepared before the battle, at the murderers. Every man,
in his heart, felt: The enemy will not destroy us so easily. It is better
to die fighting in the Ghetto than be massacred.
Hundreds of Jews
broke through the walls of the Ghetto and tried to escape. Unfortunately,
only a few of them survived. They joined the Partisans and continued to
fight the Nazi beast and to take revenge for the martyrs of the Holocaust.
Some fell in battle in Russia and a few reached the Berlin Gates.
Y'heye
Zichram Baruch
Blessed
Be the Memory of the Fighters |
Elimelech
Benari