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20. Red Plantation On April 15, 1943, an order came from the Gestapo to theJewish Presidium that they should get ready one hundred healthy ~orking men to be taken to a working brigade. If they didn't come up with the men, the Germans would take the Jewish police. You can imagine how scared the Jewish police were, so they started making lists right away, reporting people like me with no parents or connections, not caring whether they were healthy or not. They just wanted to save themselves. When the lists were ready, they went looking for the people on the lists. They began at two in the morning, so we were sleepingwhen we heard a knock on the door. Uncle Abraham got up, scared, and asked who was there. We thought it might be the Germans. They answered that it was the Jewish police and that we should open the door. They came in, took out a list, and asked for Hersh Gordon and told me to dress and go with them. Uncle Abraham said, "Why do you always pick on my nephew? Hejustcame back not long ago from one working camp and now he has to go again? Why don't you take someone else? He is a young kid. How long do you think he can hold up like this, going from one camp to another?" "What do you want us to do," the police answered, "go in his place?" I knew very well what my uncle would like to have replied, but he didn't say it. He was thinking, "It wouldn't be so bad if they would try one of the working camps instead of living like parasites on someone else's blood." But ifhe had said anything, they would have taken him, too. I dressed quickly and said goodby. The police took me to the Red Plantation 119 ghetto fence where there was another ghetto jail. In this particular jail they usually kept people arrested for not going to work or for coming late to work. I went into a big room where there were a lot ofpeople. They were asking each other, "Did you hear where they are taking us?" No one knew. We asked the police guarding us, but they didn't know either. Every minute more and more were brought in. Each was trying to guess where we would be taken. One said the Ninth Fort; another said he heard from a good source that we were being taken to Germany to work because with all the Germansfighting onthe fronts they needed people to take over their jobs. I met a friend ofmine here named Pascha Schmidt. He asked me, "Hershke, do you think they are going to take us to work in Germany?" I told him, "In ten hours, we will all be older and we will know where they are taking us." It began to get light outside. At 6:00 AM the Germans drove up in trucks with Ukrainian volunteers on them, a Ukrainian SS. The Jewish police told us to get in lines of four abreast, counted us, and told us to get in the truck. The Ukrainians gave the order and we started moving. We were packed like cattle in the trucks, with no room to move. We couldn't wait for the moment when the trucks would stop. They finally did stop in a big field. Wejumpedoffthe trucks and stood in line again to be counted. As we stood in line, anyone who tried to stretch or move a little after the ride was beaten by the Ukrainians with their rifles, or kicked in the shins by their boots. They hit and kicked us even ifwe didn't do anything, and this was only the beginning ofour lives at Red Plantation, near Vyzuonos. After they finished counting they took us up to a pig stall and told us we would sleep there. It looked like the pigs had been moved out only a few hours before; manure lay in big piles. They put us to work cleaning out the stall so we would be able to sleep there that night. There were no lights, only a few gas lamps. We couldn't wait for dark when we could hide ourselves in the stall to escape the brutal Ukrainians. They were ten times as bad as the Germans. There was a dead stillness among us. Everyone thought that [18.191.240.243] Project MUSE (2024...

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