Tag #116062 - Interview #91352 (Chasia Spanerflig)

In late August Lithuanians and Poles, who lived in the central streets of the city: Strashuna, Rudnitskaya and Mesino were forced out of their apartments and told to move to other houses. The ghetto was established here in the downtown area. In early September Vilnius Jews were taken here. In a couple of days policemen came to our settlement in several carts and told us to leave with them. There were five or six Jewish families in the settlement. All of us were loaded on the carts. We weren’t allowed to take any things. I held my son in one hand, and a bottle of milk in the other – it was the only thing I could take with me. We were brought to the ghetto. We were lucky, as many Jews were sent straight to Paneriai. Besides, we were taken to the large, and not to the small ghetto, [two ghettos were established in Vilnius – a big and a small one, with the center in Sticle Street], as the small ghetto existed for no longer than two months – in late October 1941 all dwellers of this ghetto were sent to Paneriai.