Tag #116404 - Interview #78774 (Fania Brantsovskaya)

On the first days of our imprisonment various actions began. It seemed the fascists enjoyed changing the ways of selecting Jews for killing. Young people were taken to work in the peat bog and one day they were told to go to the sauna. My acquaintance Dodke Vedutskiy felt ill and didn't go with his comrades on this day. The young people were locked in a shed and burnt. There were a few synagogues in the ghetto. The yard of one synagogue was in the smaller ghetto. On Yom Kippur, 21st September 1941, all Jews that were praying there were taken to Ponary. My friend Motke Gurewich's parents were also there. His father told him to stay at home that day. The ghetto inmates used to make shelters to hide away during various actions. They were called 'malina' shelters [Russian slang for a secret apartment where those who were against the regime had their meetings]. Our schoolteacher's daughter was born in such a shelter and he named her 'Malina'. Unfortunately, I have no information about what happened to her.