Selected text
They began to transport Hungarian Jews through Horodenka eastwards. We managed to get an awful lot of them out of the trains and they stayed in Horodenka. The ghetto was bounded by barbed wire. A Jewish auxiliary police was set up. Over 3,500, up to 4,000 Jews lived in the Judenviertel [Jewish quarter] in Horodenka. Horodenka had a hospital, where injured German soldiers were brought to convalesce. In the first weeks of the German occupation the following episode took place: about ten or twelve convalescing pilots went out onto the street to have some fun. They rounded up some Orthodox Jews, with their dayan at the fore, locked them in the big synagogue and ordered them to light a bonfire. Into that bonfire they threw the Torah, and they ordered the Jews to gather round it and dance round the bonfire, and then they pulled out their bayonets and ordered them to cut each others' beards off. A large group of onlookers gathered, and, well, we children wanted to see it close up as well. Nobody was killed that time. That was the start. Similar incidents took place in Kuty, Obertyn and Sniatyn.
Period
Interview
tomasz miedzinski