shot. No Jews were permitted to stay in the ghetto, where signs were posted declaring it Judenrein. Jews who were still in Bialystok were sent as slave labor or executed. The Nazis issued an ultimatum to those in the bunkers: surrender or be liquidated. Many preferred the grim conditions in the hideouts to sur- render to the police. Electricity and water were shut off. We were forced to obtain water from a polluted stream that was filled with frogs. We filtered the water through a linen screen, and that’s how we subsisted for two months.... Suddenly one night, our bunker was exposed. The Nazis attacked and shoved us in all directions; many fled. I panicked and was disoriented. I can’t remember how I and fifteen others managed to find another hideout that had been uncovered earlier, its former occupants killed. We stayed there, for we had no choice. I was lonely. My father and little sister had been killed with the other victims. We, the temporary survi- vors, hid in our new shelter for two more months. Meanwhile, we set fire to all the Jewish property we could find. At night we went from house to house, doused kerosene on everything, and burned it. We were determined that the Nazis would have little booty. Finally, our bunker was exposed again. We were tortured and jailed for six weeks, and then transferred to concentration camps, including Stuthof, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Neustadt. Like many others, I suf- fered indescribably. Several times I was at the thresh- old of death; 1 wonder how I survived. After being liberated in May 1945, I returned to Bialystok, my hometown, to see whether any of my 160 family had survived. I had little hope of finding anyone. But then the incredible happened. I went to | Minsker Street, where Jews who had survived the Holocaust or exile in the Soviet Union were staying. A girl came over, kissed me and told me my husband was alive. I couldn’t believe it; I thought she meant my husband’s brother. Then, a friend of my husband’s who had been with him led me inside a building, where I found my husband lying in bed with a high fever. I called a doctor immediately; my husband went to the hospital, where he was treated for typhus for two months. Even after leaving the hospital, he was very weak. He walked with crutches. It took him a long time to recover. I later learned he was sent to Auschwitz during the first liquidation in Bialystok. His mother told him, ‘“Go, my son, and save yourself.’ Then he was sepa- rated from her and his sister. My husband’s mother’s words ring in his ears to this day. My husband was later transferred to the Jaworzna concentration camp, where he worked in the coal mines for nineteen months. Afterward, he and others were force-marched to the Blechamer concentration camp. Two days after their arrival, the Bialystoker contingent dug a tunnel underneath the camp’s fence and escaped. Among the brave Bialystoker Jews who fled Blechamer were Lejzer Olszanski and his son, Chaim, who live in Argentina; Jeszua Krawecki; Chaim Kurnianski; and my husband, Szmuel Drogoczynski. Thus my beloved Szmuel and I were reunited after enduring the Holocaust. A miracle. Very few couples were so fortunate. The Bialystoker Memorial Book