what was happening, we had already run quite a dis- tance. To this day I do not understand how we were able to escape. It could only be that good angels carried us along the way and our own passion for life gave us the strength to run. A hail of bullets flew over our heads, the noisy reverberations blending with the anguished screams of the wounded. From the forty of us who had run, many had been shot dead. Fresh Jewish blood had been spilled, saturating the already blood-drenched field. My five friends and I, with minor wounds, fled to the highway — a brutal experience, running under a barrage of gunfire, pursued by the Nazi murderers. At the highway we found that we had fallen into a trap. Armored jeeps were rushing toward us, opening a fresh round of fire. We retreated, but behind us were sixty Nazi soldiers who continued to shoot like hunters, in hot pursuit of their prey. In all directions of the field we noticed many new victims. Nearby, we heard one of our Bialystoker friends, Josef Lew, pleading with a Gestapo officer to spare his life. But the brute shouted back: טסצ"‎ are a Jew, you have no right to live, march into the ".זנק‎ We also saw the soldiers dragging the severely wounded into the trench. Evening descended. We crawled on all fours into a bush and spent the night. The next day we sneaked out, creeping on our bellies, until we reached a swamp, into which we fell up to our necks in mud. Miraculously, we did not drown. Thus for three days and three nights we lay outside in the frosty cold, naked and hungry, without food and water. Under normal circumstances we would not have been able to withstand it all. But we were fighting for our lives and we discovered that we possessed reserves of superhuman strength. On the third day we attempted to enter a nearby Polish colony, from which we were sent away with a warning that we would be handed over to the Nazis. We barely managed to escape with our lives. On the fourth day, we found an underground shel- ter in the forest. There we hid for fourteen days, during ten of which we had no water. We managed to survive only by eating a few raw chickpeas, which we would gather in the field once every three days. On July 26, we tried to search for food, but we were forced to go back because the forest was heavily surrounded either by the Nazis or the Russians. Thus I endured another hell — hungry, naked, homeless, besieged by an unknown enemy deep in the forest. Salvation On July 27, 1944, we heard people singing Russian songs and we realized that our liberators had arrived. We left the forest and were treated to a friendly recep- tion by the Red Army, which provided us with clothing, food and later took us back to Bialystok. For the first time in a long while, I breathed easier, once again feel- 102 ing what it meant to be really alive. The following sur- vived with me: Tewele Wrubel, Isroel Felder, Awrom Izchok Lew, Wolf Szyf, Mejszel Gerszuni, Anatol Rabi- nowic, Zalmen Edelman. Szejme Lyfszic also escaped, but we later heard he was taken away and evidently perished. Six months later, Awrom Karasik was found alive but wounded in Russia. He then returned to Bialystok. The foregoing was one epilogue of the tragic de- struction of Bialystok — a scene that unfolded for months after the Bialystok ghetto had been liquidated. We, the last of the Mohicans, remained to shed tears for the ruin of our hometown, which we ourselves wit- nessed. We are prepared to render testimony to the world on behalf of our people concerning the greatest crime ever committed in the history of mankind, the mass murder of our brothers and sisters. Let all Bialystokers know that they have a respon- sibility to bury properly the martyrs in the field who were cremated, who never had the benefit of Jewish interment. Let us erect a monument over their graves and observe the anniversaries of their death. Let us never forget what we went through. REACTIONS TO THE RESISTANCE The brave resistance and the self-defense waged by the Jews in the Bialystok ghetto called forth great admi- ration that went far beyond the borders of Bialystok. In a report by the Jewish National Committee dated November 15, 1943, to Dr. Izaak Szwarcbard in Lon- don, signed by Dr. A. Berman, Izaak Cukerman and Dr. D. Kaftor, the following appeared: