running through town looking for their kin. They run and fall, get up and fall again. Smothered children are being dragged from the shelters. They began crying dur- ing the searches and were suffocated. It seems everyone is carrying belongings. Everywhere there are tears. Police enter the cellars, attics and other places collect- ing corpses. The residences of the evacuees are sealed. At the cemetery, gigantic heaps of dead bodies are bur- ied in mass graves. Again, loud wailing. “Today a snow has fallen, covering the bloodstains on the ground. Underneath the whiteness of the snow appears a shiny redness. In the afternoon, it rained. All has been washed away.” With similar despair, Pejsach Kaplan described the wretched situation he found: ‘“Monday morning we resumed life as usual, await- ing a renewed shaking of fists, the murderous rage and the unrelieved terror in the face of imminent death, which we see before our eyes. Our souls are tortured by the unanswerable question: how much longer will our THE LAST CHAPTER (Editor’s note: Refoel Rajzner, who was incarcerated in the Bialystok ghetto until the end, recorded shortly after the war all his experiences before, during, and after the ghetto. We offer here excerpts of his descrip- tions of the final liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto as well as the annihilation of its Jews, borrowed from his book, The Destruction of Bialystoker Jewry 1939-1945, published in 1948 by the Bialystoker Centre in Australia.) In mid-July, 1943, a rumor circulated that an impor- tant Gestapo committee would arrive in the ghetto, which was awaited with the greatest apprehension. On that day practically no one appeared in the streets. Word had it that this committee would be the last, its decision final as to whether the ghetto would live or die. It seemed as though the Nazis had to choose between the two remaining larger ghettos: Lodz, with its more than 80,000 Jews, and Bialystok, with its 40,000. One of these ghettos would surely be promptly destroyed by the Nazi murderers. After the visit by the committee, Efrajim Barasz confided in his closest associates that he was not optimistic. This cryptic assessment made it clear that Lodz would be left alone and that Bialystok was Slated for liquidation. Some members of the Juden- rat, however, still clung to the hope that somehow a final tragedy could be averted. The resistance forces in the ghetto struggled to complete their last preparations for battle. Workers were instructed to keep the Nazis away from the facto- ries at all costs, and when it became clear that the cause was hopeless, they should set fire to them. The Bialystoker Memorial Book lives be prolonged — for days or for weeks? Optimists believe we will be permitted to live for another month, while the pessimists disagree. People move about like shadows, physically and mentally shattered, their gazes reflecting hope extinguished, moving about automati- cally through inertia, like lunatics.” Tamarof recorded a personal indictment against a particular violation of the Nazis that contravened all international conventions: ''1 refer to the use of ‘dum dum’ bullets. The fact of their usage was established by post-mortem examinations. There are no wounded, only dead, as a result of these bullets. A bullet of this type in the head meant an open skull plus pieces of brain extruding from the wounds, faces torn apart beyond recognition.” Pejsach Kaplan also referred in his diary to the appearance of the mortally wounded: ‘Terrifying was the picture of hands and feet resting upon decapitated heads — bloodied, split open, torn apart like slaugh- tered calves.” OF THE COMMUNITY For the next four weeks, the Jews in the ghetto were plunged into deep fear and despair, awaiting the tragic outcome. The waiting, which seemed like an eter- nity, took its toll on the lives of these unfortunate people. On Saturday, August 14, 1943, a Gestapo commit- tee inspected the fences and the gates around the ghetto. Those people who worked outside returned to the ghetto before dusk, informing their families and friends that many empty railroad cars had arrived at the station and that numerous Ukrainian Gestapo sol- diers were fanning out through the city. Another clue to the impending catastrophe was that the Germans were requesting the return of their broken watches from Jewish jewelers, even before they could be repaired, claiming they had to leave right away. The ghetto Jews well understood the import of this, since the Nazis had done the same right before the February slaughter. Both the members of the Judenrat and Wehrmacht soldiers attempted to reassure the inhabitants of the ghetto that they had nothing to worry about. On Sunday, August 15, quiet pervaded the ghetto and some permitted themselves to hope that the Wehr- macht officers were telling the truth. People tried to persuade each other that their fears were exaggerated. Most went to sleep that night, choosing to believe they would awaken to another ‘‘normal’”’ day.