In an average bunker, where about twenty to twenty-five people could reasonably hide, some seventy- five jammed in. It was almost impossible to breathe. Arguments erupted. Often the din of bickering drowned out the Nazi footsteps outside. This could end in the Shelter being exposed and everyone arrested. In addition to overcrowding, a second problem arose — crying infants. Although the majority of moth- ers administered a sleeping potion to their babies, it often happened that a child would awaken and start wailing. Tragically, in order to save the lives of every- one in the hiding place, mothers ended up smothering their children. People with coughs also posed dangers in the shel- ters. Many who wished to be admitted to a hideout denied that they coughed. Alternatively, a cougher would threaten to expose the hiding place if he were not allowed to stay there. In one such case, sixty Jews were turned over to the Nazis because a cougher carried out his threat. For more than a week, Jewish men, women and children were constrained to live in these unbearable conditions. * * * At first most Jews in the ghetto did not know they could escape death during this “February action” by reporting to work in their assigned factories. The Ge- stapo told Barasz that legitimate factory workers were immune from attack. When this information reached the hideouts, regular workers in the ghetto factories took their wives and children to their places of work. Many who were not workers joined with the regulars in virtually tearing down the doors of the factories to seek refuge. Yet the guards and the Jewish police admitted only those who worked in the factories, sending away their wives and children. Chairman Barasz incessantly pleaded with the Ge- stapo to allow the workers’ wives and children admis- sion to the factories. The Nazis promised this exemp- tion would be granted although at first their pledge went unfulfilled. The massacre continued for seven days from Feb- ruary 5-12, 1943, except for Sunday, when the Nazi soldiers took their day of rest. Trucks of soldiers would arrive inside the ghetto punctually at 7 A.M.; the searching, shootings and evacuations would continue until 5 P.M. This lent a measure of predictability to the carnage, an advantage for the Jews hiding in their shel- ters. If the enemy’s mode of operation could be antici- pated, the Jews could find ways of outwitting the Gestapo. After 5 P.M., when the methodical Nazis called it a day, some women would emerge from the shelters and re-enter their homes, where they prepared food for their famished families. Some of the babies went days without a drop of water. The methodology of murder soon became familiar. The Bialystoker Memorial Book At the appointed hour in the morning, a caravan of cars and trucks would enter the ghetto, cordoning off the streets. Entire buildings would be damaged, roofs torn apart, floors uprooted, halls smashed, streets exca- vated, no stone left unturned. On the third day, February 8, Barasz succeeded in obtaining from the Nazis permission for wives and children to be admitted to the factories with their hus- bands. As a result, buildings that could accommodate three hundred fifty persons at one time, had to let in all 1,000 workers of the three shifts together with their families, which totaled about 2,000 people. The walls bulged. It seemed there was no room even for a small pin to be thrown inside. Barasz managed to obtain exemptions and permits for a number of leading Judenrat figures and others in important positions within the ghetto. They included Mojsze Wisocki, Oszer Irzanowicz, director of the Measurements Department, S. Rawet and Ch. Goldberg. Particularly poignant was the plight of Pejsach Kaplan, one of the archivists of the Bialystok ghetto. Having earlier caught a severe cold, after spending a few days in an overcrowded shelter, he sought asylum in a clothes factory where his daughter worked. Although weak and debilitated, forced to lie in bed in the factory, his awareness of what was happening to his fellow Jews in the streets made him compulsively run back and forth to the window of the factory to look outside. Kaplan observed hundreds of Jews rounded up for evacuation to Treblinka. These scenes had a terrible effect on him. Pacing up and back in the long factory hall, he raised his fists, crying, “Jews, let us take revenge! I can’t stand this! My end is near!’’ Following these outbursts, Kaplan went back to bed, no longer able to walk to the window. His wife and daughter never left his side. But when he and his family left the factory several days later when the operation ended, Kaplan had become critically ill. Gestapo Commandant Friedl, not satisfied to leave the factories alone, sent his men into these supposedly safe havens to ascertain whether there were people who should not be there. Of course, there were. These unfor- tunates were either shot on the spot or sent to Treblinka.