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Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

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THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

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They followed 

 the Soviet slogan ---

"It is better to

die standing 

than to live

 on your knees."

arrested together with their families and put overnight in police headquarters, where they were beaten mercilessly. Then, in the morning, they were taken to the big, notorious grave. 

Some of them started to run and were shot or wounded and remained lying on the ground. The rest of the people, about two hundred of them, were thrown into the big pit and shot with machine guns.

 Afterwards, bloody Fritz came in, threw his leather coat among the Jewish workers and said, "Clean the Jewish blood out of it quickly."

Not everyone was killed. One woman, who was lightly wounded and survived this massacre, came back to the town and was secretly put in the hospital. The Germans found out about it, took her out to the cemetery and shot her. 

My father told me this story, while risking his life to visit me in the Ghetto. This was the last time I saw him.

According to the witness testimonies after the war, the Nazis event- ually pursued the non-Jewish people and they therefore conducted a regis- tration of all Russian citizens who remained in German-occupied areas. 

The Nazis collected about one hundred people, mostly former sol-diers and officers of the Soviet army and executed them. The rest of the Russians escaped into the surrounding forests. This is how the underground army started. It did not take long for the rumors about their activities to reach other communities. 

As a result, many of the younger Jews saw no other alternative but to join these ranks of the Russian underground. However, there was only limited opportunity to get out into the forest. It was a very difficult task, because the partisan groups would not admit anyone without arms and to get arms was almost impossible. 

However, as necessity is the mother of invention, some of the Jewish mechanics and other workers employed in the huge staging areas and collection centers of Soviet arms, started secretly to remove parts of machine guns, bullets and grenades, and hide them in forests, yards or cellars. Slowly, the future guerillas left the ghetto and disappeared into the forests.

Life there was not easy either. The weather was cold and wet. There were many marshes, and the locations had to be changed frequently to elude search parties. The Germans preferred to keep out of the forests, because they were afraid of being ambushed. However, at times a huge SS formation, together with the local police, used to penetrate the areas occupied by the partisans. There used to be battles, ambushes, and shootouts, with many casualties on both sides. 

The partisans suffered from hunger and all kinds of diseases but had no meaningful medical help. There were people who were new to this type of life. Many of them had to be taught how to use rifles, machine guns and grenades. It was a long and bitter road to life and freedom and many did not survive. They followed the Soviet slogan: "It is better to die standing than to live on your knees."

To annihilate the Jews, the Germans divided people into two groups: useful and non-useful. Useful meant that these individuals still had some chance of living for a time while still being employed in the German war effort. Non-useful people had to be immediately exterminated. This gave some people doomed for extermination false hope.

When German troops marched into White Russia and the Ukraine, they were welcomed with kisses, flowers and music because they believed them to be liberators from Stalin’s regime. 

Now Stalin was gone, he was far away and powerless, and here was Hitler with his own ideas to implement. Little did the local population know that Hitler had planned to later leave the Slavs as subhuman slaves of the mighty super race.

As the German occupation continued, the honeymoon with the local non-Jewish population weakened. Realizing that Nazism was worse than Stalinism, a segment of the local population rose up to defy the new regime and with the help of former Russian soldiers and officers started a partisan movement. Unfortunately, all of the Russian soldiers and officers were later captured and executed.

Indigenous local Nazi collaborators, such as members of the auxiliary police force, were often more monstrous than their German masters. For example, in the spring of 1942, Fritz Figas approached the head of the Jewish Counsel and demanded that certain quantities of gold be delivered directly to him at specified times. 

To enforce this edict, Fritz Figas would enter the Jewish community with his thugs and he would randomly shoot people to death as if using them for human target practice. To further demoralize and degrade the Jewish community, Fritz Figas would force the Jewish Counsel to send Jews out on the street to clean up the blood and to remove the bodies.

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