SARA. Laws are keeping silence during the war. Elena Fishtik

her eyes and said in a void:

      – Jews are hated because of their merits and not defects.

      There was even a long pause… And suddenly Boris jumped up and begged:

      – You must go! Mama, Sara – it’s not a joke!

      Jews run from Germany and Poland more and more.

      I’m sure – it’s a bad sign!

      – Well, why are you so confident?

      – Mum couldn’t understand

      – Look, all who remember the last war, say that the Germans did not cause harm to anyone including the Jew.

      This is a policy and all.

      Well, L’vov will be the German city, and all!

      Big deal!

      Day by day it was more anxiety and feelings.

      In the Soviet Union, more and more attention was paid to the military and professional training, to further strengthen of labor discipline, training of industrial workers at trade schools numbering 600 thousands of students and other labor reserves.

      The words “mobilization readiness” repeatedly were said in an oral advocacy and in print.

      On the Red Army Day, February 23, “Pravda” published an article by General G. K. Zhukov (before he came to the post of Chief of the General Staff), perhaps less optimistic than his speech two months ago.

      He wrote that 1940 was a year of the fracture, “rebuilding of training and educational system”, but made it clear that the reorganization is in progress and that the situation is still far from perfect.

      Since the ending of the War, he noted, the army has undergone great changes, for example, « the unity of command were strengthened” but much remains to be done and “conceited and complacent” is not necessary.

      The article gave some feeling of anxiety and encountered the conclusion that “big changes” that took place in the Red army is unlikely to be completed until 1942.

      Chapter 3. The War

      “In our time, the Jews have only one choice: either to become a Zionist, or stop to be a Jew”

Crossman

      The Germans entered L’vov in the morning June 30, 1941.

      And on that day it began a three-day pogrom against the Jews, which was organized by “Ukrainian people’s police” with the connivance and instigation of the Germans.

      The formal pretext for the pogrom began shooting the prisoners in the prisons of L’vov, that the NKVD carried out during the retreat of the Red Army.

      Boris was taken to the army very quickly, it immediately alerted Emma and Sara.;Boris insisted on his mother they immediately went into the heart of the country.

      There were not only rumors about the probability of the war but also hints in the press, on the radio.

      After the beginning of the Second World War (1939) and Hitler’s seizure of Poland, its eastern part was occupied by the Red Army in accordance with the secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.1

      As L’vov on that time was inhabited by a large number of Jews (about 180 thousand), which is almost half of the total population of the city, the Soviet authorities in summer of 1940 sent about 10 thousand Jewish refugees from Germany and Poland deep into the Soviet Union because they have the fear of a sudden military action and the invasion by Germany.

      L’vov, though was a part of Poland, was ruled by the Soviet regime, which hasn’t shown care about the Jewish people of L’vov in a proper way, they weren’t sent to the heart of the country.

      The indigenous inhabitants of L’vov didn’t want to leave their homes, they believed that the Germans will not cause them harm, as it was before.

      Sara’s family also preferred to stay in L’vov, and there was a hope on the sanity of politicians.

      Despite the set of various kinds of incoming information from legal and illegal sources, people refused to believe in the complete loss of reason from around the world.

      The Soviet people were inspired full protection from the Kremlin.

      Most of them like children implicitly believed and trusted themselves to their leadership, especially the common people.

      Already in the first days after the June 29, 1941, the date of entry of the Germans to L’vov, there happened pogroms in the city staged by them, claimed the lives of thousands of Jews.

      After a few days in the wood near Bilogorschey Germans shot 1,400 Jewish men.

      The whole of July 1941, the Germans and Ukrainian auxiliary police destroyed in the wood near L’vov Jewish politicians and intellectuals, as well as the Jews trapped in urban raids.

      Almost all the synagogues and cities were blown up or burned.

      When on Monday, June 30th the Germans entered the city, the smell of not buried corpses could be felt from the burning prisons.

      It was the discovery of thousands of half-decayed corpses of political prisoners, who were killed by the NKVD in the previous days, when councils have realized that the rapid German attack makes it impossible to evacuate the prison.

      The representatives of the German Army in the second half of June 30 reported that L’vov’s population has turned their anger on the killers of the NKVD against “the Jews living in the city, which has always cooperated with the Bolsheviks”

      On that day, Jewish men were rounded up in the so-called “prison works” – to dig up and carry out the bodies of those who were killed in the prison.

      Boris was very worried for his mother and sister.

      He was constantly asking them in his letters do not go out, to hide in the basement, in case of danger.

      But they are still sneaking out of the house in search of food and water.

      One day Sara ran out of the house with a bucket to get some water, but when she came to the arch of the house, in the twilight her eyes met with glowing lights across the street.

      At first, she froze with fear, then at closer look she recognized the neighbor guy whom she has seen sometimes in the courtyard.

      The guy said quietly:

      – Do not go there. Do not go! There’s a pogrom.

      Sara never saw pogroms by herself, but she had heard about them and about the atrocities committed against the Jews.

      She shivered and turned to run back home, but the boy stopped her:

      – Go to us quickly. They won’t come to us. I heard that today they are going to go to the Jewish houses.

      – No! But what about Mum? – Sara pleaded.

      And then suddenly the shouts and cries were heard from her yard.

      The guy grabbed Sara by the arm and dragged her to his entrance.

      She ran after him sobbing and not understanding anything, in the head – the porridge, before the eyes something flashed, but there was nothing she could not make out.

      Popped into the entrance, they quickly hid behind the door, as they heard the sound of a door opening on the ground floor.

      The big man hastily left the apartment and walked quickly into the street to take a look at the next pogrom.

      Sara and her rescuer stood behind the door and watched through the crack.

      For the third day in the city

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