3. What Malke Gilis and Khane Pelts witnessed:

Part 1 of testimony by Malke Gilis was released here:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-malke-gilis-witnessed/

Alongside her testimony was that of Khane Pelts. This was posted as Part 2:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-khane-pelts-witnessed/

Eighty percent (80%) of Jews in Lithuania had been murdered (almost entirely by Lithuanians not Nazis) prior to the formulation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish People” by the Nazis.

Lithuania has an entire government department dedicated to falsifying the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania, exonerating Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrators, and shifting all blame onto Germans. Those opposing Lithuanian government fraud are identified as “Russian agents” and are subjected to Soviet style, government intimidation.

Leyb Koniuchowsky collected 121 testimonies from Holocaust victims, which were made public in: The Lithuanian Slaughter of its Jews: The Testimonies of 121 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Lithuanian, recorded by Leyb Koniuchowsky, in Displaced Persons’ Camps (1946-48).

Lithuania customarily identifies testimony inconvenient to them as “unreliable” and dismisses it from consideration. Truly “unreliable” data is manufactured to falsify the historical record.

Following is what Khane Pelts and Malke Gilis testified. Lithuania has not punished a single Holocaust perpetrator. Instead, they identify many of them as their national heroes. Bear that in mind as you read the victims words…….

THE SLAUGHTER OF JEWS IN THE LITHUANIAN COUNTY SEAT TELZH (TELSHIAI)

In the Camp at Geruliai

In the morning of Tuesday, July 22, 1941 partisans came once again and announced to the women that over the course of the next several hours all of the women and children would be transported to the Geruliai camp, nine or ten kilometers from the town of Telzh. A great panic broke out at the Rainiai camp. There were many women who no longer had any strength to pack their things and make the trip to the new camp, Geruliai. It was a market day. Many women pleaded with peasants passing by to take them along with their things. The Lithuanian murderers permitted them to ride on wagons. The stronger women, and the men who were disguising themselves in women’s clothing (nine men – L.K.) went on foot. The Lithuanian murderers accompanied them to the camp at Geruliai. It consisted of six barns, where Red Army soldiers had lived before they retreated from Lithuania. The whole place was infested with big lice, who crept over the walls, through the straw, and everywhere. Some 4,500 women and children were crowded into the six barns. Together with the women and children from Telzh, women and children from nearby towns in Telzh County had also been placed.

The commandant of the camp at Geruliai was the Lithuanian murderer Platakys, the same one who had been the commandant at the Rainiai camp. The commandant had a military kitchen set up. The women and children received roughly a hundred grams of bread and black coffee in the morning. During the day they received half a liter of watery soup with no fat. Some of the women would steal out of the camp and exchange the last few possessions they had still kept with them. At first they were not sent to work. Epidemics began in the camp in the beginning of August 1941. Spotted typhus and scarlet fever daily took a toll in the death of dozens of children in the camp. It was impossible to withstand the lice. There was no soap. Very little water was given in this camp as well.

Every day the murderers came with more and more tragic news about preparations to annihilate the women and their children. Every day they announced new dates when the women were to be shot. The panic among the women grew constantly. All of them lost the desire to do something for themselves and their children. Rumors were spread that the shooting would indeed take place, but the only victims would be elderly women.

The younger were not going to be shot. The older women began doing everything they could to make themselves appear younger. They began wearing cosmetics and dressing up. The tragedy continued to grow.

When the Lithuanian murderers caught the women going into the village for food, they whipped and tortured the captured women. At the time of the epidemics Malke lost her six-month-old daughter Reyzele. Reyzele had caught dysentery. This was ten days after the shooting of Leyb Gilis, Malke’s husband. Malke and her mother found Reyzele dead in the morning and buried her with their own hands. Later the older boy, Ruvele, who was in his fourth year, also grew sick. Malke and her son were transferred into a barrack for those with chronic diseases. They stayed in that barrack in the cold for a week’s time. They suffered from hunger. Ruvele had caught diphtheria and typhus. Malke and her child were permitted to be transferred to the hospital in the city. Together with Malke other mothers and their children were allowed to be transferred. Some ten children were brought to the hospital in all at that time. They were taken to the hospital and placed in one room.

The mothers were not allowed to go in, and they returned to the camp. But the Lithuanian doctors did not want to tend to the children. All they did was assure their death. Mrs Fayn also had a three year old girl in the hospital. She snuck in to see the children one time, and found many of them scattered dead beneath their beds. They only received food once a day. No one was concerned about them. They regarded the Jewish children as superfluous creatures, who were taking up space in the hospital. Through connections Malke received permission to visit her child. Once, on August 23, when Malke came back from the hospital to the camp, she felt a sharp pain in her foot. Four hours later the pain had spread from her foot throughout an entire side of her body, which suddenly broke out in lesions. With great difficulty, Malke managed to be accepted in the hospital where her child lay. But she could not go in to see how he was doing, because she was unable to walk.

There were 21 wounded Red Army prisoners in the hospital. They were treated at the hospital. After they were healed, partisans took them out of the hospital. In a pasture not far away all 21 were shot. Malke personally watched through a window as they were being taken out of the hospital. This was during the last week of the month of August 1941.

Mrs. Yoselevsky had an eleven year old son named Khayem Moyshele in the hospital. He and Ruvele lay in the same room. Mrs Yoselevsky’s boy died without receiving any medical assistance. Khayem Moyshele died during the day on August 27, 1941. Ruvele died during the night of Wednesday the 27th.

On Friday, August 29th Sheva Rabinovitz, together with Mrs. Yoselevsky, took both children to the Jewish cemetery and buried them. Sheva Rabinovitz pleaded intensely with the doctor on duty to allow her to sleep next to her daughter Malke, who felt badly and still did not know about the death of her child. The doctor refused Sheva permission. Sheva went to the camp.

Young Women Go to a Ghetto in Telzh

Elderly Women and Children Slaughtered

In the middle of the night of Friday, August 29, 1941 Lithuanian murderers arrived, led by Jodeikis. They brought a number of bottles of whiskey with them, and got thoroughly drunk. Jodeikis gave a speech to the deadly frightened women and children: He ordered all of the women to pack up their bags and write the women’s first and last names on the packages. He promised that all of the women and children would be brought into the city of Telzh. In the middle of the night Platakys and Jodeikis ordered the women to surrender their gold, silver and valuables. They threatened to torture any woman who did not surrender her gold, silver, money and other valuables. Rebbetzin Rashl Bloch, her sister Mrs Yasgor and another woman went from barrack to barrack in the middle of the night, collecting everything from the women. During the night they surrendered the collected money, gold and silver to the partisans.

At 5:30 a.m. of Saturday, August 30, 1941, the Lithuanian murderers drove all the women and children out of the barracks into the yard. The women understood well that they were going to be taken and shot, so they threw everything they still had into a swamp near the yard. All the women stood in the yard with their faces made up and with their best clothes on. All of them wanted to look younger and more attractive.

They hoped that perhaps the younger and healthier women would still be permitted to live. The murderers began choosing and separating out younger women on one side, and the older ones and those with children on the other side. They chose five hundred of the younger women and immediately sent them to Telzh on foot under heavy guard. On the way, they heard shooting not far from the Geruliai forest.

All the rest of the women and children remained in the Geruliai camp. In the yard near the barracks the Lithuanian murderers took off the women’s and children’s shoes and overclothes. The women had to remove their better underwear as well. The women had to arrange these things neatly in one spot. Then they were arranged in rows, 75 to a group. The women and children were led off from the compound to a pit which had already been dug out very near the barracks. The women had to stand near the edge of the pit, and the Lithuanian murderers shot them from behind with automatics. In this manner they took away group after group of naked women and children, lining them up at the edge of the pit and shooting them. The women who were standing in the courtyard surrounded by armed murderers could see the shooting. They began pleading with the murderers to shoot them more quickly, rather than leaving them until the end. Other women still had valuables which they had hidden. They gave them to the murderers so that they would be shot first. That way they would not have to see women and children being shot, nor hear their wild screams before they were shot, and the cries of pain of the wounded. In this gruesome manner the Lithuanian murderers slaughtered the women and children at the Geruliai camp.

Together with the women and children the last of the men, who were masquerading as women, were also shot. The last of the men who were shot then were: Hirsh Broide; the brothers Gedalye and Shmuel Peltz; Merkin; Yoselovsky (Berl and his brother).

Among the men two survived: Henokh Ribovsky and Nokhum Rastovsky. Both of them escaped from the Geruliai camp.

1)  Henokh Ribovsky was captured while escaping and brought to a small prison in the Telzh Ghetto. From there he was taken to the city prison. The murderers tricked Henokh into giving up the gold and silver which he had hidden in his house. After he handed over the gold and silver the murderers brought him back into the city prison. From the prison they took him to be shot. He convinced the murderers to permit him to dig himself a grave at the Jewish cemetery. The murderers satisfied his request, explaining that they were doing it on account of the gold and silver which he had voluntarily surrendered. He dug himself a grave, and they shot him there.

• Nokhum Rastovsky made his way to the Shavl ghetto, where he also died.
• Two boys aged thirteen or fourteen, Berl Vayner and Avrom Desyatnik, had escaped from Geruliai into nearby villages before the women were shot. Both of them hid and survived. Both of them were saved by a German from being shot in the Rainiai forest thanks to their youthful appearance, and returned to the camp.
• A girl named Mery Shlomovitz, aged twenty at the time, a tailor by trade, went to the pit in line together with her mother. The mother was already weakened, and could not undress herself. Mery helped her mother to take off her overclothes. Her mother encouraged Mery to run away. Mery jumped over the pit full of women who had been shot and began running. The murderers shot at her but did not hit her. Near the pit was a thick stand of saplings. Mery threw herself among the saplings. The murderers shot in her direction, but did not hit Mery.

At night Mery left the shrubs and escaped to a village. Several days later she arrived at the Telzh ghetto. She related that while she was escaping she had disturbed dead bodies and had smeared her boots with blood.

She related everything that had taken place at the pit. All of the women had been brought to the pit in their underwear and shot with automatics. The women fell into the pit. Many were only wounded. The shrieks of the wounded mixed with the weeping and shouting of the women who were being led to the slaughter. The air trembled from their wild, tormented screams. But the murderers carried out their murderous work with a smile on their lips.

Mery also related that the murderers did not shoot the small children. As they explained while they were shooting, they didn’t want to waste bullets on the children and threw them in the air over the pits. The children fell into the pits still alive. The murderers put an end to them with the butts of their rifles, or with their heavy, bloodied military boots. They grabbed many of the children by the feet, bashed their heads against rocks and threw them into the pit.

Testimony of Khane Pelts

The women, children and the last of the men remaining in the camp at Geruliai were taken the same day, Saturday, August 30, 1941, to a canal in a field near the compound and shot. That day some 8,000 women and children, who had earlier been gathered from nearby towns, were shot. Those who survived the slaughter were: Nekhame Grin, Mrs. Blank and her daughter Khane, aged 17; two sisters, Mikhele and Mushele Yasgur. All of these arrived at the Telzh ghetto. Several other women survived; these did not arrive at the ghetto, but hid in the villages. The female survivors related in the ghetto that they had escaped while riding to the pit and hidden not far from the pit, in bushes in a small forest nearby. All of the female survivors who came into the ghetto told the same thing: They had seen with their own eyes the women being forced to strip completely naked, taken to the pit and shot in the back with automatics. They saw the murderers tearing the clothes by force off of women who did not want to strip completely naked. The murderers did not shoot small children. They held them by the feet, bashed their heads against a stone and threw them into the pit. There were cases in which they forced the mothers to take the child in their arms and go to the pit. At the pit they shot the mother and the child with a single shot. The cries and weeping of the innocent women and children only made the murderers work faster. The murderous work went on for an entire day. The murderers left over a number of women and children to be shot on Sunday morning.

On Sunday morning women accompanied by male Lithuanians came to the Geruliai camp from the ghetto to take produce from the warehouses in Geruliai. The murderers who were still busy shooting on Sunday dragged these women off as well to the pit, and they were about to shoot them. But their chief, Jodeikis, let them go, adding: “Let them live for the time being,” Among the women who came from the Telzh ghetto and stood ready to be shot in Geruliai were Ruta Gurvitz; Roza Ziv; Leye Kopl; and others. When they returned to the ghetto they related what they had seen Mrs. Khayetovitz and her child lying dead in the pit. The barracks were full of blood. This was because the old and sick women, who could not even walk the 100 meters to the pit, had been shot in the barracks. The pit was full of the totally naked bodies of women and children.

To be continued…..