Word seeped into the Rakov ghetto that America had entered the war, but the Germans saw to it that the news raised no hope or unrest. Nazi officers convinced the Rakov Judenrat that the United States and Britain intended to make peace with Germany and that when the fighting stopped the Nazis were going to transport the Jews to Palestine. “Many such shameful and worn-out lies guided the activity of the Judenrat,” wrote one Rakov Jew. “Rich storekeepers and factory owners, people with initiative who handled their difficulty with gelt . . . were in the Judenrat. They exacted a harsh price from the population. No one can say that the gelt did not help them. Meanwhile hundreds of children, women, old people and weak and sick men were living in great hunger and need.” Etl and her daughters were among those.
The day after the United States declared war on Japan, the first killings by poison gas took place at the Chelmno extermination camp in Poland. The murderers mounted an elaborate charade, telling the victims that they must have a medical exam and shower—and then shoving them naked into the back of a paneled truck in batches of fifty to seventy and asphyxiating them with carbon monoxide. Murder by gas would be perfected over the next few months and a gas called Zyklon B, far more efficient than carbon monoxide, would be used to kill on an industrial scale at the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, and Sachsenhausen. But gas was not necessary for mass murder. Plenty, like Shepseleh, were shot over pits; murdered, like Beyle, by greedy neighbors; captured and imprisoned and executed like Khost. Disease, exhaustion, and malnutrition claimed many more. In the six months between June and December 1941, the Nazis slaughtered a million Jews in the territory they had seized from the Soviets—most of them killed by bullets and fire, the preferred weapons of the Einsatzgruppen.
By the end of 1941, Hitler had made it clear that the elimination of Jews from Nazi-occupied territory was now his top priority. Accordingly, on January 20, 1942, SS general Reinhard Heydrich convened a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to inform key governmental and military personnel of how the “Final Solution” of European Jewry would be effected. Heydrich announced that the Reich’s goal was the elimination of some 11 million Jews not only from the countries at war in Europe but also from the United Kingdom and neutral nations including Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and the European sector of Turkey. Able-bodied Jews would be worked to death; the remnant would be “dealt with appropriately.”
The Jews of Rakov were among the first to be “dealt with” under the blueprint of the Final Solution.
They were torn from sleep at dawn on Wednesday, February 4, 1942. To Minsk, to Minsk, adult voices muttered. Mireleh was only six but she knew what Minsk meant. Minsk was where her father had gone. Minsk was the city. Shops. Crowded sidewalks. Cakes and sweets and stores crammed with delicious food. If they were going to Minsk maybe she’d get to see her daddy again. Maybe her mother would smile.
The snow was still shadowy blue outside, but inside everything was in an uproar. Her mother was frantically pulling clothes into bundles. Dobaleh was hungry—Mireleh was hungry too but she knew better than to whine about it. To Minsk, to Minsk. They must pack only what they could carry in their arms. Mireleh was big enough to carry a bundle of her own, but Dobaleh was still a baby. What did Dobaleh know? She had spent half her life in the ghetto, her father had disappeared before she could say “Daddy,” she couldn’t even walk properly. In one month it would be Dobaleh’s first birthday—but Mireleh doubted that there would be cake.
Fists were pounding on the walls and then the door flew open and men’s voices shouted at them to get moving. Everyone who had been stuffed into this tiny house since Yom Kippur grabbed what they could and then all of them tumbled outside into the snow.
Even in the feeble dawn light Mireleh could see the ring of armed men in uniforms. The voices kept shouting commands that she couldn’t understand. The women screamed as the men with guns grabbed their bags and shoved them along. No need for bags where you’re going. Anyone who tried to resist or turn back got cracked on the head with a rifle butt. A few fell to the ground bleeding. Mireleh clung to her mother’s hand and they moved with the surging crowd. Cries and curses echoed over her head. They are not taking us to Minsk. They are taking us to death. One or two broke off from the mass and began to run. Fire from the machine guns dropped the bodies onto the trampled snow. The sound of pain was deafening.
The noise subsided a little when they were all assembled in the courtyard of the three synagogues: the old shul, the new shul, and the small shtible where the Hasidim used to dance until their black clothes flapped in the air like crows’ wings. They were low and humble, these three beloved shuls. Their roofs were shingled; their wooden walls were darkened and ridged by time; inside they were bare and dim but for the jeweled light that shone from the Torah scrolls. Still, they were the glory of Rakov. But why were they at shul today? It wasn’t Shabbat and it was much too early. Mireleh pressed close to her mother and baby sister in the courtyard as the ring of men tightened. They were all being squeezed toward the entrance of the old shul, and one by one they disappeared inside. The bony ends of knees and elbows jabbed at Mireleh from every side. The breath was crushed from her body. And then it was their turn to take their place with the others in God’s house.
Nachum Greenholtz, a Rakov Jew, had been warned of what was coming that day and managed to hide inside a “field bathroom.” He wrote: “From the cracks in the wall we could see the Germans searching and checking and surrounding the town. Later we saw the flames coming from the ghetto and we instantly understood what was happening. We heard the sound of the screams.”
A group of six witnesses reported: “Crying children were pierced by rifle bayonets and thrown over the crowded heads. The synagogue doors and windows were blocked with nailed planks. The murderers spilled gasoline on the walls and set the building on fire.”
Others said that a few managed to get out of the synagogue and run for their lives, but the guards shot them down.
Moshe Pogolensky gave a different account:
At dawn . . . the ghetto was surrounded and the entire Jewish community, nine hundred and fifty souls, was put in the yard of the synagogue. They took ten of the healthiest people and separated them. The rest were taken group by group to the entrance of the synagogue, where they were shot and killed by automatic machine guns. The ten separated people were ordered to throw the individual bodies in the synagogue. As soon as the last of the people were thrown in the synagogue, the ten people were pushed inside without shooting them. They shot the building and set it afire and everyone was burned to death.
“She will be a wonder girl, with her brains and the excellent way she speaks,” Beyle had written Shalom Tvi of their granddaughter Mireleh a few months earlier. “I love how she sings and dances.” The wonder girl died at the age of six with her mother and baby sister. Whether fire, bullets, or bayonet blade killed them, whether they were shot at the entrance to the synagogue or incinerated alive inside, it will never be known. Fire consumed what remained.
“We sat there as if we were frozen and had lost touch with ourselves,” Nachum Greenholtz wrote of himself and a fellow survivor after the fire. “We did not speak the entire day. The night was very dark and very cold. We kept walking, two lonely broken-hearted Jews who tried to save their souls and left behind them everyone they knew and loved—all that were now annihilated.”