The video was recorded by the Pilecki Institute as part of the “Witnesses to the Age” project.
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Our today’s interviewee:
Czesław Łyżwa (born 1926), was born in the Wołyń region. He lived near the town of Rożyszcze, where in August 1942 the Germans liquidated a Jewish ghetto. On 22 August 1942, the Germans woke him up in the middle of the night and ordered him to join the other Poles who were told to dig large pits. Czesław was afraid the pits were meant for them - that they would be murdered. It turned out, however, that the Germans rushed a group of naked Jews from a nearby forest to the pits. A horrific massacre ensued: one group after another was marched to the pits and told to lie down. They were shot in the back of the head and buried with a layer of dirt. Then the whole process happened again and again. Czesław remembered especially two traumatic moments from this execution. A Jewish woman with a newborn child was not shot, because the German missed. She turned her head away, but one of the guards crushed it with a stone. A moment later, a 12-year-old boy tried to run. He managed to get quite far by zigzagging, but one of the bullets eventually hit him. Czesław was worried that the Germans would shoot them too, but in the morning the Poles were released. Sadly, the Jewish community of Rożyszcze ceased to exist.
Copyright by Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego.
2 окт 2024
