intro

KASRIEL K. EILENDER, M.D. 

THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ

"Following this, there was a little visit with Erren the district leader, to discuss the happenings of the day. During these discussions, many of the participants were praised and the other ones who were weaker were criticized with the recommendation that they improve their performance. The following were present. (We are skipping the names here.) At the conclusion of this meeting, there was drinking and celebration. The entire number of Jewish men, women and children who were killed was estimated between 4,000 to 8,000 on this day."

Here, Alfred Metzner in his testimony starts to enumerate the executions and destruction of Jewish people in several of the communities surrounding the city of Slonim. And in the first one here where he does not mention the name of this community he states that it was about seven to nine kilometers from the city. Metzner continued:

"During the execution in this area, about 1,200 to 1,400 Jews from this ghetto were destroyed. During this action, there were groups of about 500 people taken at the time. They were walked to the annihilation area where they were killed by the destruction commander. During this execution, I was there and participated in the shootings. The prepared pits in this place were four meters in width, five meters deep, and 150 meters in length. The execution place was outside of the community behind a small forest. Seven days before this execution, shooting exercises were conducted to make sure the surrounding population would not be able to hear the noises of the mass action.

"This execution was conducted in the following fashion: The guards went with the Jews into the pits. Then the ends of the pits were closed and the Jews went first on the edges to undress, and without any further examination, they lay down in the graves. As the fifth layer of people were lying there, the guards got out of the pits and opened fire from two sides. In this fashion, it was possible to have crossfire on the Jews.

"The first layer was comprised of about 100 to 120 people in the pit. After the first execution of those, the second layer of Jews had to lie down on the bodies of the ones who had been killed before them. The second layer of people had to be placed in such a fashion that their heads touched the feet of the people under them. Thus the pits contained five layers at least. The number of people was between 400 and 500.

" Automatics as well as machine guns and carbines carried out the shootings, whatever the preferences of the executioners were. Before this, many of the people had just been beaten to death. It was surprising to see how the Jews went into graves and tried to console each other and made the work of the executioners easier. The executions took three to four hours and I was participating without interruption in the shootings. The only interruption was when I had to reload my carbine. It is not possible for me to state how many people I killed during the three-to four-hour shooting.

"During the unloading time of my weapon, a comrade of mine continued to shoot. During this time, we drank a lot of alcohol to increase our performance. The Jews did not resist at all. The still-living Jews in the lower layers were choked later through the oncoming upper layers. The blood streamed from above to below.

"At this time, there were not any living wounded coming out.

"The graves were closed by the surrounding population and after this mass annihilation, a conference again took place at the office of the district commissioner who praised my performance and dedication at this occasion. He also ex-pressed satisfaction with the entire action. In this fashion, were more of the same types of executions performed in other communities. One was Kozlowczyzna where about 700 to 800 Jews were murdered. In Dereczyn, 2,000 to 3,000 people were killed.  In Holinka, 400 to 500 Jews, and in Byten, about

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