33,500 of 57,000 Jews in Vilna already murdered

The last Aktion in a series of operations in the Vilna Ghetto took place on December 22, 1941. The Germans’ method was to murder inmates who did not hold a “Schein,” a German-issued labor permit. For this reason, the Jews in this city termed the murder operations “Schein-aktionen.” By the end of 1941, the Germans had murdered 33,500 of the 57,000 Jews in Vilna, mostly at the massacre site at Ponary. Several Jews managed to survive Ponary and return to the Vilna Ghetto. A teacher, Rivka Yoselewska, who regained consciousness in the mass grave related: ‘When I came up to the place – we saw people, naked, lined up. But we were still hoping that this was only torture. Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold on to the children. We took all children not ours, and we carried them -we were anxious to get it all over – the suffering of the children was difficult; we all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The children were taking leave of their parents and parents of their elders. We were driven; we were already undressed; the clothes were removed and taken away; our father did not want to undress; he remained in his underwear. Then they tore off the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. And then they took my mother, and we said, let us go before her; but they caught mother and shot her too; There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave; she prayed with the Germans; she asked to run, naked; she went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked into her eyes and shot the two of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend. Then my second sister was shot and then my turn did come. We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked “Whom shall I shoot first?” We were already facing the grave. The German asked “Whom do you want me to shoot first?” I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held on to my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies; but I felt nothing. The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought maybe I am not alive any more, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was choking. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about. I felt that I was choking, strangled, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not know the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in the last throes of suffering; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying “Mother”, “Father”; I could not stand on my feet.’