Day of the killing (continued): During the course of the night battalion briefing, the battalion doctor, Dr Schoenfelder, drew outlines on the ground of the upper part of the body, showing the spot on the neck at which a shot should be fired. Advice was also given about using the bayonet to act as a sight, and to keep a reasonable distance from the victim.
At company meetings thereafter, orders were issued concerning the rounding up and bringing everyone to the market square. If it was difficult to get individuals to move because of old age or infancy, or they were too sick, then they were to be killed on the spot. Initially the companies were given specific duties but this was changed once the assembly had been completed, as the men were all needed for the killing.
Dawn brought the Germans into the town and ghetto. They moved methodically through the streets and forced the people out of their houses, usually with beatings with whips or rifles. Those who caused trouble either from age or sickness, or simply would not go, were shot and the way from the ghetto to the market square was marked by dead bodies. All the patients in a Jewish hospital were shot where they lay. Babies were killed during the round-up as well as later. One normal way to do this was to hold the baby up by one leg and then to shoot it.
By about 9.30 a.m. all the Jewish townspeople had been assembled and by 10 a.m. the able-bodied men, about 400, had been sorted out and sent to their work camp. Now the trucking began. While this was slowly carrying on the whole day, the remaining people were forced to sit in the square and were not allowed to leave. Those Germans designated as part of the killing squads, which came to involve all of them by the end of the day, were already waiting in woods on the outskirts of the town. As each lorry arrived, squads of 8 men would sort out 8 from the group and line them up in single file and then, one German to each victim,they walked them into the woods until they came to a clearing which had not already been used. The victims were made to lie face down and the men took their position at the head of each, waiting for the order to fire. Killing in this way meant that the men's clothes became flecked with blood, bone, brain and flesh. Marked like this, they then returned to the truck to bring a further 8 victims into the woods. Then another group...And then, another.
