Phina Korovski survived the Zabludow and Bialystok Ghettos, Majdanek Concentration Camp, then work camps in Germany. He was liberated from a work camp near Dachau after a death march in which 80 of 2,000 persons survived. While in Bialystok he had witnessed the rounding up of some of the 1,200 Bialystok Children in Pietrasze Field (the 'killing field' just outside the city) at the final liquidation of the Bialystok Ghetto in August of 1943. Below is his testimony from the Zabludow Yizkor Book.
"Finally they brought us to Pietrasze field, a big group of Ukrainian hooligans forced us to run to a field, they tortured us, and beat us mercilessly… took off boots from the dead people. They pierced the women with spears; many choked from the oppressive and dense condition. If one person fell then the entire group collapsed on the person, and tanks surrounded us. It was impossible to escape. All that night we were together in the field, my brother-in-law, his children, my cousins and their children, and all those who succeeded in hiding in the first aktion days (earlier massacres and deportations). The next day the murderous Nazis gathered all the small children in one spot, and whoever ran back to their parents was caught by his neck with a hooked pole and thrown to the ground… the screams of the children and their mothers still echo in my mind. They ran the children like a flock of sheep back to the ghetto, and kept them there for two weeks."
Honor His Memory!
These children were among those that left Bialystok on the 21st or 22nd of August 1943 bound for Theresenstadt in Czechoslovakia. They were accompanied by about 20 Nurses and Doctors from Bialystok who were later separated from the children and sent on to Auschwitz where they were immediately gassed and burned.
Web: 2003 Tilford Bartman
