“The sky exploded”: Germans occupy Novogrudek

Paula Burger: The first time I remember, really, the feeling of the fear. Which unfortunately never goes away, all the way. Some of the residue stays with you. And although you know how old I am now, it’s been a long time, and still, without too much effort at all, I can recall the feelings of that. And it’s knowing that my father had to go to work – I guess the Germans were coming in and everyone was supposed to put in certain hours of work to help with whatever. And then I remember a Friday night with the candles being lit and my father was coming home late, and you know, as a child you don’t really know the details but you know when your mother is scared, or when your mother is upset, and I remember her holding me in her arms, just like you would hold a baby. And though at that time I was 4 ½, closer to 5 [sic], but I wasn’t very big, and the feeling of that security I had felt for many, many years, and in all the years after that I had tried to recall that feeling of feeling safe, and it helped at times. So. That was my first knowing of the war and that we were supposed to go into the ghetto. Though it didn’t make any sense to me, I knew we were supposed to go in the ghetto. And then the bombs would start flying. The airplanes would start flying, and we could see the planes because in those years they weren’t flying that high, and they would actually bomb the city, and then we would hear – where we lived, it was a little bit outside the city, I guess, so we weren’t bombed but we could hear the planes and the whistle of the low-flying planes, and people coming, sort of like running away from the bigger centers to hide out, and the fear of that told me how bad we were doing, but my parents didn’t share with me the details, because I was so young. And then within a short time later, we went to the ghetto. We packed up, taking very little.