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By Root 832 0

We knew he was from the village of Klubochin a few kilometers through the forest from Trochenbrod. We talked to his mother there, and then met him in the Radziwill Forest. Radziwill had armed forest rangers to protect his property. So Felyuk said, “If you’re brave, let’s go take the guns from those forest rangers.” Alexander Felyuk worked with us for several months and made us into partisans. He was a wonderful man. He died recently, but we stayed in touch with him all these years; we sent him money and packages.

One day one of our boys found a pistol in the Ignatovka cemetery. It was a new pistol, with bullets—it had been left behind when the Soviet soldiers ran away. With this pistol we began to learn how to use guns, and with this pistol we went to a forest ranger, waited until he had to come down from his tower, and then took his rifle.

With one rifle we went into the forest and began to arm ourselves; we got another one and then another one and then another one. We got more rifles and ammunition and even grenades. We became a big enough group of armed partisans. I was the commander and Gad Rosenblatt was my second-in-command. Eventually, including the six Soviet saboteurs we met, we had thirty people.

And so we began to operate. For example, a Jew came to us; he said that a certain Ukrainian found a Jew and turned him over to the Germans. This Ukrainian was called Gapon. Immediately four of us went to Gapon’s village and we took him to the forest and shot him.

Another operation: we heard that the Germans arranged to send the animals that were left from Trochenbrod to Germany. We found the herd, ready for transfer to the train station, and we went in and set them free and scattered them all.

Another operation: A very terrible Schutsman who had done horrible things to Jews lived in a small village called Yaromel near Trochenbrod, a Ukrainian village, with mostly straw-covered houses. We pounded on his window: “We are Schutsmen. We have an important message for you. Glory to Ukraine. Open up.” The man came and we drank with him. He bragged about all the Jews he killed—this included women and children—and others he gave to the Nazis. Then we showed who we were. His wife screamed and we took him away in a horse wagon that we hired from a Polish man who drove it. We took him to the forest and shot him. The Polish man was happy to be a part of the operation; he was a good man and he had a good time. Revenge felt sweet, revenge for the blood of all the children, women, and men that the Schutsman had murdered.

That’s how we started. We didn’t know anything about how to fight battles yet, so we started with operations like that.

The Nazis were able to fool so many people. Of course, the nationalist Ukrainians were the biggest fools. They thought they should help the Nazis get rid of the Jewish people and then the Polish people. So they did the work of the Germans with happiness, and when the Soviets drove out the Germans they treated these Ukrainian nationalists as enemies. What is funny, the Nazis saw the Ukrainians as sub-human, good for nothing more than slaves. If the Germans won the war they would take the Ukrainians off the land and shoot them or kill them in slave labor camps.

The Jews also were fooled a lot. Many of them believed the Germans would not kill them even though they saw death in front of them. Once we were planning to attack Trochenbrod and kill the Germans and Schutsmen. We planned to throw grenades into the houses where the Germans and Schutsmen lived, then open fire and kill anybody left. Another group would set fires in different places, burning anything the Germans wanted to have. We sent word to the ghetto to all the Jews saying to sneak away to the forest. Soon one of the Jews from the ghetto showed up and said he was sent to beg that we do nothing. The Jews would not leave. They believed the German promises that there would be no more killings, so they did not want to leave Trochenbrod. We begged them, but they would not listen. Those Jews, they saved the lives of the Germans and Schutsmen.