[Testimonies given in Vilnius by Jewish refugees from German occupied Poland]

Testimony of Rachel B., 43 year old woman from Rozan. She describes the conquest of the city by the Germans and the beginning of atrocities committed against Jews in her town and the surrounding area. These include arbitrary shootings targeted at children and the elderly, and burning of Jews in synagogues. She and her two children left to Goworowo, where all jews were ordered into the synagogue with the market on fire, and men were taken out and shot. On officer stopped the mass burning because there were too many Jews, but much of the Jewish neighbourhood burned with many casualties. She describes the gathering of Jews into detainee camps, and the anti-semitic acts of the Poles, as well as the systematic burning of Torah scrolls, seizing of abandoned or closed Jewish businesses and monetary extortion. Eventually she made her way to Bialystok and from there to Vilnius. Protocol No. 20 is an extract from a volume of protocols /statements provided by a group of Polish-Jewish refugee writers and journalists who fled to Vilnius, Lithuania. In 1939 they formed a committee to collect evidence on the condition of the Jews in Poland under Nazi occupation.