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

Testimony of M. T., a 22 year old baker from Poręba-Kocęby, a small town oin the Ostrow Mazowiecka district. According to the author of the testimony, the town was not damaged by bombardment, and no local casualties fell. The Germans entered the town and looted the Jewish homes; in some homes they even broke down the walls. Then they ordered men to come with them, saying they were going to work, and held them in a church for several days without food. The Poles that were held with them were fed, and abused the Jews, taking from them money and their watches, together with the German soldiers and officers. The men were then deported to the detainee camp in Ostrow Mazowiecka. The author spent three weeks in the detainee camp, doing hard labor with very little food. He fled to the Russian side of the border. In Poręba-Kocęb the Germans accused the local Jews of setting a fire to the city and executed 487 people with machine-guns or by setting them on fire, an event reported to the author by a survivor. Protocol No. 181 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