Of course you've misunderstood (or understood but mischaracterized) my position on Pesye Schloss. Her 'testimony' hasn't caused me any problems nor do I need a 'better' witness. Pesye Schloss suits me just fine.
But I have a question about the part of your response in bold face. First of all, I admit I don't know much about Ponar or Pesye Schloss. So I know that I have some really rookie questions about her.
I read what I thought was an actual quote from Schloss. I asked you earlier if that quote was the only quote we have from Schloss. You didn't respond to that question.
Here you are saying that Kruk took her testimony and summarized it. So my new and improved question is do we have any direct quotes from Pesye Schloss at all or is Kruk's summary of Pesye Schloss' testimony all we have?
I have come across Pesye Schloss's testimony only in Kruk. I am glad to see that you now refer to Schloss's account as testimony, which is what an eyewitness gives. That aside, it is really easy to find out what Kruk's account of Ponar consists of. In his diary, for Thursday, 4 September 1941, Kruk wrote a section entitled "The First Messages from Ponar."
This was a bit of a strange title, at first blush, because in July, on the 20th, Kruk had previously written about rumors of killings at Ponar reaching, among others, the Vilna Judenrat; one of those spreading this story was "a maid of N." who had followed a group of Jews to Ponar, taken from Lukiszki Prison in Vilna: "all the Jews were shot" said Kruk's diary entry for 20 July.
On 4 September Kruk began his summary of "the first messages from Ponar," which I take to refer to eyewitness testimonies come back to Vilna
from survivors of the Great Provocation massacre, by stating that "all I have written here is hardly a fraction" of the new information. (p89) He called the testimony he recorded "truly a scream from the grave . . . the people we shall hear about really do come out of the grave after the execution and have reached the Jewish hospital in Vilna." (p90) Kruk explained that, through personal contacts, he gained access to "a few of the six who came from Ponar." The first account he took down was that of 11-year-old Yudis Trojak, who lived at Szalewksa St 11, apt 26. He set off some of his text as quotations and gave some as a summary of Yudis Trojak's account. The second account in this section of Kruk's diary was from Pesye Schloss, 16 years old, of Strashun 9 in Vilna. As with the testimony of Trojak, Kruk summarized some of what Schloss told him and quoted some. In this case, the quoted material was mostly what she witnessed of the action, how it was carried out, and the executions - all before her group was led to the pit. This quoted account was brief - 9 lines (p91). What Schloss experienced directly in the pit was summarized by Kruk from what the girl told him.
After setting down the two accounts, Kruk continued, ". . . if anyone anywhere comes upon [these lines], I want him to know this is my last wish: let the words someday reach the living world and let people know about it from eyewitness accounts," referring, of course, as you know by now, to Trojak and Schloss. After this, Kruk re-summarized the news given by those who'd reached the hospital, explaining that "all tell" the same main points of what they saw at Ponar. Kruk noted that only a few taken to Ponar had survived. He wrote that "It is hard to find out how many were shot." (p92) He also noted that the shooting had clarified some odd behavior of some German bosses in Vilna, his boss at HKP having before the action "warned . . . that we shouldn't walk around in the streets and that we should sleep at work." (p93)
The very next day, with some new information that had been gathered on Wednesday (Kruk didn't say how or how he learned it) from four additional survivors, all women, Kruk again summarized in his journal what he was learning. He also noted that a fifth survivor had turned up on the 5th: "This person also confirms everything chronicled here." (p94) It was on the 5th as well that the Germans announced (Kruk learning, he wrote, "from reliable sources") that the action at Ponar was to be followed by creation of a ghetto for Vilna's Jews.
Other writers from Vilna, of course, wrote about these same events. For example, Mendel Balberyszki, in Stronger Than Iron, his account of Vilna 1941-1945, written in the 1950s, recalled that his German bosses - Balberyszki was working as a carpenter in August 1941 - would not, in contrast to Kruk's, help their employees at all during the Great Provocation and ghettoization process.
Sakowicz's account, from which I have quoted earlier in this thread, was written by a Pole and not by a member of the community affected by this crime. It meshes well with the other accounts and is a real problem for deniers. That is why some try to make out, without a shred of evidence for their claim, that it was fabricated and that Kruk rewrote unspecified parts of his diary after the war (I kid you not).
Some primary and secondary sources for this execution at Ponar, in addition to those already mentioned, include Reizel Korczak, Lehavot ba-Efer (Tel Aviv 1946); M. Dworzcecki, Yersualayim de-Lita ba-Meri u-va-Sho’ah (Tel Aviv 1951); Jaeger, Y. Rudasehevski (diary published in 1973), L. Epstein (ghetto diary), A. Rindziunski (Moreshet testimony), S. Bronowski (YVA testimony); Rozauskas et al, Documents Accuse; S. Bistrickas, Diary of Jews Murdered in Ponar, July 1941-November 1943 (published 1977 In Vilnius, diary of witness, Lithuanian railway worker); A. Sutzkever, Getto Vilna (Tel Aviv 1947); testimony at Eichmann's trial. Not reading the various languages, I have not read most of these accounts but have come across them in footnotes in Arad's book on Vilna and Sutton's on Lithuania.
