After a few days of such a hunt for people, the number of dead Jews in both parts of the ghetto amounted to over 200. It was not the end, because some Jews were still hiding in the ghetto. Those Jews who were captured, were ordered to dig two huge pits in Piękna Street, more or less opposite Krótka Street. Bodies of the people executed in this part of the ghetto were placed there. Jews captured later were also executed. Similar events took place in the other part of the ghetto, near the Cetynia River. Three huge pits were dug on Bóżnicza Street, Magistracka Street now, where the bodies of the dead were buried and where the captured Jews were executed. When the ghetto was completely liquidated, the pits were carefully covered with dirt so that there would be no indication that mass graves had been located there. Only in the spring of 1944, when the front line was getting closer to Polish borders, the invaders, in order to cover up traces of their crimes, arrived in a large truck covered with sheet metal, dug up the pits and began taking out the bodies and transporting them in an unknown direction. The Germans, however, did not know in how many pits they had buried the bodies, because one of those mass graves was discovered over a decade after the war while digging foundations for PSS warehouse - a full cart of human bones was taken from there. |