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

Testimony of M. A. K., 55 year old timber merchant from Ostroleka. Left the city on October 7. He says that though German planes were seen over the city, nobombs fell. When the Germans were about to enter Ostroleka, he and the majority of the Jewish population left for Ostrow Mazowiecka. The Germans in Ostorw Mazowiecka kidnapped Jews for forced labor, and held the Jews of the city prisoner, shooting anyone who lagged behind and many of the prisoners. The author left Ostrow Mazowiecka to return to Ostroleka for Yom Kippur. In Ostroleka, the Germans burned and destroyed Jewish shops and houses, and the Poles looted them. A week or so later the German authorities ordered all Jews to leave Ostroleka within three days of the notice. The author left for Lomza, then under Soviet control, where his children were. He continued on to Vilnius, hoping to go on to the United States or the Land of Israel, one of his sons went to Russia, and the other two children remained in Lomza. Protocol No. 153 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.