Tag #148116 - Interview #95750 (Maria Rolnikayte)

One of the first orders of the new authority was the order they posted up on the restaurants and cafe doors: ‘No Jews allowed’. I went to our school to receive the school-leaving certificate of my elder sister Mira, and other documents. The school was dirty and ruined. A boy from the 9th grade approached me and said ‘Get out! Stop stinking at our school!’ But at that moment Yonaytis, our teacher called me. He shook hands with me, asked me what I came for, went to the school office together with me, and helped me to find the school-leaving certificate and our birth-certificates. That person did much for us later (when we were in the ghetto). He gave us food and money, risking his life.

Soon hitlerites put into use their own money and ordered to check in all radio receivers. Later they ordered every Jew to wear a special sign: a yellow square and a circle with letter J inside it. Together with Mom we made those signs out of an old yellow coverlet. Jews were obliged to bring to the commandant's office money, gold goods and other jewelry. But there came more frightening news: armed patrols arrested men in the city streets and put them into prison. At first people thought that from prison men were carried away to Ponary (to a labor camp), but soon we found out that there was no camp there, in Ponary people were executed by shooting.