Witold Anuszkiewicz, who was born in Ejszyszki in 1917 and joined the Home
Army during the war (his
nom de guerre
was "Agawa"), prepared a lengthy report about his home town where he
remained until December 19, 1944, when he was arrested by the NKVD and deported
to a Soviet concentration camp. Of special interest is the period from July to
December 1844 when he again had occasion to meet Moshe Sonenson, who was known
to him from before the war and had just emerged from hiding, on the streets of
Ejszyszki as a functionary - a senior lieutenant - of the dreaded NKVD.
Around July 20-25, 1944, while I was in the town, dressed of course in
civilian clothes....I came upon a small convoy. A Soviet soldier led a group of
five exhausted and despondent prisoners-of-war.....to headquarters, where they
were collected in larger groups and sent to POW camps. Moshe Sonenson appeared
on the scene. He was very impulsive and started to scream in Yiddish that he had
lived through the murder of the Jews and had to take revenge on these prisoners.
He screamed: "I have to wash my face and hands in German blood". ........Moshe
Sonenson brought over two more Soviet soldiers, paid them and told them to lead
these prisoners out of the town ..... The convoy stopped beyond the built-up
area near a field of rye. ......The Soviet soldiers who had been paid by
Sonenson shot to death the five defenceless German prisoners. Immediately after
shots were fired Moshe Sonenson threw himself on their still quivering bodies
and started to wash his face and hands in their
warm blood, chanting some verses in Hebrew that sounded like a
prayer.
The situation of Poles in the Wilno region became ever
more tragic. The NKVD repressions increased almost from day to day. There were
more and more arrests and deportations. Particularly aggressive in his pursuit
of Poles was a local Jew by the name of Michalowski, who served in the NKVD.
....He had been with the Soviet partisans in the Rudniki forest from 1941 to
1944.
Confirmation of Moshe Sonenson's mistreatment of
captured German soldiers is apparently to be found in the Ejszyszki memorial
Book itself.