On June 24, 1941, while we were stunned and struggling to absorb the news, German tanks arrived in Pruzhany, which was less than 50 km from the border. The Russians fled the area, as fast as they could. Some of the Jews fled eastward with them, into Soviet territory.
When the German army entered Pruzhany, the Jews shut themselves inside their homes, while the Christians went out into the streets to welcome the conquering army. From rumors we knew about persecutions and decrees against Jews in German-occupied Poland, and many Jews had been expelled from the Reich into Poland even before the war. We preferred not to be in the Germans' way when they arrived in Pruzhany.
What I did not know at the time, I learned after the war. The Lomzha district of Poland, and part of Grodno, between East Prussia to the north and the Generalgouvernement to the south — the territory the Germans called the Generalkommissariat Bialystok, centered on the city of Bialystok — was made into a district nominally incorporated into the Reich and annexed to East Prussia.
This administrative division meant that our fate was, at first, better than that of the inhabitants of the part administratively annexed to Poland, which was called the Polish Protectorate.
In the wake of the invading German army came the Einsatzgruppen, the special forces that "dealt with" the Jews. The Einsatzgruppen brought with them decrees and raids on Jewish homes, for the purpose of plunder and abuse. Together with antisemitic elements and collaborators from the local population, the Germans rounded up Jews and murdered thousands of them by shooting beside large pits. At first they burned the bodies in those same pits. Later they developed more efficient methods.
Along with the Einsatzgruppen came the German civilian administration. Its men established ghettos in the Jewish towns.