TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT D-969

AFFIDAVIT OF LEIB KIBART
I, LEIB KIBART, declare as follows :
1. I am a Jew and lived during the German occupation in the
Ghetto of Schaulen, about 130 kilometres of Riga. I am a leather worker by trade. ,
2. I was arrested in the street and forced to work for the Germans for three years making mostly women's handbags. I lived in the Ghetto but I was taken daily by SA men to the Courtyard of the District Commissioner where I and other Jews worked on various jobs.
3. While at work we were often cursed and beaten by the SA. Sturmfuehrer SA Bub one day ordered a lady's handbag from me, to be ready by the same evening. I said that was impossible, so he gave me many strokes with a whip. In the evening he thrashed me again because the bag was not ready.
4. The SA came to Schaulen soon after the occupation by the Germans in the summer of 1941 and they took over the administration of the Ghetto. The first SA Chief was SCHROEPFER, a Sturmfuehrer SA. He was either from Bromberg or Bamberg but I cannot remember which. I know it was one or the other because Jews were employed to make trunks for SA officers and I remember his name and address being painted on one. His successor was Sturmfuehrer Bub.
5. It is hard to judge, but I estimate that there must have been 700 to 800 SA men there at the beginning, but they decreased in numbers later. I knew them as SA because they wore brown uni-
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form with Swastika armlets. Later on they often used other Germans in the locality as auxiliaries.
6. There were 4,500 Jews in the Ghetto, which was very overcrowded. In August 1941 the SA therefore surrounded the whole Ghetto, and numbers of them went into the houses and took out women, children and old men, and put them into lorries and drove them away. I saw all this myself. It was done exclusively by SA. I saw them take children by the hair and throw them into the lorries. I did not see what happened to them but a Lithuanian told me afterwards that they had been driven 20 kilometres away and shot: he said he had seen the SA make them undress and then shoot them with automatic pistols.
7. In 1943 working parties were sent out from the Ghetto into the country and they sometimes brought back food such as potatoes. 'the SA searched them and if they found food on them they beat them in the streets. In June 1943 a man called MAZA-wETZKI, a master baker, was caught by Hub with four or five cigarettes and some sausage.
.tie was beaten and brought to the District Commissioner's office. 1 was working in the Courtyard with other Jews and Bub said to the working party that the man must be hanged because he wanted to show that he too could hang Jews. Next Sunday we were all kept in the Courtyard and Bub had Mazawetzki hanged in front of us by Jews.
8. The District Commissioner in whose Courtyard I worked was called GEWECKE. I saw him eery day. He was in the SA.
9. The SS took over from the SA in September 1943, and the Ghetto then became a working commando.
I declare the above to be true.
[signed] :
10 August 1946 LEIB KIBART