The First Month of the Nazi Occupation The Germans are Coming On
Friday, the 4th of July, 1941, 13 days after the German army had
begun its attack on the USSR, the Germans arrived at the gates
of Pinsk, which then numbered, according to German sources,
80,000 inhabitants, 35-40,000 of whom were At eleven o'clock in
the morning the first German airplanes appeared in the sky. The
people outside ran in panic to their homes. The peasants who had
come to town for market day hurriedly returned to their
villages. The Russian N.K.V.D. (The Commissariat of the
Interior), who were the last of the former authorities to
remain, hastily packed their belongings and sped in their cars
in the direction of the bridge over the Pina River. Suddenly
there was the sound of a huge explosion: the retreating Russians
blew up the bridge. Several buildings on the edge of the town
went up in flames, set on fire by the Russians. Then all became
quiet, the silence being shattered from time to time by bursts
of cannonfire. Shells flew ove