Murder Story of Mogilev Jews in Kazimirovka

Sometime during the last third of October they started to drive us out of our houses and into trucks. Mother became frightened. She went wild and started to rush about, grabbing up photographs and other items. They loaded us onto the trucks and took us away. They also took our eldery neighbor Nemtsova. She used to get around, as I recall, with a cane. They put all of us into an empty room of a factory (now the "Strommashina" plant). We spent a day or two there. It was so crowded that there was no place to lie down. There were thousands of people there. My brother continually asked for a drink. In the morning of October 22, 1941, at about 11, some covered trucks arrived. It was raining and the rain was mixed with snow. They forced the people, mainly the women, to undress. The Gestapo men hit the naked women on their backsides with whips and laughed. They looked for valuables hidden in our clothes. They pulled a gold ring off my mother's finger. At the beginning I asked Mother "Where are they taking us?" Then I started to cry: "Mother, they will shoot us! Mother, I don't want to die!". When they took us to the pits, it was crystal clear where they had taken us and why. Mother whispered in my ear: "Tell them you are not Jewish, that your are Russian, and got into this truck by accident. Tell them your name is Nina. Tell them you are Belarusian and were living in our apartment." She approached the SS-men and started to explain: "This girl got into the truck by accident. She was living in our apartment and ended up in the ghetto by accident. She is not my daughter." The translator said [to me]: "Say the word "kukuruza." I said it. No one in our family spoke with a gutteral pronunciation [speaking that way was considered to be a typically Jewish trait], everybody spoke clearly. They put me aside. Mother tried to also save my little brother. My sister looked Jewish but my brother didn't. Mother said [that] no one knew whose son he was. The translator said to him: "Drop your pants." They pulled down his pants and started to laugh loudly. Like all Jewish males, my little brother was circumcised... As for me, they... threw me into a truck, took me back to Mogilev, and threw me out there.