Murder Story of Klichev Jews in Poplavy

…And in October, just on the Pokrova holiday, a terrible tragedy took place – a holocaust at the edge of the Poplavy woods. Grigoriy Matiushonok, then a young child, was a witness of that tragedy. Having hidden in the branches of a tall tree, Grisha [Grigoriy] saw the shooting of the Jews. On that day Poplavy was surrounded by Germans and their accomplices – Ukrainians, Latvians, and Belarusians, who were swearing and humiliating the people [Jews] even more than the Germans. The people were forced into the kolkhoz yard. Next to the club building there was a public bathhouse built out of mud. All the men had to face the wall, while the women, old people, and children had to stand with their backs to the men. The Germans had dogs. The residents of Poplavy were asked to identify any partisans, Communists, or members of the Young Communist League there. Grigoriy Fedorovich’s uncle, who had a decent command of German (during World War I he had been a p.o.w. of the Germans) translated. At that time people were digging pits at the edge of the forest. Then, one after another, covered trucks full of Jews – men, women, old people, and children - began to arrive from Klichev. They were beaten severely with rifle butts, set on with the dogs, and forced into the pits alive. In that place they used to dig up clay to make bricks. After some time everything was quiet and the murderers left for Klichev. Grisha climbed down from his hiding place and, together with three other boys who had hid nearby, went over to where the tragedy had taken place. It was terrible. The whole pit, that had been covered with earth, was bloody. Worse than that, it was heaving. Many people had not even been shot but were buried alive. It is known that the barber from Klichev named Breslav, his wife's sister, and one other person had crawled out of that grave. Over 300 Jews met their deaths in that grave near Poplavy. Hardly any of them remained alive. One of them, the blacksmith Moyshe, had hid in a furrow. Some were saved by Belorusians from Klichev, who later took them to the woods.

No Jews lived in our village of Poplavy. On October 14, 1941 all of us local villagers, from young to old, were collected in the kolkhoz yard next to the administration building. We saw covered trucks full of people arriving from Klichev. The people were unloaded in the woods near the village. We heard screams and weeping from the trucks. They were Jews. We heard how they were shot in the woods, heard the shots and the explosion of grenades which, as grownups later told us, were throws into the pits at the people who were still alive there. I remember how the first four trucks arrived and, then, after unloading the people, the murderers drove to Klichev for another group of the doomed. The trucks went back and forth for several hours. It was 4 kilometers from Klichev to the murder site. People who went the next day to look said that the ground was heaving. Freshly scattered earth covered the grave. Our village folk even hoped that someone might have remained alive but they were all dead. After the war relatives of the victims arrived and erected a monument there.