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Murder Story of Kurman Kemelchi Jews at the Brickworks near Kurman-Kemelchi

Murder Site
Kurman Kemelchi
Russia (USSR)
War-time location of a brick factory claypit where Jews from Kurman-Kemelchi and the vicinity were murdered. Photographer: 	Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2010.
War-time location of a brick factory claypit where Jews from Kurman-Kemelchi and the vicinity were murdered. Photographer: Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2010.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615523
On February 17, 1942 (in late autumn 1941, according to eyewitnesses) about 60 Jews, mostly old people, women, and children, from Kurman-Kemelchi, as well as Jews brought from surrounding kolkhozes, were assembled in the abandoned building of a prewar printing house on present-day Engels Street (today the building houses a charitable organization). The Jews were held for several days and then taken by cart to the area of the brickworks. There they were made to stand at the edge of the clay pit or of a nearby anti-tank trench and shot. The murder was perpetrated by an as yet unidentified SS unit.
Related Resources
Lyubov Yakimchenko, who was born in 1927 and lived in Kurman-Kemelchi during the war years, testified: Interview by Mikhail Tyaglyi and Tatyana Velichko in 2010
- …there was a brickworks factory and a pit for clay. That’s where the shootings took place. Liubov Nikolayevna, could you please tell us what you remember or what you were told by witnesses? - We used to go to work – the girls and me – and walk by this pit on our way to the fields… - Also during the occupation? - Yes. So we used to look into the pit and we had tears, and we were always horrified. How could they do this to people? At least they should bury them… people weren’t even buried properly! - Pavel Ivanovich said that the pit was between the water station and this base. - Yes. You see, they still don’t build here! Someone tried to build here, on the bones, but it didn’t work out. No one ever took the bodies out, even when our troops came. - So they never re-buried these victims? - No, they made a trash pit here. - Yes, he said that horses were thrown here. - Yes, he also remembered another place where Jewish people were shot, plot number 89. - So, they were brought there in wagons and shot? - Yes.
YVA O.101 / 568
Kurman Kemelchi
brickworks
Murder Site
Russia (USSR)
45.497;34.295
Contemporary view of the Brickworks murder site in Kurman-Kemelchi. Video by Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2010 Yad Vashem Visual Center 14653801