Zmievka Ravine Related Communities
Rostov na Donu Related Murder Sites
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Murder story of Rostov na Donu Jews in the Zmievka Ravine
Murder Site
Zmiev
Russia (USSR)
On August 9, 1942 the head of the Jewish council in Rostov on Don, Lurye, on orders from Sonderkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D, issued a call to the Jews of Rostov on Don. All the Jews in the city were to come on August 11, 1942 to specially defined gathering points, supposedly for resettlement to a quarter assigned for Jews. The Jews were ordered to take with them their identity papers and the keys to their apartments. They were told to bring valuables, cash, and small bundles that they could carry. The resettlement was presented as a measure whose purpose was to protect the Jews from violence directed against them.
On August 11, 1942, early in the morning, Jews of all ages and both sexes started to arrive at the gathering points, which were surrounded by Germans and local auxiliary police. Upon their arrival the people were robbed of the cash, valuables, and foodstuffs they had brought, loaded with violence onto trucks, and driven to the 2nd Zmievka, a settlement of railway workers northwest of Rostov on Don on the right bank of the Temernik River. Here the victims were ordered to undress, and then taken to the sand quarry pits in the northeast outskirts of the Zmievka settlement or to graves dug in advance at the edge of a grove in the botanical garden southeast of Zmievka, and shot there with machine-guns. According to testimonies, the children were poisoned and their bodies thrown into the pits.
To speed up the murder process on the next two days gas vans were also used to killing of Rostov's Jews.
The three day massacre perpetrated by members of Sonderkommando 10a and local auxiliaries recruited from Soviet prisoners-of-war, claimed the lives of between 2,000 (according to German data) and 13,000 (according to Soviet sources) Jews of all ages and both sexes.
Subseqently the Zmievka Ravine served also as the murder site for the Jews who escaped the August 1942 massacre but were eventually caught by the Germans and their accomplices. For example, in September 1942 Jews were murdered in gas vans operated by members of Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C; the bodies were thrown into the ravine.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
Written Accounts
German Reports / Romanian Reports
Soviet Reports
ChGK Soviet Reports
From the testimony of Marta Derganova, November 24, 1942:
On August 11, 1942, at 7 a.m., black covered trucks were brought to the nursery of the botanical garden and the mass shooting of the population was carried out. People wearing only pants were taken out of the trucks. Men, women, and children were shot. This vile atrocity lasted until 11 p.m. and the very terrible cries of women and children were heard from there.
When, at the day of this horrible Fascist shooting, [I] went to the kitchen-garden and climbed a tower, [I saw] a girl crying near this grave where the German murderers carried out the shooting (the girl was crying: "Oy uncles, oy aunts, save me, my mother is Russian and my father is a Jew, save me!" This crying had a very strong impact on me and I lost consciousness. On August 11, 1942 at 5 p.m. Germans and our own Russians who served in the police drove 500 women and children to the pit in the nursery of the botanical garden and started to shoot them. A terrible screaming could be heard; one couldn't stand it. They [the victims] started to flee [but] the Germans caught them and threw them into the pit alive while the prisoners [of war] were standing around the pit, [they] covered the murder victims with 2-3 centimeters of earth and it continued this way with a break every other day or two until they were all murdered;, some of them were pushed forward, dragged to the very pit, and then thrown into the pit [alive].
Yitzkhak Arad, Destruction of the Jews of the USSR in the Years of German Occupation (1941-1944), Jerusalem 1991, p. 219 (Russian).
Zmiev
ravine
Murder Site
Russia (USSR)
47.236;39.713