Murder Story of Poddobryanka Jews at the Collective Farm in Poddobryanka

… The German-fascist occupiers and their accomplices murdered the entire Jewish population of Poddobryanka village in a brutal way. In September 1941 a German murder squad shot 47 [Jewish] men with machine-guns near the pigsty of the kolkhoz. The bodies were first buried in a pit but later moved to the cemetery … On January 24, 1942 members of the Gestapo [stationed] in the village of Dobryanka, together with policemen from Dobryanka County and policemen from the village of Poddobryanka, shot 105 women and children with pistols and rifles next to a pit near the kolkhoz barn and the cemetery ...

... As a witness of the third bloody murder of Soviet civilians from the village of Poddobryanka that was perpetrated by Germans in late January 1942, I can provide the following information. Four Gestapo men and a group of policemen from the police force of Dobryanka County, consisting of about 15 people, arrived in Poddobryanka village from the town of Dobryanka in the Chernigov District. The Gestapo members had pistols and the policemen had rifles. The Germans ordered the head of the village named Suchkov to call the policemen [of Poddobryanka] and he carried out this order. Then the policemen Ivan Pavlenko, David Kushnerev, Saveliy Kovsharov, Timofey Zaitsev, and I reported to the Germans. They ordered us and the policemen from Dobryanka to round up all the Jews in Poddobryanka village. Afterwards police teams went from one apartment to another and woke the sleeping people because it was nighttime, and took them to the houses of Berka Soloveichik and Grabovskoy. Meanwhile the Gestapo men had returned to Dobryanka. All the civilians who had been collected were guarded by local policemen. I also had to carry out my punitive duty by guarding the collected civilians who were in the Soloveichik house. At this time the Dobryaka policemen were patrolling the streets of Poddobryanka village. At 2 p.m. the Gestapo men and Gudimov, the chief of police of Dobryanka County, arrived. The latter ordered the people who had been arrested to hand over their money "to help the town." All of these citizens gave him their money and then he left. Later, all the civilians who had been collected were taken from the houses of Soloveichik and Grabovskoy out to the street. From there Germans and policemen with firearms marched them toward the cemetery. On the way the policeman Ivan Pavlenko entered the house of Pavel Khanin, took him out, and made him join the others. All these civililans were taken to the kolkhoz barn, where they were guarded by local policemen, while Dobryanka policemen took them to pits where German Gestapo men shot them with pistols in the back of the neck. Pavel Khanin was shot first, then the women and children. A total of 105 people were shot on that day.…