Murder Story of Poddobryanka Jews at the Jewish Residences in Poddobryanka

… In the village of Poddobryanka, Terekhovka County, Gomel District the German occupiers and their accomplices shot the entire Jewish population of about 200 people, including old men, women, and children. As a citizen [i.e., resident]of the village of Poddobryanka I can provide the following information. In December 1941, in the morning (I do not remember the date) the village mayor, Sergey Yakovlevich Kushnerov, came to my apartment and ordered me to transport the bodies of the Jewish women who had been shot by the Germans the night before. When I came with my horse to the yard of Zadek Naiman, I saw there the bodies of his family and of other Soviet civilians. They had all been shot in the back of the head, as could be seen from the bullet holes in their heads. The policemen Saveliy Kovsharov and Timofey Zaitsev loaded six bodies onto my cart and I drove them to the cemetery, according to the order I had been given. There the above-mentioned policemen threw them into a pit. They then sent me to the yard of Efroim-Meer Gofman. From there I drove the bodies of four women to the same pits. There were also bullet holes in their heads. Altogether I saw 22 bodies of Soviet civilians on that day, 20 of them were of women and 2 of children …

... In December 1941 two Germans arrived in the village of Poddobryanka from the commandant’s office at the Gornostayevka railway station (I do not know their names), together with the policemen Feodor Kirillovich Kovalev (the latter was shot by the Hungarians) and took 20 [Jewish] women and 2 [Jewish] children to the yards of Zalek Naiman Zalek and Efroim Gofman and shot them in those yards at night. In the morning the local citizens Iona Zaytsev, Ivan Plashkov, and Yevdokim Zhukov took the bodies of the shooting victims to the cemetery on orders from the head of the village, Sergey Kushnerov, and buried them in a pit ...