Murder Story of Vysokopolye Jews in Knyazevka

... On this date the commission carried out an examination of the sites of atrocities committed by the German-Fascist occupiers. The examination discovered two graves in the area of Vysokopolye village, Bolshaya Aleksandrovka County, Kherson District. 12 largely decomposed bodies, 5 (five) of them of adult males, 4 of adult females, and 3- those of children, all lying in disarray, were discovered during the excavation of the first grave. None of the bodies were clothed and all had bullet holes in the back of the head. According to forensic expertise, the wounds were caused by firearms such as submachine guns or Parabellum pistols. 7 male, totally decomposed bodies were found in the second grave; there were traces of bullet wounds, caused by the same weapons, in the back of the head of all the bodies. Since all the bodies mentioned above were largely decomposed it was impossible to identify the victims. On the basis of the testimonies of eyewitnesses Sergey Pavlovich Melnikov and Leonti Aleksandrovich Porozhnyak, who live in the village of Vysokopolye, Bolshaya Aleksandrovka County, it has been established that the shooting of Soviet civilians was carried out in September 1941 at the place where the bodies were discovered. The shooting was carried out by the Romanian military commandant's office and an SS unit….

… About in September 1941, I do not remember exactly, the German SD tortured to death and shot … Jewish families of Vysokopolye village: the Zibelshteyn family [consisting] of 4 people- Leonid Zibelshteyn, I do not know his patronymic, his wife, and their 2 children; Faina Ulrich, together with [her] child (a girl of about 6); a pharmacy manager, an ethnic Jew, I do not know her last name; the Gorelik [family, consisting] of 3 persons (Gorelik, I do not know his [first] name, his wife, and their child), and some other persons whose last names I do not remember…. The Jewish families… were shot by German soldiers outside the village of Knyazevka, in the Vysokopolye rural council....