Murder Story of Chernigov Jews in Podusovka

... Shooting was carried out from the spring to the onset of the frost of 1942. The operation was supervised by Germans; the rest was carried out by the Security Service – by Ukrainians who were dressed in German uniforms [sic!]. The people who were going to be shot were taken along Vorovskaya and Peretz Streets, past the oil cooperative to Podusovka, where these Soviet civilians were shot. The trucks were covered with tarpaulins. Each truck was followed by a small car with armed Germans. At that time I was guarding a thermo-electric power station and I saw how the people were being taken to be shot. Sometimes some of the people who were going to be shot tore the tarpaulin and ran away – but that was not often. Shooting took place from 3 or 4 a.m. until late in the evening. When I came from my job and there were no trucks there was no shooting. When trucks drove through the city, it was prohibited to go there – everywhere there were guards from the Security Service. Woe to those who passed by at that time, especially if they did not have identification papers with them. One can estimate the number of those shot: prison guards said that the prison holds 2,000 people. It was emptied in the course of one day.…

... There are graves in the ravine of Podusovka, located in the forest south of the village of Podusovka-1, about .5 kilometers from it, on both sides of the road, two of them located on one side of the road and nine on the other side, not far from each other. The first two murder pits are located 100 meters from the forest, the rest are located in the forest itself. They have the shape of a rectangle and measure 4 x 13, 4 x 13, 4.5 x 16.5, 4.5 x 16.5, 5 x 18, 5 x 18, 5 x 18, 5 x 17.5, 5 x 17.5, 5 x 21.5, and 6.3 x 30 meters. Due to the lack of a mound over them almost all the graves, except for one that was not totally covered by earth, are hardly noticeable on the surface of the ground. Vines planted by the Germans to hide them are growing on the two first graves … The forensic team partially opened two of the murder pits.… The bodies were mostly naked although some of them had clothing that is typical [for people] from towns or villages. There were bodies of men, women, and children. The ages of those in the first one were between 17 and 60 and in the last one -- between infancy and 12 years old. The bodies in these murder pits were covered with calcium chloride. The bodies of the adults had holes from bullets that entered the neck and exited from other parts of the face. Some of the children’s bodies revealed fragmentation of the skull while others showed no trace of damage at all. According to witnesses, the children were not shot but their skulls were broken with a blunt weapon or they were thrown into the grave alive and buried with the adults that had been shot. The commission stated that shootings of Soviet civilians were carried out by Germans during the entire period of the occupation. The people selected to be shot were taken in trucks that were covered with dark tarpaulins. The shooting was carried out by Germans from machine-guns either in the murder pits or nearby. At the time of the shooting the site was surrounded by [Ukrainian] policemen. Before the shooting the people who were about to be shot usually had to take off their clothes; the clothes were taken to the city by truck.…

… From 1936 to the present I have lived on the auxiliary farm of the Chernigov city council near the village of Podusovka-1. During the German occupation I very often heard machine-gun fire and the screams and groans of our people – both adults and children. The sound of shooting reached our house from the place where the Germans were shooting our civilians. I heard shooting, screams, and groans during the whole fall of 1941 and the whole summer and fall of 1942. Most often I heard the shooting and the screams and groans of the Soviet civilians who were about to be shot from 4 a.m. until 11 or 12 p.m. and, sometimes also, from lunch time until late in the evening.…