Murder Story of Gulyay Pole Jews at the Zavety Lenina Collective Farm near Gulyay Pole

On January 10, 1942 carts were sent from kolkhozes, and they [the Jews] were loaded onto the carts. Policemen told them that they were being moved from Gulyay Pole. [They told them] to take their best possessions and go with them. At night they were taken to the police station and later they were taken to a trench located on the territory of the Zavety Lenina kolkhoz. The trench was an anti-tank one…. Gypsies and Jews with young children were taken there. The adults were undressed and were placed facing the trench. A gendarme shot them in the back of the head and they fell straight into the trench. The young children were thrown into the trench alive after they had something [poison] forced under their noses. Thirteen carts drove up to the trench with about 12-13 people in each, along with young children. I was not there the next day…. When [they] finished the killing and the gendarmes left, one Jew, Aron Shneyder, was left there with the policemen. The policemen forced him to enter the trench to put the dead bodies in order. He did that and was all covered with blood. Then he worked together with us to cover the trench over with earth. After some time other Jews were taken to the trench and this story went on for five days. All this time the Jew was forced to do everything they demanded of him and then he too was killed. The day I was present there 170 people were murdered – Jews and Gypsies. People said around 500 - 600 people from Novozlatopol County and Pokrovskoye County [of Voroshilovgrad District] and other counties and rural councils were taken to the trench. Now the trench is covered and there is nothing else at this site....

... I hereby state … that during the occupation the German authorities, together with German collaborators, i.e. policemen and the head of the local administration, murdered 12 Jewish people who lived on the 1st of May Street in the town of Gulyay Pole. They were taken away at night and the next morning they were taken from the gendarmerie to a trench where all the Jews were killed…. Everybody was taken, young children and old people. The Germans annihilated the Jews as a nation....