Murder Story of Zaporozhye Jews at the Stalin State Farm near Zaporozhye

On March 24, 1942, which was the first day of Passover (according to other sources it was on March 28), the remaining Jews - mostly women, children, and old people - were collected at the local police station on the pretext of being sent to Melitopol to work. The day before the police had searched the town for Jews and taken those they found to the local municipality building, where they were kept in the basement without food or water for several days. According to some sources, on the day of the shooting a column of Jews was brought to the police station yard and, later the same day, were sent to the Stalin sovkhoz not far from the city. The young Jewish men and women were apparently separated from the rest and sent to Dnepropetrovsk by train. Their subsequent fate remains unknown. When the Zaporozhie Jews were being taken to the shooting site, the column was divided in the following way: the men went in front, followed by the women; the sick people and the young children were taken by truck. The Jews had to make their way through mud: the road-sides were still snow covered and water was dripping onto the road. Many of the arrestees lost their shoes and had to walk barefoot. When they approached the shooting site, all the Jews had their outer clothes and shoes taken from them. Then, in their underwear and barefoot, they were forced to approach the anti-tank trench, jump into it, and lie down at the bottom. There they were shot in groups; each group was forced to lie on top of the one that had just been shot. Then German gendarmes, under the command of a Sonderkommando officer, carried out the shooting with submachine-guns. A total of 3,700 Jews were killed at the Stalin sovkhoz.