Murder Story of Zhlobin Jews in Lebedevka

... [Roman Vasilchenko, a resident of Lebedevka village, testifies:] "On the night of April 12, 1942 ... the German fascist authorities ordered me to take an iron shovel and to go to the school building of Lebedevka village. When I arrived,about 20 residents of Lebedevka village had already gathered at the school building with their shovels. When our number had reached 40, we were all forced to go to the fields near the oil-storage tanks between the town of Zhlobin and the village of Lebedevka. There we were immediately forced to dig a pit 4 x 5 meters and 1.2 meter deep. In the morning 8 members of a German murder squad arrived in cars and ordered us to dig a second pit about the same size 40 meters from the first one. At the same time a truck arrived via the road from Zhlobin to Bobruysk; it was full of innocent Soviet civilians, mostly old people, women, and children. The German fiends surrounded the truck and took the people that had been brought there to the pits. Those wearing decent clothes were forced to undress to their underwear and then, in turn, they were taken toward the pits. The people were forced to lie face down and two German executioners shot them from submachine-guns. Babies were taken from their mothers by force and were thrown into the pits alive onto the pile of corpses while the mothers were beaten with clubs and gun butts and then brutally shot.” Thus, about 1,200 innocent Soviet civilians of Jewish nationality, as well as several Gypsies, were shot. When the pit was filled with bodies, the German fascist fiends ordered residents of Lebedevka village to cover it over. Thus, some of the people who were shot that way were not killed but were still alive. This is indicated by the following example provided by the witness Artyom Vasilchenko, a resident of Lebedevka village. “While the grave was being covered a 10-12 year old girl lifted herself up with her arms from the pit over a pile of corpses and shouted: '"Uncles," finish me off or let me go,' and immediately fell down. A German who noticed this drew a pistol from his holster and finished her off with two shots.”...