Murder Story of Babinovichi Jews at Lake Zelenskoye

... Only those Jews who had hidden and avoided the [the first] shooting remained In Babinovichi…. When the men had been executed, the Germans collected the remaining Jews in one house (or several houses next to each other) and organized a ghetto there. Nobody guarded it.… The Jews were taken out for forced labor and were abused. Sometime in mid-February 1942 the Germans and the policemen took the Jews from the ghetto and ordered them to gather at the square next to a shop. Then they were taken across the lake to an island on the opposite bank. Zelinskoye Lake was still. The winter was severe and the ice was thick and hard. Hardly anybody dug pits then in the frozen soil, more likely they [the pits there] had been dug for another purpose. The policemen knew the whole area and suggested where the Germans might shoot the people.… Nina Novikova recalls: "And they were taken along the street to be shot. They did not run away. Belka slipped and fell into a water channel. A policeman immediately shot and wounded her. She shouted: 'Help me,' but when nobody helped her, she began to cry: 'Finish me off.' Everyone heard that. I do not know how many Jews were being taken to be shot but there were many. I saw the Pevzners walking along, I had been at school with them, also the Sheinins, and others. They were taken to the island across the lake. Now this site is overgrown and it is hard to identify it. There used to be a ditch and they were murdered there. Belka died in the water channel."