Murder story of Yalta Jews in the Massandra Vineyards 4th Ravine

... On December 18, 1941, near the red sentry box of Massandra [vineyards], at the lower road between Mogarach and Yalta, at a reservoir near the seashore, a Gestapo unit of the Fascist executioners shot civilians before the eyes of the local population all day long, from early morning until late evening. Almost the entire population of Magarach [village] and the Nikita gardens witnessed this terrible bloody sight since the Hitlerite executioners, on purpose in order to intimidate the [local] population, carried out the shooting during the daytime and at a place where [the shooting] could easily be seen. While I was in Magarach at the seashore at that time, my attention was caught by the sight of a pile of black items. At first I thought that the Germans were placing and calibrating a weapon and preparing fortifications on the seashore. But people were [already] concerned. The children of the worker Kozhukhova ran up to me and said: "Uncle, the Germans are shooting people there, bringing [them] by truck, shooting them, and throwing them into a big pit." The worker Kozhukhova approached [me] right away, [as well as] the worker Yemelyanenko and others. Together with them, I began to observe what was happening not far from us. Trucks were continuing to arrive from the direction of Yalta. The people were stood at the ravine and were shot with bursts of machine-guns. Then the people who had been shot were taken and thrown into the reservoir. Afterwards, during a break between the firing of the machine-guns, a couple Germans descended into the reservoir and pushed down the bodies with their feet. Then they proceeded to shoot to death with submachine-guns or pistols those people who were still alive. The screaming of the wounded women was terrible. Later it was said that the children were put to death beforehand in the ghetto or in gas vans and then thrown in sacks into the reservoir. In the evening after the shooting [members of] the murder squad of the Gestapo unit came to Magarach and, while in the apartment of Yelizaveta Poltavchenko, with typical German insolence, were bragging about how in one day they killed with submachine-guns or pistols about 2,000 Jews - men, elderly people, women, and children, including nursing infants, and [claimed] that the Jews everywhere would be treated the same way and would be exterminated everywhere in the world....

… On December 17, 1941 the Germans led the healthy men out of ghetto and took them down the road leading to the Nikita Gardens. The truck stopped at the Red Shelter (the guard booth for the Massandra vineyards). The Jews were ordered to dig two deep trenches at the bottom of a ravine. When the work was completed, the Jews were shot. On the morning of December 18 all Jews - women with children and old people - were loaded on trucks. They were forbidden to take any belongings with them. People stuffed a piece of bread or an apple in their pockets. The truck stopped next to the ravine. The doomed people were stripped and driven with bayonets to the edge of the trench. Children were taken from their mothers and flung into the trench. The adults were shot with machine guns. It was a clear, sunny day. The sea splashed twenty meters away. The vineyard workers of Massandra and Magarach saw everything. By evening it was all over, and the Germans covered 1,500 Jews with a thin layer of earth. Then the executioners went to Magarach. At the apartment of Yelizaveta Poltavchenko they bragged that they had killed 1,500 people and that soon there would not be a single Jew left alive in the entire world. Among the murdered were many doctors. In the "Tourist's Guide to the Crimea", published in 1898, "L.M. Drushkin – pediatrician" … listed among the practicing doctors.… Doctor Drushkin was killed in Yalta on December 17. He had treated children for fifty years. His former patients had long since grown old. [He was very old and could hardly walk.] He was shot at Red Shelter, and the bodies of small children were thrown on the body of this specialist in children's diseases. The winter of 1941-1942 was a severe and hungry one. Homeless dogs dug up the graves at Red Shelter and dragged out the corpses. In the spring water flowing from the ravine washed away the earth, and the half-decayed corpses were revealed. The Germans blew up a part of the ravine and covered up the bodies….

29.11. The German order was posted [around the city] – all the Jews had to move into the ghetto…. I won't go with him [Arkadi, her husband], even though I had previously decided to be with him till the end. According to the advice I was given by the head of the Jewish community, I should stay and save the boy [our son]. 2.12. Carts, wheelbarrows, and people on foot with packs are trudddging to their new ruins.… They are riding or walking and crying. The course of life has been disrupted, the human being doesn't belong to himself anymore. Tomorrow - is uncertain…. Soon Arkadi will be leaving. I can't think about it, I don't know how I am going to live through this…. 15.12 … Arkadi is working, I bring him food when I see him on his way from work back to the ghetto. It is hard for him to do this work…. Today after their work I was astonished by how Arkadi and his co-workers looked.... Arkadi could barely walk… When it was a time for us to say goodbye, for some reason Arkadi decided to say goodbye "in a special way": "You and I always say goodbye [to each other] as if nothing is happening and as if this is peace time. This time let's really say 'Goodbye.' I was upset; I felt ill. He had tears in his eyes "Take care of Fredik" [our son]. He didn't say anything else, just embraced me tightly and kissed me. 17.12. Today also no one was allowed out of the ghetto…. How awful! Will they [the residents of the ghetto] be taken away? I will wait until morning…. 21.12. For three days I have been half-conscious. I can't believe what has happened. Or why? On the 18th [of December] at 6 a.m. Fred brought food to his father. At 8 a.m., Fred returned home, silently put the untouched food containers on the table and left without a word…. When it was completely dark outside, he came home pale and haggard…. He only said: "It's all over – Papa doesn't exist anymore." In the evening an acquaintance came and told me about the shooting. I couldn't cry and we did not have the right to do so…. Was it true? I can't believe it even now. There is some hope that Arkadi is still alive since [about] 200 people escaped from the ghetto [before the shooting]. Perhaps he is one of them?.... I am afraid to think about what happened.... 2.1.1942. Today, … on the way home [from the city], we came across a group of people who were tied together. These were people who had escaped from the ghetto…. They were guarded by [auxiliary] policemen…. My unhealed wound reopened with new pain and force. I recalled the details of the shooting as they were related to me by eyewitnesses who had buried the dead, along with some people who were still alive. They didn't do it voluntarily…. The times of Nero have been superseded. I can not write any more."

In Yalta, in addition to prisoners of war, many civilians from Yalta were tortured and shot to death. A Russian doctor named Milevskiy went voluntarily to the shooting [place] with his Jewish wife. The Hitlerite executioners shot to death Dimitriy Chaikin [an Orthodox] priest of the Alupka Church for trying to help the Jews. Near Yalta… on the slope of a mountain at a garden that extended from the top of the slope to the sea there are huge reservoirs for the dry seasons. There… the Germans prepared a place for a terrible execution. They brought, in turn, thousands of civilians to the edge of the reservoir, shot them, and without waiting for them to die, threw them, still half-alive, into the reservoir. Many were thrown in alive, without being shot. When the reservoir was filled to the top, they covered it from above with stones. Then they started filling the next one….