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Murder story of Dunayevtsy Jews in the Solonichnik Forest

Murder Site
Solonichnik Forest
Ukraine (USSR)
Solonichnik Forest murder site, contemporary view. Photographer: 	Arkadi Zeltser, 2012.
Solonichnik Forest murder site, contemporary view. Photographer: Arkadi Zeltser, 2012.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615602
Early in the morning of October 19, 1942, during the liquidation of the Dunayevtsy ghetto, about 2,000 Jews, including some from the nearby village of Minkovtsy and other places, were collected at the former machine-tractor station that was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. Those who did not show up or went into hiding were found and taken to the same collection point. Many Jews knew what was awaiting them since several days before they had heard and seen local residents digging pits outside the town. Then, guarded by armed Ukrainian policemen and German gendarmes, headed by Gebietskommissar Eggers, who commanded this murder operation, the Jews were marched on foot in two groups to the Solonichnik forest, near Chankov village, located about 3 kilometers west of the town. The sick people and those who could not walk were beaten or shot to death. The area of the shooting site was surrounded by Ukrainian policemen in order to prevent the Jews from escaping. The victims were made to strip naked and, in groups of 5-20, were taken to the pits, where they had to lie face down, and were then shot to death with sub-machine guns by Gestapo men, members of the gendarmerie, and Ukrainian policemen. According to testimonies, many children were thrown into the pits alive by the policemen and then shot to death. During the shooting, when it was his turn to be shot, Shike Goren, one of the leaders of the local Jewish community, tried to strangle a Gestapo man to avenge the murder of his wife and daughter, but he was killed. After the shooting the bodies were lightly covered with earth. After the war, among the remaining Jews of Dunayevtsy, Goren's act helped create a myth of mass Jewish heroism and resistance to the Nazis.
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Bela Krasner (née Reidman), who was born in Dunayevtsy in 1927 and lived there during the war years, testified:
It [the execution] took place on October 19, 1942. My mother was sick with typhus. The situation was terrible. More and more troops and murder squads arrived in town. [At that moment] I was in the garden at the border of the ghetto. I was lightly dressed (because I was close to home). My father called me, gave me some German marks, and said to me: "Take off your yellow patches (all the Jews were wearing yellow round patches on their chests and backs) and get out of here." I was confused. Where could I go? My mother was sick. But my father lifted up the wire and said: "While nobody sees you, get out, go to our house. Our neighbor Lida will take you in." So I went…. I went into the unknown. [However,] our neighbor was afraid to let me in…. But she felt sorry for me and told me to go up to the attic in the barn…. In the morning I heard noise, shouting, and shooting and I already understood what had happened. What should I do: run toward my family? All my relatives and their children were there, but Lida wouldn't let me go. She convinced me to stay. It all became clear to me: I had been torn away from all of them. Staying in the attic became dangerous so Lida suggested that I go somewhere else…. When it became dark, I moved to the attic [of another building]. It was cold…. I stayed there all night long. In the morning I again heard screaming. I carefully looked out the window and I saw something terrible. The [German] gendarmes, together with [Ukrainian] policemen carrying submachine-guns and pistols, were pushing forward a large group of Jews. The women were screaming and the children crying, while the younger people were literally carrying the elderly on their backs. Each time someone else was beaten. When sick people fell, they were shot to death. All of a sudden… I saw my father leading my mother by the hand. She could barely move her legs. Nearby was my aunt with her two children, my mother's brother with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his two sons. I was paralyzed, unable to move. I at least wanted my parents to look in my direction. They knew that I was in this area but they didn’t turn in my direction in order not to give me away. I tore all my clothes, I howled like a dog, but I couldn't help [them]. After some time shooting was heard. Then silence. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice say "Catch him, he is running there!" When I looked through the window I saw how my classmate and neighbor Zosya Zvalskaya was helping to chase a boy. He was chased like a rabbit, then there was a shot and moaning.… Evening had fallen.…
YVA O.33 / 7542
I. Kenigsburg testified:
Is it possible to forget the pogrom [mass murder] that was carried out in October 1942 against the innocent civil population…. When it became known that something terrible had been prepared [by the Germans], all [the Jews] were ready and went into hiding in shelters, holes concealed in walls, and cellars, just not to die at the hands of the monsters…. And then these furious monsters blew up houses and cellars, and tested the walls with search dogs. The groans, the pleading of those who were taken from the shelters were in vain. The monsters looked at the innocent women, children, and the elderly with eyes that didn't see anything, as if they were staring at empty space. Even handicapped people without legs were taken; the perpetrators carried out their vile deeds with cynical composure…, people [who had been wounded] - children, women, and the elderly - were buried alive in pits. Near Chankov village there rose mass graves of those tortured to death…. Why did they [the Germans] kill… the director of the local library Tsilya Kenigsberg, with Marochka, her one-year-old child…. Mirel Kenigsberg, her mother who suffered from rheumatism, why was she not allowed to reach old age and to die naturally rather than with the rest [of the Jews] at the pit on the sunny day of October 27 [1942], when she was tortured to death. Why was Fishel Kenigsberg, her father and a teacher, a man who gave over half of his life to the education of the younger generation, tortured to death? Why were these tens of thousands of lives of innocent children, women, and elderly people cut off by such a villainous death? ….
TsDAHOU, KYIV 166-3-258 copy YVA M.37 / 1220
Solonichnik Forest
forest
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
48.890;26.851
Josef Kuperman was born in Dunayevtsy in 1919 and was living there during the war years.
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 51662 copy YVA O.93 / 51662