Murder story of Dunayevtsy Jews in the Solonichnik Forest

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.…

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? ….