Murder Story of Orinin Jews in Zherdya

... Q: What do you know about the murder by Germans of the Jews in the town of Orinin? A: Around June 20, i.e, during the time when I was serving as a company commander of the police in Kamenets-Podolsk and was in charge of the police in the three counties, Lieutenant Raich, the chief of the Kamenets-Podolsk gendarmerie, ordered me to go to Orinin County and to pick 30 [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen, and await him at 3 a.m. on the road leading from Orinin to Kamenets-Podolsk. I carried out this assignment and waited for him with the policemen at the due time, by which time the following persons arrived at the site [as well]: Lieutenant Raich,… 60 policemen and 20 Gestapo men. Lieutenant Raich put me in charge of [another] 20 policemen and ordered me to surround the Jewish part of the town of Orinin. When this had been carried out, Lieutenant Raich, together with the Gestapo men, summoned the head of the Jewish council, Goldfarb, and ordered him to collect all the Jewish population at the town square of Orinin in order to send them to Kamenets-Podolsk. Few Jewish men were left in the town since they had been taken for a week, along with the horses of the kolkhoz, to transport some goods. Therefore, mainly women, children, and old people were collected at the square. Barish, a German, the head of the labor office, read before those gathered a list of various occupations. Those who were on this list were put into a separate group and taken under the guard of 15 policemen to the Kamenets-Podolsk ghetto. This group consisted of about 250 [Jews]. The rest, a total of about 2,000, were lined up in columns and taken towards the village of Zherdya. About 30 policemen that had surrounded the town of Orinin were relieved by me and reassigned to guard this column of 2,000. By this time the gendarmes and the Gestapo men managed to round up 70 collective farmers with shovels; they were instructed to dig two large pits between the town of Orinin and Zherdya village. The column of Jews that we were guarding was taken to these pits. The people, who had been stripped naked, were taken out of the column in groups of 10-15 and shot to death with machineguns. 20 Gestapo men and 3 gendarmes directly participated in the shooting. As for the policemen and myself, our assignment was to surround the column and to make sure that no one could escape. Terrible scenes took place among those who were waiting for their turn to be shot. Mothers were crying next to their children. Two women tried to escape from the column, but were shot to death by the policemen. The shooting lasted about 5 hours. Afterwards the Gestapo men examined the clothes of the people they had shot to death and took their valuable items: their watches and gold. The rest was given to the 70 men who had stayed to cover the pits and to the policemen. From there the Gestapo men, gendarmes, and policemen returned to the town of Orinin, where a search of the homes of the murder victims was conducted by the Gestapo men, who took everything of value. These belongings were loaded onto 20 trucks and … taken to Kamenets-Podolsk. Afterwards I called off the [police] cordoning off of the Jewish part of Orinin....