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Murder Story of Studenitsa Jews in Grushka
Murder Site
Grushka
Ukraine (USSR)
On July 22 or 23, 1942, Ukrainian auxiliary policemen, headed by the SD and the Gendarmerie, rounded up some 100 Jews from Studenitsa and took them by truck, under guard, to a field near the village of Grushka, some 2 kilometers northwest of Staraya Ushitsa. They arrived there toward the end of the shooting of the residents of Staraya Ushitsa. Two pits had been dug in the area beforehand by local residents. The Jews were forced to strip naked. Those who refused were severely beaten by the gendarmes and policemen. After being lined up at the edge of the pit, the victims were forced to enter it in groups of five and lie face down, whereupon they were shot dead with machine guns by members of the German SD and Gendarmerie. Many children were thrown into the pit alive. After the shooting, local peasants were forced to cover the pits with earth.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
From the testimony of Basia Shwarts-Zevina, who was born in 1921 and lived in Studenitsa during the German occupation:
…On July 21, [1942,] I left my parents' home and bid farewell to my father and mother. As it turned out, I would never see them again.… On July 23, my parents, along with all the Jews of Studenitsa and Staraya Ushitsa, were shot dead in two graves: one for the men, and one for the women and little children.…
YVA O.33 / 6510
From the testimony of the commander of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police squad, Captain Zaloga, from The Black Book, taken from the ChGK (Soviet Extraordinary State Commission) report from May 1944:
… The chief of the SS and the chief of the Gendarmerie issued orders and drove out in their automobiles to the place of execution. The orders were as follows:
1. Send vehicles to the village of Studenitsa and Staraya Ushitsa region for Jews living there.
To the village of Studenitsa were sent three or four vehicles with a police unit of fifteen to twenty men headed by a representative of the S.D., whose rank and surname I do not remember, and by the Hauptwachmeister of the Gendarmerie, Peucker. Toward the end of the shooting of the residents of Staraya Ushitsa, they brought about eighty to one hundred residents of Studenitsa. The convoy guard was reinforced by eight border guards.…
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Wassili. The black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 . New York : Holocaust Library, 1981, p. 532.
Grushka
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
48.583;26.916