Murder Story of Gorodok Jews at the Sugar Refinery

In December 1942, Billing [local] commandant, ordered me to get my horses ready, then he get into the cart and ordered me to take him to the sugar factory dam. On that day a vile scene took place at the dam. Leaving me, Billing moved closer to the mass of people [who were standing there], while ordering me to stay close to the horses. I was standing there, seeing a terrible sight, i.e., about 76 people, including little children, teenagers, old people, and women, were stripped naked. They were ordered to enter the grave alive. They were shot to death by Ostrovsky, a translator for the Gendarmerie. The crying and shouting of women and little children was heard, and I also heard more than one voice of men asking [the executioners] to finish them off since it was hard for them to suffer the torment of their imminent deaths. Among those who were shot to death, i.e. who were then still alive, I recognized Itzhak Sedler, Khreplivyi with his wife and 3 year old son, [and] Nut [?] and his wife.

... We, the undersigned, the regional committee…. carried out an excavation of the mass graves of the Soviet civilians who were shot to death and tortured by the German-Fascist barbarians and their accomplices. During the examination of the [Gorodok] district area the following was found: 1. A mass grave at the sand quarry located about 2 kilometers from the Gorodok sugar factory (dam), on the way to Ludvipol village. During the excavation in one quarry…. 87 [bodies of] Soviet civilians who had been brutally tortured and then shot to death by Gestapo men in December 1942 were found, 40 of them were women and children. During the examination of the bodies medical experts established that before being shot the Soviet civilians suffered terrible tortures, this was indicated by fractures of the bones of their extremities, cracks in their skulls, and others injuries. … During the examination of the bodies it was learned that the killing of the civilians was carried out by submachine-gun fire aimed from a short distance at the back of their heads. It was established that the victims were found in their underwear, some of them were even half naked – the clothes and shoes had been taken from their bodies.…

... In 1942 the order from Romanovich [the head of the local administration]… was passed on to us by the local administration to the effect that at 6 a.m. we, cart drivers, had to come to the local administration building. We did so. Under the command the Ukrainian policeman Chernomorets, we were ordered to wait with our carts. The Ukrainian policemen forced all, as many as 90, of the [Jewish] residents out of their homes and loaded them onto the carts and took them to the dam next to the sugar factory, where they were shot to death. While standing near the guard post, I saw the following scene: for some reason the Ukrainian policemen returned one resident, Shoikhat, and drove him back home. A few minutes later he came back with a piece of gold, which he handed over to Kite, the head of the Gendarmerie, while he [Shoikhat] was muttering something in his language [Yiddish] and crawling on his knees before Kite. However, the gendarme [rural policeman] kicked him, made me put Shoikhat into my cart and take him to the same dam where about 100 others like him [Jews] had been shot to death. He was guarded by the Ukrainian policeman Chernomorets. I approached the dam.... Ostrovsky [a Ukrainian policeman] forced Shoikhat to strip naked and then shot him to death with a submachine-gun on the spot.…