Murder story of Kletnya Jews in the Kletnya Area

Several days after [the beginning of the occupation] the Fascists shot a group of Jewish men from Kletnya: Yakov Zheleznov, Isak Konovalov, Natan Rizhanskiy, Ruvim Yakubovich, Zelik Kazin and Israel Rukhman,along with two 16-year-old soldiers who belonged to a [Soviet] destruction [i.e. sabotage] squad that had had been surrounded but [successfully] returned home…. From the time that Kletnya was occupied by German troops rumors about the Jews being annihilated began to circulate in the village. Time went on but the rumors were not confirmed so people stopped paying attention to them. In April 1942, when a Sonderkommando unit arrived in Kletnya, the rumors began to spread again. On April 30, 1942, early in the morning, policemen forced the Jews into a column by using sticks and rifle butts and took them toward the northern outskirts of the town, where the executioners were already waiting for them.