Murder Story of Kunev Jews at the Kunev Jewish Cemetery

Hello, my dear beloved brother! I am writing to you from [the village] of Pluzhnoye, after staying 3 days in [the town of] Kunev. Read [this letter] and until the end of your life don't forget it [the murder of Kunev's Jews] and cry bitterly-bitterly for the shed blood of the innocents. …. On one "fine" summer day of 1941 all [the Jewish residents of Kunev] were ordered to take with them shovels and brooms on the pretext that they would be taken to work (a special murder squad had arrived the town at that time). Jewish policemen… went from house to house and tried to persuade everyone [the Jews] to come [to the collection point] in order not to arouse the anger of those murderers. It [the murder operation] was carried out in such way that the Jews would understand what a horrible thing awaited them. [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen-local traitors … approached the [Jewish] houses with rifles, searching for those who were hiding. When all of them [the Jews] were lined up and taken to the Jewish cemetery, they understood where they had been taken. Heart-rending screams and the crying of women and children began to be heard. They were taken to the open area [of the cemetery]: the men and women were forced to strip naked, the children were [stripped naked] separately, all of them were lined up near a pit that had been dug and all of them were forced to lie inside it. [The victims] in groups of 30 were taken to the pit and shot to death with machine-guns. However, not all [the Jews of the town] were shot to death on that day. Some remained alive and were forced to cover [with earth] the murdered women and children. [During the shooting] Babtsya Tsalys pulled out her hair, Khuma Spilphoigel tried to curse the murderers, crying out that [this murder] would be avenged, but she wasn't allowed to finish, she embraced her sister and thus together they fell into the pit. Their father wasn't shot to death at that time but his two daughters were killed before his eyes. When he returned [to the town] after the shooting, he said: " I have already married off my two daughters" and lost his mind. Not all the [the Jews] were shot to death then, craftsmen – shoemakers, tailors, carpenters and others [remained alive]. 8 of them, headed by Moshe Garbar, remained to work at the … (leatherwork) [in Kunev], the rest were sent to Pluzhnoye to work at a cooperative workshop. … After the liberation [of the area by the Red Army] from the occupiers, the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission [for the Determination and Investigation of Nazi and their Collaborators' Atrocities in the USSR] opened those pits [and] established that many [victims] among those thrown in to the pit died due to suffocation, i.e., they were buried alive. It is difficult to describe all the brutality with which the Jews were treated and the diligence with which the [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen, former neighbors and classmates [of the Jewish victims] carried out the shooting. By these deeds they gained the "right" to pillage Jewish houses. …. Dear brother Froim! As long as you have an opportunity, as long as it is not too late, go to our home [Kunev] and fight for justice. The murderers [i.e. Ukrainian auxiliary policemen] of our parents, relatives, and other Jews should not be allowed to walk freely on the earth and should be subjected to a fair trial. Your loving brother Boris, August 9, 1944, battlefront