Murder Story of Ostrov Jews in a Birch Forest in the Pskov Area

... There were numerous Jews living in the town. However, these Jews were not shot in the town but were taken somewhere in the Pskov area. this took place in the following way: in the summer of 1943 (I do not remember exactly when) on Uritsky Street, two [German] trucks arrived at the town center, where the commandant's office was located. These two trucks were full of people - children, women, and old people - of Jewish origin. It turned out all these people had been imprisoned in cellars where some Germans had been living. Then they were loaded onto trucks. First we did not know what was going to be done to them; later we guessed that they had been taken to be shot… What was going on during these several hours is hard to describe. It was simply horrible. German guards were sitting on the trucks boards, Russian guards … did not allow anyone to approach the trucks. If someone tried to pass food to the arrestees, the Germans threw it away. Basically it is impossible to describe this. … There were about 100 people on the trucks, many of them were children. These two trucks headed toward Pskov under guard…. Peasants who came to Ostrov from the Pskov area later said that those Jews were shot somewhere in a birch forest near the town of Pskov.