Murder story of Tsuraki Jews in the Tsuraki Area

... When the [Nazi] threat hung also over our families there was a good person who warned them that the Germans were coming to Tsuraki to arrest and shoot them. He advised them to find a good place to hide and, thus, to wait out that terrible time. But the Jews did not listen to that advice and remained in the village. In vain - because on the following day local policemen who were killers arrived there. There were three or four of them. They forced all the members of these families into the house of Zlata and Zavel. They took them out one by one to shoot them. First two policemen carried out Zlata under her arms. She screamed in desperation and tore her hair but that didn't have any effect on our enemies. The policemen carried the poor woman across the road, right opposite our house, and placed her at the edge of a pit that had been used to store potatoes. They put her with her back to the house and forced their victim to lower her legs into the pit. One or two of the policemen guarded the others who had been rounded up and were in the house, while two other [policemen] did the shooting. Zlata did not fall into the pit. So one of the policemen went up and pushed the dead woman into it. Then it was Sima's turn. She screamed so loudly that she could be heard even in our house. I was observing through the window and shuddered with terror. My mother, Domna Romanovna Matievskaya, and all the other members of the household (my Father Ilya Grigorevich, who before the war had been chairman of the Molotov Collective Farm, was at the front) also saw and heard all this. They took Sima to the pit. Shots rang out. But she was still alive and cried: 'Finish me off, I'm still alive.' They shot her again. Perhaps, those monsters aimed that way on purpose so that she suffered longer because she was a very beautiful girl. Then it was Basya's turn. The same thing happened with her. Just before the entry of the killers into the village, her mother Zlata brought her daughter to my mother. (Most likely, they [the enemy] knew well who was in the family.) They rushed to search the houses and entered ours. [Her mother said:] 'Romanovna, hide my daughter. Call her Valya. Just in case' she asked. Mama did that, she hid the girl in the cellar of the house. The police noted that one girl was missing. But Mama somehow denied this, 'There was no one here. I didn't see anyone. I don't know anything.' They warned her, saying that if they found the girl in the house they would shoot the whole family. Mama insisted she had not seen anyone, no one was there…. Believing her, the policemen were about to leave but suddenly the voice of Batya was heard from the cellar: 'I am here' the 5-year-old girl revealed herself, quite ignorant of the mortal danger she was submitting herself and others to by this act. To put it briefly, Basya was taken away and shot at the edge of the pit and then this victim was kicked into it. The same fate was also suffered by the female members of another Jewish family. Before this, when the policemen had not yet appeared in the house, one woman who was some kind of relative of either Zlata or Zavel, suggested that the others flee. The men refused. Then, after knocking out the window frame, she fled into the forest. Realizing what was going on, the policemen began to shoot at her. We didn't know then whether she had succeeding in saving her life or not….