Murder Story of Ignatowka Jews in Jaromiel

…On the morning of the 14 of the month of Av [July 28, 1942] we saw an approaching convoy of trucks. They collected [Jews] in [ groups of] 200, besides those who were loaded onto trucks. When the convoy was passing by, Zechariah Antwerg who was then the head of the Judenrat, was standing with his daughter near his house, so he and his daughter were added to the convoy. As a result, he headed it. Including the first group, 2 pits were filled with the murdered [Jews, including him and his daughter]…. 4,000 Jews [were shot to death in those pits], 2,000 in each pit, the bodies were thrown one on top of the other, until the earth couldn't cover the dead. … [since] our house was in the center of town we could see the commotion and what was going on outside, we saw those who went to the pits…. [The Jews] were stripped naked near the pits and forced naked into the pits. The cruel enemy didn't have mercy on anyone without exemption – men, women, little children [were killed] and [afterwards] the Ukrianian [auxiliary police] took away in their clothes all the valuables that [the victims had had] . …

… On July 27, 1942 Ignatowka was surrounded by Gestapo men and Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. When the big [murder] operation began, I and my family went [hid] inside a grain storage silo located 5 meters from our house. When we were there in the silo, we heard Jews screaming from the trucks: " If anyone remains alive, they must avenge us!". We hid for 3 days in the grain silo and then we left for the [nearby] forest. ….

…On one Sunday, a bright summer day, the end came for the two towns [i.e. Zofjowka and Ignatowka]. About 5,000 [sic] people were driven out of their houses and taken to the large mass grave that had been dug near the Pzabraza Polish agricultural colony [i.e. near Jaromiel village], all of them were shot to death there. … During this first murder operation were murdered [the following members of his family]: my mother, my sister Reitsi and her children, my brother Herzi, his wife Shindel and their four children. Our neighbors were also [among the murdered]: Khaim Yankel Feldman and his family, that included Malka his wife, his daughter Rachel and Eli, her husband and their children, and her sister Reizel and her children. That day I and Benjamin Feldman [his friend] were at the home of Yidel the tailor, both of us hid from the murderers in the chimney in the attic. In the evening when it became dark, we got out of the chimney and fled to the nearby forest. …

… On Thursday, early in the morning, Gestapo men [sic for a Gendarmerie unit] entered [the ghetto of Zofiowka] on trucks, began to load the Jews in groups of 20-30 onto the trucks, and took them to the [prepared] pits right behind the town. The slaughter was planned for all the Jews, except for 6-7 Jewish families of tanners who came from our town … . I was the only one from our family who managed to stay alive. Three days after I heard that the murder operation had ended, I went to the town [of Zofiowka] in order to find out whether anyone from my [extended] family had survived. When I reached the town, I saw great destruction; a handful of Jews were [still] alive since they were professionals [i.e. mainly tanners] and had been sent to the ghetto, where I met my grandfather's sister … whose husband was a tanner and this "aunt" told me how my parents and four sisters had been killed. …