Murder story of Elista Jews in the Gashun Ravine

As soon as the German–Fascist occupiers entered the area of the town they began to brutally abuse the Jews who lived in Elista town. …These abuses concluded with the complete extermination of the Jewish population of the town of Elista.… Two days after their [the Germans'] arrival in the town the Gestapo headquarters staff collected all the Jews and announced that they would be relocated to Ukraine, to towns specially designated for Jews. Trucks arrived immediately. Before loading the Jews onto the trucks, the German cannibals searched the Jews, demanding gold, silver, and other valuables from each of them. That way the Hitlerites took from [the Jews] many valuables and looted them. The rest of their everyday possessions, mostly clothes, were loaded onto special trucks. The Jews were loaded onto buses and driven to the area of the former town dump behind the airport. On September 9, 1942 at noon all the Jews, including old women, old men, women, and children, were lined up at the edge of four pits that had been prepared in advance. A detachment from the 16th Mechanized Division began to commit atrocities: first, the German executioners selected the children, including infants, from the group. They were taken to pits and their lips were smeared with some poisonous substance. That way the Hitlerists annihilated all the innocent Jewish children. After that the Hitlerite villains shot all the adult Jews with submachine-guns. According to witness testimony among those buried were half-dead people, who continued to moan and scream. Among the shooting victims were Chaya Yankelevna Vayner, 74 years old, Revekka Solomonova, 56 years old, the Kaplan family – the husband, the wife, and her daughter; Mariya Davydovna Gerkevich [Gershkovich]; and others.