Murder story of Kowel Jews at the Sand Quarry in the Bachów Area

On June 1 or 2, 1942 the head of the Judenrat, Wili Pomerantz, received an order to compile a list of those Jews living in the old city ghetto who were not to be deported and, thus, were required to move to the new city ghetto. The same evening members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police received an order to come to the Gendarmerie post. They were held hostage there and then ordered to go on the next day to the ghetto in the old city and announce to the Jews incarcerated there that they were going to be sent to work in the East. Early in the morning members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police and the Gendarmerie surrounded the "useless" ghetto. Members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police, accompanied by German and Ukrainian policemen, went from house to house and drove the Jews out onto the street. The Jewish residents, mainly women, children, and elderly people, thus had to leave their homes immediately, with little baggage and food for only several days. From there they were taken to the market square situated on Brest (Brześć) Street. Those who tried to hide but were found, as well as the elderly, sick people, and children, who couldn't line up quickly enough or lagged behind during the procession, were shot to death on the spot. According to one testimony, upon arriving at the square, the Jews had to put their gold and their paper money into a box that had been placed there. During the round up at the square 300 Jews were shot to death. They were later buried at the Jewish cemetery of Kowel. Then the rest of the Jews were taken by truck or on foot, under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary policemen, to the railroad station and from there by freight train to a sand quarry near Bachów village, located 7 kilometers northeast of Kowel. Upon their arrival at the site the victims were ordered to strip naked and forced in groups into pits, where they were shot with submachine-guns in the back of the head by German policemen and a Security Polie unit. At the murder site, according to several testimonies, before being shot, Yosef Averbuch, a teacher at the former Hebrew gymnasium, gave a speech in which he condemned the Germans for killing the Jews, anticipated their fall, and calling for revenge. Soviet prisoners of war covered the pit with earth and, later, with chlorine and lime. After the shooting a freight train took the clothing of the victims back to the Kowel railway station where, after the clothing was unloaded, the train was filled with new victims, who were taken in their turn to the murder site. Among the several thousand murdered Jews were some members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police, and Mauricio Maizel, the last head of the Warsaw Jewish community. This murder operation lasted three days.

On August 19, 1942 German and Ukrainian auxiliary police surrounded the ghetto of the old town, where shortly before this several thousand working Jews and their families had been resettled from the ghetto in the new city. The Jewish workers and their families were also collected at the Market Square on Brisk Street and then taken, under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police, by truck and then by train to the Bachów murder site, where they were shot to death by an SD unit. These two murder operations were headed and carried out by the Gebietskommissar of Kowel Erich Kassner, the head of Kowel's regional order police (Gendarmerie) Philipp Rapp, and the head of the Kowel German urban police (Schutzpolizei) Fritz Manthei. Afterwards the Germans put signs saying "Beware Mines!" around the murder site in order to prevent the local population from approaching it.