Murder Story of Zvenigorodka Jews at the Dubrava Tract

…The remaining inmates of the Smilchintsy concentration camp were transported to the village of Budyshche (Lysyanka County) and then, in the spring of 1943, to the village of Nemorozh. On August 23, 1943, when during the day Gestapo men and auxiliary policemen started to take people to be shot, some of the latter escaped. After collecting the rest, Gestapo men took them to Zvenigorodka and, adding to them the surviving Jewish craftsmen, shot, [all of them] in the Dibrovo [Dubrava] [Forest].

…And in the Zvenigorodka area the Fascists proceeded in the following way: Jews from the neighboring counties of Lysyanka, Vilshana [Olshana], Yekaterinopol, and Shpola, etc., were taken by force under a reinforced guard of [local] policemen and [German] gendarmes to the Zvenigorodka prison. There they were sorted [and] most of them - the elderly, women, teenagers, and children - were taken from the prison, in columns by a reinforced armed guard, to be shot. The mass shooting was carried out by a young executioner, a so-called ethnic German whose last name I do not remember. Before the shooting all the Jews were forced to strip naked and lined up in front of a trench; then this executioner shot them with a machine-gun. The wounded fell into the trench together with those who had been killed and all of them were lightly covered with earth, while their clothes were loaded onto trucks and taken away. The earth in the trench with the bodies was heaving. I was an eyewitness of horrors, of terrible acts, such as when a baby was torn from its mother’s breast and thrown into the body of the covered vehicle, and afterwards its mother [was pushed in]. Old men and women were thrown into the trucks in the following way: policemen took them by their arms and legs and, after one or two swings, the living person was thrown into the body [of the truck] like a log and taken to the trench that had been prepared….

On the night of July 15, 1942 the Fascists and Ukrainian nationalists who became auxiliary policemen, and members of the town administration of Zvenigorodka surrounded the ghetto, driving everyone outside. They put to one side the healthy old people, [and] women from whom their nursing babies were taken, and sent them to the concentration camp at the stone quarry…. The rest were taken to be shot at a pit that had been dug in the Dibrovo [Dubrava] Forest. The existing pit, however, was not large enough for all [of the bodies] so some Gestapo men returned those tormented people [to be killed later]…. On July 16 Gestapo men and auxiliary policemen again took people to be shot, returning them again [to the murder site], but [this time] without the children. Only by July 17 were all of them (8,000 people) shot. The Zvenigorodka ghetto was completely liquidated….

…On the night of July 14, 1942 my mother heard some shouting and the barking of dogs outside. She got me up and we quickly got dressed. She heard banging on the doors of others and on the blackened windows outside. She said [to me]: “Shelya, it is a round-up, they are already taking us away and they are already banging on our [doors]….” We went outside, fully dressed and taking a small pack with us. We lined up. Jews were being taken from all the houses. Whoever did not manage to get dressed, especially elderly people, were beaten. There was shouting, a lot of noise…. This whole crowd of about 2,000 people was taken to the courtyard of the Zvenigorodka prison. We [too] were taken to that courtyard. If I were an artist I would try to depict what I saw there. There were smashed, bloody heads… especially that of one elderly woman, whose nightshirt was bloody. Her head had been smashed and the blood was clotted on her grey, unkempt hair…. My God, it was a St. Bartholomew Night[massacre]! In the morning [auxiliary] policemen came and started to select people. All were lined up. First skilled workers were separated, I do not remember whether it was with their families or not…. [They were] shoemakers and tailors, without whom the town could not exist [and] who were now to serve the Germans. The rest were put into groups of two or three along the wall and the selection started. Those selected for work [had to go] to one side, those unfit for work - children and elderly people - to the other side…. When our turn arrived, as a child I was put on one side and my mother - on the other. Then my mother took me by the hand and, together, we went straight to the Germans. They stood to the side, watching the [auxiliary] policemen tear the children from their mothers’ arms. My mother approached the highest officer - the commandant of Zvenigorodka - and said to him: “My girl is big enough. I am a doctor. Do you have a mother?” He could not stand her persistent gaze and said to her: “Take [her] with you!” In this way I, the smallest one, found myself in the line of the able-bodied people. The gate was opened and we were taken toward Nemorozh….