Murder Story of Ivankov Jews on the Kiev Road

QUESTION: Tell [us] [additional] facts about the annihilation of Soviet people? ANSWER: Early in January [1942] a group of about 30 Soviet citizens, including elderly people, women, and children from Khabnoe [Kaganovich] and Novo-Shepelichi Counties were put onto 6 carts and were handed over to me to be guarded in the detention room. In the morning of the second day the above-mentioned [people] were shot next to a bridge on the Kiev Road…. In late November 1941 a group of 13 Soviet citizens, including… children age 5 to 10, was shot. The adults were guarded by [auxiliary] policemen whose last names I do not remember, while I allocated a cart for the children, and assigned [auxiliary] policemen Izyumenko [?] and Kovalenko to drive them to the shooting site. They were also shot near the Kiev Road next to a bridge….

…As soon as I entered the police service, on the second or third day (it was in late December 1941) I was assigned to guard some arrested people. In the morning, after breakfast, before I left for my duties, Police Chief Golubenko came out… with a rifle in his hands and ordered me to accompany the arrested Soviet citizens sitting on the cart who were to be taken to be shot. The policeman Mikhail Makarenko, armed with a rifle, was already sitting in the front of the cart. QUESTION: When giving you a rifle, did Golubenko tell you that these arrested people were going to be taken to the execution site? ANSWER: No. I asked Golubenko where we were going and he answered: “Get on [the cart] and get going, Makarenko knows where to [go]” and we left. QUESTION: Who were the 6 arrested people you accompanied to be shot. ANSWER: I do not know their last names not do I do not know who they were or where they were from. There were among them an elderly man of about 60, an elderly woman of about 60 (they were husband and wife), a man of about 30, his wife of the same age, and their daughter, a girl of about 5-6, and also a 17 year-old girl. QUESTION: And were all of those you mentioned shot? ANSWER: Yes, all of them were shot. QUESTION: The 6 year-old girl was shot too? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: Name the place where the above-mentioned 6 Soviet civilians were shot. ANSWER: They were shot ½ a kilometer from Ivankov, 60-70 meters to the right of the Kiev Road, in a pine grove. QUESTION: What did the Soviet civilians that you were guarding say to each other before they were shot ? ANSWER: They did not talk to each other; only the 17-year-old girl repeatedly asked me and Makarenko where they were being taken. I told her that I did not know, but Makarenko said: “After you pass the bridge, you will see”. At that moment we were passed by a car in which were riding: the translator of the military commandant’s office named Venger [sic] (an ethnic German), the military commandant Shefer [sic], and 2 other SS men. Then the girl realized that they were being taken to be shot and started to cry bitterly. QUESTION: Where was the car with the Germans heading? ANSWER: To the murder site. QUESTION: Tell us who shot these Soviet people? ANSWER: They were shot by the translator Venger [sic] and by the military commandant Shefer [sic], who were using sub-machineguns… QUESTION: Why in your opinion were those Soviet civilians shot? ANSWER: I think only because they were Jews… QUESTION: Witness, tell us in detail how they were shot. ANSWER: As soon as Makarenko and I brought the guarded people, Makarenko and I were ordered by Venger the translator to step 30 meters away from the pit and raise our rifles with the barrels pointing upward. Two German SS-men stood about 5 meters from us while Vegner and Shefer started shooting. Every person to be shot was forced to his knees and then, facing the pit, was shot in the head with a sub-machinegun. The elderly man and woman were shot first, than a young man and the 17 year-old girl, and the last ones were a mother and her child… QUESTION: What was the behavior of the doomed Soviet people during the shooting? ANSWER: The elderly people and the young man were calm; the girl just cried bitterly, while the young woman, the child’s mother, cried bitterly and said to Venger that she was not Jewish but Ukrainian, and begged for mercy. Venger, however, dragged her forcefully to the pit and Shefer shot her in the back of the head. The child, a girl, cried hysterically and called for her mother and father, especially when her mother, who had been shot, fell into the pit. Vegner then caught her [the girl] by her dress, took her to the pit, threw her on the ground, and then shot her with his sub-machinegun while she was lying there, and [finally] pushed her with his foot into the pit….