Murder Story of Lysyanka Jews in Pochapintsy 

…[I]n the fall of 1941 Kolomiets, armed with a rifle and with a shovel, participated, together with other policemen from Lysyanka County, conveyed under guard about 30 Soviet civilians of Jewish origin to the Burdyugovo Forest to be shot. However, Kolomiets was not in the forest during the shooting; he stayed behind because the cart [in which he was riding] broke down and, therefore, he arrived at the [shooting] site after the shooting. This part of the indictment is corroborated by the testimonies of Kolomiets [himself] and of the witness A.A. Trush, who testified that she personally saw policemen conveying Soviet civilians under guard past her house to the forest and that the defendant Kolomiets left her a harness, and headed to the forest with his shovel, telling her… that he "was going to the forest where the Jews were being taken to be shot"… According to Kolomiets's testimony, he arrived with a shovel at the forest, at a pit that was filled with the [bodies] of Soviet civilians who had been shot by the Germans and he saw policemen finishing off moaning Soviet civilians who had been thrown into the pit. In March 1942 Kolomiets, again armed with a rifle, together with other policemen from the Lysyanka County police, took part in conveying under guard 40 Soviet civilians of Jewish and Gypsy origin - including women, children, and elderly people - to the same Burdyugovo Forest to be shot. This group [of people to be shot] included the former deputy chairman of the Lysyanka County executive committee Vasiliy Fyodorovich Shulga, the former chairman of the collective farm in the village of Lysyanka Ignat Varfolomeevich Logvinov, and the former secretary of the rural council of the village of Lysyanka Maxim Nikolaevich Sych. When he was in the Burdyugovo Forest Kolomiets, together with several [other] policemen, guarded the Soviet civilians mentioned above, to prevent them from escaping. Afterwards, the Germans took 5-7 people [at a time] from the guarded group to the pit and shot them until all the members of the group of 40 people mentioned above were killed. The participation of Kolomiets in this atrocity is corroborated by his own testimony…

…I remember that in the fall of 1941, I do not remember the month, members of the Lysyanka County police took under guard by cart about 30 Soviet civilians of Jewish origin to the Burdyugovo [Bordyugovo] Forest. Being a policeman, I was among the guards armed with a rifle. I was in a cart with the policeman Andrei Teliga and an investigator (I do not know his last or first name), but our cart broke down. So we unharnessed the horses, which were mounted by Teliga and the investigator, who rode after the guards, while I stayed back, bringing the harness to the house of citizen Alexandra Trush, who was living about three hundred meters from the road. I left the harness at her home and myself went to the Burdyugovo [Bordyugovo] Forest after the [other] guards…When I got to the Burdyugovo [Bordyugovo] Forest, all the Jews had already been shot and their bodies thrown into a pit. Only the clothes of the Jews lay near the pit since before the shooting they [the Jews] had been forced to strip. The body of an old Jewish woman was lying near the pit. She had fainted before reaching the pit and was shot while she was lying on the ground. In my presence one of the policemen took the body of this old woman and pushed it into the pit… In March 1942 policemen from the Lysyanka County police for the second time conveyed under guard about 40 Soviet civilians of Jewish origin. There were also Gypsies together with the Jews and I also remember well that former deputy chairman of the county executive committee Shulga, former collective farm chairman Loginov, and the secretary of the rural council Maxim Sych were being guarded together with the Jews and Gypsies. Being a policeman, I was also among the guards and armed with a rifle. When those who had been collected were taken to the Burdyugovo [Bordyugovo] Forest, in the forest we policemen surrounded those who had been taken - to prevent their escape, while three [German] gendarmes and the police chief…went into the forest to check the pit. After some time, they ordered eight or ten of those taken to be brought to the pit. Shulga, Logvinov, and Sych were taken first. Now I cannot recall which of the policemen took them, while I myself stayed to guard the remaining collected people who, after realizing that they were going to be shot, started to cry, tear out their hair, and cry for help. When the first group was taken to the pit, submachine-gun fire was heard and those who had been shot fell into the pit. As soon as the shooting was over, I immediately went home. I do not know who covered the pit. [The victims] were not stripped of their clothes during the shooting, they were shot while still dressed….

…At the time of the German occupation the German-Ukrainian murderers-the county police - set up a concentration camp in the village of Budyshche into which the county's Jewish population was herded. This was a stable. There was herded all the Jewish population from the [county] seat Lysyanka. There policemen kept them under tight control. They were sick from hunger and cold; they were driven 20 kilometers to [carry out] heavy, exhausting earth and road [construction] work… After severe suffering in this concentration camp, those who had become unfit for work were taken to the forest at the Bordyugovo Tract and locked inside a hut, where a collective farm forest guard had been living before the war. From there they were taken out in groups of ten and shot, while the small children were thrown alive into a deep well which was there, near the hut….

…In the fall of 1941, I think in November 1941, I was ordered, I don't remember by whom, to harness a cart and to bring it to the Lysyanka County police [station]. I remember that when I approached the…police [building] three or four carts were already waiting there. As far as I remember, Semyon Zhila (I do not know his patronymic) was one of the cart drivers, the drivers of the rest of the carts were young guys and I do not remember them. [When we were] at the county police [station], some policemen took out about 30 Soviet civilians of Jewish origin, including elderly people, and nursing infants and school children. Those collected were put onto carts. About ten people were put onto my cart and the rest were put onto other carts and guarded by policemen, who were in front, behind, and on the sides. We drove along the road to the town of Korsun because we had been first told that we were taking them [the Jews] to the town of Korsun. However, when we approached Burdyugovo Forest, the policemen stopped the cart, unloaded all the Jews, and took them into the forest, while we were ordered to drive to the side and wait for [further] orders. We drove aside and, after some time, heard cries, weeping, and moaning of the Jews. We also heard shots being fired. We heard this for about two hours and afterwards all became quiet. Then, with our carts, we were called to the pit, where the shooting had been carried out. When we approached the pit, I saw blood around it, while the bodies were lying in the pit…I looked into the pit and saw there the naked bodies of the Jews. At the pit we were ordered to load onto our carts the clothes that the policemen had taken from the Jews before the shooting. We loaded the clothes onto the carts and brought them to the Lysyanka County police station, where we unloaded them and drove away...