Murder story of Cherkessk Jews in the Sadkoopkhoz Area (Gas Vans)

September 28, 1942: Starting from this morning the Cherkessk railway station was surrounded by members of the Gendarmeries and the police….By 10 o'clock a large group of Jews was collected at the railway station. They are mostly old people, women, and children. Lanky men from the fifth department of the railway police are bustling around: they are taking away the people's sacks, suitcases, and bags. They are telling the people to put their last names on their baggage. Then everything is taken away to the station building (the warehouse is located there). The doomed people are put into the railroad employees' club. There they are forced to undress and divided into groups of 20 – 25. [Then] they are taken behind the building where two trucks with tightly closed bodies are standing; the people are being pushed inside in a rough manner. Their shouts are not heard because of the engines roaring and the double-thick cover of the trucks' bodies. The trucks leave but soon return for new victims. This lasts until midnight. …The operation is supervised by the German officers Captains Tayke and Mayding, together with the Gestapo head First Lieutenant Pauk…After the liberation of Cherkessk the [State Extraordinary ] Commission opened many pits containing the bodies of the civilians who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in the area of the former gardens of Sadkoopkhoz and on the territory of the molokosovkhoz [milk production state farm]. ...In different documents the number [of victims] varies from 820 to 1,530.