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Murder story of Chocieszów Jews at the Animal Burial Ground in the Chocieszów Area

Murder Site
Chocieszów Area
Poland
Current view of the Animal Burial Ground murder site near Chocieszów
Current view of the Animal Burial Ground murder site near Chocieszów
Sergei Shvardovskii (Ukraine), Copy YVA 14616460
One day, apparently in August 1942, about 150 Jewish residents of Chocieszów (mainly women, children, and elderly people) were taken to a barn, where they were kept for 24 hours under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police. Afterward, with the arrival in the town of a Ukrainian auxiliary police unit from the town of Ratno and, apparently, the chief of the Ratno Gendarmerie (German rural order police), the Jews were taken out of the barn and divided into two groups. The first group, of several dozen Jews, was taken under guard by Ukrainian policemen to the animal burial ground (located north of town), where all of them were forced into a pit and shot to death.
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Semyon Korot, who was born in 1903 in Chociezów and lived there during the war years, testified:
In the late fall of 1942 (I don't remember the exact date) in our village [town], a mass shooting of Soviet Jewish civilians was carried out … at the animal burial grounds. [Before the shooting] Soviet civilians were detained by [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen and Germans and taken to the kolkhoz's storehouse building. Up to 150 Soviet civilians, including women, elderly people, and children, were taken and put into the storehouse. In the middle of the day the [Ukrainian] policemen took a group of approximately 70 Soviet civilians under guard to the animal burial grounds, where all of them were shot to death. Those civilians were guarded by one German, the chief or deputy chief of the [town of] Ratno police [i.e.Gendarmerie] I don't remember his last name, a [Ukrainian] policeman whose name is Dainenko … and other policemen whose names I don't know.
HDASBU, KYIV 21695 copy YVA TR.18 / JM/ 23505
Chocieszów Area
animal burial ground
Murder Site
Poland
51.716;24.790
Current view of the Animal Burial Ground murder site near Chocieszów
Current view of the Animal Burial Ground murder site near Chocieszów
Sergei Shvardovskii (Ukraine), Copy YVA 14616460