Murder story of Ust Labinskaya Jews at the Ust Labinskaya Fortress

In December [1942], the German Fascist occupying authorities and their collaborators began the mass physical extermination of the Soviet citizens who were held in the prison. The Russian POWs were ordered to dig graves, which were ten meters long, four meters wide, and 2.5 meters deep. The graves lay on the grounds of the fortress, northeast of the Kronstadt collective farm, 500 meters from the Kuban River. As soon as the graves were ready, on December 15, 1942, after having robbed the arrested Soviet citizens, the local occupying authorities... perpetrated brutal atrocities against them. Later, they were shot. From the interrogation of several witnesses, the following has been established: 1. In the village of Ust Labinskaya, more than 400 innocent Soviet citizens were tortured and shot. These included 116 men and 194 women, while the rest of the victims were children ranging in age from two months to fifteen years. As for the origin [ethnicity] of the physically exterminated people, thirty-five of them were Russians, while the rest were Jews.... 2. On December 8, 1942, the local police, headed by Rusakov, began to round up the population on the pretext of evacuation. The list of victims includes the Pinkenzon family: the physician V. Pinkenzon, aged forty-five; his father V. Pinkenzon, aged eighty-three; Pinkenzon's mother, aged eighty; Pinkenzon's wife, aged forty, and Pinkenzon's son, aged ten. The Soviet citizens who had assembled at the request of the police were put in the Ust Labinskaya prison, where they were held until December 15. At around 3 PM on that day, the Soviet citizens were taken – in two groups of about 200 people each, under a reinforced convoy led by the prison warden, Bakutin – to a trench. The trench had been dug in advance on the grounds of the fortress northeast of the Kronstadt collective farm. There, they [the victims] were shot.