During the night before the murder operation, the Germans scoured the town for Jewish civilians. The Jews were arrested and taken to the former civil registration office in Kurgannaya. That same day, between 3-4 PM, the Jews were taken by truck in the direction of the village of Mikhailovskaya, north of Kurgannaya. There was an unfinished anti-tank trench there, next to the Molotov collective farm. The arrestees had to hand over their clothes and valuables to the Germans, and then they were shot to death in the trench.
After the liberation of the town, 750 bodies were found in several pits around Kurgannaya; one of the pits was the anti-tank trench in the field of the Molotov collective farm.
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ChGK Soviet Reports
Anna Babicheva, who was born in 1918 and lived in Kurgannaya during the war years, testified:
The Germans and their collaborators herded all the Jews into the former civil registration office on Rosa Luxemburg Street. Then, in the afternoon, around 3-4 PM, they were loaded onto trucks and taken in the direction of the village of Mikhaylovskaya. On that day, a team of Molotov collective farm employees who had been working on the plot of land near the anti-tank trenches were forced to leave their workplace earlier than usual, so that they would not witness the terrible atrocities.
The area where the shooting took place was cordoned off by the police and the Gendarmerie. None of the local civilians were allowed to approach the site.
While being loaded onto the trucks, the Jews were crying and begging for mercy, but the perpetrators tricked these people; they told < the Jews> that they would not be taken to be shot, but sent to their motherland. I do not know who actually transported the Jews to the shooting site.