Murder Story of Krasnoarmeysk Jews at Lysaya Gora in the Yagodenka Area

... It was near the village of Yagodenka. I saw a truck…. There was a German with a machine gun. There were many people loaded on it -- children, men, women.… We hid in the bushes. We heard people yelling, and heard the sound of shooting…. People ran away…. As soon as they came [to the place], they were forced to dig a pit…. They ran away through the fields, they tried to escape, and they [the Nazis] shot them. Two people were left alive, and then they took them [the ones they had shot] by their legs and arms and threw them into the pit.… And the two last ones were buried. The soil was moving even on the next day. I did not go there then. I do not remember who told me about that. I went there back later, maybe on the third day.... The earth was cracked, and blood was flowing out. I saw the cracks and the blood. I think it was in the fall…. It lasted about an hour. There were Jews from all over the county; lots of them were taken. This was 3-5 kilometers from Chervonoarmeysk. I saw the shooting only on that day; it lasted about an hour. There could have been more shootings. The Germans were not numerous. I remember one with a submachine gun.....

On the next day, everyone was loaded into trucks; we were forced inside and told we would be taken to do road construction work. I was not longer able to go on foot. The trucks reached the Kiev – Lwow highway; at the village of Yagodenka, the trucks turned left, and after the Jewish cemetery -- to the right. Then, the trucks stopped. We were taken to a field. There, I saw two pits that had been dug. In one of them, the smaller one, I noticed women's hair barely covered with soil. Prior to collecting the men, the Germans had rounded up beautiful tall Jewish and Russian girls. They were told that they would be taken to Germany for work. "Here are these girls" I understood. It is frightening to remember the things that began afterwards. Wicked German shepherd dogs tore the people into pieces, the weak old people, the children. As I would learn later on, Red Army soldiers, POWs, had dug the pits; they were also shot not far from that place. Now, a small forest grows there. Until now, no one knows exactly how many people were shot there…. Here, the shooting began. The old people, some of them wearing talesim [prayer shawls], were thrown straight into the pit. Some people had gold teeth and rings, and the Germans did not rob those people; it was the policemen who cut off their fingers to get to their rings, and knocked out their gold teeth with bayonets. Only then did they shoot the people to death. Many of them were thrown [into the pit] while still alive or bayoneted. The Germans finished the people off by shooting straight into the pit. My father and his two brothers, my cousin, Dudyk's son, and some other man were taken aside…. These people were forced to cover the pit containing those who had been shot, and were often still alive. Then, they [the buriers] were ordered to dig a pit for themselves there, next to the triangulation point. ...There were almost no men there, most of them had been shot by that time (July 1941).… That is the way we lived [in the ghetto] until December 21, 1941. The winter was severe and the frost bitter. It was about four o'clock in the morning. Everyone was awakened and taken outside. Someone spread the rumor that the Jews were going to be sent to Palestine. The old people went covered with their talesim, praying. There were many policemen and Germans; they began to form [the Jews into] a column and opened the barbed wire [fence]. Something horrible began. The [local non-Jewish] people learned from somewhere that the ghetto was going to be liquidated. The peasants from the village hurried to reach [the column]. They snatched the shawls from the women's heads, grabbed clothing bundles from people's hands, took away everything they could. We could not take our belongings with us, we took only bundles with the most necessary things. The Germans announced loudly that we had to go toward the station, and from there were would be taken to Palestine. If someone was unable to go on foot, they would immediately be shot or bayoneted, and thrown onto the sleigh that followed us. Something unimaginable was going on in the column. Crying, yelling, screaming, praying – everything was mixed together. We were taken beyond the village. When we reached the old Jewish cemetery near the village of Yagodenka and turned right, I understood that we were being taken to the shooting site, as I had been there before and had seen what happened…. We passed the pit where the men had been buried. Next to it was the pit meant for us.… On top of the pit, there stood Germans and policemen with submachine guns. There was nowhere to escape to. The people had dogs set upon them. Something hard to imagine was going on…. It is impossible to describe the screaming, the yelling, the tears. [The people] shouted out their children's names. There were women with young infants in their arms. The babies were snatched from their mothers' arms and thrown into the pit alive. I do not know how long this went on. When we were next to the pit, it was sunrise. It was all over several hours later. It began to snow. I had nowhere to run to. They shot me in the back, and I fell into the pit. I do not remember how I remained alive. I do not remember how many people fell on top of me; there was blood running all around me. The shooting wound down; the policemen fired several final shots into the pit. Since I heard this, that means that I was still alive. All my senses became blurred. I could think of nothing but how to get out of that horrifying pit. At that moment, they began to cover the pit with earth. The policemen shouted; they were apparently unwilling to cover [the pit]; their drunk curses could be heard….