Styr River Bank in Boremel Related Communities
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Murder Story of Boremel Jews on the Styr River Bank in Boremel
Murder Site
Styr River Bank in Boremel
Poland
Apparently in late September or early October 1942, the members of the Judenrat were shot dead by the Germans for allegedly failing to comply with the German demand to collect gold and valuable items from the ghetto. The victims were killed at the Volkovnya tract, near the bank of the Styr River.
Most probably in October, upon the orders of Shlitter, the commandant of the town of Boremel, the last Jewish inmates of the ghetto, numbering about 700, were taken by truck, guarded by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen and gendarmes (members of the German rural order police), to the same murder site. Upon their arrival, the Jews had to strip naked, and were then shot dead by the gendarmes (or by Gestapo officers, according to the ChGK document) with machine guns. The ChGK report also states that, during the murder operation, the little children were buried alive, along with their murdered mothers.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
ChGK Soviet Reports
Rachel Kibrik, who lived in Boremel (Michałówka) during the war years, testifies:
…The first victims of the ghetto were the members of the Judenrat: Yitzhak Shek, Yaakov Tragar, Yaakov Pik, Elia Gornstein, Bonie [??] Feldman, Yosef Rayevitz, and Noah Grinberg ([the latter] was fortunate to have died a natural death). His heart could not bear the harsh trial [of the shooting], and he fell dead near the [common] grave. The [German] executioners were thus able to save a bullet, which was more valuable to them than the life of a Jew….
…Eyewitnesses told us [the survivors] how [in October] our [remaining Jewish] martyrs had been taken on their last way, the women separately, and the men separately. They were crying…. The sound of their screams rose in unison, [calling] "Revenge!"…
Rachel Kibrik, "A Cry for Help" [in Yiddish], in Mendel Singer, ed., There Was a Town, the Remembrance Book for the Jewish Communities of Berestechko, Beremel and the Surroundings (Haifa: Irgun yots'ei Berestets'kah be Israel, 1960 or 1961), pp. 20
Styr River Bank in Boremel
Murder Site
Poland
50.466;25.177