Murder Story of Lwów Jews at Kortumowa Gora

...The trucks turned from Janowska onto Pilichowska street and reached the well-known Piaski. The liquidation of the ghetto occurred shortly after the beginning of June. People were already so accustomed to this barbarism and all their feelings had turned to stone so that depicting scenes such as the smashing of an infant's head with a lantern, the burning of people alive in cellars, etc., no longer made any impression on them. On the last day of the ghetto's liquidation we were not allowed to leave the camp to go to work. Being confined behind barbed wire, we saw with our own eyes how elderly people, women, and children taken from the ghetto had to undress completely (the women remained in their underwear), to throw their clothes onto trucks, to line up in fives, and to march in the direction of the ravine behind the camp. The cynicism of the Gestapo men who were guarding them peaked in their forcing the victims to go to their death lined up in groups of five at an arm's length from each another. It was so quiet that one could hear a fly. No one uttered a word. I remember that it was a beautiful, sunny, and warm summer day One column descended to the ravine. Near the wire there was a pretty young woman dressed only in her nightgown: she unconsciously threw back her long hair which had fallen over her face. I will never forget this. Each moment another group of five appeared in the ravine, waited to be shot, and then fell into the fire below. Those who were only wounded fell in and were burned alive....

...The sandy hill in Lvov called in Polish Gora Piaskowa (sand mountain) or simply Piaski (sands) played an important role in the martyrdom of Lvov Jewry. Had these sands been miraculously endowed with the faculty of speech, they doubtless would have related countless Jewish tragedies that took place there. Next to Belzec, these sands served as the largest mass grave of the Jews of Lvov. Usually the Germans brought groups of 150-200 people there. The victims first dug their own graves. Then they were ordered to strip naked and were shot one by one. The phrase "you'll end in the sands" entered common parlance and was used by everyone in a casual fashion. Everyone knew that if not in Belzec, then they would perish there in the sands.... The Janowski camp consisted of three sections. The first section was composed of garages, workshops and offices; Jewish prisoners worked there for the camp management.... The second section was the camp proper...A lower ground led to a narrow opening in the barbed wire. The opening ended with a ball of barbed wire behind which there was a narrow gorge between two hills. All Lvovians knew these hills very well as "Kartumovka." Most of the executions were carried out in this gorge. The policemen would march a group of Jews through the opening in the barbed wire fence to the gorge and shoot them. This narrow passage was nothing less then the last road of the Lvov Jews. Some of the victims were buried in the mass grave right then and there, whereas the bodies of others were burned....

…SS (Gestapo) and Ukrainian police planned the large-scale murder operation well in advance of August [1942]. The Jews still living in their apartments and those living in the ghetto (still an open one) were registered. The skilled workers were issued certificates signed by the SS. These [workers] were still safe from deportation. Those without certificates were, in fact, condemned to death. The city was divided into areas and in each area there were people responsible for taking the Jews from their apartments and transferring them to the Janowska camp…There was a sandy area near Janowska [camp] called in Polish "Piaski." There, in the course of a number of months, thousands of Jews were shot to death… The ghetto was liquidated in June [1943] and all the survivors were transferred to the Janowska camp or were murdered at Piaski.

...The murders were carried out by the standard German method of firing a shot into the back of the head…. The main site of murder was in "The Valley of Death," between the Jewish cemetery and the so-called "Hangman's Hill". All the prisoners dreaded these sand dunes. "Na Piaski" (to the sands) meant death by shooting, followed by the burning of the body….

…In early 1943 the Janowska camp became basically a death camp when thousands of Jews [incarcerated] in it were shot to death in the sandy area around it. In November 1943, after a failed uprising by inmates, the camp was liquidated and the last of its inmates were killed…

…Our fat employer gave precedence to those who still had good suits. He fooled them into giving him the suits in exchange for an exemption from work, and then sent them stripped of everything to Piaski to be shot, first making sure with the Janowska camp authorities that they were not fit to work anymore. I too was taken to Piaski after three days of work. I was driven by truck together with other victims, escorted by a few Ukrainian policemen. The distance between Piaski and our workplace was about 400 meters. On the way I gave the Ukrainians cigarettes and one of them remembered that I had often defended Ukrainians in court. Near Piaski the vehicle stopped and the Ukrainians stepped down to drink something. We were 50 meters from the murder site. I saw behind the fence of the Jewish cemetery the fresh grave of my mother, who had died in June of that year. Not realizing clearly what I was doing, I jumped out of the truck to pray at her grave. After a while, the truck moved on and not one of the guards noticed. No one shot at me. Only the Jews shouted: “Shma, Israel!" and "What are you doing?” They left and after a while I heard the rattling of a machine-gun that was owing down the people who had been my fellow travelers on my short trip....

…The mass executions always took place in Biaski [sic, Piaski]; Jews from the death camp Janowska were shot also there. Execution were carried out solely by [German] urban police and Ukrainian militia….

...I was included in a transport, together with a group of around six thousand people. During the loading at the Kleparowski railway station everyone was forced to completely strip and then loaded, 150 people to a car, into trains that had been prepared in advance. Obviously, this did not proceed without beatings and shootings. I escaped from this transport by breaking a window and I returned to the Lwów ghetto very bruised, as a result of my fall from the speeding train.... After ten days there was the final liquidation of the ghetto and all the workers were sent to Janowska again.... This time the transport was no longer headed for Bełżec. The people had to undress in the camp. They were told to hand over everything they had and, in groups of 100, they were taken to ravines, located about 400 meters from the camp, where shootings were carried out for the whole day….

…In the first weeks after the establishment of a [Jewish] council, it was ordered to collect the entire [local] Jewish intelligentsia; this succeeded with minor exceptions. Afterward, Gestapo men and Ukrainian policemen showed up and took them away to an unknown destination. Later, it was learned that they were taken to Janowskie Piaski, where all of them had to dig their own graves and then were shot; some of them were burned [alive]…

...The Lwow Gestapo employed 500 Jews, including 100 women.... In August 1942 these women were gotten rid of as unneeded by being shot to death at Piaskowa Hill in Lwów. In November 1942 300 Jews with their families, all together about 1,000 people, were shot. The remaining 1,000 Jews were taken to prison; I was among them. In the prison called “Na Łąckie” [the prison on Lacki Street) there were 16 small cells in the basement, rseserved especially for Jews. The cells were for 1 or 2 people, but 40 people were held there.... When the prison was full, an "operation" was carried out: the prisoners were taken by truck to Piaskowa Hill. There they were ordered to take off all their clothes, then to descend to a previously dug mass grave, and to lie facedown. After that, one of the murderers shot the victims. For this job the Germans usually used Ukrainians who wore black uniforms and were called “ravens” because of that. It turned out that some of the victims were only slightly wounded although almost all of them were shot to death. They [the dead and the wounded] were both buried. What was going on down there we could imagine. In this way on September 10, 1942 about 100 people were murdered. My wife and two-year-old child were among them.

…In March or April 1943 the gassing camp in Belzec was at a stage of liquidation which continued for several months. However any groups of Jews from that time on were no longer directed to barracks but they were sent to the camp in which I was an inmate [Janowska camp]. This group of people were unloaded at the camp and driven by the SS and Gestapo people to the neighboring field called Piaski. The field was plowed with deep furrows. The Jews were put at the edge of the furrows lengthwise and in this position they were machine-gunned by the SS and Gestapo people. Many of them were only slightly wounded and after that they were covered by sand. They still struggled under the sand for a certain time in agony. I estimate tens of thousands of Jews were killed there in that manner….

… They took us to Piaski. Thousands of victims were already waiting there to be executed. That very day Warzog took command of the camp. He came to Piaski and carefully looked over the victims. He chose 25 prisoners, including me, and ordered us to be taken back to the camp. I survived by a miracle. Warzog called us “Meine Begnadigungbrigade” [my brigade of those amnestied]; we were selected to get rid of the bodies at Piaski.... Some time later Ziller arrived and said: “rechts um, grade marsch” [turn right, march forward] and then he took us to the murder site. It was a hill in the camp. Below the hill there was a ravine. Everyone had to undress and jump into the ravine, while Ziller shot people on the run. He himself shot the whole brigade of 280 people....