Murder story of Krzemieniec Jews in the Prison in Krzemieniec

August 19, 1942 They [Jews] were being taken to the prison, a few trucks a day. These were the people who were found hiding in cellars. … As I'm writing I hear shots coming from the prison. Another one! Perhaps this one was aimed at F. [Frida, his friend]? In that case, she is better off now. No, she is neither better nor worse off then. I can't imagine – F., naked, with her body covered in lime. Wounds. Lying under a pile of similar bodies. Such horror, such abominable horror! … August 21, 1942 Yesterday they [Germans] executed everyone that had crammed into the prison. A five-ton truck that pulled out of the prison, filled with shoes all the way to the brim is the only thing that lets one estimate the number of the massacred. So F. died yesterday.… September 21, 1942 The massacre of Jews has been going on now for over a month and a half. Since early this morning again I can hear the firing of machine guns and occasional rifle shots coming from the side of the prison. They say there are approximately 200 people who are still in prison – craftsmen and professional workers.…

In order to make it easier for them [after the mass killing of August 10th and 11th 1942] to find the people who were hiding in the bunkers, the Nazis spread the rumor that the handful of people who survived would not be executed, but rather would remain alive in order to sort out the property of the Jews who had been murdered [at the shooting range]…. Accompanied by Germans and Ukrainians [and some surviving Jewsremaining] people went through the houses [in the ghetto] and shouted outloud [in Yiddish]: Jews get out! No one wwill be touched! It is necessary only to go for work!". Many [Jews] who heard the Yiddish, or recognized the voice of a familiar Jew, left their hiding places. They were collected and taken to prison. After they had finished the job of burying many dead people whose bodies were scattered through the streets [of the ghetto] - all of them were killed in the prison yard.… Those who were left in the prison in Krzemieniec after the murder operation in the ghetto, experienced much suffering. Hungry and filthy after being in their shelters for a long time, they [the Jews who had been caught in hiding] were taken to the prison and there awaited their death. The murderers waited until the number [of Jews each time] reached the hundreds. They [Jews] were kept day and night on the ground, in the heat of the sun and the coldness of the night, without food or water, with the babies crying bitterly, until the pitiful end came. They were shot to death in the pits that had been prepared in the prison area. [Later,] these pits were plowed and became a garden so that the burial place wasn no longer known.…

During the Soviet time [i.e. Soviet rule from 1939 until 1941] many Ukrainian nationalists were held in the [town] prison. [Some] Jews were also held there, after having been charged with speculation. When the Soviet army began to retreat from the town [after the German invasion of the Soviet Union], they killed all the Ukrainian prisoners, while the Jews were released. The Ukrainian [prisoners] were apparently poisoned and buried in some storehouse in the prison yard. When the Germans entered [the town], they found out [that the Ukrainian nationalists had been killed] since the relatives [of those killed] had began to serch for the prisoners. Their bodies were found inside the storehouse and then hell broke loose in the town. The Ukrainians caught Jews and forced them to dug up and remove the bodies [of the Ukrainian prisoners], while at the same time [the Germans] were beating them [the Jews] without mercy. On one day [sic] 600 Jews were killed [in the prison] and there was a large number of wounded. Along with my brother Volf Shaya and his wife. I was caught [by the Germans], but we succeeded in slipping away from there [i.e. prison]. We were saved by a non-Jew who told [the Germans] that he knew us and that we were wealthy and had no connection to the Communists. The leg of my sister-in-law was broken by being struck with a pole and she run home on one leg. The Ukrainians were taking revenge on us in a terrible way. When they were beating us, they said "this is for the soap" or "for the sugar." This was due to the fact that during the Soviet time sometimes a Jew might have pushed a Ukrainian out of the line to the grocery store since [then] food was distributed according to the ration cards. The Ukrainians wore their national costume and said that in [the city of] Lwów there was a Ukrainian legion and that now Ukraine would be an independent state. This murder operation lasted for 24 hours and then all became quiet. People said that Dr. Katz, the secretary of the Jewish community [of Krzemieniec], had gone to the German Gebietskommissar [military regional governor of Krzemieniec] Fritz Müller and that the latter helped to calm things down a bit.

The day after the German occupation of the town [July 1941], a rumor was spread that, before their retreat, the Russians [Soviets] had killed 60 [sic] Ukrainian nationalists in the [local] prison. Therefore, revenge would be taken against the Jews of the town since it was "known" that they were all Communists. And, indeed, a pogrom broke out on the same day. The non-Jews gathered and entered the town … equipped with iron poles and other types of weapon. They went from house to house, plundering and looting, took hundreds of people [Jews] to the big prison, while beating and wounding them without mercy. In the prison [the Jews] were made to wash the bodies of the murdered Ukrainians and, afterward, [Germans] ordered [the Jews] to dig graves for themselves near the prison and to lie down ins them. German soldiers went through from one pit to another and killed [the Jews] by shooting [them]. During this murder operation about 400 to 500 people [Jews] were killed. The pogrom lasted for three days, then an order was given to stop the killing.… … Finally, only 200 out of [1,500 specialists] who had survived [the mass shooting of Krzemieniec Jews in August 1942], were taken to the [town] prison and kept there for some time, … until they were executed too and buried in the prison yard. This was also an end of the "artel" [cooperative] workers. They were kept in the prison in a special section, were taken for work and taken back [from work] every day. the Germans told them that they would be left alive and, even though it might sound strange – they [Jews] believed this and did nothing to save their lives…. Finally the Germans announced that since the Jews themselves had burned down the ghetto, there was no longer a place where the "artel" [workers] could be taken back to and, therefore, they would be liquidated as well. And, indeed, shortly afterward they were executed in the prison yard and buried there. [Thus], the last "transports" [of the ghetto's inmates] and some Jews who had been recently caught in hiding, as well as the "artel" workers and some others – were not taken to the trenches [i.e. shooting range], but rather to the prison, where they were murdered and buried in the [prison] yard. It is estimated that about 2,000 [Jews] are buried there.…