Murder Story of Krzemieniec Jews at the Yakutsk Regiment in Krzemieniec

August 11, 1942 The final act of tragedy in our town is about to end. I am writing about the events of yesterday that I pieced together from several witnesses to whom I've talked. I couldn't do it last night; I couldn’t find enough strength in myself to do it. Approximately 5,000 people were shot and killed yesterday. Outside town there is an old trench, about a mile long. This was a trench of the Yakutsky Regiment that was encamped by Kremenets in the Czarist times. Yesterday's execution was held there. They began taking people out of the ghetto at approximately 3 a.m. and it lasted until late at night. The scene is horrible! The ghetto gates were wide open, and a line of the doomed began from there, in rows of two. A truck pulled up, and the line slowly and silently moved onto the truck. The first pairs got down on the bottom of the truck, those following got on top of the first, and so on, in human layers. It was done in total silence: no talking, no screaming, and no crying. The schutzmänner [Ukrainian auxiliary policemen], who were absolutely drunk, were using rifle butts to hurry people who were late or slow, and used them to ram people who were already at the back of the truck. The truck pulled off, sped up, and left town. Similar trucks with high-boarded sides returned to town loaded with clothes. A "militiaman" was riding on them, sitting atop the pile of clothes, with a happy look on his face. He was playing with a ladies umbrella. His contented looks could be explained easily: he has pocketful of watches, five pens, and he left a few suits and an astrakhan fur coat on the way here, in a safe place. Moreover, he must have drunk a liter of vodka. Once outside the town, the truck sped toward the trench. From time to time four Schutzmänner standing in the corners of the back of the truck, swore and hit those who were lying down on their backs with rifle butts. Thus finally they reached the destination. The truck stopped and the doomed people slowly got off it. Taking their clothes off right there, the men and women proceeded to the ditch one by one. The ditch was already filled with bodies of people and chloride lime had been sprinkled on them. Two Gestapo men, naked down to their waists, sat on the top of the mound holding guns in their hands. People got down into the ditch and laid down on the dead bodies. Gunshots followed. It was all over. Next! I don't know what a person might feel in his or her last moment; I don't even want to think about it. One could go insane. There were some who tried to resist, who didn't want to take their clothes off, who didn't want to get down into the ditch. They were executed on the spot and thrown into the pit. When the pit was filled full, the militia [Ukrainian auxiliary men] covered the bodies with ground. The line moved on to another pit; there was plenty of room for everyone. Now one person, naked, set off running across the field. The Gestapo men just sneered, watching him. He crossed some 200 yards when the Gestapo calmly aimed and began shooting at him. A few minutes later his body was thrown into the pit as well. There was a man who was chewing on a piece of bread while walking to the pit. The militiamen who were the only witnesses of this horror sobered up after a few minutes there. They were fueled with a new dose of alcohol. The Gestapo men did not need alcohol. It was not their first time. … The trucks rolled one after another. It was evening, and they were not as full – women, young girls and children sat at the bottom. One girl smiled a meaningless smile. Another straightened her shawl on her head. In ten minutes you will be killed. Do you understand it? Why don’t you fight back? No. The victims were filled with apathy; all they wanted is for this terror to end soon, as soon as possible. This was the effect of the starvation and beatings. Here was Arek Z., a friend of mine, going on a truck. He sat at the end, his head hanging out of the side of the truck and he watched the cobble-stones of the pavement flickering under the wheels. Every stone brought him closer to his final destination; it brought a person who hasn't lived closer to the end of his life. I will never forget his face; the face of someone who knew that in a few minutes he would be dead, and in an hour his body decomposing with lime, would be covered by another layer of dead human bodies. One would have to be in these people's shoes to feel everything that they felt – at least those of them that were still able to feel and think.… The horror comes to an end.… Occasional shots are heard [inside the ghetto] and occasional trucks run outside of the town where the last ones are being executed. They are the last ones who have been hiding in basements hoping to save their lives. They will have one advantage only – their bodies will be buried close to the surface. Fifteen hundred people who were taken the day before yesterday out to Belokrinitsa [Bialokrynica] were also killed. They were killed because they attempted to reach some kind of deal. Setting terms to the superior German race! They were supposed to come out today and work like they would normally do at 7 a.m., and they said that they would do so only if their families were spared and returned to them. That "if" killed them all.… 14 August 1942 … Last time they [Gestapo men] were back in town. That's why today was marked with killing another 1,500 people [at the same murder site]. They had been found over the three days – hiding in cellars and basements.… Last night the shooting went on for two hours, non-stop, just like in June last year.…

At night, … on August 10th [1942] the Jews of the ghetto were frightened … by the thunder of shooting that emerged from all around the ghetto. At first deathly silence prevailed. People ran to hide in the darknerss of the night…. The shooting was continuing and becoming stronger from minute to minute, the bullets were flying from side to side.… The murderers were impatient. They destroyed the ghetto fence and brike into the Jewish houses in order to loot and plunder. While doing so, [they] were shooting and wounding right and left, everywhere, and the first people were already falling dead and panic erupted in the ghetto.… Everyone broke into bunkers. Others were climbing up to attics to see what was going on outside the ghetto.… The people were running around like they were crazy. Shouting and screaming.… Dawn was breaking. Everybody knews that annihilation was near. Information was being received that 60 Nazi Gendarmerie men [German rural order police] had broken into the ghetto, together with an SS Ukrainian company [sic for Ukrainian auxiliary police]…. A Jewish policeman who was removed by them from [guarding] the gate related that they [Germans] had fired shots on purpose in the ghetto and falsely accused the Jews of having revolted – and that served as a pretext for the liquidation of the ghetto. They [the Germans] immediately demanded that the Jewish council send all those eligible for work to the gate [of the ghetto -- supposedly to employ them. The Judenrat had called on the [Jewish] population but only a handful of people responded to the call and went to the gate. At the gate a group of Germans, some of them in SS uniforms, were standing, carrying out a selection. According to the work-permits they [the Germans] were deciding – whether or not to allow [someone] to exit from the ghetto or not. As time passed, more and more people arrived to the gate, until almost all the population [of the ghetto] was assembled, the elderly and the young, including people with children in their arms. The [first] line stretched from the Great Synagogue … until the street of the tailors. The second line stretched from the Great Synagogue along Gorna Street. The Ukrainians [i.e. auxiliary policemen] were standing on both sides, between the Jewish lines.… The people were forced toward the gate, and everyone believed that that would be his salvation. Even the sick ... were getting out of their beds. A selection was going on. The lucky ones were taken outside the gate and, in groups of 400, were taken under reinforced guard to the [nearby village] Bialokrynica. Some people were trying to escape. The Ukrainians [Ukrainian policemen] were chasing them, killing them by shooting and removing the clothes from the dead.… On the way [to Bialokrynica]… I could see… Sonya Goldenberg, Shpigel, and Gurevich, being pushed by a Ukrainian policeman who was beating her with his rifle butt. In her arms she is holding her child, who is looking at his mother with swollen eyes.... … After the first day's selection in the ghetto and after some people had been taken to Bialokrynica, the rest sought shelter in bunkers. It is obvious that not everyone had a bunker. Among the first victims to be taken for annihilation were the residents of "the Grand Hotel" [poor people who had been living in a former hotel] and patients from the [local] hospital. Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen and German Gendarmerie men forced them into the [Great] Synagogue square and, from there, [they] were taken, by truck and even on foot, to barracks in the vicimity of large trenches from World War I. The people were beaten and forced to strip naked and then to lie down in rows inside the pit. An SS murderer was sitting near a table and aiming volleys of bullets at them. Those who had not been wounded by bullets were killed by the Ukrainian policemen who were positioned around the pit. The screaming of adults and children could be heard from far away. Every row of murdered [victims] was covered with several shovels of earth and with a layer of lime; among them also were bodies that were still twitching while dying and their blood was … seeping from under the earth and the lime. More victims were piled on top of them.… Some tried to escape even though they were naked, but they were fell from bullets fired by the murderers. Those who were [still] alive were forced to carry [the bodies] of the murder victims to the pits and then to lie down next to them. After the mass killing, the German and Ukrainian policemen searched for those who were hiding in bunkers. It is clear that even with the greatest precautions people could not control their children who were crying out of fear or hunger and, thus, all those who had been hiding were found and were forced, by explosives or other means, to emerge from their hiding place and proceed toward their death.… Some people poisoned themselves and their family members in order not to fall into the hands of the murderers…. During the selection men, women, and children were separated. When[several] children were found with the men, they [the Germans] fell upon the pounced fiercely on the former. Two children clung to their father. The big sister was pleading with the murderers to let her say farewell to her mother. They let her do so. After she had said farewell to her father, she approached her mother and bade her farewell also. After that, quiet and pale, the went with a row of children who were being forced into a truck. One small child was holding on to … his father and screaming: "Daddy, I don't want to go! Then one of the murders rushed up, kicked the boy toward a second murderer, and the second [murderer] to a third – and, in that way, he was thrown… over the heads of the children who were standing crowded in the truck.

...It was on a Sunday. Our ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire and a wooden fence 2.5 meters high. Suddenly they [the Germans] shot into the ghetto. Panic arose. The Germans arrived by truck and began to take the Jews [from the ghetto]. Every family was ordered to report [at the gates] and we were photographed (perhaps they wanted to show people in Germany how many Jews they killed). Afterward, everyone was taken to prison. When a certain number of people had been collected, they [the Germans] took them [the ghetto inmates] outside of town and shot them all to death. I was taken together with the family of my brother Faivel. We were photographed and, afterward, selected to be taken away. We were standing near the synagogue waiting for the truck that was goingto take us [to the murder site]. I noticed a tiny store near the synagogue, its door was open. Suddenly, I realized that no one was paying attention to me so I jumped into the store. There was a bed there and an old lady was lying ins it. "Girl, hide under the bed" she said. I crawled under the bed and covered myself with a tin bathtub. At night the woman told me that two Jewish families were hiding in the attic and that I should join them. I did. The next day some Germans came to the store and took away the old lady. There were eight of us in the attic. During the day we were lay quietly; at night we went out to look for some food.… One day a non-Jew heard the crying of one of the children from our hiding place and brought Gendarmerie men to us. We were loaded onto trucks. I took a ring off my finger and gave it to a Ukrainian policeman so he would let me jump off [the truck]. [Instead] he said that if I jumped off he would shoot me immediately. [He said] that it would be better for me to escape from the prison if I wanted to try to escape. The Jews who had been taken from [different] hideouts were collected in the prison yard and, when the quota had been filled, they were all taken to the edge of the town and murdered there. I was held there [in prison] for 8 days and, during all that time, additional people were brought there. We were not given any food. Non-Jews brought us bread; we had to pay 5 rubles per loaf. The non-Jews were carrying on business. I bought bread and divided it among the children. Where did I get the money from? Among the Jews who had been doomed to be executed was my cousin Ishak Bisnovski. He asked one of the Ukrainians [the guards] to allow him to say farewell to me. This permission was given: when I approached him [Ishak], he passed me a sock, a little package containing some gold. Beside, I had inside my sock a few [grams] of gold that I had received from my mother. My mother gave it to me before her death! One young man named Azriel Goldman asked me for a little slice of bread for his little girl. I told him that I was going to escape [from the prison] that night. He told me that he had a non-Jewish acquaintance who would agree to take in a Jew, but that I would have to . He[Ishak] added that his friend Dudek Bialogoz was also involved in this. We agreed that we would escape together. They would provide a hiding place and I would give money to the non-Jew. When a Jew would die, the Ukrainians [guards]would leave his body next to the prison fence and when some additional victims were added, they were taken by truck [to the murder site]. We agreed that we would jump through the fence, in the place where the bodies [of the dead Jews] were lying.… Azriel … jumped over the fence…. Dudek was the last one to jump. When I wanted to jump, a [Ukrainian] guard woke up and fired a shot. Even though the bullet penetrated my leg, I jumped. They [Azriel and Dudek] were waiting for me and we started on our way to the non-Jew....

The murder operation began on Monday, shortly before sunrise. The German policemen [Gendarmerie] announced that the inmates of the Krzemieniec ghetto would be relocated to other town. They were ordered to get up onto the freight cars [trucks] tha had been awaiting them near the ghetto gate, and they [Jews] were allowed to take with them [only] small packages. The trucks were covered with boards. The first ones who got up [onto the trucks] were elderly people and children. They didn't resist. After them the rest of the ghetto inmates got up. Whether they knew or didn't know where they were being taken, or pretended not to knowing anything, the majority of them came to the gate as required by the [German] order, got up onto the trucks and went on their final way.… One truck would leave [the collection point] while another would arrive there. The evacuation of the ghetto lasted for two days, on Monday and Tuesday of that week. The trucks drovew out of town, in the direction of the Tsar's Bridge [i.e. shooting range]. Half a kilometer from the railway station, toward the Tsar's Bridge, on the left, there were military trenches from the [time of] World War I, near a military base.… This place was chosen by the Germans as a mass murder site. They didn't even bother to deepen or widen the trenches [sic], but used them as they were. When a "transport" of Jews from the ghetto arrived at the murder site on a truck, they [Jews] were ordered to get down [from the truck], [and] they were sorted into separate groups of men, women, and children. They were ordered to strip naked and lie down ins the trenches. Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen were guarding the surrounding area to prevent those doomed to death from escaping. The murder was carried out by German policemen [i.e Gendarmerie men]. Equipped with machine-guns, they walked along the trench, firing at those who were lying in the pit [trench], killing them one by one. Afterward, the bodies [of the victims] were covered with a light layer of earth, and mainly Germans were pouring large amounts of chlorine to prevent epidemics.... After some time skulls and human bones … lay scattered around the site. That is how the mass murder was carried out. Not all the ghetto inmates got up onto the trucks. Some of them hid in attics, cellars, or bunkers. However, Ukrainian and German policemen conducted extensive searches in houses and yards. Jews who had been given assurance that they would be allowed to live turned others [Jews in hiding] in [to the Germans], thus aiding the latter. Every day hundreds of people were found [in hiding]; they were loaded onto trucks and taken to the murder site.… What happened to the 1,500 working people who had been taken [from the ghetto] to Bialokrynica one day before the last murder operation? They were kept there for a while to perform various kinds of jobs; afterward,they [the Germans] were subjected to selections every day. Those who agreed to be taken, supposedly to work in another town, were loaded onto trucks and taken directly to the main murder site [i.e., the shooting range] and murdered together with others....