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Murder Story of Poczajow Nowy Jews at Belaya Gora

Murder Site
Belaya Gora
Russia (USSR)
Apparently on July 8, 1941, a Security Police unit arrived in Poczajów and arrested 120 (or 106, according to other testimony) Jewish men, including the rabbi of Poczajów Eliezer Urecki, and imprisoned them in the cellar of the police station. While being kept there, the Jewish men were cruelly beaten. Of these arrested men 30 were selected and taken, under the heavy guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police and several German soldiers, with shovels, toward the forest near Belaya Gora, located 3 kilometers from Poczajów in the direction of the town of Krzemieniec. Upon their arrival, the Germans ordered these men to dig a pit ostensibly for burying dead German horses. At 2 p.m. (or, according to other testimony, in the evening) the chief of the Ukrainian auxiliary police Iosif Myslynskyi, together with a Security Police unit and Gendarmerie men (German rural order police) forced the remaining arrestees to the pit. After their arrival at the pit, the victims, including those 30 who had dug the pit, were ordered to lie down. They were then shot to death with machine-guns in the back of the head by members of the Security Police unit. The shooting lasted about two hours.
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From the joint testimony of Aharon Kuperman and Wolf Veytsman, who were born in Poczajów and were living there during its German occupation
... On the night of July 8, 1941 Ukrainian [auxiliary] policemen, headed by several Germans, caught 106 Jews [i.e. Jewish men] of Poczajów and imprisoned them in the cellar of the police station that was located in the town hall building. From time to time all those prisoners were given some water or something else necessary for continued human existence. The Jews were cruelly beaten. Toward evening, they were marched, almost naked, through the town. The unfortunate victims, were beaten so brutally that it was almost impossible to recognize them. On the same evening all of them were shot to death at the Bilar [Belaya Gora] Forest, [located] on the road leading to [the town of] Krzemieniec. Among those 106 murder victims was the rabbi of Poczajów Eliezer Urecki, of blessed memory. He suffered a heart attack while the group [in which he was] was being marched to be shot and he collapsed. The guards who were riding in a car behind the group, drove the car over the body of the rabbi and crushed him to death. The Jews were forced to carry with them the body of the dead man towards the grave that had been prepared there. Several minutes later those who had been shot to death and those who were still alive [after the shooting] were all thrown into the same grave.…
H.Gelernt, ed.: Pichayever Yizkor Book: Memorial Book dedicated to the Jews of Pitchayev-Wolhyn who were executed by the Germans,(Philadelphia: The Pitchayever Wohliner Aid Society, 1960), pp. 167-168 (Yiddish).
Belaya Gora
Murder Site
Russia (USSR)
55.204;51.093