Murder Story of Oszmiana Jews in the Hamlet of Bortele

... The Oshmiany district attorney, lawyer of the 1st class I. Paradnia… [other names follow], has compiled the present report attesting that, on this day, they carried out excavations of the pits in the birch grove near the farm of Czesław Zacharewski, a resident of the village of Borteli [sic] of the Oshmiany District. At this site, which lies 450 meters west of the manor, residents of the town of Oshmiany were shot by the Germans on July 3 and 4, 1941 [in fact, on July 26]. In the course of the excavation, the diggers uncovered one pit - 30 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 2 meters deep – where corpses of male individuals, 573 persons in total, were piled haphazardly…. The skulls of some of the bodies are unharmed…. The heads of others are shot through or pierced by some dull objects…. Some bodies have clothing and shoes…. Others have no clothing at all…. [According to eyewitness accounts, the perpetrators] drove them to the pits in small groups of 10-15 and shot them with rifles. Their testimony is corroborated by the presence of German cartridge cases in the pit....