On July 4-5, 1941 groups of Jews, mostly men, were taken to the old Jewish cemetery on Dorosh (now Sofia Stadnykova) Street, on the eastern outskirts of Tarnopol, to bury those Jews who were murdered in the prison yard after exhuming the bodies of the NKVD victims and those who had been murdered throughout the city during the pogrom. Many of those taken there were beaten to death or shot by the Ukrainian mob or by German soldiers.

According to numerous testimonies, in the first half of July 1941 commanders of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C ordered the former principal of a Jewish school, Marek Gottfried, to select 40 Jews from among the intelligentsia, ostensibly for the establishment of a Judenrat in Tarnopol. After the selected people refused to accept this role, they were taken to the Jewish cemetery, brutally beaten, and then murdered.

According to the testimony of Wladyslaw Gostynski, during the existence of the Tarnopol ghetto the head of the Security Police station in the city, Hermann Mueller, regularly took patients from the ghetto hospital to the Jewish cemetery and personally shot them to death.

The survivor Pessach Herzog testified that in early 1943, during a raid carried out by the Security Police in the Tarnopol ghetto, scores of Jews were caught by surprise, taken to the cemetery, and shot to death there.

Related Resources

Written Testimonies

German Reports / Romanian Reports

ChGK Soviet Reports

From the Memoirs of Pesach Herzog, who was born in 1922

…The Jews in prison thought that [now] they would be freed, but they were wrong. At the old Jewish cemetery more bodies of Jews brought there from the prison awaited [them]. Therefore, the Jews still remaining in prison were taken to bury them. The worst death of the entire pogrom awaited them. When they saw what awaited them, the blood froze in their veins. They were forced to prepare four large graves -- for themselves. While they were working, half of them were beaten to death by Ukrainians. The rest had to endure even worse torture. After all the bodies had already been put into the graves, the torture of the survivors began. Ukrainians tied them together in twos, naked, back to back with barbed wire; others were tied upside down, i.e. the head of one was tied to the feet of another. Some Jews were forced to tie together other Jews… The winter of 1942-1943 was cold and severe. In January-February criminal murder operations took place in the ghetto. The people in the ghetto was caught by surprise and were kept without food for several days, and then were buried alive at the Jewish cemetery….

YVA O.33 / 7404

From the Testimony of Sonia Mandel (Yaffe), who was born in 1921:

…As soon as they [Germans] entered, they took the men, supposedly for work… for forced labor. [In fact] they took them to the cemetery, this was during the first days [of the pogrom], where they [the Jewish men] dug a grave, as they were ordered. Afterward, they [the occupiers and/or their collaborators] shot them [the Jewish men]. That is how my brother died….

YVA O.3 / 5849

From the Testimony of Wladyslaw Gostynski, who was born in 1908

…Obersturmfuehrer and head of the Gestapo in Tarnopol Mueller was assigned to Tarnopol during the German occupation… Every week when he visited the hospital, Mueller took away patients whom he then personally shot at the Jewish cemetery. Bearded Jews were doused with gasoline by members of the Gestapo or security service and then set on fire. He [Mueller] ordered pregnant women to strip and to sing and to jump around in front of the men. Most of them were subsequently shot by Mueller….

YVA M.9 / 526

Tarnopol

Jewish cemetery

Murder Site

Poland

49.255;25.753