Murder story of Tarnopol Jews in the Janowka Forest

…It was a real St. Bartholomew's Night (on March 23, 1942). A "quota" of "700 units" of people was demanded by the Judenrat -- to be killed. You can not believe this, can you? But that is how it was. Our own brothers, our own policemen, were responsible for their death. The collection place for the victims was the former synagogue [the Old Synagogue]. It had been warmed up so that "the poor people" would not freeze before their death, and they were given bread and jam. Afterward, they were loaded onto trucks and taken to Janowka. All the arrangements had been made. The graves were ready there, along with machine-guns, and that was it….

…Balfinger was the head of the Jewish department of the Tarnopol County administration. I saw how in 1942, under his command, 900 Jews from the Tarnopol ghetto were loaded onto trucks and taken to Januwka [Janowka] near Tarnopol, where mass graves had been prepared, to be annihilated…

…He [Balfinger, Security Police officer in Tarnopol] personally collected many hundreds of Jews in prison and took them to Janowka, 8 kilometers from Tarnopol, to a forest, where they had to strip and, then, were shot…Balfinger displayed considerable cruelty during those executions. The people had to sit at the edge of a pit and were then shot in the back of the head so that they immediately fell into the pit…

…In late 1941, I believe, there was a special murder operation carried out against Jewish elderly people and children. I saw with my own eyes Riemann [a senior Security Police officer in Tarnopol] ordering Jewish militia men [policemen] to collect from the street cripples whom he pointed out. These cripples were held for some time at a police station and [subsequently] were transferred, on Riemann's orders, to a prison, from which they did not return. Along with these cripples, for several days they collected the sick, the disabled, and the children from an orphanage, a total of 570 people. They took them to Janowski [Janowka] Forest near Tarnopol, and murdered them there.

…On March 25, 1942 a new blow, a [new] catastrophe, fell on Tarnopol like thunder out of a blue sky. The Gestapo demanded, under the pretext that they were going to be expelled, that there be handed over to them 600 Jews, mostly elderly, sick, and disabled people, along with others who were not working. The Gestapo ordered the Judenrat to assemble in the shortest time possible such people who were considered unfit for work. With this base, inhuman, and barbaric lie the Germans wanted to get rid of those Jews who in their opinion constituted a burden on the ghetto and [its] administration and, thus, should be expelled to other places. [At this point] dissention arose in the ghetto: some Jews with conscience in the Judenrat did not want to hand over their brothers to be murdered by the Germans and attempted to avoid their [assigned] task. [In contrast,] the blindly [obedient] Dr. Karol Pohorylets-Buczynski [head of the Judenrat] yielded to Gestapo pressure and blocked the opposition of several of the Judenrat members. Therefore, the list of 600 Jews [supposedly] destined to be expelled was prepared. In a speech that was a mixture of threats and calls [for the Judenrat members to fulfill their responsibility] Dr. Karol Pohorylets demanded that they hand over the required number of Jews. He formed small squads and personally handed out lists of addresses of those Jews. In the evening German policemen surrounded the ghetto, which was also patrolled by [local] policemen and small groups of Jews. The policemen took the Jews from their apartments and collected all of them at the Old Synagogue. The Judenrat members registered for the Gestapo all of those who had been assembled. Toward morning Gestapo men and Ukrainian policemen broke into Jewish houses, demanding that all orphans and, also, elderly people from an old folk's home be taken to a collection point. They demanded that they be given lists - of those who were capable of walking on their own and medical lists, i.e., those of ill people, and lists of people who had been receiving pensions. At that point the [real] purpose of the establishment of orphanages, old folks' homes, hospitals, and welfare [institutions] became clear. The base cunning and lack of shame of the Germans left no doubt among the Jews about the [real] meaning of "expulsion". The children's refuge and the old folks' home were located in a small synagogue opposite the Old Synagogue. Armed Germans, criminals wearing black uniforms, entered the orphanage by force, ruthlessly driving out the children whom they had awakened. The poor orphans were barefoot and were not wearing shirts. Terrified, they were crying and shivering from the cold. The Germans threw those innocent children onto trucks and, to the accompaniment of tense shouting and blows, squeezed the poor victims together into an unbearable mass, covered them with tarpaulins, and took them to Janowka. The elderly were treated with the same roughness. They too were squeezed onto trucks and forced to lie at the bottom of the trucks. They were taken via Lwowska Street to the Janowka Forest….

…In mid-March 1942 the Judenrat received an order from the chief of the Gestapo Miller [probably Mueller] to hand over the quota of 1,500 Jews for "Schmalz", i.e. for execution by shooting, of elderly people unfit for work, cripples, and the incurably sick; they [the Jews] were threatened with another pogrom if they did not comply. The "Obmann" (head) of the Judenrat, Dr. Fisher, could not take on his conscience the death of 1,500 Jews and, therefore, resigned from his post. In negotiations with the Gestapo the new head of the Judenrat, Dr. Lipe, was able to save the lives of 600 people by reducing the quota to 900. The Judenrat appointed a special commission to prepare the list of persons to be murdered. This murder operation took place during the night between March 23 and 24, 1942. The [German] policemen and Judenrat members and officials armed with axes and sticks broke through gates, windows, and doors, and burst into homes searching for the people whose names were on the murder list. I cannot describe the sight of the desperation of people who were being led to their execution. At that time people still did not accept the idea of death: they did not believe that all of them, each in turn, would meet the same fate…. I was crying, tears were running down my cheeks, when I saw the old people being taken to their death, their desperate faces reflecting their fear of proceeding into the unknown. Others went with their heads bowed, their lips whispering a prayer. All the doomed ones were taken to the Old Synagogue, which was brightly illuminated. At the entrance the officials [of the Judenrat] registered all the arrivals. For these doomed ones the Judenrat organized a last meal, that consisted of bread with jam and tea. Those victims included men of 60 and older, women of 55 and older, cripples, and people who were incurably sick or swollen due to hunger irrespective of age. As a reward for their collaboration in the murder operation, no one was taken from the families of Judenrat members or of [Jewish] policemen. At midnight, when the quota of 900 people had been reached, trucks arrived at the synagogue and the doomed ones were loaded onto them and made to lie one on top of the other. Loaded in this way, the trucks were covered with cloths…; the roar of the engines made it impossible to hear the wailing of the suffocating old people. Anyone in the top layer who dared to raise his head to breathe some air was beaten with a rifle butt on the head or back by the German policeman ("Schupo"[i.e. members of Schutzpolizei, urban police]) until he lost his consciousness. In that way, they were taken to a forest near Janowka village…. There the doomed ones were forced to strip naked, to put their possessions into a pile, and then were shot to death. An hour later trucks with the possessions of the murder victims returned to the city….

…One morning when I awoke, my cousin Fanda came running to us from the adjacent courtyard, terrified and agitated. She burst into the house crying "This night they were taken!" Where to? What for? It turned out that at night the [Jewish ghetto] policemen and the Judenrat collected eight hundred people, mostly elderly ones, from the ghetto, according to a list, and took them to the "Stara Synagoga" (Old Synagogue), which some days earlier had been prepared for this purpose. We were stupefied - indeed the rumors were true! Despite all the horror, I also felt relief: after all we were not hurt, the [murder] operation had passed over us, leaving us unharmed. My feeling was not a noble one but that was the truth. I learned about everything at my work place. The German beast was thirsty for blood. After lengthy negotiations, the Judenrat agreed to hand over to the Gestapo the number of people that had been demanded. At nine in the evening before the murder operation, "the Akcija," members of the [Jewish ghetto] police were summoned and the head of the Judenrat demanded that they provide the required number of people since this operation was 'for the good of the Jewish population of the ghetto'. The policemen received a list with the names and addresses of the doomed. The centuries-old Old Synagogue, that for generations had been the pride and glory of Tarnopol, became the site of this bloody operation. The names on the list prepared by the Judenrat were mainly those of old people, but it turned out later that it also contained the names of young people, mostly of [young] women from the poorest stratum of Jewish society. Nor was the Ochronka Jewish orphanage spared: many Jewish orphans and also many children given to the orphanage by parents unable to provide for them were also victims of bullets of the Hitlerites. All of them were taken to the Old Synagogue by a large guard of German and Ukrainian policemen. The next morning those unfortunates were loaded onto trucks, packed in, and then covered with rugs so that they could not see the way [they were being taken]. Thus, they were taken to the forest near Janowka village, about seven kilometers from Tarnopol where a deep pit, a mass-grave, had been prepared. There the Jews were forced to strip and were shot naked. Fortunate were those who were murdered right away and fortunate were those who were covered with earth when they already dead since many were covered with it after they had only been wounded. As if angry because it was made to cover the innocent victims, the earth heaved, shifted, and appeared to be raging…. It shifted as the victims were buried alive in their last agony, struggling against death with their last strength. [Both] in the synagogue and during their [the victims'] last way, the Ukrainian guards silenced the cries and the wailing of the unfortunates with their rifle butts. The martyrs doomed to death were squeezed together, bent over or kneeling, inside the trucks….

…In March 1942 an expulsion operation [mainly] targeting 350 elderly people but also including many children, took place in Janowka. There all of them were murdered by Ukrainian policemen on the order of Mueller [head of the Security Police station in Tarnopol]…

My parents perished in the first large-scale murder operation in Tarnopol, in 1942. Then all the elderly [Jews] in Tarnopol were rounded up and taken to the forest at Janowicz [Janowka] near Tarnopol, and all of them were murdered there… In March 1942 the rumor spread that a murder operation was imminent. My husband was friends with Dr. Lippe, who was then serving as the head of the Judenrat, and went to him to find out whether my parents were going to be taken in this murder operation. He returned reassured since Dr. Lippe had promised that nothing will happen to them. Early in the day on March 24, they knocked at our door. We knew that the murder operation had started. We told my father to run away because we were sure that they wanted only him. He did not manage to put on his shoes and ran away barefoot. Jewish policemen entered our house with a list of names in their hands. They read out the name of my father and we said that he was no longer there. Afterward, they read out the name of my mother. We wanted to say that she too was not here, but she answered instead and said that she was there…. The policemen told us that apparently this was a matter of taking people [not money]. My mother insisted that she would go only with my father. I went to my father and told him that Jewish policemen were taking mother with them. My father said that he would not let my mother go by herself, so he went with her. They were taken to the synagogue. After our parents were arrested, we started to beg several people to help them get released. We were informed that our parents were hiding separately. About 700 Jews had been squeezed into the synagogue. Not only elderly people were there, but also young ones who were on the list of social assistance institution, and also children from the orphanage, together with their care-givers. The atmosphere in the synagogue resembled that of Dante's Inferno. People were suffocating from being squeezed together. People were forced to tend to their physiological needs where they were standing. At dawn everyone was taken out, loaded onto trucks, and taken to Janowka, where all of them were slaughtered. My parents were murdered with the rest of the victims. Afterward, I was told that my parents had been hiding separately, but at the last moment the Gestapo murderer Mueller, who organized the entire extermination operation, discovered them. When he asked them what they were doing and who they were, they answered that they had been taken by mistake at the time of the murder operation. However, the murderer Mueller ordered them to be added to those being taken to Janowka, and they were murdered there together with the rest….

...Balfinger [a Gestapo official in Tarnopol]…personally collected 925 Jews, whom he brought to a forest (near Janowka near Tarnopol) 8 kilometers from Tarnopol. The latter were forced to strip there…. Balfinger behaved very cruelly during those executions at Janowka. All of the people [the victims] had to kneel and were shot in the back of the head….