Murder Story of Mikhaylovskoye Jews at the Mikhaylovskoye Airfield (Gas Vans)

...[I]n September 1942, a Gestapo unit numbering fifty-two members arrived in the village of Mikhaylovskoye. Upon the orders of the German commanders Brand and Mull, mass arrests of civilians began, with most of the arrestees being Jewish evacuees. The occupiers assembled a group of 200 people and took them to the machine tractor station, where they were forced to strip down to their underwear. Then a vehicle arrived, which had been converted into a mobile gas chamber, intended to kill people by suffocation. The Germans began to herd the people into the vehicle, and those who resisted were beaten with sticks and rifle butts. The screams of the adults and the cries of the children were audible throughout the area. The fully-loaded vehicle drove toward the aerodrome. By the time it reached its destination, all of its passengers had turned into corpses. They were thrown into the ditches and trenches that had been left over from the construction of the aerodrome. In this way, all the 200 people were gradually killed in these vehicles during the drive to the aerodrome…. In early November 1942, the Gestapo unit, which was still commanded by the same Mull and Brand, arrested another ninety people, most of them women and children (including nursing infants). They were locked up in a garage in the courtyard of the German headquarters. From there, they were transported in vehicles to the aerodrome, and their corpses were thrown into the ditches and trenches there. This is confirmed by the following residents of the village of Mikhaylovka [Mikhaylovskoye]: Vasiliy Alrkseyevich Marshalkin, Mikhail Demitrievich Chupakin, and Georgiy Agafonovich Selyutin. In this way did the German commander and the punitive Gestapo squad brutally torture and kill three hundred and three (303) people in Mikhaylovka [Mikhaylovskoye]....