Murder story of Balti Jews in the Romanian Gendarmerie Bulding in Bălți

...I live next to the [former] Slobozia regional Gendarmerie building. On the third or fourth day of the occupation of the town of Bǎlți by the Germans and Romanians, Romanian soldiers began to drive the Jews into the yard of the Gendarmerie. By evening several hundred people were collected there. When it became twilight, women and children were taken away. The collected Jews had to dig a pit in the course of several hours that day.… At that time I was near my home, about 20 meters from the pit. When it became completely dark, an order in the Romanian language was given to begin shooting. I heard single shots and the words "next in turn, get up." All the time single rifle shots were heard; this last for about 2-3 hours. Then I heard an order in Romanian to finish off with a second shot those who had not been killed by the first. After the end of the shooting, the soldiers covered the pit, but the heads and arms of some of the bodies were sticking out from it. When it became light, together with the guard of the [former] regional trade cooperative Grigorii Kozoretskyi … in the bushes I found the body of one killed Jew [whose name was] Moyshe Akkerman … after putting him onto a stretcher, we threw him into the pit and covered him with earth. During the day, among the group of collected [murdered] Jews we recognized: Yermolintskyi, 45 years old, … and the two Akkerman brothers and another one [Jew] named Nusim, I don't remember his last name.... I didn't recognize any others. The shootings had been carried out by soldiers, [members of the] Romanian Gendarmerie were not present [at the shooting site].…

… in the morning we were all driven to the yard of the [Romanian] Gendarmerie [on the outskirts of Bǎlți known as] in Slobozia, near the bridge, where about 100 [Jewish] men had been shot to death….

10. 300 Jewish men were shot to death at the former Romanian Gendarmerie [headquarters] in the Slobozia [suburb] (where the Peasant Bank had formerly been located). 11. There, in the yard, the remains of 20 persons were found. 12. In the yard of the same Gendarmerie [building] 100 people had been shot to death. Interview with Iurii Rashkovan, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, YVA O.93/17889

On the basis of the testimony of Dmitrii Limar, who was living near the former [building] of the Romanian Gendarmerie [located] on the outskirts [of Bǎlți called] Slobozia, about the place he pointed out where the mass shooting of the Jews took place, the [ChGK] commission carried out the opening of the [mass] grave on the outskirts of Slobozia, in the yard of a former unit of the [Romanian] Gendarmerie and established the following: one pit where murder victims of the Fascist terror were buried was 6 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 3 meters deep. The bodies that … were found there [and exhumed] were scattered in disarray along the length and breadth of the pit. Exhumed from the pit were one body with its limbs connected to its torso, six bodies with arms and legs, and then … [another] nineteen skulls [were exhumed]. On this basis the commission concluded that the total number of victims was 30. Since the bodies positioned at the bottom of the pit were totally decomposed, during their exhumation it was possible only to assemble some bones. According to the testimony of the above-mentioned eyewitness, among those killed [and buried there] were the following Bǎlți residents - … the two Akkerman brothers, and Nusim … who were mentioned by the eyewitness Lumar during his questioning. All the remains of the bodies exhumed from the grave were photographed. The killing of all the victims occurred on the third day after the [German-Romanian] capture of Bǎlți [i.e. July 11 or 12, 1941] by the troops of a Romanian army unit that was passing through [the town]. Since at that time there were no Romanian civilian authorities and the headquarters of the Gendarmerie had not yet been occupied, it did not prove possible to determine the perpetrators of the shooting. The testimony of Mr. Limar, according to which [initially] several hundred people were taken by force to one killing site, leads to the conclusion that all the other victims were taken to a different murder site.

We, members of the [ChGK] committee … compiled the current report … [as follows]: 1. The interrogation of several eyewitnesses established some undeniable facts regarding the murder of the Soviet civilians carried out mainly by the Romanians. The details of this crime include … the shooting of [Jewish] men on the former premises of the Romanian Gendarmerie [located] at [the outskirts of Bǎlți, known as] Slobozia, where the Peasants' Bank had previously been located. Also shot to death and buried there were about 300 people, as indicated by [the testimony of] the eyewitnesses…. 3. All the above-mentioned incidents of killing took place in July 1941.