Murder Story of Cepelauți Jews in the Cellar of the Cepeleuți Former Drugstore

[One day] in July 1941, on a Monday, Syrbu-Yeni came to my house at approximately 2 PM, armed with a … rifle, and ordered me to harness a horse into the cart and go to remove the bodies of the Jews who had been shot in the cellar near the building of the former rural [town] council. Syrbu-Yeni didn't tell me that it was he who had shot the Jews, but, during the removal of the bodies, I learned from my fellow townspeople that the Jewish civilians had been shot by Syrbu-Yeni, Gontza Dmitriy, [Vasilii] Kistruga, Danil Russu.… In the cellar near the building of the former rural council, there were [lying] about 30 bodies of elderly people, women, and two-year-old children, all of whom had been shot. Yes, I descended into the cellar… The walls of the cellar were spattered with blood. From the position of the bodies and the bloodstains, I deduced that the shooting had taken place inside the cellar itself.… Among the victims lying in the cellar, there were 3-4 children aged 2-5….

…I personally saw Petr Lupan kill the family of Aharon Grinberg – his wife, his 12-year-old daughter, and [Aharon] Grinberg himself. The killing took place on a Sunday in August [sic for July] 1941. Petr Lupan, Nikolay Televka, and others arrested the entire Grinberg family in the field [outside the town], took them [back] to Cepeleuți, and locked them in the cellar behind [the building] of the town council. At about 2 PM, Petr Lupan and Nikolay Televka set out toward the cellar – the Jewish girl had been asking for some water to drink. Lupan went down into the cellar, but, instead of giving the girl water, he shot her dead in the arms of her mother. Afterward, they took out the mother and Aharon Grinberg himself, ordered them to turn and face the wall, and shot them both in the back….

…From the words of my fellow townspeople, I learned that Syrbu-Yeni had taken part in the shooting of Jewish civilians in Peisakh Gru's cellar, which was located near the building of the town council. There used to be a drugstore there in 1940…

Following the arrival of German-Romanian forces in Cepeleuți in July 1941, the mass murder of the Jews began. My neighbors – Peisakh Grum [probably Gru] together with his family (his wife and daughter-in-law with her 2-3-year-old boy) – hid in my garden. Sometime afterward, having learned about this, Dmitriy Gontz came over to me, arrested… Peisakh Grum and his family, and took them somewhere. When I entered the house shortly afterward, I [suddenly] heard shots and immediately went into the yard. Approximately 100 meters from my yard, under the walls of the town council, I saw several Jews lying on the ground. One of them was a woman I knew – Grum, I don't remember her first name – and there was a child near her. Dimitriy Gontz and some others were standing a short distance from them… Many of my fellow townspeople were standing nearby, together with a group of Romanian soldiers and officers. Among the Romanian troops, I recognized my fellow townsman Vasilii Kistruga, who took a revolver from a [Romanian] officer and walked with it toward the town council building. When he was several meters from the prone Jews, Kistruga stopped and fired several rounds at these Jews from the revolver he had [at his disposal]. When I saw it, I turned around and walked away.… On the second day after the shooting, my fellow townspeople told me that Dimitriy Gontz and others had shot a group of Jews near the town council building, with the family of Peisakh Grum among them; however, they had failed to kill the daughter-in-law of the late Grum, [since] during the shooting she dropped down on the ground and survived together with her child; therefore, Vasilii Kistruga shot her and her child with his revolver.