Murder Story of Edineți Jews at the Edineți Jewish Cemetery

…And [several days after the German-Romanian occupation of the town] an order was issued, requiring [all] Jews to assemble in the street. Forbidden to take anything with them, leaving all their possessions at home, [all the Jews] were going out into the streets. We were all collected and taken to the central street [of the town].… There was a theological…seminary. We were gathered and kept there until nightfall. When night had come, they began to gradually remove the elderly people, [as well as] the women with [little] children, letting them go home. As we were passing the gates where all the Jews had been assembled, we saw a committee [made up of] local residents and Romanians who had arrived [in Edineți] to handle this matter. They began to take away young people, those aged about 18-20, all the young ones. When more than 100 [young] people had been gathered, on the same night [sic] they were all taken to the [Jewish] cemetery and shot… while the other [Jews] were released to their homes….

…And several days later [i.e. after the German-Romanian occupation of the town], [the occupying authorities] began to collect all the Jewish men [sic; this refers to the entire Jewish population of the town] at the former theological seminary. I remember that, from early childhood, I had been attached to my father… And, when they [the Jews] had all been assembled [to go to the seminary building], he could not take me back home…. Thus, I went along with him. We spent the whole night in this seminary; there were many people, and no air to breathe; we were forbidden to go outside. The next day, the town's representatives arrived, and, as the people were getting out [of the seminary building], they [the committee members] would point… to the left (i.e. [back] toward the town) or to the right (upwards, i.e. away from the town). And when we reached… the gate, one of those [committee] people who was standing [by the gate] looked at my father and told him: "You go to the right". So my father turned to him, [saying]:" I want to go home, to the left", and the [committee representative] replied: "I told you to go to the right!" – and he nearly struck my father, swinging his fist at him and saying: "[Go] where I told you!" For some reason, my father thought that the left path meant going [back] to the town, that those people were about to go home… But he got it all wrong. On that day, a miracle occurred – to us, not to the people who were taken to the [Jewish] cemetery, which is [now] the site of the first mass grave in Edineți; where the first shooting, most of whose victims were [Jewish] men, took place…

… On July 13, 1941, toward morning, we were all forced into the [Jewish] cemetery. Men were ordered to dig pits. Then, all the men were forced to take the little children (boys only) [sic] in their arms and stand at the edge of the freshly dug pits, whereupon they were shot together with the children, right in front of the women. Thus, my [first] husband Moshe Gluzman was killed before my eyes, together with our little son Faivel, whom he was holding. A total of about 1,300 men were shot on that day. Afterward, an order was given to suspend the shooting actions for the time being. There were only three men left alive [after the shooting]…