The shooting operation against the Jews of Kramatorsk was carried out by Sondekommando 4B on January 20 or 26, 1942. According to Soviet reports, 600 families were shot on that day, while German documents give the much lower figure of 139 Jews. The victims were rounded up on the pretext of deportation to Palestine, and transported in trucks to the shooting site near the village of Krasnogorka in the vicinity of Kramatorsk (apparently, this village has since become part of the town itself), where they were shot in a ravine.
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From a letter written by Vusya, a young Jewish woman from Kramatorsk, to her relatives on August 26, 1943, describing the murder of the town's Jews:
January 20, 1942. It was 30 C degrees below zero. "Deportation to Palestine." While my mother and I were running to the suburbs through some people's backyards, families carrying their belongings walked along the streets. The policemen hurried them up in order to load them onto trucks and shoot them at that site, near an antitank trench beyond the town. Mina, too, was among them, as were Grisha and his family, the family of [first name unclear] Shneyder, and the wives and children of the Brazilovsky brothers (Dusya and Abrasha, together with their father, had escaped on the same day). There was also Reyzen with Polina Makh. Even on the brink of death, he [Reyzen] managed to get his own way: She [Polina] went to her grave with him, and not with that Kuznetsov.