One month after the onset of the occupation, the Germans began to arrest the Jews of Talalayevka and the surrounding villages. Twenty-eight Jews were imprisoned in a single room in Talalayevka. They were then forced to perform hard labor in the village.
On January 19, 1942, German soldiers and local policemen rearrested these Jews and took them to a pit in the forest on the outskirts of the village. There, the Jews had to strip naked, and were then shot by the collaborationist police officers, who used machine guns. Immediately after the massacre of the twenty-eight Jews, another two Jews were executed at the site. That same night, another group of twenty people were shot at the huge pit. These included Jews, partisans, and Soviet POWs.
Later in 1942, another six Jewish civilians from the surrounding villages were shot at the same spot.
Related Resources
ChGK Soviet Reports
The ChGK report from Talalayevka
In December 1941, all the local Jewish residents were arrested and locked in a single room in Talalayevka. They were rarely fed, forced to work hard every day, and deprived of their freedom.
One of them was Martha Barulovna Bogulvika, a teacher and a perfect organizer.
However, one day – it was January 19, 1942 – all the Jews were taken to a pit, which was actually a mass grave dug by our soldiers. There, they were executed with machine guns, for being Jews. The execution lasted until 1 AM, when they brought in Anatoly Lubinsky (an ethnic Jew) and Dima Krasnyi…, and shot them. The head of Boguslavskoy was also shot there, along with four POWs.