Murder Story of Konstantinovka Jews at the Krasnyy Farm

The indictment of Fritz Braune and others. The prosecutor's office accused Braune of participating in shootings in Konstantinovka in the spring of 1942; more than 100 Jewish men, women, and children were executed in a natural depression created by soil erosion. In the course of the legal procedure, the following came to light: Some time after the arrival of half of the squad in Konstantinovka, the former accused… ordered Braune to register all the Jews living in the town. Following his order, the local police rounded up and arrested all the [Jewish] people; there were at least eighty of them. Among them, there were men, women, and at least one three-year-old child together with its mother. Braune ordered the people to be shot.... It was impossible to dig pits, because of the very cold weather.… He did not consider this important, and he reaffirmed the necessity of the shooting, while Braune carried out the task…. Furthermore, [Braune] understood that.… [He] had ordered the victims to strip naked, aware that this would cause them additional suffering. However, he agreed to that, since he needed to use their clothes. One day in early 1942, the Jews were loaded onto trucks and taken to the place of execution. It was a pit created by erosion, outside of town. The pit was five meters deep and 3-4 meters wide, and it lay 500 meters down the road. The vehicles stopped by the pit, and the victims had to climb down from the trucks and strip to their underwear, despite the cold weather. At that moment, they realized that they were going to be murdered solely because of their racial origin; they went insane. They were led to the edge of the pit in groups of 5–6 and shot in the back of the head. The victims who were waiting their turn could hear the sounds of their friends being shot, and see the dead bodies in the pit, and all this doubled their suffering.… The execution lasted 2.5 hours, and all the eighty arrestees perished in it. At the end of the operation, the pit was detonated in order to hide the bodies. The victims' clothes were taken by the Commandant and stored at the Commandant's headquarters, while their valuables were delivered to the Commandant.