Rudolf’s Mill was a multi-story building on Długa Street, on the outskirts of the Stanisławów Ghetto. Originally a granary named after its Jewish owner, on the eve of the war it was a garment factory. In late 1941 or early 1942, its area was turned into a smaller ghetto within the Stanisławów Ghetto. It was used to house Jewish deportees from the Hungarian-annexed Carpathian Ruthenia, Jewish refugees from Galicia who had escaped into Hungarian-controlled territory and were returned by the Hungarian authorities, Jews from the Stanisławów area, as well as inmates of the Stanisławów Ghetto who were deemed unfit for work. The head of the Jewish desk at the Stanisławów Security Police office, Heinrich Schott, was put in charge of the Rudolf’s Mill ghetto. Schott turned the engine room in the basement of the building into an execution chamber for the Jewish inmates of the smaller ghetto. Groups of several dozen to several hundred Jews would regularly be brought into this room, where Schott would shoot them in the back of the head – either single-handedly or with the assistance of other security and urban policemen. According to the materials of the postwar trials of the perpetrators of the massacres in Stanisławów, several shootings of Jews took place in the mill courtyard. There, Jews of various ages and of both sexes would be taken to a large pit just outside the mill and shot dead in the back of the head by German security policemen.

Related Resources

Written Testimonies

German Reports / Romanian Reports

ChGK Soviet Reports

From the testimony of Julian Baczewicz (born 1914):

Rudolf’s Mill, a four-story former mill, now closed, was turned into a prison. Jews from the vicinity of Stanisławów were gathered there and shot indiscriminately. One of its rooms, which opened into the yard, was chosen as an execution site. Some 200 victims were crammed in there, pressed tightly together. One SS man stood in the doorway and shot with a submachine gun. He never entered the room. The living and the dead would be piled together and left in this state until the next morning, when a vehicle with Gestapo men arrived, and a brigade of Jewish gravediggers loaded the bodies onto the vehicle and collected the blood into barrels….

ZIH, WARSAW 301/4026 copy YVA M.49 / 4026

From the memoirs of Salomon Guensberg:

…Uninterruptedly, Jewish people from Boharodczany, Sołotwin, Halicz, Tyszmenica, etc., were brought to the Stanisławów Ghetto. These people were housed… in the former mill, a brick building at the intersection of Halicz and Długa Streets. The Gestapo officers referred to it as “The Red Mill”; it was a death building. Every day, Germans would shoot hundreds of victims there…. This building was guarded by Ukrainian auxiliary police[men]. Here, urban policemen proved that they were as murderous as the Gestapo men. A special chamber on the ground floor was chosen for this hideous mass murder. The walls and floor of that room were flooded with blood, as in a slaughterhouse. Here, the murderers choked on the blood of helpless children, women, and men. The Red Mill will stand forever as a monument to the martyrdom of the Jews of Stanisławów, and also as a monument to the disgrace of German culture….

ZIH, WARSAW 302/136 copy YVA M.49 / 136

From the testimony of Alfred Fink (born 1898):

Rudolf's Mill was a mill that used to belong to a Jew named Rudolf. There, Jews from the Stanisławów area and from the city itself were shot by Streege [the commander of the urban police in Stanisławów] alone. They would be gathered in a room on the ground floor and shot by Streege, who used a submachine gun….

YVA M.9 / 747

From the testimony of David Berber (born 1910):

…The so-called Rudolfsmühle [Rudolf’s Mill] was the site of bloody massacres. Groups of Jews brought from the surrounding area, along with elderly people, were murdered there. The Germans forced the victims' adult sons and daughters to take their elderly parents to their deaths.…

ZIH, WARSAW 301/91 copy YVA M.49 / 91

From the testimony of David Orgelrgrub (born 1930):

The “Red Mill” was a large four-story building of about 200 square meters. The captured people were transferred there and divided into four groups: A, B, C, and D. [The people in] group A would be taken to the cellar and shot on the evening of their capture.…

YVA O.33 / 1778

From the testimony of Dr. Liebesman, a former resident of Stanisławów:

…There was the so-called “Rudolf’s Mill” in the Stanisławów Ghetto, which was also known as the death mill. It was a huge building that still stands in Stanisławów, and it still bears the traces of Nazi crimes, such as the blood of the victims on the building's inner walls…. Once, I was summoned from the street by the official for Jewish affairs, Obersturmfuehrer Schott, and Lieutenant Grimm, who took me by car to Rudolf’s Mill, where I had to assist in a bloody execution arranged by Grimm in connection with his son’s death on the Soviet Front. These executioners chose the rooms, where the sick and exhausted victims, most of them elderly people, children, and women, were dying from hunger and cold. Each of them was approached by one of the abovementioned thugs, who killed the victim with a pistol, while I, as a physician, had to ascertain the victim's death in each case. An emaciated woman with a three-month-old baby at her breast was sitting in the corner, and it turned out that she was the wife of the young physician Gruen. Lieutenant Grimm shot the baby in the head, and the child’s brains and blood splashed over my face, while the bullet went further, hitting the mother in the heart….

YVA O.62 / 443

From the testimony of Malvina Babicka (born 1914):

…There was one more liquidation of the Jews of Stanisławów and its vicinity…. I was not present, but I know these things for certain, because I was told about it by Jewish policemen who were on duty. This liquidation took place in Rudolf's Mill on Długa Street. I lived not far from there, and every evening, between 7 and 8 PM, I would hear the sounds of gunfire from there. The policemen I have mentioned told me that Streege would order the people to strip naked, and then shoot them. My sister told me that the walls of Rudolf's Mill were awash with blood. My sister, together with some other Jewish women, was required to clean the rooms of Rudolf's Mill; they had to scrub the blood off the walls with knives.…

YVA M.9 / 747

From the testimony of Sala Hermann (born 1908):

…We lived [in the ghetto] across from a large four-story building known as “Rudolf’s Mill.” The Germans brought Jews from all over the county to that building. Every day, toward evening, Brandt and Schott would come by, and 150-200 people would be shot….

ZIH, WARSAW 301/3258 copy YVA M.49 / 3258

From the testimony of Shmerl Shtern (born 1890):

…On April 12, 1942, a selection presided over by Brandt [deputy chief of the Stanisławów Security Police office] began, and it lasted several days. All the Jews had to pass through the labor office. Once there, they would be taken in small groups into a room where the commission presided by Brandt sat. Brandt alone decided to which category the person in question should be assigned. The people of the "C" category were herded into the empty grain mill named "Rudolf's Mill" and shot there….

YVA M.21 / 178

Rudolf’s Mill

flour mill

Murder Site

Poland

48.921;24.713

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USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 44068 copy YVA O.93 / 44068