Murder Story of Kostopol Jews at the Dinamo Stadium in Kostopol

On August 16, 1941, a squad of the Security Police and the SD from Równe arrived in Kostopol. With the assistance of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (headed by Colonel Ivan Likhodko), they rounded up 460 (or 480) Jewish men and 20 Jewish women from among the most affluent members of the Jewish community, using a list drawn up in advance. The head of the Judenrat, Dawid Dajan, was among the arrestees. These Jews – along with some Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Roma – were taken to the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police jail, where they spent the night. During their stay in the jail, they were severely beaten, tortured, and abused. On the next day, the arrestees were taken in groups behind the Dynamo Stadium near the town. Upon arriving at the shooting site, the victims were ordered to take off their clothes, and were then shot dead by a squad of the Security Police and the SD. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police guarded the murder site throughout the shooting, which lasted from 10 AM until 5 PM. Afterward, the victims were buried at the site. However, their family members were told that their loved ones had been sent to work camps. These relatives were even deceived into sending them money, which the German authorities confiscated. On October 1 (or November 10), 1941, some 1,500 members of the families of the Jewish men and women killed in the first murder operation behind the Dynamo Stadium were offered the "opportunity" to join their relatives at the alleged "work camps" (according to one testimony, these camps were supposed to be located near the city of Kraków). Once they had assembled, they were forced to bring their finest clothes, and were then escorted to the same murder site (according to some other sources, they were taken to the town's slaughterhouse). Upon arriving at the stadium, the victims were shot in groups of 10 by a squad of the Security Police and the SD, with the assistance of the local Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and the 1st Company of Police Battalion 320, which had arrived from Sarny. Their bodies were thrown into pits that had been dug in advance – a mere hundred meters from the pits where the Jewish intelligentsia had been shot back in August. The District Commissar, SA-Standartenfuhrer Heinz Löhnert, was in charge of these two murder operations.