Murder Story of Bereźne Jews at the Bereźne Christian Cemetery

Early in the morning of August 25, 1942, a squad of Security policemen and SD men from Równe, assisted by the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (headed by Ivan Garkavets), entered the ghetto and ordered all the Jews to assemble, most probably in the market square, for a work assignment in the town of Kostopol. After the Jews had been forcibly rounded up, they were formed into columns, with the men separated from the women and the children (according to another testimony, the Jews were segregated by age), and marched in large groups, under a heavy convoy, a distance of 1.5 kilometers away from the town, to a field near the Christian cemetery, next to the road leading to the village of Małyńsk. On their way to the murder site, the Jews were brutally beaten. Upon reaching the site, they saw several large pits, which had been dug by Ukrainian residents of Bereźne and the adjacent villages. The victims were forced to undress, hand over their valuables, and lie face down in the pit, whereupon the men of the SD murder squad, with the assistance of the Ukrainian auxiliary policemen, shot them with machine guns. Another group would then be forced to lie down atop the bodies of the previous group, and be shot in turn. According to the ChGK document, the children were stripped naked and thrown into the pit, where they were shot before the eyes of their mothers. According to the testimonies, the massacre went on from noon until evening, and more than 1,000 Jews were shot dead over this period. At night, the remaining Jews were taken to the police station – where, according to a testimony, they were searched for valuables, and had their gold teeth extracted. On the next day, the shooting resumed at the same site. According to the ChGK document, 3,680 Jews were shot in the course of these two days. Franz Hammer, the Landwirte (senior German official) of Bereźne, was in charge of this murder operation.