Murder story of Stepań Jews in the Korczewie Forest

…The ghetto existed until August 1942. Many inmates became sick and died in the ghetto, while the rest were sick of living. On that day, the Jews were led out, group by group, and taken – some in carts, some on foot – twenty-five kilometers away from the town, to a spot near [the town of] Kostopol. Pits had already been dug there, and this was the end of the Jews of Stepań. Only a hundred Jews escaped, either during the trip or from the killing site itself. The rest – elderly people and children, 3,000-3,500 souls – were felled by the unclean swords of the wicked, and were gone from this earth. Among the victims, there were residents of the town and members of its political parties: Pinchas Goldenstein (from the Committee of the Kostopol community), Avraham Guz (a committed Zionist), Moshe Yosef Dargof (the head of the Artisans' Committee and of the community's charitable institutions), teachers, and others. This was the end of Stepań.

…In Elul [August] 1942, rumors began to spread through the town that something was going to happen in the next few days. We didn't know what was really going on in the world; it was all rumor and hearsay. The people of Stepań knew nothing of what was going on in the neighboring village, and vice versa. My father, Michal Tkhor, worked in the forests and in a German grain warehouse in the village of Botiki. I escaped from the ghetto and joined him at his workplace. One day, the manager of the warehouse came and told us that we couldn't work there anymore, and that we must return to Stepań. Our hearts told us something horrible was about to happen. We had no choice, and the next day we started walking toward the town. On the way, we met a Ukrainian farmer who knew father, and he told us: “Where are you going? Yesterday, they took all the Jews of Stepań to be killed.” We were stunned, and didn't know what to do. We went into the forest, and it was father's intention to go to Sadliski, a Polish village. Many of his acquaintances were from that village.… I later learned the details of the destruction of the Jews of Stepań. The Germans and Ukrainians put all of the town's Jews on carts and took them to Kostopol. Pits had been dug there, and all [the Jews] were shot with machine guns and buried at the site. Only a few managed to escape by jumping from the carts….

…Muffled but persistent rumors about the partial annihilation of the nearby communities of Rowné and Kostopol somehow spread among the inmates of the [Stepań] ghetto. There were those who credited the rumors, while others argued [that it was not true]. But everyone was scared, and they lay sleepless, pondering what was to come. There were rumors that a group of Ukrainian policemen from the town, headed by Ivan Chednik, had been sent to Kostopol for special training. It was explicitly said that this was in preparation for our annihilation. And on one of the evenings of Elul [August] 1942, a rumor spread among the Jews in the ghetto that all the carts belonging to the non-Jewish residents of the town and nearby settlements had been requisitioned. There were some who said this had been done to transport grain, but most felt that the end was coming and believed the rumor that [the carts were] for transporting Jews in the direction of Kostopol. The panic in the ghetto was great. Some of the men from the work camp were able to get into the ghetto to calm their wives. We sensed that the guard posts around the ghetto had been reinforced, and we heard warning shots. I approached the building of the Judenrat and heard screams and threats in Ukrainian coming out of the window [of the building] that faced the ghetto. Perhaps this was the final attempt to extort money and jewelry from the head of the Judenrat, his clerks, and family, before the deportation. (After the liberation [of the town], there were rumors among the non-Jews that these individuals had been shot dead near the police station of Stepań). I was tired and scared, and I returned home. I lay next to my mother and younger sister, and somehow fell asleep. But before dawn, we heard voices in German: "Jews, get out of your houses!" I looked out the window and saw three German soldiers wearing helmets, with bayoneted rifles in their hands. They marched through the streets of the ghetto and urged the Jews to get out of their houses. Within a couple minutes, I could see from the window… groups of Jews with their wives and children, carrying their possessions upon their backs and walking toward the gate of the ghetto. From time to time, they would be joined by others, becoming a frightened mob, or a flock of innocent sheep being led to the slaughter. I vividly recall Yitzhak Vitznodel, the butcher, dressed in his finest black suit, leading his family. My mother, my sister, and myself, being very scared, jumped out of our beds and, without taking anything, barefoot and minimally dressed, we left our house and went to look for shelter. My mother suggested that we hide in the small basement at the entrance to our house, until the danger passed. I objected to the idea, since I thought that they would continue their search next morning, and we would be found. My mother heeded my advice, and we climbed over the fence surrounding the ghetto. Near the ghetto, there lived a non-Jewish Pole, Yanek the carpenter. We jumped into his garden and hid among the thick corn stalks. Suddenly, we heard screams and abuse from the attic of the Pole, telling us to leave immediately, or he would call the police. Apparently because of fear, we all began to suffer from stomach pain and diarrhea. We were thus forced to leave the Pole's garden, and we turned into the main thoroughfare, May 3rd Street. When we reached the street, we saw a convoy of carts harnessed to horses. On most of the carts, Jewish families sat, ready to be transported. The carts were facing in the direction of the market – i.e., of Kostopol. Across the street, there were many armed Ukrainian policemen standing in close formation, to prevent people from escaping from the carts…, - i.e., to prevent any possibility of escape from the town. In this way, moving between the carts, we tried to cross the street and sneak away into one of the alleys, but every time the policemen prevented us from doing so with their bayoneted rifles and by firing in the air. Once, my mother and I did manage to cross the street and reach a side alley near the Sames Bruman bar. But then we saw that my sister Sosel-Sarah had been stopped by a policeman and dragged onto one of the carts. Her voice and cries brought us right back to her, as though we meant to get onto the same cart. But actually, we took her and ran back to the ghetto for the second time. Nobody tried to stop us, since we were once again in the trap. In the ghetto, we saw several people still walking toward the gate. Here and there, we heard crying from the houses, and occasional gunshots came from the direction of the ghetto gate.… [W]e decided to go to the men's camp and see if my father was still there. We went through the gate separating the ghetto from the men's camp and entered the room where my father used to be. But, to our deep sorrow, the entire house was empty. We made a quick search of the building and the area outside, and called my father's name a couple of times, but there was no reply. It seemed that the men's camp had been emptied unexpectedly, and the men had been put on carts going in the direction of Kostopol. As we lost our hope of finding father, we turned to a bathhouse on the river bank.… In order to bypass it and get out of the ghetto, we had to wade through knee-deep water, which was filthy and full of sharp stones and broken glass. In these circumstances, we decided to jump over the fence of the ghetto near the second corner of the bathhouse. The fence there was relatively high, and only with joint efforts… were we able to jump over it and drop to the ground on its other side – outside the ghetto. The minute the noise of our hitting the ground… was heard, shots came from a policeman standing on a nearby hill in front of the fence. We heard the noise of the bullets very well, but were able to crawl away from the fence without getting hurt. We then ran along the river very quickly, toward the village of Korost.… After the liberation of Stepań by the Red Army in 1944] one day, I decided to travel to my town, Stepań, even though I knew that none of my family remained alive…. In one case, I ran into a Ukrainian who was known as a friend of the Jews, even prior to the war. He was liberally minded, and was always willing to help. He related the following to me – some of which he had witnessed himself, and some of which he had heard from others: The Germans, with the aid of their Ukrainian collaborators, commandeered three hundred carts harnessed to horses. The convoy was organized in a single file along the 3rd of May Street, where they turned in the direction of Kostopol. At dawn on that day – the eleventh of Elul, August 1942 – the Jews were loaded onto the carts and taken to a forest near the village of Korczewie, in the area of Kostopol. Thus, about two thousand Jews set out on their last journey, surrounded by a large chain of Ukrainian policemen under German command: girls, boys, mothers with babies in their arms, elderly men, elderly women, and disabled persons. During the trip…, [some] girls, boys, and men tried to escape from the carts. Many were shot with no mercy, but some managed to slip away into the forest. However, most of them were eventually discovered by the Ukrainian policemen. The majority [of Jews] were huddled in the carts, some crying bitterly, some praying aloud, some silent, but with faces showing boundless fear and anxiety. These people made no attempt to escape, having seen the savage reaction of the Germans and the Ukrainian policemen, who were eager to shoot with no compunction as soon as someone so much as tried to get off the cart. Several large pits had been dug in advance, to serve as common graves for the innocent victims. The heavens, the earth, and the trees of the forest were mute witnesses to the total annihilation of the Jews of Stepań and the vicinity by several brutal soldiers of Hitler and the Ukrainian collaborators. According to the stories of eyewitnesses who escaped from the pits themselves, the Jews were forced to run naked to the pits, being hit and shoved constantly, and then ordered to lie down, their heads pressed to the ground. The murderers shot them in the pits. Many… were buried alive. It happened that, about two months after this huge massacre, their blood bubbled out of the soil that covered these pits. Workers from among the Ukrainian farmers were drafted and forced to exhume these pits and pour extinguishing lime over the dead bodies, to prevent the spread of disease and to get rid of the stench that wafted out of the pits. And it was an awful sight that greeted the farmers when they opened the pits…: Babies, little children, elderly men and women, men, women, youths in the prime of their lives – all heaped atop each other. The bodies were intact, and one could still identify each individual…. Most of the bodies bore no traces of gunshot wounds. This proved that the majority of the victims had been buried alive.… Thus, the Ukrainian summarized his sad story: “As I walked through the town after the massacre, I relived that horrible act. It seemed to me that life had stopped in the town, and the silence of death prevailed over everything.”…

…Since we were experts in making lime, they transferred me, my father, and my uncle Chaim Wachs to work in the small village of Werwecha. We were there until August 1942. One day, the Germans showed up in a car and took us to the ghetto [of Stepań]. From an overheard conversation among the Germans, I learned that the Germans intended to annihilate us along with the remaining Jews from the ghetto. My uncle escaped into the forest, but was caught by the Ukrainian nationalists and killed.… At dawn on the day of the annihilation, I, along with my brother Yaacov, were put on one of the carts that transported the town's Jews to their deaths near the village of Korczewie, ten kilometers from Kostopol. There, the Ukrainians and the Germans had dug huge pits in advance. The Jews were shot by these pits and buried in a huge common grave. Some were only wounded, and were buried alive. When our cart approached the place [i.e., the murder site], Yaacov, my brother, and I decided to escape, and we ran for the trees of the forest. Although the Germans opened fire on us, we managed to get away.…