Murder story of Kolomyja Jews in the Kolomyja Ghetto

…Suddenly, it became light in the room…. The son of one of the workers had somehow managed to break out of the ghetto and burst into the factory. The words of the sixteen-year-old teenager, interrupted by constant sobs, gave us a picture of what was going on in the ghetto. “The Germans,” he told is, “furious at the Jews who had hidden away, set fire to the houses of the third Jewish district (the most populous one), and the people were burning alive. Those jumping out of windows to escape the flames were shot on the spot. Women were throwing their crying children into the street. Thousands of victims perished in the flames. The wooden houses were crumbling with a crash. The wind was fanning the flames ever further. The conflagration was spreading with indescribable force.”

…I recall one murder operation in particular – the burning of the third district on April 2, 1942, when Steiner and Kleinbauer grabbed the small children and threw them alive into the flames. I saw this cruel, inhuman operation with my own eyes.…

On April 3, 4, 6, and 7, [1942], we experienced the terrible pogrom days. The hissing of the flames, which devoured entire streets, was mixed with the shots of the Gestapo officers and the lamentations of the poor victims. These days claimed the lives of 5,000 victims, most of whom were shot. 600 of these holy martyrs were even burned alive.… The expected “murder operation” also took place on November 5 of that year [1942]. On that day…, the entire ghetto was burned to the ground, together with 300 Jews who were hiding there….

…The Passover murder operation; April 3-6, 1942 …On Monday, the second day of the Christian Easter, it was the turn of the third Jewish quarter. This time, the people had hidden away. Woe to anyone who was found in hiding! Unwilling to fret over the “lousy” hidden Jews, they (the Gestapo officers) threw an incendiary bomb into each house, and a few minutes later almost the entire Jewish quarter was ablaze. SS men stood guard the whole day, making sure that no one tried to extinguish the fire…. The next day, the bodies of the people who had jumped out of the flames and been shot by the Gestapo were lying about in the open. Hundreds of charred bodies were discovered in cellars, closets, and other hiding places.

…The first of the deportation operations took place immediately after the establishment of the ghetto, on March 31, 1942, which was the second day of Passover [sic! In 1942, the second day of Passover was April 3]. For the first time, the Germans took advantage of the fact that the Jews had been concentrated in the ghetto, and used a “sophisticated” new method, instead of searching for individual Jews through the apartments and hideouts. They brought in firefighting hoses, doused the entire neighborhood with fuel, and ignited it. This resulted in infernal scenes. The wall of smoke and flame forced the hidden Jews out of their hideouts. Women with babies in their arms jumped out of windows and from attics. At the same time, the Germans placed machine guns in the streets and shot upon the fleeing people. Detective dogs tore the people alive. Many were tied to telegraph poles and devoured by the flames. Moreover, many of those who failed to escape the fire, or had been thrown into the flames by the thugs, were burned…. Franz Schipany…, and here is an excerpt from his admission from September 29, 1947: “I could see Gestapo men setting fire to a section of the ghetto. This caused a panic among the Jews, who were jumping out of their apartments, out of the windows and attics of the burning houses, trying to escape as best they could…. The Jews who were unable to leave their houses and their hideouts were burned alive, while those trying to escape were shot by the urban policemen who surrounded the ghetto…. It is true that those trying to flee from the burning houses were shot, too….”

…On the third day, the Jews, seeing that they had nothing to lose, hid away – mostly in cellars, attics, and underground hideouts. In response, the Gestapo officers drove in vehicles through the third district and threw incendiary bombs through the windows into the houses, which burned to the ground with the people [inside them]. Even if someone managed to get out, they were already living torches, with no hope of survival. In this way, eighty percent of the residents of that district perished….

…When they finished the murder operation I have described above, some Jews still remained in the area where the operation had taken place, since they had managed to hide. When the Germans learned of this, they entered the same area again – this time, too, at 3-4 AM – and ordered the Jews to get out. Very few people got out, so they began to throw grenades into the houses and set them on fire, with the occupants still inside. When I heard that this murder operation was over, I ran to that area, to see what had happened to my brother-in-law, who lived there. When I arrived there, I saw a horrible scene. There were many dead Jews in the streets, and the whole area was burning. Gestapo men were still walking around in the area, but other people were allowed to enter. This was especially true of me, because everyone knew me as a tailor, and I was working for everyone. I noticed several Jews who were trying to get out of the burning houses, but the Germans walking around grabbed them and threw them back into the flames. The firefighters stood outside the ghetto, making sure that the fire would not spread to the Aryan side. I witnessed a shocking scene, when a woman approached a child who was lying in the street and still moving. The woman tried to lift the child, and then a (Gestapo) officer approached them and shot them both….

…It was Passover 1942…. There was a large number of victims, many of them burned to death. If anyone got out, they would be thrown back into the flames and burned. The Ukrainians assisted the Germans and the Gestapo.…

…It was on Passover; we were hiding in the attic, having climbed there after learning of the murder operation. I raised one of the roof tiles. We looked outside and saw groups of urban policemen and Gestapo officers igniting the phosphorous substance covering the houses, to force the occupants out. And, when all these poor people got out, the urban policemen and Gestapo officers shot every one of them without mercy…. We felt the approach of the new murder operation, so my wife, my son, and I managed to hide between the wooden fence and a lavatory. We looked through the gap created by a missing plank of the fence, and saw some thirty people from families we knew – Shtayn, Bauchman, Blitz, and others – being taken out of the bunker in the nearby courtyard. The men, women, and children were lined up against the wall and shot dead on the spot.

…On Monday, April 5, the third day of the Hol-a-Moed of Passover, at about 9 AM, the murderers surrounded the ghetto with lightning speed. The detonation of a hand grenade signaled the beginning of the murder operation. The people began to flee. The shooting began, and the dead lay about in the streets…. Suddenly, the noise of vehicles and of spraying liquid was heard. They were spraying the houses with gasoline from the vehicles. Then, the crackle of incendiary bombs could be heard, and shortly thereafter the third ghetto was in flames. The people who had hidden in the houses and shelters tried to jump out of windows, or from the other side, but they were shot while running out. On the corner of the “New World,” a house was burning, and the murderers caught small children, stripped them naked, and threw them into the burning building. Other people, who had failed to get out, were burned to death or suffocated in their hideouts.… Also, a certain group of people was gathered in the square of the “New World”, ordered to lie down in a circle, with their heads pointing inward, and shot by a Gestapo man with a pistol. A second group was assembled, ordered to recite the vidui [confession recited prior to death], and shot in a sadistic manner.…