Murder Story of Bereznica Jews in the Forest in the Tutowicze Area

December 26, 1945 Kiev From the Interrogation of Willi Meyer, commander of the machine gunners’ detachment of the 323rd Reserve Rifle Battalion of the 76th Infantry Division: …In the second half of July 1942, I was ordered by Feldwebel [sergeant] Amberg from our 4th Company of the 323rd Reserve Rifle Battalion of the 76th Infantry Division to dig several graves not far from our barracks in a suburb of the city of Sarny. To this end, I took 100 men from the camp located not far from our barracks; it housed Soviet citizens about to be deported to Germany. Five large and small graves were dug under my supervision. After the graves had been dug, one early morning in late July 1942 (I do not remember the exact date), our battalion was put on alert. Feldwebel Amberg ordered me to place two heavy machine guns at the open graves. The soldiers of our battalion brought groups of no more than 150 Russian citizens – including men, women, and children – from the camp to the open graves. When they had been positioned at the graveside, I gave an order to open fire upon them from the two heavy machine guns. I manned one machine gun, while a soldier named Hans Gerige manned the other… The shooting lasted for the whole day, with a lunch break… In the course of two days, a total of 1,400 [sic for 14,000] people from this camp, including many women and children, were shot....

October 23, 1964 Bad Zwischenahn From the Testimony of Willy Felske, former official of the district commissariat in Sarny …I know of only one former colleague of mine who watched the murder operation against the Jews. Now I give his story for the record… This comrade subsequently told me that he had watched the murder operation out of curiosity. He did so on the first evening of the murder operation, which is known to have lasted 1.5 days… The eyewitness, whose first name was Paul, told me that the Jews had been brought to the execution site in groups of unknown size. The execution site was at the former Polish military airfield. The eyewitness Paul saw Jewish men, women, and children being forced to strip naked. Their clothes were thrown into a big pile. Their valuables were deposited in a box. The Jews had to approach the edge of the pit in groups of ten. I have forgotten to indicate that members of the Organization Todt had been ordered to dig these mass graves in advance. According to the eyewitness Paul, the edge of the pit was sloped in one place, so that the Jews could descend into the mass grave. The mothers held their little children in their arms. Once inside the pit, five of the Jews had to go to the left, while the other five had to go to the right. Two SS men with submachine guns stood inside the pit. An SS man with a truncheon stood beside each of these SS men, showing the victims their places. The Jews inside the pit had to stand on the sand wall, and were then shot in the back of the head… Afterward, the bodies were sprayed with chlorinated lime and covered with earth. The murder operation lasted for a day, and then until noon on the next day…

December 29, 1945 Kiev From the Interrogation of Willi Meyer, commander of the machine gunners’ detachment of the 323rd Reserve Rifle Battalion of the 76th Infantry Division: Question: …Describe the shooting site in detail. Answer: …The shooting site lay in the northern district of the town of Sarny, northwest of our barracks, 300-350 meters away. The site of this shooting was a flat plot of land at the edge of the young forest. The ground there was sandy. There were two old barns, formerly used as granaries, about 30 meters from there… …The mass shootings of civilians from the town of Sarny were carried out on August 25-28, 1942. Contrary to what I said previously, the total number of victims was 14,000 (fourteen thousand), and not 1,400. My group and I personally shot 1,400 people on the first and third days… Each person had to remove [his or her] clothes before the shooting, and was then shot in front of the grave. The people from the group of 150 would approach the grave in pairs, one after the other. After the shooting, the wooden barracks were burned down. I do not know if there were people inside them.

March 18, 1970 Ludwigsburg From the summary report of the investigation of Alfred Sokolowski, former rural police chief in the Sarny area: …The ghetto in Sarny was established around September 1941 [sic for April 1942]. On August 25, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated, and the Jews were taken to the [Poleska] camp, which had previously housed Russian POWs. Jews from the localities of Klesów, Dabrowica, Bereznica, and Rokitno arrived in this camp at the same time. On August 28, 1942, all the Jews from the camp, together with about 200 Roma people…, were shot at pits that had been dug in advance not far from the Jewish cemetery. The number of victims varies from 10,000 to 17,000, depending on the source… The shootings supposedly took place 1-1.5 km from the camp, at five large mass graves northwest of Sarny. According to the documents, the victims were taken from the camp to the pits in groups of 200 to 300 people. There, they had to remove their clothes, and were then shot inside the pits…. The Russian defendant Belonis, according to his 1947 interrogation, had to be present at the execution site. There, he saw 20-30 “policemen wearing SS uniforms.” He continues: “The Jewish arrivals had to remove their clothes 50 meters from the grave. Afterward, an unknown German herded them into the grave, where they had to lie down atop the Soviet citizens who had been shot previously. [The new victims] were then shot by an unknown German with a submachine gun (only one German stood at each grave)” … The investigation report of the public prosecution from November 28, 1944 speaks… of “Gestapo men” carrying out the shootings at the graves: “The people were led from the camp to the graves in groups of 150-200. There, they had to remove their clothes, and were then led down the steps into the grave. The Gestapo men ordered the victims in the grave to lie down in a line, and they [the victims] were then shot through the head with submachine guns. The bodies in the grave were piled in as many as 10 layers, and about half a meter of soil was spread over them. Afterward, [the executioners] moved on to the next grave”…