Murder story of Yagorlyk Jews in the Anti-Tank Trench in the Yagorlyk Area

…On September 6, 1941…, a truck, headed by the commandant Keller [i.e., Walter Kehrer, the commander of Einsatzkommando 12a], arrived [in Yagorlyk]. [The commander] ordered the head of the rural council to assemble all the Jews [of the village] in one building [on the premises of the former collective farm administration]. There were many Jews near the mill [apparently, an assembly point], and the Romanians, who had begun to call out the names of Jews and [Communist] Party members…, were telling them that the Germans would take them by truck to Palestine. The Jews were very glad to hear that they would stay alive, but things turned out differently. [All the people] were gathered, taken under convoy to a pit, and shot dead. [Here follows a list of forty-one persons]…. I [also] saw one [Moldovan] woman from the village of Doybany, who came running [to Yagorlyk], looking terrified, and who was shot dead along with our [local] people. The shouts and cries [of the victims] were terrible to hear. Keller, the commander of the murder squad, ordered his men, who numbered ten, to remove all forty-one persons from the premises. [The people] were taken out and led to a valley where an anti-tank trench had been dug. During the march [to the murder site], they all kept crying bitterly, saying that they wished to live, but they [the Germans] kept beating them and menacing them with rifles and machine guns. When they approached [the killing site], [the Germans] shot [the victims] in turns. When the shooting was over, they summoned the workers from the [local] collective farm and ordered them to cover the bodies [of the victims].

…On September 6, 1941, a truck with [the members] of a Gestapo detachment, headed by commandant Keller [i.e., Walter Kehrer, the commander of Einsatzkommando 12a], arrived [in Yagorlyk]. [The commander] ordered the head of the rural council to assemble all the Jews and Communists [of the village] on the premises of the former collective farm administration…. [During the roundup], the commandant released two Communists…, while [the third one], [Vladimir] Solonenko, was taken to the common room, where the assembled Jews were sitting. No one bothered to interrogate the Jews, and they were [identified] by their last names. The Communist and old partisan Vladimir Solonenko [apparently, was brought in], along with [the following] Jews… One [Moldovan] woman from [the nearby village of] Doybany, who had come running to Yagorlyk (I don't know her last name), was also shot dead. The murder squad consisted of ten individuals, and they [the arrestees] were all removed from the building where they had been held, and taken under convoy to the anti-tank trench. [The victims] were positioned [on the lip of the trench] in groups of five, and [the Germans] shot them. The [Communist] Party member Vladimir Solonenko was the last to be shot. After the shooting, members of the collective farm were brought in to cover the bodies.…

1. On September 6, 1941, the German commandant Keller [i.e., Walter Kehrer, commander of Einsatzkommando 12a], who had arrived by car, ordered to summon the [Communist] Party members and the Jewish civilians of the village of Yagorlyk. 2. The people were rounded up and led under convoy to the anti-tank trench in the valley, where forty-one people were shot dead. 3. On that day, the following individuals [a list is attached] were shot. Among the executed [Jews], there are many [bodies of] children and elderly people.…