Murder story of Niemenczyn Jews in the Niemenczyn Area

Sometime in August 1941 (I don't remember the exact date), I was summoned urgently, with my weapons, from my home to the Jewish synagogue in Nemenčine. When I came to the synagogue, I saw that it was filled with Jews, who had been rounded up all over the town. When the last Jews had been brought in, we were ordered to cordon off the road and begin to drive the Jews toward it. We lined them up in rows of four. In the course of this operation, male Jews were beaten, and, if anyone tried to resist, they would be thrown out of the upper windows of the synagogue. The chief of the Nemenčine police, Tekoris, was in charge of all this. Apart from a group of Gestapo men, [the killing squad] also included some Lithuanians, who had come over from Vilnius. All of them were drunk. We escorted the column of Jews along the Vilnius road – but, on the third kilometer, we turned them to the right, into the Nemenčine Forest, where ditches (graves) had been dug beforehand.… After entering the forest, many Jews tried to run away, and the whole escort opened fire on them. The column of Jews was given the order to "lie down." Some of the would-be escapees were killed, while others were able to hide.… Then, [we] began to take the remaining Jews to the ditches and shoot them. When the shooting was over, those who wanted began to loot the clothes and belongings of the murdered. These objects were loaded onto a horse-drawn cart. I did not take anything from the murder site.

One day in late August 1941, at about noon, the headman of the Niemenczyn commune, Stanisław Rutkowski, came… with an ethnic Lithuanian policeman, whose name I don't know, and they ordered me to get dressed, take a shovel, and go with them.… [T]his policeman and Headman Rutkowski led me to the bridge over the Niemenczyna River, where some thirty men were assembled, under guard by a group of about ten policemen. Afterward, all of us, the peasants…, were driven three kilometers in the direction of Vilnius [i.e., southward], and forced to dig a pit there.… Nearby, a group of some sixty men, who had been brought there before us, were already busy digging the pit.… The next morning, at about 9 or 10 AM, a German captain came to the pit by car, looked it over, and left. Two hours later, when we were done digging, the pit was eighty meters long, four meters wide, and three meters deep. To this pit, the armed Lithuanian policemen forcibly drove [a large group of] Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality, 500-600 people in total. Having come close to the pit, these citizens began to run away. Some of them were killed by the policemen [on the run], while others managed to escape. However, the rest of them were ordered to lie down, whereupon the policemen began to take them, in batches of fifteen-twenty, to the pit we had dug, and shoot them. At the beginning of the shooting of the Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality, we were driven away [from the pit] for a distance of about 100 meters.… After the shooting of the Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality, the policemen ordered us to cover the pit with soil.