Eyewitness accounts of mass shootings:
This first testimony is by Rivka Yosselevscka in a war crimes tribunal
court. For ease of presenting her testimony, I am eliminating questions and
comments of the court itself. She lived in Zagrodski and the Einsatzgruppen
commandos arrived in the summer of 1942. All Jews were rounded up, a
roster
was drawn up and the families were loaded onto trucks. Since there were around
500 families, many could not get on so they were told to run
behind the
trucks....
...I had my daughter in my arms and ran after the truck. There were
mothers who had 2 or 3 children and held them in their
arms - running after
the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell - we were not allowed
to help them rise. They were
shot right there, wherever they fell. When we
reached the destination, the people from the truck were already down and
undressed - all lined up. All of my family was there. This was some 3 km
from our village. There was a kind of hillock. At the
foot of this little
hill, there was a dugout. We were ordered to stand at the top of the hillock
and the 4 devils shot us - each one
separately. They were SS men - the 4 of
them....
When I came to the place, we saw people naked lined up. But we were
still hoping that this was only torture. Maybe there is
hope - hope of
living. One could not leave the line, but I wished to see. Is there anyone down
below? I turned my head and saw
that some 3 or 4 rows were already killed -
on the ground. There were some 12 people amongst the dead. I also want to
mention
that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said,
"Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress? We
are being taken to
be shot!". And when we stood near the dugout, near the grave, she said,
"Mother, why are we waiting? Let's run!" Some of the young people tried to run,
but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was
difficult
to hold on to the children. We took all children not ours, and we
carried - we were anxious to get it all over - the suffering of
the
children was difficult. We all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to
come nearer to the end of the torture of the
children. The children were
taking leave of their parents, and parents of their elder people. We were
driven...we were already
undressed, the clothes were removed; and taken
away. Our father did not want to undress. He remained in his underwear. We
were driven up to the grave...when it came our turn, our father was beaten.
We prayed, we begged with my father to undress,
but he would not undress,
he wanted to keep his underclothes. He did not want to stand naked. Then they
tore the clothing off
the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own
eyes. Then they took my mother and shot her, too...and then there was my
grandmother, my father's mother, standing there, she was eighty years old
and she had two children in her arms; and then there
was my father's
sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the
babies in her arms..
Finally my turn came. There was my younger sister -
and she wanted to leave. She prayed with the Germans, she asked to run -
naked, she went up to the Germans with one of her friends, they were
embracing each other. He looked into her eyes and shot
the 2 of them. They
fell together in their embrace, the two young girls - my sister and her young
friend. Then my 2nd sister was
shot and then my turn did come. We turned
towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, "Whom shall I shoot
1st?" We were already facing the grave. The Germans asked, "Who do you want
me to shot 1st?" I did not answer. I felt him
take the child from my arms.
The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First,
he held onto my
hair and turned my head around. I stayed standing. I heard
a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again
and he
aimed the revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around
and shot at me. Then I fell to the
ground into the pit amongst the bodies-
but I felt nothing. The moment I did feel, I felt a sort of heaviness...and
then I thought
"maybe I'm not alive anymore - but I feel something after
I've died". I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling that comes
after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I
tried to move, and felt that I was alive and that I could
rise. I was
strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an
end to my suffering, but I continued to
move about. I felt that I was
choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself - to find some air to breathe,
and then I felt that I
was climbing towards the top of the grave above the
bodies. I rose and I felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my
legs, pulling me down, down. And yet, with my last strength, I came up on
top of the grave, and when I did, I did not know the
place, so many dead
bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this
stretch of dead bodies, but I could
not. It was impossible. They were
lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last
sufferings; naked; shot, but
not dead. Children crying "Mother" &
"Father"; I could not stand on my feet....the Germans were gone. There was
nobody
there. No one standing up. I was naked, covered with blood, dirty
from the other bodies - with the excrement from other bodies
which was
poured on me....I was wounded in the head...I have a scar to this day from the
shot by the Germans...and yet
somehow, I did come out of the grave. This
was something I thought I would never live to recount.
I was searching
among the dead for my little girl and I cried for her - Merkele was her name -
"Merkele!" There were children
crying "Mother!", "Father!" - but they were
smeared with blood and one could not recognize the children. I cried for my
daughter. From afar, I saw 2 women standing - I went up to them. They did
not know me. I didn't know them, and then I said
who I was, then they said,
"So you survived!"...and there was another woman crying, "Pull me out from
amongst the corpses! I
am alive! Help!" We were thinking how we could
escape from the place. The cries of the woman, "Help! Pull me out of the
corpses!" We pulled her out. her name was Mikla Rosenberg. We removed the
corpses and the dying people who held onto her
and continued to bite. She
asked us to take her out, to free her, but we didn't have the strength - and
thus we were there all
night, fighting for our lives, listening to the
cries and screams - then all of a sudden, we saw Germans, mounted Germans - we
did not notice them coming in because of the screams and the shouting from
the bodies around us. The Germans ordered that
all the corpses be heaped
together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together, all of
the corpses, amongst
them many still alive.- children running about the
place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging
onto me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the
children around me - the children who got up from the
heap of corpses. Then
Germans came and were going around the place.
We were ordered to collect
all the children, but they did not approach me and I sat there watching how
they collected the
children. They gave a few shots and the children were
dead - they did not need many shots - the children were almost dead, and
this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot
her. They all left - the Germans and the non-Jews
from around the place.
They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all
left, and the four of us -
we went onto the grave - praying to fall into
the grave -even alive, envying those who were dead already and thinking "What
to
do now?". I was praying for death to come, I was praying for the grave
to open up and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting
from the grave in
many places - like a well of water. When I pass a spring now - I remember the
blood which spurted from the
ground - from the grave. I was digging with my
fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails,
but
the grave would not open - I did not have enough strength. I cried out
to my mother, to my father "Why did they not kill me?
What was my sin? I
have no one to go to!". I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was
I not killed?...I remained
there, stretched out on the grave, 3 days and 3
nights...
The following account of Einstazgruppen aktions during the liquidation
of the Dubno ghetto (Ukraine) was given by Hermann Graebe, a German civilian
engineer,
who witnessed the event:
On Oct. 5, 1942, when I visited a building office at Dubno, my foreman,
H. Moennikes, told me that in the vicinity of the site, Jews
from Dubno had
been shot in 3 large pits, each about 30 meters long and 3 meters deep. About
1500 persons had been killed daily.
All of the 5000 Jews who had been
living in Dubno before the pogrom were to be liquidated. As the shootings had
taken place in
his presence, he was still much upset...
Moenikkes and I
went directly to the pits. Nobody bothered us. Now I heard rifle shots in quick
succession, from behind one of the
earth mounds. The people who had got off
of the trucks - men, women and children of all ages - had to undress upon the
order of
an SS man who carried a riding whip. They had to put down their
clothes in fixed places, sorted according to shoes, top-clothing
and
underclothes, I saw a heap of shoes - about 800 to 1000 pairs, great piles of
underlinen and clothing. Without screaming or
weeping, these people
undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and
waited for a sign from
another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a
whip in his hand.
During the 15 minutes that I stood near the pit, I heard
no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family of about 8 persons, a
man and woman, both about 50, with their children of about 1, 8 & 10
and 2 grown-up daughters of about 20 & 24. An old
woman with snow-white
hair was holding the 1 yr old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling
it. The child was cooing with
delight. The couple was looking on with tears
in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 yrs old and
speaking
to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed
towards the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something
to him.
At that moment, the SS man at the pits shouted something to his comrade. The
latter counted off about 20 persons and
instructed them to go behind the
earth mound. Among them was the family which I mentioned.
I well-remember a
girl, slim and with black hair who, as she passed close to me, pointed to
herself and said "Twenty-three!". I
walked around the mound and found
myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together
and lying on
top of each other so that only their heads were visible.
Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of
the people shot were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning
their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit
was already 2/3
full. I estimated that it already contained about 1000 people. I looked for the
man who did the shooting. He was an
SS man who sat at the edge of the
narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. he had a tommy-gun on
his knees and he
was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely naked,
went down some steps which were cut in the clay wall of the pit and
clambered over the heads of the people lying there, to the place where the
SS man directed. They laid down in front to the dead or
injured people,
some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then
I heard a series of shots.
I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies
were twitching or the heads, lying already motionless on top of the bodies that
lay
before them. Blood was running from their necks. I was surprised that I
was not ordered away, but I saw that there were 2 or 3
postmen in uniform
nearby. The next batch was approaching already. They went down in the pit,
lined themselves up against the
previous victims and were shot.
When I
walked back around the mound, I noticed another truckload of people which had
just arrived. This time it included sick
and infirm people. An old, very
thin woman with terribly thin legs was undressed by others who were already
naked while 2 people
held her up. The woman appeared to be paralyzed, the
naked people carried the woman around the mound. I left with Moennikes
and
drove in my car to Dubno.
On the morning of the next day, when I again
visited the site, I saw about 30 naked people lying near the pit - about 30 to
50m
away from it. Some of them were still alive; they looked straight in
front of them with a fixed stare and seemed to notice neither
the
chilliness of the morning nor the workers of my firm who stood around. A girl
of about 20 spoke to me and asked me to give
her clothes and help her
escape. At that moment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was
an SS detail. I moved away to my site. 10 minutes later we heard shots
from the pit. The Jews still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into
the pit - then they themselves had to lie in this to be shot in the neck.