Report on Nazi Atrocities

[Translated from the original Ukrainian.]

[Pages 1 & 2]

At the grave of relatives and friends. More than five thousand people of the local population, mainly old people, women and small children, were brutally tortured and exterminated by the Nazis. They were buried in pits on the territory of our hometown, Chudnov.

From eyewitness accounts, I learned that the first victim was the spiritual rabbi, 77-year-old Joseph Yakovlevich Mosuk. This happened on September 8, 1941. At first, they mocked this old man: they ordered him to put on his talus and tefillin, then they forced two old women to take him by the arms and lead him with candles in their hands through the streets to the park, accompanied by the rubber whip of a German executioner.

The two old women were forced to sing an obscene song. After all the mockery, the two old women and Rabbi Joseph were killed in full view of the entire population. They were buried in one of the pits, and a wooden cross was erected over this pit. One girl dared to clandestinely remove this cross, and she was immediately killed.

[Page 3]

The first mass extermination of the Jewish population took place on September 9, 1941. The police and Gestapo instructed Eli Sherman and Nuta Zilberman to convene all Jews; they were all told that they would be sent to work. About 2,000 people were herded into the cinema. From the cinema they were put into overcrowded trucks and taken to a park which many years ago belonged to the landowner Michalson. Nobody knew in advance where they were being taken. Among the passengers of the first truck was Lazar Kharitonovich. Waving his hat, he shouted: “I feel certain that I am going to die.” Vehicles raced from the cinema to the park, where the new arrivals were lined up by pre-dug pits.

[Page 4]

Above each pit lay a narrow board, towards which people of all ages, with petrified expressions on their faces, quietly moved together in a long line. In one of these lines stood my mother, my aunt Sura and Yankel, my wife’s brother. Yankel clung to my mom with one hand, and in the other hand he held tightly to a small bag with things. After all, he thought he was going to work. By order of the executioners, people stepped, one at a time, on to the board that lay over the middle of the pit. As soon as a person stood on that board, an explosive bullet was sent to the back of his or her head.

[Page 5]

Skulls with hair flew in different directions and clung to the branches of the pine trees, and brains flew out in a spray, and the bodies fell quickly into the pit. Liza, the pregnant daughter of the shoemaker, Yankel Simkhes, was standing in line. She went into labour right next to the pit. A German monster with his dirty hands tore her newborn child out of her womb, grabbed the infant by one leg and hit his head hard on the trunk of a pine tree. Then he threw the newborn baby into the common pit, where his murdered mother was already lying. So, the life of a new baby could not begin.

[Page 6]

This is how the first batch, more than 2,000 people, was destroyed. For insidious mockery, the Nazis decided not to completely kill an entire family, but only kill one family member, husband or wife or child. On that day, our neighbors, Khaim and Tsilya Furman and our friend, Rachel Morgailo, were killed. The survivors were subjected to terrible bullying. In captivity, created by the insidious fascists, wandered people with grey faces, looking like skeletons and hardly able to move from work that was too much for them. Fascists left alive tailors, shoemakers and other craftsmen who were forced to sew and alter clothes, and make shoes and other things. These artisans were forced to rework and fix things out of what had been plundered from the murdered population for the needs of the executioners and for the parcels they sent to their families in Germany.

[Pages 7 & 8]

The fiends issued an order stating that the workers would not be killed because of the necessity of a labor force. They offered the widows of husbands they already had killed, to marry other male workers, and promised to keep them alive if the widows agreed. For example: Fuki Ullman’s wife married Nusya Britan right after her husband was killed; the wife of Haim Siver married the old man, Gershel Bronzovink, whose wife was also killed.

The Germans forcibly imposed family ties. Moishe Mair, after his wife and three children were killed, lost his mind out of grief. He ran around Chudnovo like a hunted animal. Moishe was not the only one who lost his mind from grief. The young wife of a doctor, Litov, also lost her mind; Aaron Keelun’s daughter-in-law dressed up very smartly and with a loud song went to the park to the scaffold, where she was immediately killed.

The second massacre took place on October 15 and 16, 1941. This time, my father, who was greatly exhausted from infestations since the arrival of the German invaders, was killed. By this time, Freidel, the wife of my father’s brother, Yankel, and his three children had already been killed.

[Page 9]

According to eyewitnesses, my dad’s sister-in-law Freidel was dressed in a white dress and carried her infant son with one hand, and led her daughter by the other hand. Her little son, Fima, held onto the hem of her dress. The policeman pushed Freidel to make her go faster. She complied and tried to walk faster; she knew that they all were going to die. On the same day they brought Yankel Barshtman to the park. He was holding his grandson, Dimka, in his arms; next to him was his wife Shendel, who was holding another newborn grandson. Her daughter-in-law Sarah stood by. She looked like a skeleton and could hardly move. They all went together on this last journey. A policeman grabbed the newborn baby, kicked it up like a football and shot it in the air. German fiends laughed and many of them photographed this trick.

[Page 10]

A 19-year-old very beautiful young woman, the daughter of Itzik Hanis, was brought to one of the pits. She was a local teacher, and they were our neighbors. The policeman forced her to strip naked and loosen her long blond hair. They stared at her for a long time and admired her beauty. Then they took the girl out of the line, told her to get dressed and gave her the option to leave; they had decided to keep her alive. The young woman categorically refused to leave and demanded her death. She wanted to take a place in the pit beside her mother and father, who were killed a few moments before.

[Page 11]

An explosive bullet tore off the upper part of her skull, which, together with long fluffy hair, flew into the air and hung on the branches of a nearby pine tree. Hairs hung on a pine tree for several days until the wind carried them into the Teterev River, which flowed near the park. Nehama, the daughter of Yankel Balagula, was crippled. Her husband, who was not Jewish, also refused to stay alive. Nehama was killed along with her child. Her husband threw himself into the pit to be beside his murdered wife and child, and he was immediately killed. An old man named Shmul-David put on a talis and tefillin and decided not to wait for the Germans to come for him, he himself came to the park and went directly to the pit. There he was immediately killed.

[Page 12]

The third massacre took place in mid-November 1941. Then the 83-year-old doctor Libov and his youngest daughter Lilia were killed. This doctor was loved by all residents of Chudnov. Doctors Voskoboinik and Frenkel and their wives were also killed. The Germans led Doctor Libov, a handsome and slender old man who had saved thousands of people from death, to the pit. He threw into the crowd pre-prepared notes with one written message: “Save us.” But he, like many of his patients, was killed by an explosive bullet.

The brains of this clever and kind man flew into boughs of the pine trees until they were blown away by the wind. Doctor Lubov, while waiting for his turn, made a speech in Russian and German before reaching the pit.

[Page 13]

Doctor Libov proudly declared that he had always been a Bolshevik and was dying as a Bolshevik. The first bullet was aimed at the back of his head and missed the mark. The doctor managed to turn and face the executioner and shouted to him: “If you shoot, then shoot directly at me.” The entire population of Chudnov, including those from the outskirts of the city, had created a petition and collected more than a thousand signatures asking the German authorities not to kill Doctor Libov. Several people were sent to the city of Zhitomir to the German city authorities. The permission to postpone the killing of Dr. Libov arrived in Chudnov the day after he was killed. Doctor Libov studied in Germany in 1889. There he became a highly qualified physician. And he was killed by the German fascists.

[Page 14]

So, it was done to the Jewish population of our town. Most of the killed people were buried in pits dug in the park. Some were buried in other places on the territory of the old and new Chudnov and its outskirts. 80 former residents were buried close to the city center. Moishe was buried close to the mountain, under the stones. Moishe’s nickname was “Pampushka.” It means “donut” in English. He jumped out of a truck while being transported to the park. Moishe ran and shouted in bad German: “I am the father of ten children.” He was shot before finishing his sentence.

[Page 15]

The corpse of Arka Tutin lay for a long time on a hill near Chudnov. He died there of distress and grief in 1942. Moshe Khanis was killed in 1943 not far from the city of Krasnogorsk. He hid in the woods for two years until he was captured by German predators. In the Voznesenski forest, they found a dead forester named Bendik. He was found sitting on his knees, frozen by an extinguished fire and looking like a wild animal.

Before reaching the distillery factory, under the bridge, a murdered husband, wife and son,Aaron, lay for a long time. Before the war Aaron delivered home brew in the city. Ruzia Furman, a nice young girl, did not let the German executioners kill her. She hanged herself in the cellar of the Barshtman family home. Ruzia hung in the cellar for a very long time until she was accidentally discovered and buried in the city center. A dead little boy, the son of Pupa Barshtman, was also found in the cellar.

[Page 16]

So many wonderful and kind inhabitants of our city of Chudnov perished. Excellent craftsmen were destroyed: shoemakers, tailors and other incredible specialists in their craft. Many were killed with their families. In February 1944, I visited the graves of all my loved ones, relatives and friends. At that time, the Germans had fled to the West under pressure from the Red Army. Fighting took place in the small town of Krasnosersk, which was 15 kilometers from Chudnov.

[Page 17]

On February 8, 1944, I arrived at the graves of the people closest to me. There was a terrible blizzard that day. I pressed my face to one of the pits and imagined that I could hear my mother’s whisper: “My children, my beloved children!” It seemed to me that this whisper was echoed by the evergreen pine trees, which lowered their branches. It seemed as though the pines told me how human skulls hung on their branches for a long time and human brains were dried there. I had no doubt then that the pines were living witnesses of a terrible crime. I saw the ground of the pits begin to move as it did in front of the eyewitnesses when they saw people not yet dead be buried alive.

[Page 18]

This day, February 8, 1944, ended. It was already dark when I, fearfully looking around, quickly left the park. I went to where the murdered people once lived and saw that many of the houses of the killed people had been destroyed, and I had nowhere to spend the night. This is my brief description of a very sad and bitter truth about the crimes and atrocities of Hitler’s fascists and their henchmen in our small town Chudnov.

February 5–10, 1944

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