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Murder Story of Berdichev Jews in Khazhin

Murder Site
Khazhin
Ukraine (USSR)
Murder site between the villages  of Khazhin and Bystrik. Photographer: 	Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2015.
Murder site between the villages of Khazhin and Bystrik. Photographer: Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2015.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615553
On August 27, 1941 (according to another source, September 4), a special unit of the Higher SS and Police Leader southern front headquarters headed by Friedrich Jeckeln assembled 1,303 (according to another source, 2,000) young, strong Jews, mainly men, on the pretext of sending them to agricultural labor. They were held in the stores of the town’s market (until the required number of men was assembled). On September 4 (according to another source, September 5), the men were brought to the area between the villages of Khazhin and Bystrik, some three to four kilometers south of Berdichev on the road to Vinnitsa, and shot.
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From the article of Vasily Grossman “The Murder of the Jews in Berdichev”:
...On September the fourth, one week after the ghetto was organized, the Germans and traitors who had joined their police force ordered 1,500 young people to leave for agricultural work. The young people made bundles of bread and food, said goodbye to their relatives, and set out. On that very day, they were shot between Lysaya Gora and the village of Khazhin. The henchmen prepared the execution carefully – so carefully that none of the doomed people suspected until the very last minutes that there was a massacre in the offing. The victims were given detailed instructions as to where they would work, how they would be broken up into groups, and when and where they would be issued shovels and other tools. It was even hinted that, when the work was completed, they would each be permitted to take a few potatoes for the elderly who had remained in the ghetto. In few days of life, left to them, those who remained in the ghetto never learned the fate of those young people. “Where is your son?” someone would ask one of the old men. “He went to dig potatoes,” the old people would reply.
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Wassili. The black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 . New York : Holocaust Library, 1981, p. 17.
Khazhin
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
49.852;28.603
Murder site between the villages of Khazhin and Bystrik. Photographer: Mikhail Tyaglyy, 2015.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615553