Murder story of Lyakhovtsy Jews in the Lyakhovtsy Forest

… On July 20 [sic for June 27], 1942 my classmate Fedya Rudyuk got permission from a [Ukrainian] policemen whom he knew (he gave the policemen his new bicycle that had been given to him as a present at the beginning of the German occupation), and he got me out of the ghetto … . And [already] on July [sic for June] 27, a week after my escape, all the inmates of the ghetto, including my mother and father, my mother's sister with her four little children, and my father's sister with her husband, were shot to death in the forest near the village of Karasina [sic for Trostyanka]. There was no one left out of the 3,000 Jews [from Lyakhovtsy and the nearby towns]. …

… Mikhail Zaharovich [the Jewish elder] told me in tears that the murder operation of us [the Jews of the Lyakhovty ghetto] was scheduled for July [sic for June] 25, 1942. He and 12-14 other Jewish specialists were allowed to remain [in the ghetto] for some time under the supervision of the [Ukrainian] police … . Though the upcoming murder operation was kept secret, all the Jews knew about it. … Mikhail Zaharovich warned me and other drivers a week before [the murder operation] that on July 25 the Jews would be taken in special trucks out of the ghetto - 15 kilometers [sic] outside the town, to the sand quarries (I forgot the name) to be shot … . On July 25, 1942… the Germans and [Ukrainian] policemen with machine guns accompanied from the ghetto… the first group of women, men, and children, up to 30 persons. The mothers were holding the little children in their arms, the children about 3-5 years old held onto their mothers shirts and their fathers hands … . We could clearly see their sad faces, … . They were pushed to the back of the truck and two huge [Ukrainian policemen] took a man under the arms and flung onto the truck while policemen who were standing on the truck pulled him, like a log of wood, towards the front of the truck. Due to the pain from the beatings they were given, the people screamed and shouted. … When the first truck was loaded, the sides and the backboard were closed, and it drove off… . On July 28 I got the most authoritative information [about the murder] from Anton, a Ukrainian policeman… . [the following text is direct testimony from Anton] I, an eyewitness of the murder, was assigned to distribute at tense moments to each German murderer a container of 200 milligrams of vodka… . When the Jews were taken to the quarries where ditches … had been were prepared … . The Germans began to take the Jews in groups to the ditches in the quarries and the people were forced to lie face down, with the little children next to their mothers,… and they were shot to death with sub-machine guns. Then their bodies were covered with lime and sand and a second row of people was placed on top of them; they [in turn] were [also] shot to death with machine-guns; those who were wounded were finished off with pistols. …