Polonnoye Forest Related Communities
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Murder story of Polonnoye Jews in the Polonnoye Forest
Murder Site
Polonnoye Forest
Ukraine (USSR)
On the morning of September 2, 1941 1,275 Jews of the town, including many women and children, were loaded onto trucks and taken deep into the forest near the Polonnoye train station, located three kilometers from the town. When they arrived the site was surrounded by Ukrainian policemen and the Jews were made to strip naked, taken to the edge of the pit, and then shot to death, apparently by members of the 45th Reserve Order Police Battalion that had been brought from Shepetovka.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
Written Accounts
ChGK Soviet Reports
From the testimony of Boris Timoshenko, who was born in 1937 and was living in Polonnoye during the war years
…. In the summer of 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Ukraine. I cannot forget those days. Starting in September 1941, we used to stand with my grandfather near our gates and lorry after lorry would pass by us slowly, with women, old people and children. People were crying. They were taking Jews from the city [town] to be murdered. … It was clear that every lorry was filled with people, and some women held babies in their arms, and on each of the cars [trucks] there were two Germans with automatic guns. The lorries went by and soon in a forest nearby, just across the railway tracks, shots sounded and they were all killed. …
Zabarko, Boris. Holocaust in the Ukraine.London : Vallentine Mitchell, 2005, pp. 288-289.
Polonnoye Forest
forest
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
50.131;27.494