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Murder Story of Dubno Jews at the Surmicze Airfield

Murder Site
Surmicze
Poland
On May 26, 1942, after the Jewish men had been taken from the collection point to Szibiena Hura, women, children, and some sick persons were taken by truck and on foot, guarded by Gendarmerie (German rural order police) and Ukrainian auxiliary police, outside Dubno to the former airfield, located a kilometer from Surmicze village. Upon their arrival at the killing site, the victims were taken to pits previously dug by Soviet prisoners of war. They were forced in groups into the pit and had to lie there facedown; then they were shot to death in the back of the head by a unit of a mobile SS squad from Równe. Then another group had to lie down on the top of the bodies and was also shot to death. According to one testimony, at the end of this murder operation, after their mothers had been shot to death, approximately 300 small children who had been left behind, were pushed by the SS men into a pit, into which they tossed two grenades, thus killing those children. The ChGK report also indicates some women and children died of suffocation since their mouths and noses had been tightly bound by rags. This report also states that high-ranking German military personnel were present during this murder operation. The killing operation lasted for two days. On October 5, 1942 most of the inmates from the skilled workers' ghetto who did not have special certificates were collected on Rybnaia Street and from there taken by truck to the Surmicze killing site. Upon their arrival, armed Ukrainian auxiliary policemen who were assigned as guards on the trucks, made the people - men, women, and children -- get off the trucks. Then the people had to undress and to put their clothes in designated places. Afterwards, naked, the victims were made to descend the several steps which had been cut in the clay wall of the pit and lie facedown inside it. They were shot to death with submachine-guns by SS men. These two murder operations were headed and participated in by the Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) of Dubno Werner Brocks and the head of the Dubno Gendarmerie von Papke.
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Mosze Weisberg, who was born in 1912 and lived in Dubno during the war years, testified:
The murder operation of the 26th and 27th of May [1942] was carried out as follows: on the evening of the same day the Jewish police of the ghetto was ordered to separate the professionals [skilled] and other Jews, and not to leave among the professionals any person who did not have a work certificate. At midnight three shots were fired at the [main] gate of the ghetto. German SS men broke into the ghetto together with several hundred German [auxiliary] policemen. All of them were wearing steel helmets and the Germans also had dogs with them. They began to drive the Jews out of their homes and beat mercilessly all of those who were leaving their houses. Women fainted when they saw their infants being smashed or hacked to pieces by the murderers. Handicapped, sick, and old people were shot to death on the spot. Many jumped into the Ikwa River and drowned. Khaya Fainblitt from Rybnaia Street, who had been barren for 14 years and finally gave birth to her first born son at the time of the German entry [into Dubno], took her baby and drowned him in a barrel of water, screaming: [in Yiddish] … "I With my own eyes I have to see the death of my ... son!" Afterward, she took poison -- to the amusement of these barbarians…. The poor persecuted [Jews] were collected at the square near the entrance to the ghetto. Deathly silence prevailed there [at the square], occasionally interrupted by the trucks that arrived to take away the victims and the terrible crying that burst out. The trucks "swallowed" the victims and took them to the killing site. Since there were not enough trucks, they [the Germans] forced the … women and children [to go on foot] to the airfield near the Surmicz station. One group of those who was about to be killed was composed of 800 school-age children. The children, who were dressed nicely, were put into in rows of four at the beginning of the procession, and lilac bouquets were given to them [to hold]. Thus, during the most beautiful month of the year, the month of May, those little ones were going their own funeral with bouquets of flowers in their hands. They were followed by Germans, Ukrainians [auxiliary policemen], and German women with dogs, who would sometimes release the dogs on the children to tear them to pieces. Those were German women and mothers, who had their own children at home…. The [Jewish] women and children were forced to their knees and made to cross their hands on the napes of their necks and bend down towards the pit. In a corner near the pit, with his legs dangling in the pit and with a cigarette between his lips, a German man was sitting, holding a machine-gun. Every fews minutes the machine-gun rattled and [another] 20 people fell into the pit. Since this shooting was not enough, another shooting followed. Many peopled suffocated from the pressure of the bodies [above them].… When the pit was filled, it was covered with chlorine and sealed. Blood streamed and bubbled up above the ashes that covered the pit.… The murder operation lasted until May 27….
Yaacov Adini, ed., Dubno: Book of Remembrance (Irgun yots'ei Dubno be Yisrael, Tel Aviv, 1966), pp. 464-465 (Hebrew).
Surmicze
Airfield
Murder Site
Poland
50.25;25.46