Murder story of Rostov na Donu Jews in the Zmievka Ravine

On August 9, 1942 the head of the Jewish council in Rostov on Don, Lurye, on orders from Sonderkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D, issued a call to the Jews of Rostov on Don. All the Jews in the city were to come on August 11, 1942 to specially defined gathering points, supposedly for resettlement to a quarter assigned for Jews. The Jews were ordered to take with them their identity papers and the keys to their apartments. They were told to bring valuables, cash, and small bundles that they could carry. The resettlement was presented as a measure whose purpose was to protect the Jews from violence directed against them. On August 11, 1942, early in the morning, Jews of all ages and both sexes started to arrive at the gathering points, which were surrounded by Germans and local auxiliary police. Upon their arrival the people were robbed of the cash, valuables, and foodstuffs they had brought, loaded with violence onto trucks, and driven to the 2nd Zmievka, a settlement of railway workers northwest of Rostov on Don on the right bank of the Temernik River. Here the victims were ordered to undress, and then taken to the sand quarry pits in the northeast outskirts of the Zmievka settlement or to graves dug in advance at the edge of a grove in the botanical garden southeast of Zmievka, and shot there with machine-guns. According to testimonies, the children were poisoned and their bodies thrown into the pits. To speed up the murder process on the next two days gas vans were also used to killing of Rostov's Jews. The three day massacre perpetrated by members of Sonderkommando 10a and local auxiliaries recruited from Soviet prisoners-of-war, claimed the lives of between 2,000 (according to German data) and 13,000 (according to Soviet sources) Jews of all ages and both sexes. Subseqently the Zmievka Ravine served also as the murder site for the Jews who escaped the August 1942 massacre but were eventually caught by the Germans and their accomplices. For example, in September 1942 Jews were murdered in gas vans operated by members of Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C; the bodies were thrown into the ravine.