Murder Story of Khmelnik Jews on the Ulanov Road

[When we came back, we] learned that a horrendous tragedy had taken place in the town during our absence. ... At eight o’clock in the morning, they called our elder Barenberg to the town council and told him to collect shovels and axes from the Jews and bring them to the town council. Peasants from the outskirts of the town were forced to dig a ditch. At nine o’clock they encircled the town, and a roundup of the Jews began. They were first driven to a registration, and then sent to “work.” By 4 pm, they had captured 368 men and two women, and driven them to the central square. There had been a Lenin monument in the square, which the fascists had demolished. They told Moisei Beselman to stand on the pedestal, in the same pose in which Lenin had stood – with his arm stretched before him – and then they shot him, and he fell from the pedestal to the ground. They cut the beards of some elderly Jews and forced them to eat the hairs. Then they forced the Jews to join hands, dance and sing “International.” After several hours of abuses, they drove the hapless victims to the building of the district union of consumers’ cooperatives, where broken glass and planks with protruding nails had been prepared, and forced them to dance barefoot on them. ... At 6 pm, the tortured, hungry, and bleeding people were driven along the road to Ulanov. One of them fell down dead – the others were ordered to pick up his body and carry him. The victims were told to undress near the ditch and step down, one by one, into the ditch. A hangman stood over the ditch, and shot the victims from close range.