Murder Story of Chernigov Jews in Roshevshchina

… From 1938 until now I have worked as a gardener on the territory of the Chernigov city land and forestry farm in Roshevshchina. During the German occupation I was a witness of mass shootings of Soviet civilians on the territory of the above-mentioned farm. In the late autumn of 1941, at about 3 p.m., an open German truck that was filled with our civilians – men, women, and children - entered the farm. Those who had been brought there were unloaded near death pits that had been dug beforehand by policemen. They [the victims] were ordered to lie face down. In groups of four they were taken to a pit and shot. The shooting of our civilians was carried out by Germans and policemen, who had arrived by car and truck. German and Hungarian officers were present during the shooting. They photographed the shooting. During the shooting the site was surrounded by policemen. I was kept by guards in an office located in the middle of the farm not far from the shooting site. Through the window I could see well the place where the shooting was carried out. On that day ten loads of doomed civilians were brought by truck. Afterwards, every week, mostly on Saturdays, our civilians were taken there by Germans until the expulsion [of the Germans] in September 1943.…

… In late October 1941 arrests of Jews in the city and in the county began on orders from the German commander of the city, a lieutenant-colonel (I do not remember his name); and of the head of the Security Service (Sicherheitdienst), a German whose name I [also] do not remember, with the rank of major. Arrests were carried out by policemen and by the Security Service in the city and in the countryside. All the arrested Jewish families were taken to a quarry at Brick Factory No. 2 on Shevchenko Street. They were forced to undress there and then transported by truck to the Roshevchshina garden at No. 130 Shevchenko Street. There members of the Security Service, supervised by members of the German field gendarmerie, carried out the shooting with machine-guns. Altogether about 4,000 Jews were shot.…