Murder Story of Kakhovka Jews at the Dimitrov Collective Farm

… On the morning of September 26 [sic], 1941 policemen from the entire county surrounded Kakhovka. The policemen drove all the Jews out of their apartments. They [the Jews] were ordered to take with them warm clothes and shoes and also valuables and foodstuffs for three days. [They were told that] they were going to be taken to work in the neighboring county. All of them had to assemble on the main street. All of the Jews were lined up and taken outside of town. They were guarded by policemen. They were taken about 10 kilometers outside of Kakhovka, where there was a pig farm in the steppe on the territory of a former farmstead. There were two very deep wells there, about 20-25 meters deep…. The Jews were taken to these wells. The policemen started to beat the Jews with their rifle butts and threw them - women, children, and the elderly - into the well alive. This horrible tragedy lasted almost twenty-four hours: the policemen threw about 700 Jewish inhabitants of Kakhovka into the wells…. I want to describe the last minutes in the life of the oldest Jewish inhabitant of Kakhovka, 86-year old Duvid Moyshe Tirkaltaub. For many years he was in charge of maintenance at the school. The schoolchildren called him "Grandpa Moyshe." Grandpa Moyshe was brought to these wells with his son Nukhim Tirkaltaub and his family - his wife Perl Tirkaltaub and their two children, a boy of 9 and another of 7 - and his daughter Keyla Mazin, her husband, Avrum Mazin, and [their] three girls – 17, 15, and 12 years old. The policemen took Grandpa Moyshe to the well and told him that if he would throw his children and grandchildren into the well, they would spare his life. Grandpa Moyshe replied: "I will never do this. Kill me but spare the lives of my children and grandchildren." He asked the policemen to let him, for the last time, turn to God, to let him pray for the last time. He prayed as required by Jewish tradition [probably The Shema and/or the confession before death]. The policemen then beat him severely with their rifle butts and threw him into the well. With his last words he shouted: "You bandits, murderers, God will punish you. You will not destroy our people. The Jewish people is invincible. We will be avenged!" Afterward, the children and the grandchildren of "Grandpa Moyshe" Tirkaltaub were [also] thrown into the well. That night was a terrible one, the women and elderly people screamed and the children cried terribly. The screams were heard several kilometers away. In this way the monstrous murderers solved the Jewish question in Kakhovka. Afterward, all the policemen came and covered the wells with earth….