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Murder Story of Staraya Ushitsa Jews in Grushka

Murder Site
Grushka
Ukraine (USSR)
Early in the morning of July 22 or 23, 1942, all the Jews of Staraya Ushitsa were driven out of their homes and assembled in the town square, which was guarded by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen and gendarmes. The elderly and sick were carried to the assembly point by their relatives, or by other Jews. Jewish residences were searched, and those who were found hiding would be beaten and dragged to the assembly point. The Jews were informed by the chiefs of the SD and the Gendarmerie that they would be taken to the ghetto in Kamenets-Podolsk. In the square, the men, women, and little children were divided into two groups. A group of skilled artisans and craftsmen, together with their families, was separated from the rest and taken to the Kamenets-Podolsk Ghetto. The remaining Jews, who numbered about 400 according to one testimony (or 800, according to a Soviet report), were taken by Ukrainian policemen to a field near the village of Grushka, about 2 kilometers northwest of the town. Jews from the nearby town of Studenitsa were also brought to this site. There were two pits there, dug beforehand by local residents. Upon reaching the site, the Jews were forced to strip naked. Those who refused, especially the women and young girls, were beaten severely by the gendarmes and policemen. After being lined up at the edge of the pit, the victims were forced to climb down into it in groups of five and lie face down. They were then shot with machine guns by members of the German SD and the Gendarmerie. During the murder operation, some of the Jews went insane. Many children were thrown into the pit alive. Several men tried to escape, but were shot dead by the Ukrainian guards. Gebeitskommisar (regional commissar) Reindl, who was in charge of the operation, was present at the murder site, together with Gendarmerie chief Reich, the head of the SD, and Belokon, the local county chief. After the shooting, local peasants were ordered to cover the pits with earth. The victims' valuables were retrieved from the murder site and from their residences by SD men, and taken to Kamenets-Podolsk. The remaining items and clothes were distributed among the peasants and Ukrainian policemen. Some items were later sold to the locals.

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Captain Zaloga, who served as the commander of the Ukrainian auxiliary police squad, testified at the Soviet juridical proceedings. The testimony was gathered for The Black Book, from the ChGK (Soviet Extraordinary State Commission):
…While serving with the Gendarmerie in Kamenets-Podolsky as company commander of a [Ukrainian auxiliary] police squad, I participated with my subordinates for the first time in the mass shooting of the Jewish population of the towns of Staraya Ushitsa and Studenitsa in August-September 1942.… As the company commander, on the evening preceding the day of the shooting, I was ordered by the chief of the Gendarmerie, Lieutenant Reich…, to call up about fifty policemen from my company. At the same time, I was ordered to call the commander of the troops at Staraya Ushitsa and find out from him whether he had received the order sent though the chief of the gendarme post of Staraya Ushitsa, about forming a police staff from among his troops. The troop commander told me that he understood everything and that he had given the necessary orders, having coordinated them with the chief of the gendarme post, with the cavalry sergeant Major Kunde, and with the district chief of Staraya Ushitsa. He was not able to explain the matter to me over the telephone, just as I was unable to ask him, both of us having been warned: he - by the chief of the gendarme post, and I – by the chief of the Gendarmerie. To my question about what we would be doing, the company commander Krubasik answered that we would know about that tomorrow. The order was given to take ten cartridges for each rifle, plus a machine gun cartridge belt in reserve. In addition, a portable machine gun and three automatic rifles were taken. About 10-12 gendarmes and about 50 policemen - some from Krubasik's company, some from mine - drove out. Members of the SD and of the criminal police drove out independently. Upon arriving in the village of Grushka, we found there the policemen from the districts of Zelenye Kurilovtsy and Provorottya all assembled. Lieutenant Reich drove out to Staraya Ushitsa in an automobile with three gendarmes; four members of the SD, led by the chief of the SD, drove out in a second automobile. They issued an order to the rest of the gendarmes and policemen to go to sleep. At dawn, after getting up, we all drove out in two consecutive groups to Staraya Ushitsa. About 1-1.5 kilometers before Staraya Ushitsa, the vehicles were stopped, and the policemen were lined up. There, Lieutenant Reich announced the purpose of the trip and its mission – to assemble the entire Jewish population of Staraya Ushitsa and Studenitsa and to deliver the Jews to a place of execution which was there, not far from the highway. The place of execution had been agreed upon ahead of time by the chiefs of the SS, the gendarmerie, and the district chief during one of the trips made by the chief of the SD, and also by the chief of the Gendarmerie, to Staraya Ushitsa. The entire Jewish population of Staraya Ushitsa was assembled in a square that was cordoned off by gendarmes and the police staff. All the males (adults and children, except for infants) were separated from the women, right there in the square. They were all ordered to sit down on the ground and forbidden to talk to each other. Attempts at conversation would be stopped with a peremptory shout and a blow with a rifle butt or club. The chief of the SD and the chief of the Gendarmerie announced to the Jews that they were going to [the ghetto of] Kamenets-Podolsky. In some instances, the women were permitted to take clothing for themselves and their children, since many came out of their apartments barefoot, and with scarcely any time to throw on a dress after the order to come out into the square. In the process of assembling the Jewish population, many people were found hiding in their apartments. Cellars and attics served as hideouts, having been prepared in advance for this purpose with a supply of food and clothing. Everyone who was found was beaten with rifle butts and clubs. There was one incident when a Jew who was hiding in the attic was shot and killed right on the spot by a policeman. The sick old men and women who were unable to walk to the square were led or carried in the arms of their relatives - and if there were no relatives, then we gave the order for other Jews to carry them. One woman aged 60-70, who walked very slowly out of the room, was forced out into the street with blows of rifle butts to her back. After this incident and the sound of shots, cries and screams broke out among the women and children. The screams and the cries were stopped only with great difficulty, and with the help of blows from rifle butts and clubs. [One of the women, whose husband was Ukrainian and who had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, tried to prove that she was Ukrainian. She was taken by one of the Germans to the SD and Gendarmerie chiefs, and showed them her papers, telling them that she just happened to be in the square, that she and her… 6-7-year-old daughter were Ukrainians, and that her husband was a Ukrainian, as well. But Belokon, the county chief, who was present at the site, gave the following answer when asked by the SD chief whether she was telling the truth: "The papers she has, which were issued to her before 1941, indicate that she is indeed Ukrainian, but this is not true, since her Jewish sister is present here, in the square. Her husband is, in fact, Ukrainian." Following this reply, the Germans took her to the square, abusing and cursing her all the while. Afterward, the woman's Ukrainian husband approached the SD chief and begged to have his daughter back. His request was also denied, with German "politeness." I find it necessary to mention that they identified and killed as "Jewish" anyone related to a Jew - even going three generations back, even in families where the husband or wife was of a different [non-Jewish] nationality. I know of the following incident: a Ukrainian husband, his Jewish wife, and their daughter, who was married to a Ukrainian man - who, in turn, also had a daughter married to a Ukrainian man - were all brought to the SD headquarters. All three women were shot as Jews. Men and women of other nationalities who were married to Jews were not shot.]... The chief of the SS and the chief of the Gendarmerie issued orders and drove out in their automobiles to the place of execution. The orders were as follows:… 1.Organize a guard for all of the apartments vacated by the Jews. I delegated the responsibility for organizing this guard to the troop commander of the police, who, after seeing to it that the guard was organized, came to the place of the shooting. 2.The district chief was ordered to have lunch prepared for 50-60 men from the police staff and for the gendarmes. Lunch was supposed to be ready at noon. The column's guard was organized this way: in front walked two gendarmes, 5-7 steps from the first row of the column of Jews; on the sides there were about 30-35 policemen (3-4 steps away from the column), and the task of those who brought up the rear was to urge on any people who fell behind. This was accomplished with the help of shouts and blows with rifle butts or clubs, which they had thought to take along when they left Staraya Ushitsa. I walked in the rear, behind the carts, with one gendarme, a Wachmeister radio operator, and a policeman. The whole route through the town of Staray Ushitsa, from the square to the outskirts, went more or less smoothly and without any incidents. But, as soon as the column passed the outskirts of the town, one could hear first the quiet, then continually louder crying of children, and then of the women. It did not stop for almost the whole stretch of the way. In spite of all the measures for restoring silence – kicks, blows from rifle butts, threats of immediate execution – the crying and screams stopped for a short while, only to begin again with greater force. The women and the old men whispered prayers; some people, whispering quietly to one another, spoke about something to their relatives or to the person walking next to them. Some people threw the bundles containing their belongings on the road, but they were picked up by a policeman and tossed into a cart. The false claim that the Jews were being taken to Kamenets-Podolsky was repeated several times throughout the journey. About 1-1.5 kilometers past Staraya Ushitsa, I saw automobiles parked on the road. I later found out that they carried the district commissar [Gebietskommissar] Reindl and his men. They were talking with the chief of the SD and the chief of the Gendarmerie. When the column had almost reached the automobiles, and the gendarme walking in front reported to the district commissar, the chief of the SD pointed out the direction for the column to take – i.e., he pointed in the direction of the pit, toward which the whole column turned. The moment the column turned toward the pit, there was a general outcry. No shouts, rifle butts, or kicks could stop these cries. The penetrating, shrill cries of the women were intermingled with the children's crying and the requests of the children for their mothers to take them in their arms. The crying gradually died down, then began again with growing force. It continued for one to two hundred meters, until they reached the place of execution – a dug-up pit. The pit was approximately twelve by six meters…; the pit's entrance was about two meters wide, with a slope to the bottom, along which the condemned walked. On this last leg of their journey, the Jews, seeing that the order to send them to Kamenets-Podolsky was a ruse, began to throw out cigarette cases, rings and earrings. They ripped up documents, photographs, letters, papers with notes and other thing. In the event that a Jew tried to escape the execution, it was not permitted to open fire inside the cordon; but once s/he was out beyond the cordon, one was to turn, facing him/her, and open fire.… A second, inner ring of the cordon was formed directly around the Jews, who were thus squeezed extremely close together in a single group. However, the former arrangement was maintained -i.e., the men stood in front, the women behind. This ring was closed at the pit in which the executioner stood with a machine gun. The process of the execution consisted of the following, if one can say this, elements: Fifteen to twenty meters from the pit,… stood the closely packed mass of people who were condemned to death. Everyone, including women and children, were stripped naked. Urged on by blows, five people at a time were directed to the pit. Near the pit also stood several gendarmes who, in their turn, prodded the people with blows from their clubs or rifle butts into the pit toward the executioner. The executioner…, drank a fair amount of schnapps and ordered the victims to lie face down at the side of the pit opposite the entrance. The victims were killed with a point-blank shot in the back of the head. The following group of five then lay down with their heads on the corpses of their fellow Jews, and were killed the same way, having received, as they said there, "one coffee bean". Standing over the top of the pit was a "marker", a member of the criminal police; he marked off each group of five with a small cross. The truth is that there were often instances when, instead of five people, a family of six to eight people, despite orders to the contrary, and despite being beaten within an inch of their lives for a distance of 15-20 meters, would nevertheless walk to the pit together.… Not far from the pit stood the chief of the Gendarmerie, Lieutenant Reich, the chief of the SD, whose surname I do not know, and commissar Reindl; in the course of the executions, they would issue commands. In the intervals between commands, they would encourage their subordinates, sometimes laughing at successful blows which landed in great numbers on the heads and backs of the Jews who were already dazed; otherwise, they just stood stone-faced, silently watching the picture of the extermination. Sometimes they would turn away from the pit, put their hands in the pockets, and talk quietly about something among themselves. Reindl, who had spent about two hours at the pit, shook hands with the supervisors, saluted all the others, smiled, said something again, got into his automobile, and drove off to Kamenets-Podolsky.... The execution went on. The picture would not be complete if I did not speak in more detail about the condition of the condemned people. After the first shots of the executioner, the whole crowd quieted down for a few seconds and then, after realizing the horror of their predicament, the voices of the crowd erupted in such an outcry that the heart stopped beating and the blood ran cold. There were many threats of retribution, curses. The elderly ones called to God and asked him to take revenge. The men, under the blows of rifle butts and clubs, shouted on the way to the pit and inside the pit itself: "Long live the leader of all peoples - Stalin!" "Long live the homeland of all people – the Soviet Union!" There were also shouts against the Germans: "Death to the one-eyed wolf – Adolf". Among the old men and women, there were some who lost their senses. These people, with wide-open, crazed eyes, paying no attention to the blows, walked on slowly, with their arms hanging at their sides, stumbled, fell, got up again, and, reaching the executioner, stopped and stood stupefied, without saying a word or making a single movement. Only a forceful push from an automatic rifle or a kick from the executioner would get one of these victims to the bottom of the pit. The small children, who were forcibly separated from their mothers, were thrown into the pit by the gendarmes from above. A child of three or four years of age took off all his clothes and walked up to the pit himself. A gendarme grabbed him by the arm and, after warning the executioner, threw the child into the pit. The executioner shot the child while he was still in the air. Many women, trying to cover their nakedness, had not removed their slips. Their slips were torn from them, and they were beaten. A few young women and girls suffered especially. They spit in the face and eyes of an SS man and several gendarmes. They were beaten on the face and breasts and kicked with boots in the genital area. The stockings or socks were ripped from the legs of the women and children with the muzzle of a rifle or a stick. Many women begged for the lives of their small children. Many ripped their clothes to shreds, tore out their hair, bit their arms. Some of the men tried to run. A middle-aged man, already completely naked, started to run in zigzags toward some bushes, which were northwest of the execution site. He ran 70-100 meters beyond the second ring of the cordon, and was killed by combined submachine-gun and rifle fire. A second man took off his outer garments and shoes and started to run in approximately the same direction, but he did not make it through the second ring and was killed, too.… Among the women, there were no attempts to escape. While undressing, the condemned Jews ripped their good shoes and clothes to pieces and hid their valuables in the ground. The experienced members of the SD, however, were on the alert for this, and stopped the attempts to destroy valuables. The valuables covered up with soil or grass were handed over to a special "collector" – one of the SD persons. Families, relatives, even acquaintances, when saying good-bye, shook each other's hand and kissed. Sometimes people, having embraced in a farewell kiss, stood for several seconds under a shower of blows and pressed tightly one against the other, and then the whole family, carrying the children in their arms, walked to the pit. By the end of the execution, the bottom of the pit was already full. The executioner, standing in the passageway, would order the victim to run along the corpses, and then shoot them in motion. If the shot missed its mark and the person was still alive, rifle and pistol shots from above would finish them off. There were instances when a person who had been shot still moved for fifteen to twenty minutes underneath the corpses of their fellows. Under the supervision of an SD man, the policemen began to shake and examine the clothes and shoes of those who had been shot. The clothes were examined with particular care. This was done because the men hoped to find valuables in the pleat of the clothes, in the lining, and in the waistbands of trousers. All valuables were put in a sack, which was kept by an SD man. That is where they put cigarette lighters, penknives, leather brief-cases, cigarette cases, and wallets. New articles – dresses, kerchiefs, boots, shoes, coats, as well as unfinished garments – were taken by the people who participated in the execution. Sometimes they tore things from each other's hands and argued violently. Thus, on this day about four hundred citizens of the Soviet Union were shot – men and women of all ages, as well as children. The execution continued for approximately four hours (from 7-8 AM till 11-12 AM).
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Wassili. The black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 . New York : Holocaust Library, 1981, pp. 530-537.
Grushka
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
48.583;26.916