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Murder Story of Yarmolintsy Jews at the Yarmolintsy Military Barracks

Murder Site
Yarmolintsy Area
Ukraine (USSR)
Current view of the military barrack where the Jews from Yarmolintsy and other nearby towns were held before being murdered. Photographer: Eugene Shnaider, 2013.
Current view of the military barrack where the Jews from Yarmolintsy and other nearby towns were held before being murdered. Photographer: Eugene Shnaider, 2013.
Genesis Philanthropy Group project, Copy YVA 14616126
In late October 1942, on the orders of Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) Emil Mertes, the Jews from Yarmolintsy were taken from the ghetto to the military area near the Yarmolintsy railway station located 4 kilometers southwest of the town. They were put under guard there, without water or food, along with the Jews from neighboring towns, in a three-storey military barrack that was fenced off with barbed wire. According to several testimonies, some committed suicide. After three days the Germans, assisted by Ukrainian auxiliary police, began to take people out of the barracks to nearby pits that had been prepared by the Ukrainian policemen. According to one testimony, a group of Jews put up armed resistance for about three days, during which they killed some Ukrainian auxiliary policemen and Germans. After the resistance was suppressed the Germans and Ukrainian policemen took people in groups of 50 to the edge of the pit and forced them to take off their clothes and lie face down in the pit. The victims were shot to death by the Germans, who were standing on a plank placed over the pit. The shooting operation lasted 3 days. During the shooting some people managed to escape. Soviet prisoners of war were shot to death and buried at this site as well.
Related Resources
From the testimony of E. Lantsman
… In Yarmolintsy [in the military barracks] the Jews resisted for two days. Weapons had been brought along with household items and had been prepared in advance. The following events took place in the cantonment: Jews killed the first policeman who came in to select a group of victims and threw his body through the window. An exchange of fire took place in the course of which several other policemen were killed. The next day trucks arrived with policemen from the nearby areas. They were not able to get into the cantonment until evening, when the Jews' supply of ammunition gave out. The execution lasted three days; sixteen [Ukrainian auxiliary] policemen were killed during this resistance, among them the chief of police and five Germans. There were instances of suicide in other buildings of the cantonment. A father threw his two children from the window, and then he and his wife plunged to their deaths together. One girl stood in the window and shouted: "Long live the Red Army! Long live Stalin!".
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. 26-27.
Yarmolintsy Area
military barracks
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
49.166;26.566
Petr Pshenitsa was born in 1928 in Sutkovtsy, a town near Yarmolintsy
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 24841 copy YVA O.93 / 24841