'The pit moved for another three days - the Jews were buried alive': Ukrainians shared memories of the Holocaust

January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ukrainian eyewitnesses shared their memories of those times. They told how the Nazis killed Jewish children, teachers, doctors, their neighbors before their eyes, and then buried these people in ravines and forests. Writes about it Hromadske.

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These testimonies were recorded two years ago, and now they are published for the first time by the Babi Yar Memorial Center in cooperation with the French organization Yahad-In Unum.

Seen the snow covered in blood

Raisa was still a child when she saw hundreds of Jews going to the "killing fields" near the school where she studied. There the Jews were shot, and they fell dead or wounded into huge pits. When the children walked around the neighborhood, they were forced to look at the blood-drenched snow. When the Nazis came to the village of Raisy - Natyagailovka in the Nikolaev region - in 1941, she was only 6 years old.

She recalls how the Jews were led from morning until noon, and when they arrived at the place, “they were ordered to undress, then their jewelry was taken away and they were immediately killed.” The Nazis chose a place on the outskirts of the village, it was a bare wasteland, where they dug huge pits. The Germans did not shoot small children, they threw them alive into a pit and buried them. All this happened right at Raisa's school.

“We heard how they were led. They spoke in Hebrew, wept and shouted. It was terrible! Thousands of people were killed there!.. Elderly women, children, teenagers went there. They carried small children in their arms,” Raisa recalls.

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According to her, the Nazis gave local schoolchildren the task of collecting thyme, and when they walked around these places, they saw snow covered in blood.

“Believe me, if all the blood were collected near the pits of death, this would be enough to drown the whole of Ukraine,” she says.

"Sir, we want to live"

Galina was 11 years old when the Nazis killed Jews in the forest near her home. She remembers the killings, the pits and the screams of little boys and girls.

The Nazis brought Jews to her village of Tuniki in the Kiev region from the neighboring town of Bohuslav to shoot them over the graves of previously killed communists near the forest. One 16-year-old Jewish girl known to Galina's family spent the night hiding in their house, returning the next evening with two friends.

Galina's mother told her: “Daughter, we cannot hide you. Go, I have my own children, I can't risk them."

Galina grazed cows near the execution site and recalls seeing how the Nazis shot groups of Jews four times in a row over four days. But these were not the only cases: Galina and her friends went there specifically to see what was happening. Among those whom she saw killed was a girl with her friends who came to hide in Galina's house.

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“This girl said: “Master, we want to live.” The German pointed a pistol at her, but then pulled the trigger. Another shouted at him to shoot. And he tried again, then he cried. And the second one hit that German in the face, grabbed his rifle and killed them. The girls fell on top of the bodies that were already there,” Galina recalls.

The pit moved for three days - the Jews were buried alive

16-year-old Lyubina witnessed how a three-year-old Jewish girl was led to the place of execution along with her mother. She recalls that even three days after the massacre, the pit was still moving – “the Jews were buried alive.”

“One summer I saw a column of Jews leaving the surrounding villages, accompanied by 15 policemen. Local Jews joined them. There were mostly teenagers and older people there. I saw a mother with her daughter, who was about three years old. The girl kept asking: “Mom, where are we going? I was a good girl, why are you taking me there?” The column arrived at the place of execution, the pit had already been dug. The bodies were lying there - they were Jews from another village,” recalls Lyubina.

Three Germans in green uniforms were already waiting by the pit. The soldiers were armed with machine guns and rifles. The Jews undressed, stood in front of the pit, and they were shot. Children were thrown alive into pits and buried.

“After the execution, even three days later, the pit was still moving,” Lyubina said in the end.

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