Investigation visit n° 5 to Russia

 Dates: September 22-October 8, 2011

Region: administrative area of Rostov

Participants: Patrick Desbois (team leader and interviewer), Geoffroy Lauby (team leader and interviewer), Marie Moutier (assistant), Svetlana Biryulova (interpreter), Kseinia (interpreter), Denis Mouravitski) (investigator), Micha (investigator), Alexey Kosyanov (photographer), Omar Gonzalez (cameraman), Andrei Khutsko (driver), Ruslan (driver).

Investigated towns and villages: Rostov on the Don, Kagalnitskaia, Mechetinskaia, Zernograd, Aleksandrovka, Chakhty, Kamenolomni, Iegorlyskaia, Novoragovskaia, Proletarsk, Apionki, Salsk, and Kirvovkaia.

From September 22 to October 8, 2011 Yahad In Unum made a fifth investigation visit to Russia, the first one in the region of Rostov. This was a genuine challenge given the scarcity of archive documents concerning this region. Each piece of information that is collected is therefore a step forward to study the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in southern Russia.

The proximity of the war front was mentioned in every testimony. Long convoys of Ukrainian and Polish refugees, including many Jews, went across the area as they fled the Germans’ progress. During the Nazi occupation, there were German soldiers everywhere: each village apparently accommodated a number of Wehrmacht men getting a rest before they went back to the front.

Although the German occupation in this area was relatively short (less than a year, except in the area of Taganrog), Yahad found traces of numerous crimes whose victims were Jews, but also civilians and Soviet war prisoners.

The shootings in Rostov

One morning the Yahad team reached the market of Iegorlikskaia. In the biting cold, a well-muffled up babushka was guarding a stall offering multicoloured bath towels and heavy warm shoes. When Svetlana addressed her, Lidia put it straight: she attended several mass executions by shooting in Rostov, in the Smiovska ravine. She was not yet seven years old then. The Germans entered her house and other houses close to the ravine, and they brutally herded the families living there, the children included, so that they should attend the executions. They stood surrounded by guards on one side of the ravine. There were German policemen with dogs and automatic guns behind them. Little Lidia in her mother’s arms could then see people climbing down from a truck. They were led to the edge of the ravine. The victims faced the villagers. They were shot from behind with machine-guns. The bodies fell down as gunfire burst out. Then another group of victims showed up. Sometimes the little girl’s mother covered her eyes. This was not an isolated event. The Germans did the same thing for the next shooting: they dragged the frightened local population to the scene. Lidia then began to choke and could tell no more. It was a deeply horrifying testimony.

According to the Extraordinary Soviet State Commission, the Germans had transferred all the people living in the vicinity to other locations, so that there should be no witnesses of the massacres of the Jewish population of Rostov, but also of communists, civilians suspected of being in relation with partisans, Gipsies, war prisoners, mentally disabled persons from the hospital, prostitutes… The Soviet Commission reported more than 25,000 murders in this ravine within the first months of German occupation.

The shootings of Jewish refugees

The team found Aleksandr (born 1931), who told another terrible story. He was at a hamlet a few miles from Mechinskaia when he heard screams. He ran with friends to the railroad track where the noise came from. It is the line to the Caspian Sea, and also to Stalingrad. Two trains had stopped there. Women and children climbed down from the stock cars. The little ones cried for their mothers: “Mama! Mama!” The victims were surrounded by policemen who set their dogs on anyone trying to run away. The women and children were then led by horsemen to a ravine where they were shot. A uniformed German walked to the place where the young villagers were hiding. He just wanted to relieve himself. The children took fright and fled.

The team also worked in a number of small villages around the town of Salsk, like Novoragovskaia or Apionki, where quite substantial discoveries were made. In all of these villages there were a few families of Jewish refugees. They were executed by highly mobile German death commandos In Apionki, for example, Nina (born 1921) was still frightened when she recalled the shooting of twenty or so Jews, who had been dragged from the houses where they had found shelter. They were executed behind the village, in a sand career. There is no monument today to commemorate this tragedy.

In towns as well as in the countryside, witnesses repeatedly mentioned numerous denunciations, especially of Jewish refugees. The Germans posted notices promising money to those reporting them. They also organized questioning sessions in order to find refugees Nina, who is not Jewish, a found shelter in Apionki. She was summoned to the rural council. A German was there, with an interpreter. On method the Germans used to identify Jews was the way they pronounced certain words.

The gas trucks

Several witnesses mentioned closed metal trucks, sometimes bearing a blue cross. For example, in Novoragovskaia Irina saw a vehicle of this type driving to the pits that served as silos. No gunshot could be heard. In Zernograd Vladimir saw three of his Jewish school-fellows arrested in the classroom. They had been reported by the German school-mistress. Two Germans officers came up and made them climb aboard a metal truck – the same as the one which had been used to eliminate the town’s Jews. The Germans had posted notices ordering Jews to gather at a given place. They were herded into two of these trucks. Were they gas trucks? The German archives do state that the Einsatzkommandos operating in the region had such vehicles at their disposal. Also, the Extraordinary Soviet State Commission mentions that gas trucks were used in Rostov as well: a truck waited for the Jews where they had been ordered to gather; some of them climbed aboard, the other walked behind up to Smiyovskaia Balka. The corpses were then unloaded down into the ravine, at the edge of which the other victims were shot.

On the whole, in the course of this visit, Yahad has identified 14 shooting sites, most of which have no memorial, and interviewed 48 witnesses.