Compte-rendu du 18ème voyage d’investigation de Yahad-In Unum en Ukraine
Divisions administratives
L’Ukraine est divisée en vingt-quatre régions, une république autonome en Crimée et deux municipalités avec un statut juridique particulier, Kiev et Sébastopol 
| Régions et république autonome | |||||
| 1 | Cherkasy | 10 | Khmelnytskyi | 19 | Sumy |
| 2 | Chernihiv | 11 | Kirovohrad | 20 | Ternopil |
| 3 | Chernivtsi | 12 | Kiev Oblast | 21 | Vinnytsia |
| 4 | Crimea | 13 | Luhansk | 22 | Volyn |
| 5 | Dnipropetrovsk | 14 | Lviv | 23 | Zakarpattia |
| 6 | Donetsk | 15 | Mykolaiv | 24 | Zaporizhia |
| 7 | Ivano-Frankivsk | 16 | Odessa | 25 | Zhytomyr |
| 8 | Kharkiv | 17 | Poltava | ||
| 9 | Kherson | 18 | Rivne | ||
caption: Skalat, previously a building from the city camp, where 100 of the 500 Jewish prisoners were saved by a Partisan attack.
Research team:
Patrice Bensimon (interviewer) Svetlana Birioulova (interpreter) Oleksii Kosarevskyi (interpreter) Anna Mojarova (report editor) Denis Mouravitski (researcher) Thierry Soval (cameraman) Mikhaïl Stroutinski (ballistics specialist) Nicolas Tkatchouk (photographer)
Back after 17 days of research in the Ternopil region, Yahad-In Unum’s team would like to broadcast their results and discoveries.
The investigated region, which used to form part of Galicia, is distinguished, much like Lvov, by the strong presence of Jewish “labor” camps located along the Lviv-Vinnitsia highway. Yahad decided to focus this trip on locating these camps as well as the graves where the prisoners from these camps were buried, based on the information given by the witnesses who are still alive today.
Labor or extermination camps?
During the course of this trip, Yahad’s team found over 15 camps, including the ones at: Maksymovka, Romanove Selo, Kamianky, Skalat, Velyki Byrki, Velyky Gloubotchek, Ozerna, Tchortkiv, Novosilka, and Dobrianivka.
First discovery: in a single village or city, it was possible for a main camp and one or two small annexes to coexist. In Ozerna, for example, there were 3 camps. The first one was the “poor” camp, where most of the city’s Jewish prisoners were held; they were all men and were forced to work on the construction of the roads. Then there was the camp (a small building, actually) for women. Here, they had to wash the clothes for the prisoners and guards of the “poor” camp. Finally, there was the “Freilager”, an unguarded building where the “specialists”, such as Jewish craftsmen and doctors, were held. Mikhaïl (1927) remembers having been cared for by one of these doctors, whom the villagers could consult at any time, at no cost.
caption: Grimaïlov, Stanislav (96 years old) refused to participate in a pogrom organized by the Wehrmacht.
Yahad also figured out that these camps were neither hidden nor cut off from the rest of the village. In Kamianky, Vladimir (1923) and Dmitri (1928) both had the chance to go into the camp. Vladimir went because he had to pick up a German and drive him to another city. Dmitri and his father, along with 10 other countrymen, had to deliver vegetables for the camp kitchen and take out the garbage on the way back several times a week.
Another interesting thing about these camps is that, for the most part, the mass graves where they buried the Jews who died from exhaustion, were killed due to sickness, and were shot during the camp’s liquidation were found within the premises of the camp. In Stoupki, the investigated camp was at first a camp for Soviet military prisoners, and later a camp for “Jewish laborers”. The Soviet prisoners and the “Jewish workers” who died of starvation and sickness were buried in the camp’s gravepits.
When the Nazis decided to exterminate these camps in the spring and summer of 1943, these same graves were used for the last shootings. Mikhaïl (1927), Maria (1935) from Kamianki, and Iakov (1922) from Stoupki observed the execution of the last prisoners from these camps. The three of them describe how the victims were undressed in the camp buildings, and were then escorted in groups by a group of guards towards the graves, where their executioners were waiting. The camp was no longer a labor camp, but a death camp.
Another fact established by the researchers at Yahad, is that most of the bodies that were buried in these graves were later exhumed in order to be burned according to “Operation 1005″ techiniques. Stefania (1934) testified that during the course of three days, her father, along with other Kamianky inhabitants, was forced to unearth the bodies using hoes and then “position the bodies like logs between two layers of wood”. The Germans would then pour gasoline over them and set them on fire.
Even more horrifying, the Jewish prisoners at Ozerna and Velyky Gloubotchek were burned alive. Iaroslav (1933) watched as the Germans forced each Jew to carry a log of wood and lie down in the grave, after which the Germans proceeded to pour some flammable liquid over them. In Stoupki, some of the prisoners were locked inside one of the camp buildings and burned alive, as testified by Iakov (1922).
Yahad also discovered 2 camps that were not mentioned in either of the Soviet or German archives, one at Novosilka and one at Dobrianivka. The camp at Novosilka, was actually the village club building, and held 50 Jewish prisoners who worked in the Skalat quarry. The camp at Dobrianivka held about 200 Jews, and they were in charge of cultivating and harvesting at the kolkhozes where they lived. The prisoners from this camp were literally massacred in three different places on the camp. For three days, Emilia’s (1934) father, along with other residents, had to gather the bodies and bury them in a grave usually meant to bury animals.
caption: Grimaïlov, pond where 500 Jews from the village were shot along the edge on July 5, 1941
Witnesses to the executions of July 1941
During the course of this trip; Yahad collected numerous accounts from witnesses to the first Jewish executions. They shed light on several major elements: these executions took place upon the arrival of the Wehrmacht, were planned and, to a certain point, carried out by them, resulted in up to 500 victims, and systematically implicated part of the local Ukrainian population.
In July 1941 in Vishnevets, Mikhaïl was witness to the sadistic ways of the Wehrmacht soldiers, who shut fifty Jewish men in a cellar and conducted a macabre game. The Jews had to hit each other; whenever a man found himself in a corner of the basement, he was to be beaten by the others. The last one standing was then shot by the soldiers.
In Skalat, Lioubomira (1931) saw the arrival of the German army at the beginning of July 1941 on a Saturday, when the Jews were at the synagogue. About 50 Jews were taken and shot at the foot of the fortress tower of the city. On that same day, Markian (1929) saw another 50 Jews being cornered into going into the water in the lake, where they were executed.
The most troubling discovery was made in Grimaïlov. Upon the arrival of the Wehrmacht on July 5, 1941, a third of the 1500 village Jews were executed. Stanislav (1913) told us that the Germans offered their guns to young Ukrainians, so that they could shoot the Jews lined up at the edge of the pond. Our witness refused, but “many others accepted”. For three days, the first Ukrainian Jewish victims were lined up by groups along the edge of the pond, and then shot by Ukrainians who stood on the bank above. The next group had to arrange the bodies before them on the edge of the pond. The bodies were later buried in the Jewish cemetery, with the exception of those who had tried to escape. These were thrown into wells, located where a factory now stands.
caption: Veiliki Gloubotchek. Emilian points out the private garden where over 300 Jews now rest. They were held in the village camp, and were later shot and burned.
But also…
Many testimonies told of the Jewish escape attempts. In Skalat, Markian (1929) says that one night in the spring of 1943, a group of Partisans attacked the Jewish labor camp, which, for the most part, succeeded in escaping. In Zboriv, some camp prisoners escaped from the truck that was taking them to their execution, so many that, on the next truck, the Germans forced the victims to lie down while in the truck, and doubled the number of German guards in the back of the vehicle.
Two witnesses, Anna (1931) from Novosilka and Adam (1930) from Ternopil, watched the mass shootings of their respective local Jewish populations, and described a type of murder that we had never before encountered during the course of our research, a true murder methodology established by death squads. Several gravepits and several groups of gunmen were set up at the same time, and they simultaneously assassinated several groups of Jews. Anna said, “when the victims arrived, 3 graves had already been dug (…)3 groups of Jews approached 3 gravepits at the same time, and walked on a plank that had been laid across each pit, where they were shot. There were multiple planks over each pit.
The preparation file consisted of 90 pages of excerpts from the soviet Extraordinary State Commission and 30 pages from statements by people who had been questioned by German law for having participated in the killing of Ukrainian Jews. The goal of this particular trip was to find the mass graves of over 15 different camps. As we close our investigations, we can conclude that 40% of the mass graves in these camps do not have a memorial, and 50% of those that do have one, do not have the memorial on the exact location of the graves.