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On the Mass
Shooting of Jews by
the German Murderers in the Drobitzki Valley
Protocol
Kharkov,
September 5, 1943
We,
the undersigned, members of the Commission constituted as
follows: Ilya Ivanovich Profatilov -- Chairman of the District
Commission for the determination and investigation of the
crimes of the German-Fascist invaders and their collaborators;
and the following members: Aleksander Ignatyevich Selivanov --
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the City Council of
Kharkov; Major General Nikolai Ivanovich Trufanov -- the
Military Commander of the city of Kharkov; the representatives
of the Extraordinary Government Committees -- Konstantin
Alekseyevich Lebedev and Dmitri Ivanovich Kudryavtzev;
Protoyerey (Senior Priest) of the Church of Pokrov -- Ivan
Yakovlevich Kamyshan; Representative of the Executive
Committee of the City Council of Kharkov -- Valentina
Vasilyevna Karpenko; the professors -- Aleksei Ivanovich
Shevtzov, and Yevgeni Sevastyanovich Katkov, Ivan Vasilyevich
Kudintzev, and Ivan Ivanovich Makletzov, compiled the present
protocol, and these are its contents:
During
the occupation of the city of Kharkov by the German-Fascist
invaders the peaceful population was destroyed systematically,
and the Jewish population was totally destroyed one by one.
According to incomplete records, upwards of 15,000 Jewish
residents of the city of Kharkov were shot during the months
of December 1941 and January 1942 alone near the village of
Rogan, 8 kms. from the city of Kharkov in the so-called valley
of Drobitzki. This barbarity inflicted on innocent citizens
was confirmed by evidence obtained from witnesses, from
protocols by medical experts and from other reliable
documents, and these barbarous acts were also confirmed at the
place where they were committed by a member of the State
Commission, Academy Member A.N. Tolstoy.
The
German Military Commander of the city of Kharkov on December
14, 1941, issued an order according to which all the Jewish
population of the city were required, within two days, to move
to the huts of the Lathe Factory on the outskirts of the city.
It was stated in the order that those failing to comply with
these instructions would be shot.
In
the huts into which all the Jews of the city were herded the
doors and windows were broken, the water system and stoves
destroyed. Hundreds of people were pushed into these huts,
which had been intended to house 60-70 persons. The Germans
starved the population in the ghetto that was set up and
forbade them to go out to fetch water or find food. At night
they were forbidden to leave the huts to relieve themselves.
Anyone who infringed the regime in the least way was shot
immediately. Many of the people fell sick and died. The
corpses of the dead were left lying in the huts, and it was
forbidden to take them out from there. The citizen Anna
Yosifovna Chernenko-Nazvich, who succeeded in escaping from
the camp, related the following:
"On
December 28, 1941, in the evening, the Nazis burst into the
huts, took out 60 persons and shot them on the spot. Shootings
of this kind were a common occurrence."
According
to the evidence of F.I. Kersten and A.F. Grigorova, the
Germans continued to plunder the property of the occupants of
the camp. Every day the Germans made demands that they be
given warm clothing, watches and other valuables. If their
demands were not fulfilled because the goods were not
available, then the soldiers used to take out some tens of
persons from the huts and shoot them. There were many who
could not endure the systematic brutality and humiliation and
lost their minds or committed suicide. One who lost her mind
was Dr. Belyayevskaya, the wife of Prof. Mamutov, and others.
Within the area of the ghetto there was a so-called
"living grave," from which, after the killings,
groans were heard coming from people who had been buried alive
there. On December 26, 1941, the Germans announced that a list
would be made of persons wishing to travel to Poltava, Romny
and Kremenchug, noting that those who went would not be
permitted to take any baggage at all with them. On the
following day automobiles arrived outside the huts. The people
understood this provokatzia and refused to get into the
automobiles. The soldiers pushed them in by force and they
were taken out of the camp. In the course of a few days the
inmates of the ghetto were taken to the valley of Drobitzki by
car or on foot, and there they were all shot. An eye-witness
to the slaughter, from the village of Rogan, Anastasya
Zakharovna Osmachko, said the following:
"When
I learned of the murder of Soviet citizens by Germans in the
valley of Drobitzki, on the morning of January 7, 1942, I went
to see what was happening there together with my son Vladimir,
aged 12, and another 11 people from the village. In the valley
we discovered a pit several tens of meters long, ten meters
wide and several meters deep. Many bodies of those who had
been shot were piled up in the pit. When we had looked at the
bodies we decided to go home. But we had not yet had time to
leave the valley when three trucks arrived carrying German
soldiers. The soldiers stopped us. They took us to the pit and
one of them began to shoot at us with a machine-gun. When my
son fell I fainted and fell into the pit. When I recovered I
found myself lying on dead bodies. Later I heard the cries of
women and children whom the Germans were bringing to the pit
and shooting. The bodies of those who were shot fell into the
pit where I lay.
"I
was in the pit from morning until 4:00 or 5:00 in the
afternoon and saw how, throughout the whole day, the Germans
kept bringing groups of people to the pit and killing them.
Before my eyes several thousand people were shot. They were
Jews -- men and children. When the Germans had finished the
slaughter they left the place. From among the corpses groans
and cries went up from the living wounded. About half an hour
after the German soldiers had left the place I crawled out of
the pit and ran home. My son and the other people who had come
with me from the village had been shot."
The
witnesses Chernenko-Nazvich, Anna Yosifovna, Daniil
Aleksandrovich Serikov and Fyodor Lukyanovich Kovrizhko gave
evidence that together with the shooting the German-Fascist
invaders killed people, mainly children, by means of poison,
and afterwards burned the bodies inside the camp huts. The
witnesses F.I. Kersten and A.F. Grigorova and others gave
evidence that in December 1941 the Germans put into the
building of the synagogue on Meshchansky Street elderly Jews,
the disabled and children, who remained in Kharkov and were
unable to reach their new destination on foot; a large number
of them froze to death and others died of hunger. Altogether
400 persons died in the synagogue building.
The
Commission opened up two pits near the village of Rogan in the
valley of Drobitzki, one of them 100 meters long and 18 to 20
meters wide, and the second 60 meters long and 20 meters wide.
According to the findings of the Expert Medical Commission,
upward of 15,000 bodies were buried in these pits (attached:
the report of the Medico-Legal Commission). Five hundred
bodies were removed from the pits, of which 215 were submitted
to medico-legal examination. They included the bodies of 83
men, 117 women and 60 children and infants. It was established
that the cause of death of almost all these persons whose
bodies had been examined was a wound and hole in the back of
the skull caused by the passage of a bullet. This indicated
that the shooting was carried out from behind the person to be
killed and from a short distance away.
The
Commission considers the following responsible for the crimes
committed against the peaceful population of the city of
Kharkov: the former Commander of the Special Unit SK4 (Sonderkommando)
of the Gestapo Hellenbruch, the Commander of Special Unit SK4
of the Gestapo Sturmbannfuehrer Willi Neumann, Deputy
Commander Major Radetzki, Major Miller, who worked with the
Gestapo, Under-officer Schneider, Gestapo interrogator
Under-officer Falker, Gestapo assistant Under-officer
Ostermann, Gestamember Captain Beuthen and Under-officer Franz
Lovichko.
All
these must suffer severe punishment for horrendous crimes
committed against the Soviet people.
signed:
Chairman
of the Commission, Ilya Ivanovich Profatilov
Members
of the Commission: Chairman of the Executive Committee of the
City Council of Kharkov, A.I. Selivanov
Major
General N.I. Trufanov
Representatives
of the Extraordinary State Committee K.A. Lebedev, D.I.
Kudryavtzev
Arch-Priest
of the Church of Pokrov I. Y. Kamyshan
Representative
of the Executive Committee of the City Council of Kharkov,
V.V. Karpenko
The
professors: A.I. Shevtzov, I.V. Kudintzev, I.I. Makletzov, and
Y.S. Katkov.
Dokumenty
Obviniayut
("Documents Accuse"), II, Moscow, 1945, pp. 307-309. |
