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2 Execution site(s)
Maria D., born in 1927, remembers: “I went to Lypovets when I saw a column of about 30 Jews brought by the Germans. It happened at the beginning of the spring, there was still snow. All the Jews walked on foot. They were exhausted and dirty; I guess they had been hiding somewhere but were founded and arrested. There were women, men and elderly people. I saw Ida in the column, my orphanage director; she screamed and asked for help in front of me. But we could do nothing, because at this moment, Germans aimed a gun at my cousin and me and we ran away.” (Eyewitness n° 2144, interviewed in Skytka on November 04, 2016)
“The police rounded-up us, 22 resident of Vikentovka, and took us to the field where the silo pits were located during the night. The policemen ordered to clean the ditches. We dug the cleaned and deepened the ditches during the entire night. At 7am, the police brought over 700 people, men, women and children among them. They made us to go further and remained there until the end of the shooting. The victims were ordered to undress, to get down inside the pit in groups of 20-30 people and to lie down facing the ground. The German perpetrators fired with automatic weapon at them. After, another group was brought and forced to lay inside the pit over the bodies of the previous group, who were shot dead or only wounded, and they continued to conduct their “Aktion”. When the pit was full, it was filled in. Taking in consideration that not all people were shot dead the pit was moving during several hours. “[Act of the Soviet Extraordinary Commission drawn up from the disposition of a local requisitioned man, on August 10, 1944. RG.22-002M: Fond 7021, opis 54, delo 1254.]
Vikentiyivka is located about 50km east off Vinnytsia. Few Jews lived in the village because the majority of them were concentrated in a bigger town in of Lypovets. The only Jews that we knew lived in Vikentiyivka, according to a witness interviewed by Yahad, was Ida, a the director of an orphanage. There was a kolkhoz where the Ukrainians worked. They sold the products in Lypovets to the Jewish merchants. The majority of Jews in Lypovets lived off handcraft and small business. In 1939, 1,353 Jews lived in the city and represented 52% of the total population. Many Jewish refugees from the West arrived between 1939 and 1941. The town of Lypovets, as well as nearing villages like Vikentiyivka, was occupied by Germans on July 22, 1941. By this time about 15% of the Jews managed to evacuate to the East.
There were two major executions of Jews who were brought from the Lypovets open ghetto, which was created in the fall of 1941, after the first execution in September 1941, conducted in Lypovets. The two executions in Vikentiyivka were carried out by SD unit from Vinnytsia with the help of local police in late April or early May 1942 with the space of several days. Beforehand, on the eve of the shooting, 22 local villagers native to Vikentiyivka were requisitioned to prepare the pit, which was located in the field of the kolkhoz Karl Marx, close to the road leading to Skytka. During the first execution which started from the early morning, about 700 Jews (1200 according to the monumlent), women, men, elder people and children among them, were marched from the ghetto in Lypovets, about 6km, towards the execution site. Once there, the Jews had to undress, get inside the pit in groups of 20-30 people. The same method known as « Sardinenpackung » was implemented. They had to lay down facing the ground one close to another before being killed with sub machine gun. Then, another group came and laid over the corpses of the previous group. When the pit was full, it has been covered. Some days later, another 500 (800 according to the monument) were brought for the shooting in the same fields located south of the village. According to the eyewitnesses of the shootings interviewed by Yahad, this time the Jews didn’t go inside the pit, they were killed at the edge and fell down inside, they were also dressed, and it was them who had dug the pit.
For more information about the execution of the Lypovets Jews please refer to the corresponding profile.
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