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1 Execution site(s)
Anna I., born in 1924. Her parents died during the Great Famine and she became an orphan. Under the Romanians, she was forced to work in the kolkhoz, alongside the Jews: "There were 200 people, men, women, children, everyone was working in the field during the harvest. We had a lunch break and them, no. In the evening, I went back to the hall and I saw how 2 Romanians who were sleeping in the room nearby brought in Jewish girls to rape over the course of a week.
Then, one Sunday, all the Jews were gathered on the Kriva Street, nowadays it’s Shevchenko Street. I don’t remember exactly which month was it, but it was in late August or early September. By that time the rumors about the shooting of Jews had already spread over the village. I ran to the village center where I saw a crowd of Jews accompanied by Germans and Romanians. They had dogs.
YIU : Which color of uniform did they have ?
W: The Germans wore grey uniforms and the Romanians were in brown ones. The Germans walked at the head and the end of the column and the Romanians on both sides. How the Jews screamed and cried! It was unbearable. There were entire families, women, elder people and many children of different ages. If someone from the crowd fell down the others helped them to stand up. They were constantly beaten by the guards to move quicker. » (Witness n°2074, interviewed in Ananyiv, on May 30, 2016)
“On August 25th, 1941, under the pretext of a gathering, the entire Jewish population was assembled in the town of Ananyev. During the first gathering, at least 600 people were present. They were all put in rows and brought by the central street of Ananyev towards to the distillery, in the direction of the railway station of Zherebkovo. 3-4km away from Ananyev, on the right side of the road, the Jews were lined up long side the anti-tank ditch which spread from the village of Novogeorgiyevka. Once they were lined up, someone fired at them with machine guns. We could hear the bursts of fire and everybody understood what happened to the people who had been taken there.” [Act of the State extraordinary commission drawn up on October 12, 1944; RG 22.002M: GARF Fond 7021, Opis 6, Delo 79]
Ananyiv, founded in 1753, is located close to the current border with Moldova, 177km north from Odessa. There are records that the first Jewish community dated back to the beginning of the 19th century. By 1897, the Jewish community made up 3,527 people (21% of the total population). There was a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, a Talmud Torah which operated from 1880. As Ananyiv was an important export center, the majority of Jews were involved in trade of grain, clothing, and hardware. Many of them worked in manufactured workshops or in textile cooperatives established in 1920s. There were several industries, such as oil refineries, four mills which also belonged to Jews. According to the local villagers, there was a Jewish kolkhoz called Ekarta. During the course of the history, the Jewish community suffered from several waves of pogroms (in 1881 and 1920) during which many Jewish homes and shops were destroyed and several hundred Jews were killed, including the members of the self-defense unit. Due to the pogroms, the Jewish population decreased. There were only 1,779 remaining Jews on the eve of the war. The village was occupied by the Germans on August 7th, 1941.
According to the local witnesses, straight after the German invasion, all of the Jews were marked with numbers on their backs and were forced to perform forced labor.
A couple of weeks after the invasion, on August 25th, 1941, all of the Jews were gathered in the center of Ananyiv, under the pretext of an organized meeting. At least 600 people came and were brought 3-4km away from the village where they were shot in the anti-tank ditches. During the field work, Yahad discovered that the number of victims was 1350 and not 600, as mentioned in the archives. According to the eyewitness to the shooting, the Jews were shot dressed in small groups at the edge of the pit. The shooters fired with machine guns. All the roads were cut off in advance so no one could approach the site.
From September 1941, Ananyiv became part of Transnistria. On September 2-3, the remaining Jews were assembled and taken to the Dubasari ghetto, but on their way they were shot close to the village of Mostove.
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